• Search Engine Land
  • Sections
    • SEO
    • SEM
    • Local
    • Retail
    • Google
    • Bing
    • Social
    • Resources
    • More
    • Home
  • Search Engine Land
  • SEO
  • SEM
  • Local
  • Retail
  • Google
  • Bing
  • Social
  • Resources
  • Live
  • More
  • Events
  • SUBSCRIBE

Search Engine Land

Search Engine Land
  • SEO
  • SEM
  • Local
  • Retail
  • Google
  • Bing
  • Social
  • Resources
  • More
  • Newsletters
  • Home
Local

‘Things to do near me’ SEO

Columnist Andrew Shotland takes a look at the "near me" phenomenon and shares data that helps illuminate how to rank for these queries.

Andrew Shotland on February 13, 2017 at 11:10 am
  • More
local-search-mobile-smartphone-ss-1920

If you are targeting local searchers and have not employed a “Near Me” SEO strategy, I think it’s time we had a talk.

Screen Shot 2017-02-03 at 4.23.04 PM

As you can see, Google Trends data shows explosive growth of “things to do near me” queries worldwide. But it’s not just “things to do” — it’s pretty much every query that has local intent:

Looking for a psychic near you?

Psychic Near Me

How about a sex therapist near you?

Sex Therapist Near Me

And if you’re feeling in need of something a bit less physical, how about Jesus near you?

Psychic Near Me

Of course, it’s not like people just woke up a year or two ago and decided it was time to start doing “near me” searches. This is more a result of Google, and Apple’s Spotlight Search to some extent, increasing the number of queries that suggest “near me” as an option as search goes more mobile (and thus more local in intent). And fat fingers being what they are, we hit the first suggestion near us. I mean, look at the search volume just for “near me!”

Near Me SEO

And even though “near me” appears to be a mobile-driven phenomenon, across our client base we are still seeing more than 50 percent of the traffic from these queries coming from desktop — and more than 80 percent of the clicks.

Now, “near me” queries as a whole are a relatively small part of local search volume, but these searches are clear signals of local intent and thus represent high-quality traffic for businesses targeting locally.

why am i searching near me

It’s safe to say there’s opportunity for traffic near you. So how do you capture it?

‘Near me’ ranking factors

I could pull the typical SEO guru act and spit out your classic “top 10 tips” and “you won’t believe what happened next” — but at LocalSEOGuide, we like to approach things a bit more methodically. So we decided to do some scientific research.

As you may recall, in 2016 we conducted the first ever statistical study of of Google’s Local SEO Ranking Factors by looking at over 35,000 businesses and 100+ factors. So we added “near me” to our existing data and ran the numbers.

We looked at some of the most popular “near me” queries, including:

  • dentist near me
  • grocery store near me
  • gas station near me
  • hair salons near me
  • movie theater near me
  • restaurants near me

All totaled, we looked at ~600 searches, which included ~6,000 Google My Business (GMB) pages, as well as the corresponding domains/pages that the GMB pages linked to. The data showed the following factors had the strongest positive correlations with ranking well in Google’s local pack for “near me” searches:

  • Google reviews
  • Total number of backlinks with searched city and state in the anchor text
  • Percent of backlinks with searched city and state in the anchor text

In our Local SEO Ranking Factors study, link metrics also were some of the strongest indicators of good rankings, so it’s not surprising that they also matter for “near me” queries. In fact, TripAdvisor’s aggressive use of “near me” in internal link anchor text may be one of the reasons those URLs rank so well for “near me” queries:

TripAdvisor Near Me

Interestingly, the distance of a business from the searcher did not correlate strongly with positive search rankings. When you look at typical local pack results, they are often not ordered by distance. For example, see this “hamburgers near me” local pack:

Hamburgers Near Me

In the case above, the reason for the ordering may be because the two top-ranked businesses have “burger” in their name — “Keywords in Business Name” was a strong factor in our original study — or some combination of additional factors which may trump distance.

The data did show that being in the same city as a “near me” search had a stronger correlation with positive performance, so we are going to have to do some more digging into this subject in our 2017 Local SEO Ranking Factors study.

Capturing “near me” searches

So, what can you do to take advantage of “near me” today? Based on our study and our experience working on large and small locally-targeted sites around the world:

  1. Add “near me” to the title tags of your location pages.
  2. Add “near me” and popular keyword variants to the text of these pages.
  3. Add “near me” to the anchor text of the internal links to these pages, particularly on your store locator pages if you are a multi-location brand.
  4. Get backlinks to your location pages with geo-specific anchor text.

And once you get the basics down, start thinking about how to go after similar targets. For example, “nearest me” queries are also growing:

Nearest Me Searches

And they show slightly different results from “near me” — I guess “nearest” is a more precise a request.

If you’ve made it this far, hopefully by now you realize that with minimal effort, you can use this strategy to get near more of your customers quickly.

For more detail on the methodology of our “near me” study, go to Near Me Local SEO Ranking Factors on our blog.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.



About The Author

Andrew Shotland
Andrew Shotland is the proprietor of Local SEO Guide, a leading local search engine optimization blog and consultancy.

Related Topics

Channel: LocalLocal Search ColumnSearch Engine Land on InstagramSEO - Search Engine Optimization

We're listening.

Have something to say about this article? Share it with us on Facebook, Twitter or our LinkedIn Group.

Get the daily newsletter search marketers rely on.

Processing...Please wait.

See terms.

ATTEND OUR EVENTS

Lorem ipsum doler this is promo text about SMX events.

June 15-16, 2021: SMX Advanced

June 21-22, 2021: SMX Advanced Europe

August 17, 2021: SMX Convert

November 9-10, 2021: SMX Next

December 14, 2021: SMX Code

Available On-Demand: SMX

Available On-Demand: SMX Report

Available On-Demand: SMX Create

×


Learn More About Our SMX Events

Discover actionable tactics that can help you overcome crucial marketing challenges. Our next conference will be held:

Next Event: Sept. 14-15, 2021

Available On-Demand: March 2021

Available On-Demand: October 2020

×

Attend MarTech - Click Here


Learn More About Our MarTech Events

White Papers

  • SEO Wars: How to Resist the Dark Side and Earn Links Organically
  • Data & Organizational Roadblocks? Your Path to Frictionless Revenue Optimization
  • Converting with Conversational AI
  • 4 Ways Chatbot Marketing Can Drive Sales
  • Client Reporting Best Practices Guide
See More Whitepapers

Webinars

  • Drive Customer Engagement with the Power of Personalization
  • 7 Use Cases That Prove Why You Should Implement DAM
  • Accelerate Your SEO & Content Marketing Program with 4 Key Milestones
See More Webinars

Research Reports

  • Local Marketing Solutions for Multi-Location Businesses
  • Enterprise Digital Asset Management Platforms
  • Identity Resolution Platforms
  • Customer Data Platforms
  • B2B Marketing Automation Platforms
  • Call Analytics Platforms
See More Research

Attend SMX For Only $199

h
Receive daily search news and analysis.

Channels

  • SEO
  • SEM
  • Local
  • Retail
  • Google
  • Bing
  • Social

Our Events

  • SMX
  • MarTech

Resources

  • White Papers
  • Research
  • Webinars

About

  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Privacy
  • Marketing Opportunities
  • Staff

Follow Us

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Newsletters
  • RSS
  • Youtube

© 2021 Third Door Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

Your privacy means the world to us. We share your personal information only when you give us explicit permission to do so, and confirm we have your permission each time. Learn more by viewing our privacy policy.Ok