My client is listed as Number 3 on Page 1 of Google for the major keyword search phrase for his business 'architects brisbane' However he is getting little to no calls from the north and western parts of the city - he is located in the east. Does Google not list his business for those potential customers in the north and west when they type in 'architects brisbane' - there are other major high ranking architects closer to them - but still not in their local area... Maybe he is listed further down in these areas which are about a 20 minute to half an hour drive away.... How can I find out what people in these areas are seeing when they do their search? Ranking software that I have is only city based. Can't find any info on this on the net. There is no point in trying to do local pages 'architects chermiside" as no-one searches for an architect on a suburb basis. Any advice would be appreciated - particularly as to how Google decides what organic results to show to people in different suburbs within the same city when the website is optimised for the city itself.... Thanking you in advance and really and truly greatly need help!
I'm pretty sure he will be ranking in the same position irrelevant of where people are located in the city. What are the search figures like for 'architects brisbane' We currently have quite a few rankings for local business terms around the world for clients in similar positions with search figures of 300 - 700 and they don't get a massive amount of traffic from it. Adwords, 3 local listings and 2 organic above means there are lots of options before a searcher gets to position 3 organic. You could set up separate pages on the site to target different terms, if it's worth it.
On the Google search results page click the globe icon on the top-right of the page to 'view all results', not just private results. You can either drive and check different computers around the city to ensure same results or use VPN and choose IPs correlated to the locations you want search results from. I personally don't think Google does as granular search results as you suggest within neighborhoods of a city- I think results are city-wide. Did you create a listing for your client on Google Maps (Google local)?
Your issue is probably related to general economy not to SEO. Architects are not plumbers or handymen. You have to be certain that your guy is the right guy. In that sense (as archaic as this sounds) people are willing to follow word of mouth instead of the internet. We are talking about big jobs. You need to have people you trust. Also, the fact that he is third on Google search doesn't mean much. Perhaps he hasn't built his name yet within the city. Perhaps he is not trustworthy. We shouldn't always look answers in SEO.
Thanks for the reply sorry to be late in thanking you. He does use adwords, position 1 in adwords, local listings vary and used to be in position 1 until some spammy backlinks were built.... Yes is in Google Local, we did a check from people living in different suburbs and the results were only slightly different, moved down one position in one location so I guess from this very poor sample size we could deduce that the results are city wide. Many thanks for your answer and I apologise for not thanking you sooner. Thanks for the advice, it is just strange that he gets most of his jobs from one section of the city and not others...