How to Do a Local SEO Sniff Test

How to Do a Local SEO Sniff Test

The case for investing in local SEO is strong, with research showing that 92.96% of global traffic comes from Google Search, Google Images, and Google Maps.

Despite the potential for high returns, local SEO doesn’t always make sense for all communities.

Why?

For starters, you may be paying to compete for a top spot that your community already ranks for—or at least close to it.

It’s also possible you’re wasting valuable marketing dollars when there’s not enough SEO juice in the keywords you choose.

That’s why we use a local SEO sniff test to optimize results and ensure our clients are maximizing their marketing budget.

The Disclaimers

Before you dig into local SEO, you need to know the following disclaimers:

✅ The local SEO sniff test is only relevant for an individual property website. It’s not effective for a large brand with multiple communities in several areas.

🚫 If you have an ILS-style website with tons of domains and communities on one site, then this sniff test also is not for you.

Now you know if you should move forward with the next part of the SEO sniff test.

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Leverage the Local Map Pack

The most integral part of dominating local SEO is the local map pack.

Harnessing the power of Google’s map pack helps even the playing field over big players like Apartments.com and their enormous marketing budget.

Instead, you only compete with communities with similar resources.

The results?

If you’re savvy with your keyword strategy, you can win big in local SEO and get as many keywords as in the holy grail of search: those coveted top 3 spots. 👊

You’re never going to win the local SEO game otherwise.

Start by looking up the keywords in your location to review the results.

Do they have a local map pack?

If they don’t, move onto the keywords that do.

Tip 💡: You can make it easier by using a tool like SEM Rush’s keyword magic tool to filter your results and check if there is a local map pack for a keyword.

Let’s use the keywords “apartments in Arden NC” to filter all of the relevant keywords that have a local map pack.

Once you have your list, move on to the next step in the sniff test.

Look at Keyword Search Volume

Next, check out the volume of those keywords, but only the ones that already have an existing map pack.

They need to rank at least 500 in search volume for local SEO to even make sense

We did a quick test and looked at keywords for a senior living in Arden.

There were only about 10 searches.

Hard pass.

Allocating time and resources to SEO in this case is not worth it. 🚫

But if you look at garden apartments in Arden or a specific area, you may hit Paydirt with a 500+ volume.

If you snag that 500+ volume, you’ve passed the first stage and are ready to move forward.

Find Out Where Your Community Ranks for Specific Keywords

The next step is figuring out where your community already ranks.

As we outlined before, position tracking tools, like SEM Rush, can help identify and track relevant keywords.

Tip 💡: Throw all of your current keywords from your tracking tool into Google to see where your community stands in search.

You may discover that you already rank in the top 10 search results.

In this case, there’s not much else to do here.

👉 If you’re at spot #10, you could do some light SEO to see if you can bump up the rank. Any results will be marginal at this point and not worth much effort.

👉 But if you are below the top 10 for at least 1 or 2 of your target keywords then go for it–invest more time and money into local SEO.

Our local SEO sniff test doesn’t take long to implement, but is well worth the effort and saves tons of time and money in the long-run.

You can sum it all up by asking if your community has:

• Relevant local map pack keywords
• 500 or more in total local search volume
• And you’re not already in the top 10 for at least 1 of your target keywords

If yes, it’s worth it!

If not, then it’s not worth it.

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