Natural Listing for a Specific Town

[PamAllen68]

Hi,
My client wants to get his website to the top of the natural listings for City-1, Oregon. (He is currently at the top for the neighboring community City-2, Oregon)

I am the web designer also so I can make changes to the site easily. What do I need to do to get the site to move up for a specific area. The search keyword would be "Business Type, City-1 Oregon" etc.

Thanks for any input.
Pam Allen

[edited by: tedster at 3:19 am (utc) on Sep 4, 2012]
[edit reason] make specific terms more generic [/edit]

[phranque]

welcome to WebmasterWorld, pam!

what is the competition like for that business type in that city?
are the neighboring communities considered to be a single metro area, for example in analytics dimension selections or in common local usage?
which city is more prominant?
is it a business type that one would typically expect to have a local presence?

[PamAllen68]

It is a widget cleaning business, and they are one of 3 I think in the area. <snip> and <snip> are the other two main ones.
These are the most westerly towns in the suburbs of City-1 Metro Area, but they don't want to advertise in all of that because it is too far away. City-2 is probably a bit larger but not by much.
They have to keep it local because they go out to the locations and clean the widgets so they can't have out of area clients.
Thanks,
Pam

[edited by: bill at 8:20 am (utc) on Sep 4, 2012]
[edit reason] make specific terms more generic [/edit]

[PamAllen68]

Sorry to clarify, They don't want to advertise in all of the City-1 Metro area but mostly just on the west side.

And thanks for the welcome.
Pam

[edited by: bill at 8:30 am (utc) on Sep 4, 2012]
[edit reason] make specific terms more generic [/edit]

[Robert Charlton]

Hi Pam, and welcome. Sorry for all the edits... we avoid mentioning specifics, both for your protection, and because WebmasterWorld has such strong ranking power that mentioning some specifics can actually distort Google rankings.

To clarify your first question....

My client wants to get his website to the top of the natural listings for City-1, Oregon. (He is currently at the top for the neighboring community City-2, Oregon)

When you say that your client wants to get his website to the top for his services in City-1, is he willing to sacrifice his rankings for City-2, or does he want to rank for both City-1 and also for City-2?

Understand that Google is a machine... it most likely doesn't know where the west side of the city is, and in the organic results, Google doesn't really rank by location... it will rank by word matches. In the Local rankings, it may rank by distance from the city center, or by office address, etc, depending on the type of business. That gets complicated. But let's just take the organic for now.

Oversimplifying a bit....

If the client wanted to rank organically only for [City-1 services], that most likely would be a lot easier than ranking for both [City-1 services] and [City-2 services]... but it might be possible to do both.

Is the client's office located in either City-1 or City-2? I'm assuming that the client is currently ranking for [City-2 services] because that's what it says on the client's website. Is that the case?

PS...

They don't want to advertise in all of the City-1 Metro area but mostly just on the west side.

Also, again, we talk about organic rankings on this forum, and you're mentioning "natural listings", but then you say you "don't want to advertise in all of such and such an area". Advertising is something else again. Natural results are achieved by modifying the actual content of the site. Advertising is achieved by changing the ad campaign. Two very different areas.

[PamAllen68]

Ok sorry about the specifics I will try to make it work within your guidelines. Let's say City 1 is a large metro area and City 2 and 3 are suburbs of that metro area. City 4,5,6, and 7 are also suburbs but are on the east side of the metro and are not in the target of the Adwords campaign for the same site. (It is zipcode specific)
So then the client asked me to optimize the website so that he can show up in the search list if someone uses the search keyword "services at City 3" Since he is already at the top of the list when someone types in the keywords "services at City 2" he thinks I can modify the content of the site so that he can cover more customers in the google search. There are other small areas on the west side of the metro that he would also like to target if we are successful with this project. I am wondering what I should do to modify the content of the site.

So to answer questions: Yes he is hoping to be at the top for both cities and others also in the future if possible.
His office is in City 2 and has no offices anywhere else.
What if any difference is there between "Natural" and "Organic" listings. I mean the main list of sites that Google brings up for a given search.
Thanks again,
Pam