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Category: Local Website Optimization

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

  • Webstreak


    Hello All, I am currently having issues with the following website: http://universityforddurham.com/None of the vehicles the site has in inventory are not showing up organically.Example:2016 Ford Fusion in Durham, NChttps://www.google.com/?ion=1&espv=2#q=2016+Ford+Fusion+Durham%2C+NCThe results page pulls University Ford North, which is another dealership we work with and has no issues showing up organically. Both of these websites were built around the same time, but the Durham store receives more traffic.If I perform a Google Search for VIN numbers, such as 3FA6P0SU0GR121259 the first page of search results are for the vehicle by all the dealerships in the Auto Group, except for the dealership that actually has the vehicle.I am wondering if the vehicles are not being indexed by Google. When I perform similar searches in Bing, the proper results are populating.Any suggestions or help would be great.Thank you!

    | Webstreak
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  • WorkhorseMKT


    Hi there! I have a client that has just opened a 2nd location in another state. When optimizing for local I have a few questions: We're creating a landing page for each location, this will have contact information and ideally some information on each location. Any recomendations for content on these landing pages? The big question is dual city optimization. Should Include the city & state of BOTH locations in all my title tags? or should I leave that to the unique city landing pages? What other on-page optimizations should i consider across the site? Thanks! Jordan

    | WorkhorseMKT
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  • LauraFalls


    Hello We sell a product globally but I want to use different keywords to describe the product based on location. For this example let’s say in USA the product is a "bathrobe" and in Canada it’s a "housecoat" (same product, just different name). What this means… I want to show "bathrobe" content in USA (lots of global searches) and "housecoat" in Canada (less searches). I know I can show the content using a geolocation plugin (also found a caching plugin which will get around the issue of people seeing cached versions), using JavaScript or html5. I want a solution which enables someone in Canada searching for "bathrobe" to be able to find our site through Google search though too. I want to rank for "bathrobe" in BOTH USA and Canada. I have read articles which say Google can read the dynamic content in JavaScript, as well as the geolocation plugin. However the plugins suggest Google crawls the content based on location too. I don’t know about JavaScript. Another option is having two separate pages (one for “bathrobe” and one for “housecoat”) and using geolocation for the main menu (if they find the other page i.e. bathrobe page through a Canadian search, they will still see it though). This may have an SEO impact splitting the traffic though. Any suggestions or recommendations on what to do?? What do other websites do? I’m a bit stuck. Thank you so much! Laura Ps. I don’t think we have enough traffic to add subdomains or subdirectories.

    | LauraFalls
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  • RichardRColeman


    I've read a number of articles on SEO and main navigation for websites. I'd like to get a solid answer/recommendation to help solve this one. This is the situation. We're helping a local business that offers pest control and property maintenance services. Under each of these, there area a number of services available, eg, cockroach control, termite inspections or lawn mowing services, rubbish removal and so on. Is it best to have a main nav containing the top keywords for the services - Pest Control | Property Maintenance, with a drop down to the services under each. Or, a simple approach - Our Services > drop down to each - Pest Control > Termite Inspections, etc. My concern here is that they have quite a lot of services, so the nav could be way too long. Really appreciate any assistance here. Many thanks.

    | RichardRColeman
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  • SEOJedi51


    Hey everyone, I'm currently working with a client that has 250 locations across the United States. Each location has its own website and each website has the same 10 service pages. All with identical content (the same 500-750 words) with the exception of unique meta-data and NAP which has each respective location's name, city, state, etc. I'm unsure how duplicate content works at the local level. I understand that there is no penalty for duplicate content, rather, any negative side-effects are because search engines don't know which page to serve, if there are duplicates. So here's my question: If someone searches for my client's services in Miami, and my client only as one location in that city, does duplicate content matter? Because that location isn't competing against any of my client's other locations locally, so search engines shouldn't be confused by which page to serve, correct? Of course, in other cities, like Phoenix, where they have 5 locations, then I'm sure the duplicate content is negatively affecting all 5 locations. I really appreciate any insight! Thank you,

    | SEOJedi51
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  • BrianJGomez


    I have a client site that I am beating my head against the wall for right now. Three months into a 100% white hat campaign, we can't get him ranking in the top 150. Here's the cliffsnotes: Built a new wordpress website All on page SEO has been done and score an A+ for his primary kws Robots.txt is setup correctly .htaccess is setup correctly new domain multiple 95 DA, 50 PA links from reputable, national sites. Yext Local listings SSL, CDN, Speed optimized Has 19 pages indexed by Google Posting one blog a week for him Granted his primary keyword is a hyper competitive kw, but still, I've been doing this for 8 years and never seen a guy be stuck on the 16th page for so long for the sort of links we are building him. I'm genuinely stumped here and could use some help.

