Why is Local Ranking important?
Local ranking is the best way to understand which keywords are performing well in your area when searching for local businesses, products, and services near you. It helps local businesses and franchisees align their SEO efforts properly, giving local consumers more prominence at the intended moment.
Targeting the correct search terms is the cornerstone of an effective local SEO strategy. It is the only way to focus on the words that your target customers use to find your product or service in local searches.
We encourage you to learn more about local SEO and local ranking here.
What can I find in the Local Ranking Report?
You can find there some key reputation metrics of your locations. Let's take a look at the report components.
Rankings by Position
The stacked columns chart shows your position over time for significant search engines, aggregated by keywords. Each column is created by a data summary on a particular day and has information about all your keywords and their ranks in search engines.
Search engine dropdown has Google Organic (including local organic results), Google Maps, Google Mobile Organic (including local organic results), and Google Mobile Maps. You can select up to 4 search engines in the location settings or use default search engines (Google Organic and Google Maps).
Rank (1, 2-5, 6-10, 11-20, 20+) - your keyword's position in search engines. Section calculation with formula: how many times per month keywords were on the position.
Ranking by Engine
The average rank by all keywords for each search engine is available with the result, which compares to the previous report.
Pay attention to the Ranking by Engine summary you can see the last collected result, which is collected by the last column in the Rankings by Position widget. The dynamic result compares to the previous column in the Rankings by Position widget.
Keyword Ranking
This is about how keyword rank changes over time for each search engine. Visual dynamic of changes by each keyword split by search engines. The maximum number of keywords is four.
Ranking Table
In this section, you will find out the general keywords' rank by the search engine.
Pay your attention to the Ranking Table summary metrics you can see the last collected result, which is collected by the previous column in the Rankings by Position widget. The dynamic result compares to the last column in the Rankings by Position widget.
How to set up the Local Ranking report?
What you should do to start collecting Local Ranking reports for your location.
1. First of all, select the location which you want to collect data for and go to Analytics → Local Ranking
2. Click on Go to Settings, then Start using Report.
3. Start filling data into the fields. And it is important how you do it.
Let’s break down each field step by step:
Address Fields. It is a matter of which particular location we should collect data, that is why all fields here are mandatory. If you filled the Address tab correctly before the Local Ranking appeared, you are the lucky thing: just click on the Fill out information from the Address Tab button, and information in the Address Fields automatically will appear.
Language. We should be aware of which language influences the search result in your region. Please, select it from the list.
Site Type / Matching Logic and Tracked Site or Phone or Identifier. We need to have an identifier to match your exact location with the Address that you filled in below. It helps to give you the most relevant result for you.
The Site URL of the website you want to track (if entering website URL, select 'Website (Match Domain)' for the Site Type / Matching Logic)'
Phone Number of the business (if entering a phone number, select 'Phone Number' for the Site Type / Matching Logic)'
A Unique Identifier that is contained in the text of the SERP result (if entering an identifier, select 'Identifier (Use Contains Matching Logic)' for the Site Type / Matching Logic to use this tracking method).
An Exact Website URL - This is typically used if you want to track an exact URL such as a Yelp listing, Facebook Page, etc. (if entering an Exact Website URL, select 'Exact Website URL' for the Site Type / Matching Logic)'
For Google Maps Rank Tracking, you must enter the EXACT Business Name
Google Places CID - If you have the business Google Places CID number (useful if Maps Business Name changes often), you can track Maps results by adding a new Tracked Site and selecting the 'Google Places CID' option for the Site Type / Matching Logic. We highly recommend using this option, it is the best way to find out the exact location. The instructions on how to find Google Places CID are here.
Please enter the value for one of these available tracking methods in this box, and also enter the EXACT Business Name as it appears in the Maps SERP results in the 'Local Pack / Maps Business Name' box if you want to track Google Maps Rankings.
Search Engines. It is available in four search engines: Google Organic, Google Maps, Google Mobile Organic, and Google Mobile Maps. PromoRepublic selects Google Organic and Google Maps search engines by default. You can change the selected search engines. Pay your attention to If you select Google Maps you should also select Google Organic, if you select Google Mobile Maps you should also select Google Mobile Organic.
Maps Business Name. You should use the exact business name, the same as your location name in Google Maps.
Keywords for Local Search. The keywords that you want to track. You can enter up to 4 keywords here.
4. Finally, in order to start tracking the data, push the Save button and wait until your report is collected. The very first-time collection report can take up to 40 minutes. This is how it will look like:
Once your first report is collected, we can show this information in the Local Visibility Dashboard. All your following local ranking reports will be automatically added there.
How to manage the Local Ranking report?
You can change the report settings to other keywords or search engines if you want. For that, open the settings of the necessary location, find the Local Ranking section, and click Edit all the fields will be editable again.
When you change the setting and click on Save we will give you the possibility to select recalculate your report now or change it in the future period.
If you want to stop tracking keywords for the location: change the switcher to OFF, and we do not collect results for the location from now. You can switch it ON at any time that you want.
Some useful tips:
All the fields in settings are required. We tried our best to create the most relevant report for you, so we need this information.
It takes around 40 minutes to create the report for the very first time. It is not such an easy task to find all the necessary information on Google.
We collect the results every 2 weeks. So, if you got your first Local Ranking report on, for example, Nov 21: the next day when will get a new result is Dec 5. An exceptional case is if you change your settings and select the Recalculate option.
In the Ranking by Engine summary metrics and Ranking Table summary metrics, we show you information from the last update (which is made every two weeks, as was mentioned).
The best identifier in the Local Ranking settings is Google Place CID. This identifier guarantees that you will get a valid result in the report. Instructions on how to find Google Place CID are here.
We hope it was helpful.
If you have any further questions, please contact us at [email protected].