The ultimate goal of a long-term SEO strategy is to make your commercialized services/products more visible both for target audiences and crawling bots alike. But not all digital rankings are the same, and not all elements that influence your site’s online visibility will have the same level of influence.
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Local vs. National Rank Tracking
In order to evaluate the efficiency of the implemented SEO procedures, our team will need to utilize specialized ranking tools and measure your site’s SEO visibility at different geographical levels.
Local rank tracking measures the visibility of a site at a regional level, and it showcases how your pages perform for local keywords and customer particularities within a specific service area. National rank tracking, however, measures ranking across a whole country, and the distinction matters, as Google can often display different results based on the user’s location, regardless of whether the targeted keywords remain the same.
What Is Local Rank Tracking?
Local rank tracking measures how well a specific page ranks for certain keywords within a specific geographical area. The distinction between local SEO vs national SEO is important, as one site might often appear in the top SERP results for specific keywords, with enhanced geographical intent, but might rank poorly in results outside of the main customer’s geographical radius.
For example: let’s say you are an electrician active in London. If your services are qualitative, chances are that you will rank well for keywords such as “emergency electrician” or “top electrician near me”.
That said, if we expand these keywords to a national level, most likely your rankings will plummet. Local SEO techniques for growing your brand regionally are different than the ones that need to be applied for a national-level SEO campaign, as the scope is more restricted and more dependent on the particularities of regional audiences.
National Rank Tracking
What Is National Rank Tracking?
National rank tracking is the process of measuring how your websites appear in SERPs across an entire country for keywords without precise geographical intent. In the SEO sphere, ranking well in country-level SERPs is harder than targeting a specific city, as your pages will need to compete with websites with an already-established presence in the specific domain you’re active in.
In other words, you will not just have to leverage keywords with local intent, but also identify algorithm-related modifications and track keyword-level performance at a domestic, nationwide level. For SMEs, starting with local SEO is the recommended approach. However, for larger SaaS companies, or businesses that want to serve customers outside of a specific geographical base, a national SEO blueprint is the way to go, even though it will likely take a bit longer to finalize.
Local SEO vs National SEO: What’s the Difference?
Local SEO vs National SEO: Key Ranking Differences
Geographic Scope and Location
Local rank tracking evaluates your site’s digital visibility performance within a specific service area, while national-level tracking measures a domain’s visibility across an entire country, making it a more suitable, albeit complex option for businesses that want to expand their services to a nationwide audience.
What is interesting is that a website can often perform well at a national level for high-competition commercial keywords and be characterized by poor rankings in specific cities, with particular customer preferences.
Moreover, sometimes the opposite is true. In a customized digital marketing plan, SERP performance and SEO visibility are often influenced by particular demographic particularities, and at a geographical level, these particularities can be present in one area and be completely missing in another.
Keyword and Search Intent
In local SEO, the overall goal is to target keywords with specific geographical intent. National or International SEO, however, must focus on non-location-specific searches that will put the pages in direct competition with websites already present in the target sector, at a domestic level. The keywords targeted in national-level SEO campaigns can still present high commercial or informational intent, but the focus of the campaigns will be broader.
SERP Features, Competitors and KPIs.
The KPIs utilized in national and local-level SEO campaigns should reflect the differences in scope and target audiences. In local SEO, the priorities are: Google Maps visibility, rankings in the Local Pack, Local, organic positioning for keywords with geographical intent, and location-based traffic.
In national-level campaigns, however, the KPIs focus on non-branded traffic, CTRs at a domestic level, and organic keyword placement for keywords with non-local intent. For national SEO, tools like GSC work well, as rankings are not dependent on location. For local SEO, on the other hand, GSC is more limited, as you cannot, for instance, track rankings between different cities.
| Factor | Local | National |
|---|---|---|
|
Scope |
City/service area |
Country-wide |
|
Keywords |
Local intent |
Broader terms |
|
SERPs |
Maps + organic |
Mainly organic |
|
Competitors |
Local businesses |
National brands |
|
Best For |
Local/service-area businesses |
SaaS, ecommerce, nationwide businesses |
Local vs National Rank Tracking
What Are Some Common Ranking Mistakes to Avoid?
1) Not Focusing on Local Performance
Even if you focus on a national-level SEO campaign, you shouldn’t dismiss the rankings tracked from locations with a direct impact on business performance. National rankings, while important after your company reaches a certain level, can often hide important local performance differences that might impact the overall efficiency of the implemented SEO campaign.
2) Mixing Maps and SERPs Performance
Google Maps, Google Local Finder, and traditional SERPs represent substantially different search environments and should not be calculated concomitantly when determining the ranking metrics of a specific website. The Local Pack positioning of a page can, in some cases, differ from the visibility in organic results, and should therefore be tracked separately.
3) Comparing Against Irrelevant Competitors
If you are investing in a national-level/local SEO campaign, you should compare your site with competitors active in the same search environment. After all, the success of campaigns to increase your search visibility will be determined by who your competitors are. If you are focused on local SEO, you should compete with regional businesses, while if you are active at a national level, your competitors shouldn’t be local businesses present only in a single city.
Ranking Mistakes to Avoid
Conclusion
The right tracking approach will, ultimately, depend on the characteristics of your business and the scope of the SEO modifications you want to implement. Local businesses require location-based data in order to correctly calculate regional SEO performance, while national-level approaches need broader, country-level tracking. By choosing the right tracking method, businesses can gain a clearer picture of their SEO performance and invest in optimization methods with increased SERP impact.
About Author
Ion G. Tudorache
As a co-founder and managing director of GAMIT I am the first contact of our clients. My job includes setting project objectives and offering SEO consulting advice to customers. My professional background and experience working in the SEO industry are essential in developing efficient SEO strategies and designing innovative techniques.
