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Category: Local Website Optimization

Considering local SEO and its impact on your website? Discuss website optimization for local SEO.

  • DunckleyDesign


    I have a client that sells health and life insurance. It's a local office in a smaller town. When I do a google search only national results come up but when I tack on the city and state I get local results. I've done keyword research and narrowed the area down to the county. The search volume I get from just the keyphrase like "health insurance" lets say is an average of 70 per month but when I tack on city and state that number drops to 10 per month. What would be the best strategy for gaining traffic. It's not realistic to compete with national company like State Farm. Any Ideas?

    | DunckleyDesign
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  • Red_Spot_Interactive


    In general, How do you recommend handling clients that are persistent about targeting a location that is very far away from their physical location, i.e. the client is in Providence, RI, but wants to target Boston, MA. I typically give them a discussion about how they will not rank in the 7 packs, particularly post pigeon, but wanted to know if the Moz community had any other tips since this seems to come up so frequently. Thank you!

    | Red_Spot_Interactive
    1
  • Vspeed


    We just opened a new location in a nearby city. We were already servicing this location from our main base. As such we had a special page for this location which raked fairly well.  The new location will have its own website. Would it be better to 301 redirect the current location page to the new location website? Or should we simply link from the old page to the new location's website? Any best practices?

    | Vspeed
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  • LondonAli


    For example: tailoring-london.com/suits-tailoring-london/ or tailoring-london.com/suits/ The main keyword being targeted here is "suit tailoring london". The home page's main keyword is "tailoring london". Would love to hear your opinions. Many thanks 🙂

    | LondonAli
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  • Red_Spot_Interactive


    Hello Moz World, I'm wanting to know the best practices for utilizing a subdomain versus a subfolder for multi location businesses, i.e. miami.example.com vs. example.com/miami; I would think that that utilizing the subdomain would make more sense for a national organization with many differing locations, while a subfolder would make more sense for a smaller more nearby locations. I wanted to know if anyone has any a/b examples or when it should go one way or another? Thank you, Kristin Miller

    | Red_Spot_Interactive
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  • Spartan22


    looking for advice. I have my site built into landing pages for each city I service. Would it effect my seo in a negative way if I built other landing pages with "keyword + zip code" as well as the city ones I already have or do you think it would make my city rankings worst? Also how do you get a seo city landing page to show up for the "keyword" or "keyword near me" in the city of interest? Is making landing pages with "keyword + city" sufficient way to accomplish this or is there a trick I am unaware of?

    | Spartan22
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  • SeoSheikh


    Hi am in the process of developing my new site domainname.com/devs/ but my current site is still on www.domainname.com/ When the time comes to launch the new site (in devs folder) I want to change the main root folder to this devs folder. Is there a correct system to do this with as little pain as possible. I know I will need to go through all of my pages and make sure they are 301 redirected to the new folder, but not sure what the correct way to tackle the domain name root folder change. Any help would be awesome! Thanks

    | SeoSheikh
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  • BrianAlpert78


    Hey Mozzers, We recently took over a website for a new client of ours and discovered that their previous webmaster had been using a WordPress plugin to generate 5,000+ mostly duplicated local landing pages. The pages are set up more or less as "Best (service) provided in (city)" I checked Google Webmaster Tools and it looks like Google is ignoring most of these spammy pages already (about 30 pages out of nearly 6,000 are indexed), but it's not reporting any manual webspam actions. Should we just delete the landing pages all at once or phase them out a few (hundred) at a time? Even though the landing pages are mostly garbage, I worry that lopping off over 95% of a site's pages in one fell swoop could have other significant consequences. Thanks!

    | BrianAlpert78
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  • LinkPoint


