Search is a funny thing.
It’s funny because there are people looking for some of the weirdest topics and questions on the internet. So, google constantly has a hard time figuring out what is the true “search intent” for folks who are searching for what you think might be obvious?
Today, I discovered that we were showing up on the radar for a phrase I could understand that there is some ambiguity for: “bellevue family practice.” To me, it makes sense that someone might be using this phrase in google to be searching for a medical practice or office in one of the larger metropolitan areas here in Seattle:
Bellevue, WA Family Practice
They might be looking for a specific doctor like Dr. George Lee or Dr. Ann McCombs or even Dr. Lisa Steffensen-Gamrath. Maybe they’re looking for an Overlake Family Medicine facility or even Virginia Mason’s Bellevue Medical Center.
So, google has at least defined it the same way dictionaries might: “the work of a doctor who provides primary health care to members of the local community.”
However, are people looking for a specific family practice? Or are they searching for multiple to do some homework on and eventually select for their future family doctor? Or are they searching because a practice they heard about had the words “bellevue,” “family,” or “practice” in it?
It’s a good question.
And it’s the question we talk about today because this is how we recommend many of our clients think moving forward. It’s critical to deliver what that intent is so that when people do eventually land on the websites that show up in the search engine results page for the phrase, they are engaged and google defines the page as a relevant result.
Over the past decade, we’ve seen google populate these local searches with local results. So, you will see 2-3 packs of who they define as “local” or “relevant” to the area you are searching from like this:
You can see they are judging amongst the many other possibilities factors like:
- ratings
- hours
from the drop down options below the map. From your mobile device, you might have other bubbled options like:
- within 5 miles
- sort by distance
- open now
- top rated
- and more…but it may be dependent on the local business type, in terms of what google delivers.
And because it is local, you are probably going to be served up a different locale if you’re searching from:
Bellevue, IA Family Practice
orin Nebraska like:
Bellevue, NE Family Practice
For example, we’ve spent the past 7 years trying to help people get the most searched topics and phrases on the internet through our multiple iterations of a study titled just that. We felt there wasn’t relevant content and built it and now we get numerous visitors monthly coming to our site hopefully being satiated in their needs. We also try to update it annually. So, we just released 2017’s Most Searched Topics and Phrases in a somewhat graphically friendly manner recently.
If you’re in need of help in delivering the right content along with all the proper keywords research and competitive analysis in the SERPs, feel free to contact us and we’ll be happy to help you out with your SEO needs.
