Transcript
Hi guys. And welcome to another edition of Zupo's SEO Talk & Tea.
Today's conversation is to beware or to be mindful of where you're pulling your rankings from. I'll go a little bit more into detail about what I mean by that. But first I want you to introduce the tea we have today, which is the Magic Dragon. It's a tea that's a dragon fruit, packed with apple, rosehip, hibiscus and blackberry leaves. I can tell you for a fact, it is sweet. And so if you really want a sweet tea, this is the way to go.
But of course if you're watching this video, I'm sure you're interested about the topic at hand. And that is to beware, be mindful of where you pull your ranking reporting from.
So what I mean specifically about that is I don't mean the software you're using. Yes there's lots of different softwares that offer rank reporting for SEO. And that's fine. But what I specifically mean is your local geographic area you're pulling those rankings.
So when you're pulling ranking reports, you must designate a local area because when you're simulating Google search, you must simulate... And so if you're doing Google search, you're probably doing it from a place. This is getting really meta and weird, but you can't do a Google search in not a place. Right?
So what I mean by that though is, if you're doing Google searches, right, you want to simulate based on your users. Right? And so where this becomes important is if you're a company and you're a local pizza house, right? And you're in Orange County, California, because that's where I am at. You don't want to do rank reporting from the United States as a nation, or you don't even need to care about California or any locality. You really should only be pulling your ranking reporting from the local Orange County area.
And that one is obvious. But let me tell you, the flip version is where a lot of people make mistakes. The flip side is when you are, let's say, an eCommerce company, right? And when you're an eCommerce company you probably don't have geographic limitations beyond your country of residence. So if you're a eCommerce company and you're in the US, you care about the US locality but you don't care about what state or where people are buying from, you can ship it to them.
So what becomes important is when you are rank tracking, right, for your website, make sure that you do not pick your local area if you're a company that doesn't care about your local area. Because what will happen, your results will be skewed. And what I mean by that is, let's say I am a frozen pizza company and I ship my pizzas all over the country. If I pull rank reporting from Orange County, California, and I type in frozen pizza company, my listing may appear in the Google map pack in that three pack where the businesses show up, because Google always will like to throw in the local businesses in the area.
The reason why that will skew the data is because that will only usually happen in your local area, in Orange County. But if you're pulling rank reporting in your local area, it'll show that. But again, you're an eCommerce company or you're a company that doesn't care about geographical limitations. You shouldn't want to only rank your local area. You want to rank across the country.
So saying that, when you're a company that does not care about locality I actually don't really like pulling ranking reporting from your address, zip code or local area because it will skew the data. Unless you are actively pursuing local SEO, then yes. Do in your local area. But otherwise actually pick different locations. And sometimes usually in ranking reports they have settings like United States. And that's generally what I pick. Because what you can do is you can paint a rosier picture than is actually accurate if you're only pulling ranking reporting from your local area.
So the caveat to this also is that lots of people simulate Google searches by just doing it on their computer. But if you're doing the Google searches at your company, at the computer at your company, it will skew the data because it's local. You're doing it from your local area. You need to be stimulating Google searches outside your local city area and address because you want to simulate what people outside of your area are going to be finding.
So again, when you're doing ranking reporting, usually the place that you're pulling the ranking reporting from is just a small setting that you don't think much about. And a lot people just simulate from their local area. Do not do that if you don't care about locality, because you don't want the local SEO results to skew the data when you're looking at rankings.
So I have a client, they were ranking number five, but that was because they were pulling the rankings from the local area. If you removed the local area and we pulled it from a different city outside the county and the state, they dropped from five to 36. So that means that they thought they were ranking on the first page for a very long time. And they were not, right.
So I'd encourage you when you're doing your rank reporting, if locality is not a factor for you, do not pull in from your local area. It will skew the data, it will look rosier than it actually is. And you actually might perform not as well as you think you may be.
So again, as a summary, beware and mindful of the location you are pulling the rank reporting from. Ensure that if you're doing local SEO it is actually in your local area. If you're not doing local SEO, do not see the data to local because it will skew the data and it does not paint an accurate picture of how your site is actually performing in Google. Right.
So hopefully when you're doing your rank reporting, make sure you check these settings. Sometimes a lot of rank reporting tools will allow you different reports. Sometimes what you can do is do one in your local area and do one outside, so you can get a nice mix. That's always a good idea as well. And that might be helpful.
I'm going to go ahead and start pouring my tea out guys. But if you found the video valuable, please like and subscribe. I'm going to go ahead and enjoy my Magic Dragon tea. And I hope to see you guys again soon.
Thanks everybody. Sweet.