    Hi, Is it better to target broad keywords in a local market or target 'broad keywords + local city'? Or both? The sites I'm working with currently have landing pages for each 'local city/town + keyword' ... they each have about 5 services they offer and about 7 or more nearby towns they service. This means I'm tracking about 35+ keywords per client. That seems to be a bit much. Am I wrong? Would it be just as effective to target broad keywords and track them locally being that the local market isn't very competitive. Of course the broad keywords yield more search volume according to google keyword tool. However, the current setup is sending a worthwhile traffic volume to the site. According to Miriam's article http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide I'm working with a business model 2 - single brick and mortar location servicing many areas nearby. Thanks, Chris

    | LinkPoint
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  • neilmac


    Here is a site that is sitting at number 1 on Google UK (local results) for a number of its keywords: http://www.scottishdentistry.com/ If you look at the links in the navigation many of them have urls such as this: http://www.scottishdentistry.com/glasgow-scotland-dentistry/glasgow-scotland-hygienists.html These have clearly been created to be keyword rich. For example, there is no publicly-available page at: http://www.scottishdentistry.com/glasgow-scotland-dentistry Do you think this tactic has helped with the site's rankings? Is it worth imitating? Or will it ultimately attract a penalty of some kind? Remember this is in the UK where Google seems to be slower at penalising dodgy tactics than in the US. Thanks everyone.

    | neilmac
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  • Franco1978


    Hello everyone 🙂 I would like to have your opinion on one thing: I am working on a local shop selling pottery and other things. So I was thinking, would it make sense to title the page something like: “Pottery Object, San Francisco, Awesome Pottery” which means “keyword, location, company name”? Or is there a better way to optimize the title of the page for a local shop? Thank you very (very) much 🙂

    | Franco1978
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  • GrowBrilliant


    Is there a way to capture local SEO traffic by only having one website/page for our product pages or do we have to have a website for each location even though the content is identical? We do have a location finder where we list each location. But we want to generate local traffic in the cities we are in to our product pages through SEO, but it's difficult because they all sell the exact same product. We know Google doesn't like duplicate content.

    | GrowBrilliant
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  • ChaseMG


    Anybody ever seen keyword rankings for a site change drastically from day to day? I've got a client, a local furniture store, whose local keywords (furniture + city) rank consistently well without much change, but when it comes to broader keyword rankings (like "furniture" or "furniture store") in their zip code, they'll go from ranking at the top of Google one day to not being ranked at all the next (at least according to Raven Tools). My best guess is that it's just a reflection of personalized results from Google, but such a dramatic change day in and day out makes me wonder.

    | ChaseMG
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  • randomagency


    When I review competitor digital agency sites, they seem to have very little homepage content. But how would this be beneficial in gaining a higher SERP rank?

    | randomagency
    1
  • ChaseMG


    Anybody ever seen keyword rankings for a site change drastically from day to day? I've got a client, a local furniture store, whose local keywords (furniture + city) rank consistently well without much change, but when it comes to broader keyword rankings (like "furniture" or "furniture store") in their zip code, they'll go from ranking at the top of Google one day to not being ranked at all the next (at least according to Raven Tools). My best guess is that it's just a reflection of personalized results from Google, but such a dramatic change day in and day out makes me wonder.

    | ChaseMG
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  • PeteC12


    Dear All, We have an xml and image site map but we currently don't have a separate GEO Site Map / map files for our branches. I am wondering if such a thing exists and if so , if this something that we should be doing to help our branches rank locally on google maps etc. We have google local listings for our branches and we already do schema.org for our branches. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated. thanks Peter

    | PeteC12
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  • bartlettpairphoto


