Tracking Multiple Devices and Locations in Position Tracking

Multitargeting in a Semrush Position Tracking campaign allows users to track a website’s search visibility across multiple devices (desktop, phone, and tablet) and locations (down to the city level). This feature is only available to Guru or Business level subscriptions.

What are the limits of multitargeting?

Guru: One project can support 10 total variations of location or device type. For example, you could track 10 different cities on desktop results, or 5 different cities on desktop and mobile results. As you add a new location, all of the keywords added to this location (even if they’re already tracked in a previous location) will count towards your account’s keyword tracking limits.

Business: One project can support up to 5,000 variations of  location or device type.  As you add new locations, all of the keywords added to each location will count towards your account’s keyword tracking limits.

Configuring Multitargeting

Setting up multitargeting in a Position Tracking campaign is easy. First you have to set up your campaign with a single location, device type, and set of target keywords. Once you have a campaign running, you can add a new location with the Add New Target button. This button is located under a drop-down menu in the top-left corner of your campaign:  

From here, you can add new devices and locations to your project. When you choose your new location and device, you have the option to import the same keywords from a previous device or location in your project (1) or add a new set of keywords. If you’re adding a new set of keywords, you can add them manually/from file, or import from your Google Analytics or Semrush Keyword Analytics (2) reports.

How to Research Local Markets Near Your Business

Let’s examine how multitargeting works by using an example. We’ll say you are a local business owner and you own a violin shop that makes custom string instruments that offers instrument repairs as a service. Since you are a local business, you want to appeal to the market directly surrounding the area of your shop.

After you configure a Position Tracking campaign around your primary location (state level or city level), you can add each additional location or device type one-by-one. You can add multitargeting to a newly created Position Tracking campaign, or simply add new locations or devices to a pre-existing campaign.

Since your location is in York, Pennsylvania, you could open up Google Maps and look at the other locations surrounding your city.

You want to use Semrush to see your visibility in the surrounding areas, so you'll check some of the smaller neighboring towns like Red Lion and Shiloh, and also tap into the larger neighboring cities such as Harrisburg and Lancaster.

As you add each new location, you can choose to import the same set of keywords from the previous location you’ve set up. If you want to add or remove any specific keywords for this newly added location, you can do so by hitting the “edit keyword list” button and opening up the sandbox again.

This is a good place to update any location-specific keywords for each new location.

Devices & Location tab

Once all of the locations you want to track have been added, you can follow them in the Devices & Locations tab in the Position Tracking tool.

This report compares the visibility trend of your website for the keywords assigned to each location. The new locations will be added as new colored lines to the graph. This graph will update on a daily basis and you’ll be able to see if your website’s visibility increases or decreases in each location. 

When you see that one city has a much higher search volume for one of your top keywords than another city, you should reconsider how you target searchers in that city. 

You can also note if search volumes for keywords change in each location. The table can be sorted by any changes and filtered by keyword.

Finally, if you want to add or remove a new location or device, you can select the device & location link at the top of the report. From this dropdown window, you can review the device type assigned to each location and how many locations/devices your project has left to add (for Guru accounts, it is up to 10 and for Business accounts it is up to 5000).

Comparing Search Volume Across Different Areas

To illustrate how various cities can see different search volumes for the same keywords, let's examine a Project tracking yelp.com across 3 cities in California for keywords related to “food near me.” See in the image below the differences in local monthly search volume that Semrush found:

Using the Position Tracking tool in this way can assist when evaluating any new potential local markets that your business is considering to target. If there is enough search volume demand in a certain city, then you can infer that the market will have enough demand for your business to make money.

Discover Local Competitors in Neighboring Areas

When it comes to local marketing campaigns, it’s important to establish your geographical reach and understand your visibility. This means that you must consider all towns and cities surrounding your main location to understand what audiences you’re marketing to and who you’re competing against. You will have different levels of visibility within various towns and cities. But how can you understand the competition?

One of the reports within Position Tracking is called Competitors Discovery. This tab will reveal the top competitors that are ranking for the keywords being tracked in your project. You can change your location within this report to understand the competition amongst all your target areas. 

As you change your location, the graph and chart will be refreshed with information for your set location.  This can help you reveal any competitors that you may not be aware of, but should consider watching closer. Below, in list form, you will see competitors that you may want to consider tracking, based on the amount of keywords both your set project domain and the listed competitor have in common.

Moving Targetings Between Projects

With a Guru account or higher, you have the ability to move a targeted set of keywords from one project to another. If you previously had multiple projects set up to track different areas or different devices, this function allows you consolidate your tracking data in the same place. 

As a result, you’ll save your project limits and be able to compare how well your strategy works across multiple areas in one project. For tracking international campaigns or different cities in the same state, containing multiple targetings in one project will make your work easier.

Please note, this feature is available if two projects have different locations. Two projects with the same location can’t be moved. 

To move your tracked keywords from separate projects, simply find the “Move to” button under the Device and Location link above the tabs in your campaign interface. All of the historical data from these keywords will be transferred to the target project.

Once the move is finished, you have the ability to set up a new set of keywords to track in the first project. Of course, you can also always change the targeting back to the previous project by moving the targeting from the new project to the original again.  Or, if you move all of the targetings out of a project and leave the project empty, you can delete the project and conserve your project limits.

Please note that after moving your targetings, you’ll need to reconfigure any PDFs using data from the original project.