It’s no secret that there is an abundance of SEO tools across the industry; arguably the minority are more useful than the majority. I’ve recently been curious to find a tool that can easily track Local SEO performance, although many of the mainstream SEO tools fall short.
This interest led me to develop a custom approach for analyzing Local SEO data with a goal of showcasing a business’s performance for localized “near me” searches.
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The Challenge
In the competitive world of dental services, local visibility is critical. A client, a dental practice in Santa Clarita, California, faced a common misconception: they weren’t seeing their business in local search results when searching Google for key terms like “dentist” and “dentist near me”.
Anecdotal Google searches from your personal phone/computer are not a good method for validating the overall performance of a local business. There are factors such as device location and Google account search history that can greatly impact what appears in our local search results.
The Approach
To address this challenge, I developed a comprehensive local SEO analysis project. My goal was to provide the client with a clear, data-driven picture of their local search performance across Santa Clarita and its surrounding areas. Here’s how I tackled the problem:
- Geospatial Data Collection: programmatically gathered zip codes surrounding Santa Clarita, California, creating a comprehensive map of the local area.
- SERP Analysis: Using a SERP API, I conducted searches for key terms like “dentist” and “dentist near me” across each identified zip code. This allowed me to simulate searches from various locations within and around Santa Clarita.
- Performance Tracking: I tracked my client’s performance in the Google “Places” section for each search.
- Data Visualization: To make the data easily understandable, I created two powerful visualizations:
- A map plot showing the client’s performance across different areas.
- Optionally: A heatmap illustrating the strength of their local SEO performance in different zip codes
Map plot created using Plotly
Map plot heatmap created using Folium
The Results
The analysis provided several key insights:
1. Performance Variability: we discovered that my client’s local SEO performance varied significantly across different parts of Santa Clarita and its surrounding areas.
2. Strong Zones: we identified specific zip codes where the dental practice was performing exceptionally well in local search results.
3. Improvement Areas: Equally important, we pinpointed areas where the practice had lower visibility, presenting clear opportunities for improvement.
4. Competitive Zones: The project offered insights into the local competitive landscape, showing where competitors were outperforming my client. We used this information to analyze competitor strategies for areas where we could improve.
Conclusion
Enjoy this type of project or interested in learning more? Reach out to me on LinkedIn.