    My website's (http://bartlettpairphotography.com) SERP rank is #45 for my targeted keyword: Philadelphia wedding photographers. My site is several years old, with 31-Domain Authority and 42-Page Authority. I've been stuck in SERP 40's for about a year now (I used to be top 5) and I have been pulling my hair out trying everything to no avail. I have an inkling that some configuration is seriously wrong, and would be very very appreciative is someone could point me in the right direction! I'm evidently not an expert at this, but here are my high level thoughts, though I could be totally off base here: Homepage problems (ranking 45 for highest priority keyword: Philadelphia wedding photographers): The #5 rank has a flash website, homepage = 33-DA/44-PA (slightly better than me). This makes me wonder if my problem is off-page? I have recently been submitting my photography work to many relevant wedding blogs so I think I will get some nice relevant backlinks in the coming weeks/months. The #11 rank has the same wordpress theme as me (ProPhotoBlogs), and homepage = 26-DA, 35-PA (somewhat worse than me) and similar homepage content etc...this makes me think I have an on-page problem? As you can see, my targeted keyword starts off with a geographic location. Geographically, our location is ~1 hour outside of the location, so ranking on Google maps etc. is very competitive (hundreds of competitors that are closer). Therefore, I'm mostly focused on non-local ranking. Both of the competitors I mentioned are ranking non-locally and both are 1 hour outside Philadelphia. With that said, would it still benefit me to add local content to my homepage (insert google maps, address, hours etc.)? NON-homepage problems (ranking ~30 for longer tail keywords, i.e. specific wedding venues) My blog page (http://bartlettpairphotography.com/blog) is ="noindex,follow." My reasoning for the "noindex" is because I'm showing FULL posts rather than excerpts (because I want my brides to flip through ~5 weddings rather than only clicking on 1). My thinking was that the FOLLOW aspect would pass along the link juice, while avoiding a duplicate content penalty by noindexing? I don't think this problem affects my higher priority homepage problem, but still wanted to point it out. We have ~100 published posts, but honestly I only care about ranking for ~30 of them. What should I do with the ~70 that I don't care about? Are they sucking up link juice that would be better elsewhere? Or should I just leave it because it's more content? Other than that, I'm really lost as to how I can improve my site. I gave the above examples to show that I am trying, but ultimately I feel like I'm looking in the wrong areas. With my SERP in the mid 40s, I feel like many things are broken that I am not able to figure out. I would be so very grateful if someone could help diagnose my issues!

    | bartlettpairphoto
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  • PeteC12


    Hello All, I have a eCommerce site and we operate out of mulitple locations. We currently have individual location pages for these locations against each of our many categories. However on the flip slide , this create alot of duplicate content. All of our location pages whether unique or duplicated have a unique title Tag, H1, H2 tag , NAP and they all bring in the City Name . The content on the duplicated content also brings in the City name as well. We have been going through our categories and writing unique content for our most popular locations to help rank on local search. Currently I've been setting up 301 redirects for the locations in the categories with the duplicated content pointing back to the category page. I am wondering whether the increase in number of 301's will do more harm than having many duplicate location pages ?.. I am sure my site is affected by the panda algorithm penalty(on the duplicated content issues) as a couple of years ago , this didn't matter and we ranked top 3 for pretty much for every location but now we are ranking between 8 - 20th depending on keyword. An Alternative I thought,  may be to instead of 301 those locations pages with duplicate content, is to put No Follow tags on them instead ?... What do you think ?. It's not economically viable to write unique content for every location on every category and these would not only take years but would cost us far to much money. Our Site is currently approx 10,000 pages Any thoughts on this greatly appreciated ? thanks Pete

    | PeteC12
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  • ChaseMG


    I'm working on developing some local pages for an HVAC company. They cover two counties, so I was planning on having two county pages, then linking them to individual city pages to keep the menu simpler and not cluttering it up with a couple dozen city pages for people to slog through. Has anybody ever done county pages before for local SEO? Or at least seen them? Just curious to see if there's any real benefit overall for have separate county pages, or if I should just stick to city pages.

    | ChaseMG
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  • TheZenAgency


    Hi I was wondering is there any specific rules for Local SEO for a service company which provides a service in a variety of cities but only has one physical location. For example is it ok to target the other cities in Title Tags or would this be frowned upon? Regards

    | TheZenAgency
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  • Sans_Terra


    I have a client who has created a Weebly web presence alongside his provided franchise website.  What is my best strategy as he does not wish for the franchise site to out-perform his Weebly presence.

    | Sans_Terra
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  • Toddfoster


    I work for a local Canadian digital marketing company and we are seeking to expand our client base but are having difficulty with converting potential clients. We do excellent work and get good results across the board for our current customers. That being said, we can't seem to convert new ones at the rate we hope to. I am wondering what we are missing and would really like to see what has worked for others to see if we can augment our approach to be more successful. Any ideas are greatly appreciated! We are currently beating the competition on local SERPs, and rank very well nationally. 
    We have run AdWords campaigns, attempted cold-calling, worked with website audits, worked with different sales funnel ideas, social media and done our share of outreach in both online and local communities, among other marketing moves. Tips on these topics are also welcome, because it is possible we just went about it the wrong way.

