A False Sense of Security
– is a common thing in search rank reporting as this case study illustrates. If you follow this very small business story to it conclusion, you will take-away most of the key issues all local businesses that depend on online visitors face today. Local search is not what it used to be and its changing quickly. Whether you are a Yoga instructor or Pizza Delivery, hyperlocal search marketing will become a priority channel as new customers increasing use mobile search to find you. And the old tools don’t work.
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(screenshot AWRCould – #1 ) This AWRcloud report for Yoga am Bach (yoga-am-bach.de) indicates that Yoga am Bach is #1 for the keyword “yogalehrerin schwarzwald” (yoga teacher). Yoga am Bach is satisfied that they are #1 and reassured to see a “competitor”, Yoga Institute Schwarzwald (yoga-schwarzwald.de) is struggling to stay in 4th positions – and sometimes hitting lows on the second page of SERPS.
Yoga am Bach is feeling confident that their SEO efforts are working and that they are getting their share of Internet Leads. |
How To Choose The Right Keywords
“yogalehrerin schwarzwald” is a good keyword for Yoga am Bach to track because it accurately describes what the business is, and its a keyword a real potential customer would use to find them online. Except locals would not include “schwarzwald”. So is this keyword really viable?
(Schwarzwald is The Black Forest in Germany and it is important HERE to talk about this location specific keyword “schwarzwald”.) We MUST use this in our keyword-phrase when attempting SERP reporting using AWR – and any other search tracking/reporting SEO tools for that matter. Spoiler Alert! – in screenshot #4 you are going to be surprised to see a completely different SERP without this local keyword.
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( screenshot #2 ) But as this case study illustrates the Card on the page (the top right box) that is so prominent, contains none other than Yoga Institute Schwarzwald. Clearly these Cards, when displayed, probably get the majority of clicks. This Card in the top-right of the page is not indicated in the AWR report. The results from AWR is far from accurate and not indicative of the exposure Yoga Institute Schwarzwald is getting online. As a result Yoga am Bach has been overconfident in their dominance of the market (and complacent). |
How did we find this discrepancy?
Our SearchStation alerted us to the Card.
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Then as we take a close look at our SERP produced locally ( screenshot #3 ), we see that Yoga Institute Schwarzwald is actually #2 in real local search results ( not 4th – 10th as AWR reports ), and also has a Place listing in the real 4th position, and has the Card on the top right of the SERP. Seems that reality is very different from our original reporting – Yoga Institute Schwarzwald dominates these SERPs. |
What you don’t know can hurt you.
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( screenshot #4 ) is the result produced by our actual local search for “yoga lernerin”. Neither Yoga am Bach nor Yoga Institute Schwarzwald rank at all. Now we have a whole new Hyperlocal Internet Marketing ball game determining how to get the most visitors to our website, when our assumed keywords don’t work at all the way we thought they were using other tools.
This case study is typical of what you get in most local search rank reporting services, a false sense of security. We would not know this using any other search reporting tool. |
If you want to really know track how you are doing in search results, get the SEO tool that accurately reports search rank – SearchStation.