    | BrianJGomez
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  • OliverNeely


    So it's common practice to include the city/state in page titles and within the content. However let's say that a business is located in a small town, but serves customers in surrounding, larger towns.  You might say that it's not worth mentioning the small town because there would be few searchers in that area. However, does Google take into account the distance a searcher is from the business location, in relation to the page title, as well as the Google my Business page? Obviously you can't go stuffing all of the surrounding towns into your homepage or main service pages. Is there any value in mentioning the small town, or is it fine to leave it out too? What has been your experience?

    | OliverNeely
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  • wearehappymedia


    Hey Mozers, This is an old and often criticized method of SERP however we have a client who has requested we create suburb specific pages for their site. PLASTIC PLANTS "SUBURB" NEED PLASTIC PLANTS IN "SUBURB" They have shown us a competitor who is ranking for hundreds maybe thousands of suburbs in Australia using this method. Any thoughts or experience in this area would be appreciated.

    | wearehappymedia
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  • TimKelsey


    Hi everyone, I'm working with a client that has a strange situation. He's ranking for his target keyword on a national level but when searching locally, he's in the 100s (see attached). Any idea what could be going on here? He did have an old domain that got hacked that is redirecting to his current domain. Thanks, Tim lmSSXdT

    | TimKelsey
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  • BobGW


    Hello, On this site, I removed a huge spammy location footer with hundreds of cities, states, and dog training types. The traffic and rankings have gone down a lot, and I'd like a discussion on how to rebuild things the right way. There's some local adjustments to be made to the home page content, but other than that: My plans: 1. Analyze top 10 Google analytics keyword queries and work them into the content as best as possible, though I am debating whether the client should make new pages and how many. 2. I'm going to suggest he add a lot of content to the home page, perhaps a story about a dog training that he did in Wisconsin. I'll think about what else. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.

    | BobGW
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  • jluke.fusion


    I'm working with a real estate client currently that asks users to identify the market they are in prior to showing them properties. The markets are far enough apart that no user would conceivably be browsing within two separate markets. When the user selects their market choice, they are redirected to a market-specific home page whenever they login after the original home page loads. These market-specific pages are ranking currently (page 2-4) for market-related phrases, but before embarking on further optimization I wanted to get a second opinion on whether or not keeping this redirect process is even a good idea or not. Thoughts?

    | jluke.fusion
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  • Jenifer30


    my traffic goes to referral if visitors visits in my subdomain page. i have tried adding my subdomain in referral exclusion list and other ways via GTM posted in some articles, nothing seems to be working for me. any suggestions how to solve this issue

    | Jenifer30
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  • RosemaryB


    So I have client that delivers goods to residential addresses and commercial businesses.  They have 60+ distribution centers but want to target surrounding counties, cities and territories. Our development team was considering using virtual location pages (thousands) for these service areas.  I have lobbied against this out of concern that Google would label these "doorway" pages.  These pages would not have full addresses. I want to develop a strategy to gain coverage in these surrounding delivery areas.   I was told that applying https://schema.org/serviceArea might help.  However will this truly bring in the necessary visibility?   Would having only a few key select virtual locations suffice (along with Service Area schema)? Any advice on applying https://schema.org/serviceArea attributes would be much appreciated.
    Thanks

    | RosemaryB
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  • ClickHub-Harry


    For one of my SEO campaigns, Google is using the website's home page as the landing page for the majority of search terms being tracked. The website splits its products by region and so we want specific region pages to rank for search terms related to that region, rather than the home page. We have optimised each regional page to a reasonably high standard and we have ensured that there is a good amount of internal linking and sign-posting to those region pages, however, Google is still using the home page. The only complication is that for the first few months there were canonical tags on these pages to the home page. These were removed around 3 months ago and we've checked that the region pages are indexed properly. Is there anything we are missing? Has anyone had any success in getting Google to change its landing pages?