    | Toddfoster
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  • PeteC12


    Hello All, I have an Ecommerce Site specializing in Hire and we have individual location pages on each of our categories for each of our depots. All these pages show the NAP of the specific branch Given the size of our website (10K approx pages) , it's physically impossible for us to write unique content for each location against each category so what we are doing is writing unique content for our top 10 locations in a category for example , and the remaining 20 odd locations against the same category has the same content but it will bring in the location name and the individual NAP of that branch so in effect I think this thin content. My question is , I am quite sure I we are getting some form of algorithmic penalty with regards the thin/duplicate content.  Using the example above , should we 301 redirect the 20 odd locations with the thin content , or should be say only 301 redirect 10 of them , so we in effect end up with a more 50/50 split on a category with regards to unique content on pages verses thin content for the same category. Alternatively, should we can 301 all the thin content pages so we only have 10 locations against the category and therefore 100% unique content. I am trying to work out which would help most with regards to local rankings for my location pages. Also , does anyone know if a thin/duplicate content penalty is site wide or can it just affect specific parts of a website. Any advice greatly appreciated thanks Pete

    | PeteC12
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  • Myntra


    Hi All, What would be the reason that Google shows international websites in the first page results while there are huge local players available. Eg: Dresses - Keyword that shows results with almost all the results from International websites whereas the local big players in the same category are not shown. This is not the case for other keywords like Women dresses, Clothing, Shoes etc., Is it a bug or any particular reasons? Thanks,

    | Myntra
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  • AMATechTel


    We just finished a new telecom site, and like all telecom sites (think AT&T, Verizon, Suddenlink, etc.), we allow people to put their location in and find internet and phone service packages (what we call bundles) unique to their area. This page also has contact information for the local sales team and some unique content. However, we're about to start putting up smaller, satellite pages for our local SEO initiative. Of course, these pages will have unique content as well, but it will have some of the same content as what's on the individual bundle page, such as package offerings, NAP, etc. Currently this is the URL structure for the bundles: domain.com/bundles/town-name/ This is what I'm planning for the local SEO pages: domain.com/location/town-name-state/ All local FB pages, Google listings, etc. will like to these location pages, rather than the bundle pages. Is this okay or should I consolidate them into one?

    | AMATechTel
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  • WhitbyHolidayCottages


    After a couple of years of talking about having a redesign of my website I finally taken the plunge and I'm paying for responsive design version. Before they go fully into the redesign I thought I would try to get some feedback on whether the initial look and functionality looks good or not. My old website is a very basic Dreamweaver website constructed by myself and because there's only 12 holiday properties on this holiday letting website it has done the job, but you have to scroll down to see the pictures and read the information. At the end of the day I'm certainly not a professional web designer I'm fully aware. With the new very first draft of the responsive design I've asked for functionality where clicking on the property allows you to check out the photographs and information without scrolling. This is the very first stage of a redesign any opinions regarding functionality and initial look would be very gratefully received. New draft website  http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/newsite/ Old website http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/

    | WhitbyHolidayCottages
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  • DealWithAutism


    Hi, Just got a business address and a toll free number for my website. I have read that adding the NAP details schema to the site gives that additional weight of trust to Google and also helps local search. Now my website is NOT local. However, if I add my LA address details on my website using the Local Business schema.org, it might give Google the impression that I am based out of CA. Fair enough, but my question is, will it impact negatively for SERPs from other states. For example I might want to rank for KW "Autism Alternative Treatment". Obviously now that I have added my NAP, if someone keys in Autism Alternative Treatment LA or Autism Alternative Treatment CA, google should give my site preference. But if someone searched Autism Alternative Treatment Arizona, will google exclude/downgrade me (even though there may not be a local site for Arizona) from the search results under the pretext that I am not Arizona based? Your suggestion would be very helpful.

    | DealWithAutism
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  • StevenPeavey


