Don't be fooled by testing your website's visibility from your office. You search for one of the products or services you sell, and your website comes up in the first position on Google. You think you have great SEO rankings. That may not be what everyone else is seeing.

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Most people within a company visit their own website regularly. Google keeps track of your browsing history, search history, location, and previous interactions. It uses this information to personalize many of the search results you see.

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In other words, Google is trying to improve your browsing experience by showing you websites it already knows you visit. That isn't what your potential customers are seeing—especially people who have never been to your website before. Those are the people you're trying to reach.

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Search results are also affected by the searcher's location. Someone searching ten miles away can receive completely different search results than someone searching from your office. Your customers don't all search from your parking lot.

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That's why testing local visibility is so important. You should know how visible your business is throughout your entire market area. In many cases, businesses have excellent visibility close to home but disappear just a few miles away.

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A good reporting system should test your visibility from multiple market areas using the same search terms every time. That's the only way to accurately measure your market coverage and identify areas that need improvement.

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