    | ClickHub-Harry
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  • QuickToImpress


    Basically, I have 2 company websites running. The first resides on a .com and the second resides on a .co.uk domain. The content is simply localized for the UK audience, not necessarily 100% original for the UK. The main website is the .com website but we expanded into the UK, IE and AU markets. However, the .co.uk domain is targeting UK, IE and AU. I am using the hreflang tag for the pages. Will this prevent duplicate content issues? Or should I use 100% new content for the .co.uk website?

    | QuickToImpress
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  • RosemaryB


    I have a client that has multiple virtual locations to show website visitors where they provide delivery services.   These are individual pages that include unique phone numbers, zip codes, city & state.  However there is no address (this is just a service area). We wanted to apply schematic markup to these landing pages.  Our development team successfully applied schema to the phone, state, city, etc.  However for just the address property they said VIRTUAL LOCATION.  This checked out fine on the Google structured data testing tool. Our question is this; can just having VIRTUAL LOCATION for the address property be construed as spamming?  This landing page is providing pertinent information for the end user.  However since there is no brick and mortar address I'm trying to determine if having VIRTUAL LOCATION as the value could be frowned upon by Google. Any insight would be very helpful. Thanks

    | RosemaryB
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  • sbrault74


    I've got a blog with some tools and business directories (https://www.webhostinghero.com). Actually my website is in English and is hosted in the US since its biggest source of traffic is from there. My second biggest traffic source is India. The issue is that while my website is really well optimized (in terms of speed), it is still slow for visitors from India. So my question is: Would it be possible to have a copy of my website on a web server located in India and use a sub-domain (ie.: in.webhostinghero.com) to access it without being penalized by Google? Would that be considered duplicate content? What would be the HREF LANG tag set to for India (EN-US, EN-GB... EN-IN??) I thought that having a sub-domain for a specific country could also help its rankings. Thanks in advance for your inputs. P.S. Sorry my english sucks.

    | sbrault74
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  • Jason_Taylor


    I'm new to this forum and this is my first question. So if I'm not supposed to ask this type of question, please forgive me. I'm trying my best to get http://www.westcoastflenterprises.com/#!roofing/bbb1e to rank on the first page in Google for "roofing contractors" in the following SW Florida cities: "Naples, Bonita Springs, and Fort Myers." Our company has a physical address in Fort Myers only so I understand it's going to be harder to get it to rank for Naples and Bonita Springs. But I can't even get this page to rank well for "roofing contractors in Fort Myers." The page authority is 25 and our domain authority is 27. Our home page authority is 39. Our primary category in Google is building restoration & preservation. But we have divisions in our company: Roofing Concrete Ornamental metals I would love it if our roofing page could rank higher than the third page, which is where it currently sits. I worked really hard to get each of our roofing-material manufacturers to link directly to our roofing page, not the home page. My hope is that you can help me because I'm really discouraged. Thanks in advance.

    | Jason_Taylor
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  • BBsmyth


    I work for a car dealership in Southern California and have been tasked with a seemingly impossible task. They would like for me to remove Title Tags, Duplicate Content, Descriptions, and get all other SEO issues in order. The concerns I have rank in this order: 1. Remove Duplicate Metadata: When the platform spits out new pages they use template Title/Description/Keywords and we are not always informed of their addition. There are also somewhere near 1K vehicles in the inventory that are being accused of duplicate content/Metadata. The fix that I have been spit balling is adding canonical - No Follow to these pages. I am not sure that this is the best way forward, but would appreciate the feedback 2. Duplicate Content: Most of the information is supplied from the manufacturer so we have been sourcing the information back to the manufacturers site. They are showing up on random "SEO Tools" pulls as harmful to the site. Although we use the Dealers name and local area, the only way I can assume to get the heat off and possibly fix any negative ramifications is to once again use a Canonical Tag -  No Follow to these pages. 3. Clean up Issues: Most of the other issues I am finding is when the website platform dumps new pages to the site without notice and creates more then 1k pages that are coming with duplicate everything. Please provide with any assistance you can.