    Have a business located in Indianapolis, Indiana. The business name will be BusinessName Indy. The URL will be BusinessName-Indy.com Since I am using Indy instead of Indianapolis or Indiana, is Google's algorithm smart enough to match up local results to my site?

    | StevenPeavey
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  • GreenStone


    We have been focusing on Local SEO and quality, original content and social media. Over the past 4 weeks we have seen sharp declines in our impressions and overall traffic to the site. Crawler does not reveal any new massive issues, index is growing and there are no penalties. Where do we begin to troubleshoot?

    | GreenStone
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  • ImprezzioMarketing


    I have a business that I just recently started working with and he has written a ton of blog articles (some of which are really good) and decided it would be a good idea to insert the keyword hes targeting into the content or title of many of his blogs. Lets just say for example that the keyword is plumbers chicago. So I searched on Google and the words "plumbers chicago" (in that exact order) are on 199 pages on his site, not including filtered content. He is on page 2-3 for that keyword and I'm wondering what people's advice would be for a site that has so much content referencing the same exact keyword. It is a keyword that is service + location too so it actually doesn't even make sense when you read it in half the sentences it's in. I think one of the main issues of why it's on so many pages is he has a tag for it in Wordpress and tons of the blog articles have that particular tag.

    | ImprezzioMarketing
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  • blitzna10


    So we currently have two websites: www.thephotoboothguys.co.uk and www.thephotoboothguys.com.au We're redeveloping our sites, and combining them to have just a singular website (and then sub sections for each country / location). Unfortunately we can not get the .com of our domain, nor the _.net _And I really can't find a .com that i think will work (for lack of availability, or just because the domain name would not be succinct enough). So, I also have registered - www.photobooth.gy and www.thephotoboothguys.co
    My question ultimately is - is it a bad idea to use a .gy or .co as my main domain - especially when we dont operate in either Guyana or Columbia - but, assuming that the content and structure of the website make it clear what countries and locations we do operate in. Is this something Google et al will figure out over time? Or is it likely to make a huge impact? Or should I be searching harder to find a .com that will work for me? Cheers!

    | blitzna10
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  • yabyy14


    I have just started working with a plumber in my local area to provide a website and generate leads from a combination of SEO, social media and advertising. The issue is that he is adamant that his address should not be displayed anywhere on the site or on any of the citations we are looking to build. This is even after I explained the importance of this information to rankings and the fact that his address can be hidden from view in local listings. I have already come to the conclusion that getting in the typical 7 pack will be near impossible without verifying the address or building citations without a address. But I would like to hear your thoughts on whether you believe ranking organically is still a possibility or whether I should just focus on social / advertising.

    | yabyy14
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  • Web3Marketing87


    Hello Moz Community, We have been working with a company called Provincial Movers to optimize their website. We are focusing our efforts on building external local & relevant citations, however, I can't help but think there is more we can do internally --> www.provincialmoving.com The previous provider created a LOT of articles that are not necessarily relevant to the website like this: http://www.provincialmoving.com/blogs/ Do you guys have any suggestions for cleaning up the website so it performs better on Google? Thanks, Anton

    | Web3Marketing87
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  • BBuck


    Hi Moz'ers! I am creating 2 new websites for 2 different bankruptcy attorneys in the same city. I plan to use different templates BUT from the same template provider. I plan to host with the same hosting company (unless someone here advises me not to). The content will be custom, but similar, as they both practice bankruptcy law. They have different addresses, as they are different law firms. My concern is that Google will penalize for duplicate content because they both practice the same area of law, in the same city, hosting the same, template maker the same, and both won't rank. What should I do to make sure that doesn't happen? Will it be enough that they have different business names, address, and phone numbers? Thanks for any help!!

    | BBuck
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  • cschwartzel


    I understand the need for NAP in the website for citation sourcing / local ranking purposes, etc. Is it possible to use a linking anchor text such as "Find Us" that can link to the Contact Page of the site that does list the street address? Or should it link to the google places listing? The client basically wants to "hide" the NAP, but keep the power of the local listing. Can this be done? Any suggestions? Or an example of website that does this successfully?

    | cschwartzel
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  • smartcow


    So we are setting up a new site for a Business Improvement District (BID) for our local town. So initially we would name the new site TownNameBID.co.uk (or .com) . However with the new domain tld out we are thinking of getting TownName.BID   using the new BID tld. .BID is meant to be reserved for sites such as auction sites, however this will actually be more of a community support site. I would have thought that technically it should not really make much difference particularly once all the appropriate Local Business is placed on the site. But what is the possibility that by search engines it may perceive this a an auction site as opposed to a community site. as well as technical issues are there any anecdotal issues where the wrong tld may put people off. Thoughts

    | smartcow
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  • Mr.bfz


    Hey Guys, Does anyone have experience or can point me to the right documentation about geo targeting possibilities for specific states in the US or specific areas in the world. Local SEO does not apply in my case, since my website is not a business nor have a physical address. My website offers information that is only relevant for specific states in the US, how can I leverage my I optimisation to gain more exposure in those specific states? I really appreciate any help. A

    | Mr.bfz
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  • jennie.evans


    Hi there, We're possibly looking for a small, completely whitehat SEO firm here in the UK to work with us from early next year. We've probably got a budget of around £200 - £300 a month. We're looking for top up work really, not a complete campaign. I've checked out http://moz.com/community/recommended but it's not broken down by region or budget. I had an embarrassing phone call with Distilled who it turns out charge £10,000 a month minimum! Can anyone recommend anyone to speak to?

    | jennie.evans
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  • PeteC12


    Hello All, I have an eCommerce website doing online hire. We operate from a large number of locations (100 approx) and my 100 or so categories have individual locations pages against them example - Carpet Cleaners (category)  www.mysite/hire-carpetcleaners
            carpet cleaner hire Manchester    www.mysite/hire-carpetcleaners/Manchester
            carpet cleaner hire london 
            carpet cleaner hire Liverpool patio heater   (category)
            patio heater hire Manchester
            patio heater hire London
            patio heater hire Liverpool And so on..... I have unique content for some of these pages but given that my site had 40,000 odd urls, I do have a large amount of thin/duplicate content and it's financially not possible to get unique
    content written for every single page for all my locations and categories. Historically, I used to rank very well for these location pages although this year, things have dropped off and recently , I was hit with the Panda 4.0 update which i understand targets thin content. Therefore what I am int he process of doing is reducing the number of locations I want to rank for and have pages for thus allowing me to achieve both a higher percentage of unique content over duplicate/thin content on the whole site and only concerntrate on a handful of locations which I can realistically get unique content written for. My questions are as follows. By reducing the number of locations, my website will currently 301 redirect these location page i have been dropping back to it's parent category.
    e.g carpet cleaner hire Liverpool page - Will redirect back to the parent Carpet cleaner hire Page. Given that I have nearly 100 categories to do , this will mean site will generate thousands of 301 redirects when I reduce down to a handful of locations per category. The alternative Is that I can 404 those pages ?... What do yout think I should do ?.. Will it harm me by having so many 301's . It's essentially the same page with a location name in it redirecting back to the parent. Some of these do have unqiue content but most dont ?. My other question is - On a some of these categories with location pages, I currently rank very well for locally although there is no real traffic for these location based keywords (using keyword planner). Shall I bin them or keep them? Lastly , Once I have reduced the number of  location pages  , I will still have thin content until , I can get the unique content written for them. Should I remove these pages until that point of leave them as it is? It will take a few months
    to get all the site with unique content. Once complete, I should be able to reduce my site down from 40,000 odd pages to say 5,000 pages Any advice would be greatly appreciated thanks
    Pete

    | PeteC12
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  • the-coopersmith


    We have expanded into France and Brazil and now have a someone in-house that can translate to French and Brazilian Portuguese. I own ".fr" and ".com.br" versions of our domain.  We are using Wordpress for our CMS. We are currently publishing about 2 articles a week on English site which we would be translating and publishing through new international sites (when appropriate). We will be changing out photos and videos at times in addition to all the text/copy. So, before I jump deep into this I wanted to reach out for help regarding the best modern approach to this. Should I use some sort of WP Plugin that will let me manage each of these through 1 WP install or is it better to run each separately through multiple WP installs? I want to achieve this while... avoiding any duplicate content penalties. provide easy admin/editor management of publishing content. Any help/advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

    | the-coopersmith
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  • MeasureEverything


    My company currently owns three apartment complexes. They are within blocks of each other. Only one of them has a website (believe it or not). The one that has the website ranks fairly well, but only because it has been around for a long time. There have not been any intentional SEO efforts. I have stumbled across a wonderful, keyword rich & location specific, domain name but I have a question. Here's the scenario: We have: Apartment Complex 1 - www.apartmentcomplex1.com  (longstanding website) Apartment Complex 2 - No website. Apartment Complex 3 - No website. We are considering buying the domain: www.KeywordRichDomain.com. The new URL structure would be: www.KeywordRichDomain.com/apartment-complex-1 www.KeywordRichDomain.com/apartment-complex-2 www.KeywordRichDomain.com/apartment-complex-3 Should I 301 redirect www.apartmentcomplex1.com to the new root domain or should I redirect it to the appropriate sub-folder of the new domain? Putting myself in the user's shoes, if I were expecting to go to the apartmentcomplex1.com domain, I would want to land on the sub-folder because it's relevant to what I was looking for. However, I don't think people will directly type in the old URL. I think people will be searching for apartments in the area and I want all three of our complexes to show up. By redirecting the good domain to this new root domain, it should help us start out life pretty well in the SERPS. (my assumption at least). Thoughts?

    | MeasureEverything
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  • the-coopersmith


    I'm working on a website with 100s of locations. There is a location search page (Find Widget Dealer), a page for each state (Tennessee Widget Dealers) and finally a page for each individual location which has localized unique content and contact info (Nashville Widget Dealer). My question is is related to how I should structure my URL and the keywords within the URL. Keywords in my examples being the location and the product (i.e. widget). Here is a quick overview of each of the 3 tiered pages, with the Nashville page being the most optimized: Find Widget Dealer - Dealer Page only includes a location search bar and bullet list links to states Tennessee Widget Dealers - Page includes brief unique content for the the state and basic listing info for each location along with links to the local page) Nashville Widget Dealer - Page includes a good amount of unique content for this specific location (Most optimized page) That said, here are the 3 URL structure options I am considering: http://website.com/widget-dealers/tennesee/nashville http://website.com/dealers/tennesee-widget-dealers/nashville http://website.com/dealers/tennesee/nashville-widget-dealer Any help is appreciated! Thank you

    | the-coopersmith
    0
  • davidmaxwell


    Hi all, My query relates to the Google Places 'Widget' (not sure what they are called exactly). If you do a search for, let's say 'Apple' you get the regular SERPs and on the right of the page they display a Google Places panel which includes map, company details & reviews. (and also a G+ panel for some businesses, where appropriate) What determines this being displayed?  I had presumed a correctly formatted and optimised 'Places' page and making sure this was linked and verified. We have Google Places set up for quite a long time (and verified) but for some reason it's not being displayed. Any thoughts? On another note, a client of ours has the opposite issue - they would like to remove this panel from SERPs. I'm guessing the only way to do that would be to remove the Google Places page? Thanks in advance...

    | davidmaxwell
    0
  • PeteC12


    Hi All, We have implemented Schema.org on our website and we have chosen a specific schema as opposed to just using the standard localbusiness. When we ran it through the Google Structured data tool  it did not report any error , however , when we tried it on Yandex, it showed up as us having problems with the way we have tagged our addresses for our different locations so we have made additional changes to fix this. I  have read somewhere that the Google Structured data tool is not 100% correct at showing any errors etc and that one should use Yandex as well for validation. I am wondering what others thoughts and if what I read should be taken as correct infomation?... I would be surprised if google did release something like the structured data validator if it wasn't as good at reporting than some others out there. thanks Pete

    | PeteC12
    0
  • Kingalan1


    Recently " .NYC" domains have become available for purchase to New York City based businesses. I own and operate a New York City commercial real estate firm, nyc-officespace-leader.com. New domain would be www.metro-manhattan.nyc Our existing domain has been in use for seven years.would there be an SEO benefit to transferring our site to .NYC domain? Or would a new domain kill our domain rank? Thanks, Alan

    | Kingalan1
    0
  • PeteC12


    Hello All, We have added a "Get directions" for google Maps on our website for each of our depots.  It works correctly on the latest version of google maps if we just put in our company name , postcode. However if users are using an older version of google maps, it doesn't work so well ,and brings up a massive list of companies in the same vicinity.  If we put in our whole address, it's hit and miss if it finds it okay and brings up a list of companies as well.  I have some other companies just use long/latitude but I that isn't so accurate in some cases either especially when the depots are on business parks. I am wondering if others have found this problem and whether its possible to check what version of google maps the user has say on their mobile etc before choosing which code to run ? Any thoughts ?  I can't find anything to help us to code this. thanks Peter

    | PeteC12
    0
  • Technians


    Hello what Could be the best practice of seo and website optimization for a franchise company. Business model: Lets say, a company(company.com) situated in a country having stores in different cities (more than 2 stores in some),  provides n number of services depending on store's location. Physical addresses for some stores are available and new stores shall be launched in future. But, the seo and website pages are needed for those locations at the moment as well. If I choose a sub folder, to give each store a URL. This is how it should look like Country level pages company.com, company.com/service1/ _ _ _ company.com/serviceN/ City level pages company.com/city1/, company.com/city1/location1/ , company.com/city1/location2/, company.com/city2/ , company.com/city3/ Q1) In case I make each service page specific to a store location for eg. company.com/city1/service1/,  it will create duplicate content issue because content of company.com/city1/service1/ and company.com/service1/ shall be 60% same, except for **meta title,description and contact detail in footer. ** So, the question arises that shall i give canonical to country level main services page i.e company.com/city1/service1/ canonical to company.com/service1/ as it is very hard to make unique content for same services page. Q2) Or Do I need to rework on my complete website design and seo strategy?

    | Technians
    1
  • PeteC12


    Hi All, We updated our website with a new url structure. Apart from the root domain , everyother page is showing up in opensite explorer with a page rank 1.  Although we only went live with this yesterday, I would have thought that the 301's etc from the old urls would be coming through and the PR would show ?.. I am not familiar what to expect or what alarms bells I need to watch out for when doing this type of thing although I would probably expect a small drop in traffic ?..I don;t know what the norm is though so Any advice greatly appreciated? thanks PEte

    | PeteC12
    0
  • Atomicx


    http://www.atomicx.com/cincinnati-web-design.php I am trying to get this page to rank for "cincinnati web design" and related phrases. I redid the landing page with all new content, images, url, etc about 3 months ago. Since then the site is still not showing up in the top 50 results. I see no reason that the page would not be. Our seo and compute repair phrases have all gone up but our web design phrases are being very stubborn. Thoughts?

    | Atomicx
    0
  • Ideas-Money-Art


    Hi mozzers, Me and my team are having a major website refresh and update for one of our client's. The structure of the website can be divided into 2 types of pages: corporate pages(representing the core services of the company which rank nationally) and microsite pages(representing each and every 30+ franchise locations ranking locally). Right now when you visit the Seattle microsite page you have localization feel but the main nav(of corporate site) remains at the top on top of the subnav(orange under map) which is customized for the location where you are in. My colleague who is the main person in charge of this website update would like to create a better localization experience for users in specific cities by having one main navigation instead of 2 displaying exactly the same pages displayed on the actual subnav (actual microsite)  (images are below of actual and potential look of the website). FYI: URLs will remain the same. I really like this idea of a more personalized experience but I am afraid that the local seo strategy we have done so far may be jeopardized because of this new design but i am not sure.  Am I right? Are we going to lose national and/or local rankings? Will this fresh design hurt the SEO we have been doing for the past few years? It would be great to provide me "best practice" tips to follow for this case as far as what are the steps I should be paying attention... Thank you guys! ktJrsNx.png Boq4Pvt.png

    | Ideas-Money-Art
    0

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