    | BBsmyth
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  • kminch


    Hello Everyone, I'm pretty new to this, but believe i have a pretty good understanding of SEO and hope i'm implementing everything correctly. I'm trying not to keyword stuff, but it seems difficult to not do so.  I do feel a bit limited by my website provider (zenfolio) and I am considering switching.  If anyone has a little free time, would you mind checking out my site (www.elizabethjamesphotography.com) and let me know if you see any glaring issues or errors.  I'm showing up in rankings but still getting beat out by local competitors.  I know i need work on backlinks (they just seem to be hard to come across organically in the photography space) there is some local bloggers willing to do a post but at a rather high price.  We offered free photo sessions if they are willing to post about it, but everyone still seems to only be willing to for a few hundred dollars.  Any feedback would be appreciated.  Thanks for your time. Ken ps. its my fiances photography business (hence the difference in names, lol)

    | kminch
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  • Pixelwik


    Hi there all, I have a longtime client who got the big sales pitch from Yodle and ended up with a bunch of "marketing magic" items for $1649 a month including but probably not limited to: 1) An SEO package, 2) An Adversite with a keyword stuffed URL (looks like a crappy landing page but it has 3 or 4 pages), 3) a Google Adwords package and 4) a bunch of citation listing management. We already have a website (currently in the midst of a total overhaul) that has ranked pretty well on Google for our industry and we've been working hard on citation clean up/management all along.  We also already have a Google Adwords account that is actually starting to pay off. Essentially, they sold him on things we didn't need with a bunch of talk about algorithyms and how they are winning so many awards and how they could get his phone ringing with 50-60 leads a month, etc. Blah, blah, blah. They were very loud about their "close relationship" with Google which is what I assume got him the most interested. Anyway, we got on the phone with them yesterday because I was really concerned about them wanting access to our Google My Business account and hearing that they would be changing the telephone # to their tracking # and the website address would be changed to the new one they made. I hear that kind of thing and I just think nightmare scenario with NAP stuff which is already a bit of a nightmare due to some other reasons (another story altogether). When I started questioning the support guy (who didn't really want to answer any questions directly), they backed off the GMB and citation talk and said that we would be able to customize the packages and they could get rid of that component and concentrate on Adwords and the lead generating "Adversite." So that's where we are right now. The support guy went on to tell me that Google allows 10 websites as long as you only have one GMB/+ listing but that is antithetical to anything I've ever known. I haven’t given them manager access to GMB or any citation stuff (and won't) and the Adwords campaign they're working on is apparently on they own dashboard as they have yet to ask me about access to our AW account. I guess the main thing I'm looking for is any guidance on how bad this is going to be for our Google rankings, etc. with the Adversite they created for us using a whole new web address for our company and a whole new telephone. Not to mention this Adwords campaign they're running that will be going to the new telephone and new website as well. It just seems like we're competing against ourselves in this scenario and splitting traffic and/or authority and kind of a recipe for a big setback. Any advice or suggestions here on how worried we need to be and if we should try to cancel before anything else happens (the site is already live and they also said the Adwords they’re doing is now live as well). Thank you so much in advance for any comments!

    | Pixelwik
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  • Jeremy_Lopatin


    I have a client who maintains a directory of surgeons across the United States (approx. 2,000 members at present), and wishes to use IP detection to dynamically filter their surgeon directory to a sub-set that is relevant to the geography of the visitor. At the same time, however, we want the pages in the surgeon directory to rank nationally for terms like "[insert specialty] surgeons". Any tips/best practices for implementing an IP detection solution without shooting yourself in the foot from an SEO perspective? Is it even possible? Thanks! Jeremy

    | Jeremy_Lopatin
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  • Web3Marketing87


    Hi Moz, I have a question about one of our websites that has been ranking very poorly on it's current domain (fancydoorsedmonton.com) lately, but was ranked at #1 for the search term "Edmonton Doors" until last month. The main search terms we're targeting are "Edmonton Doors" and "Doors Edmonton". I made another post regarding the on-page SEO value and had some feedback from that, but there is another issue that seems more likely to cause an issue. There are 2 more domains set up to forward to their main domain: fancydoors.com was their old domain but was registered by someone else and had some questionable, X-rated content put on it. The domain has now been reacquired and redirected to their main domain. There isn't any more questionable content on there anymore. Would this domain's past affect it's current ranking? fancy-doors.com was another old domain of theirs now set up as a redirect. In the past they had another SEO provider work with this domain and did some bad SEO work for them with automated citations, etc. We changed the domain to fancydoorsedmonton.com to get away from that and also include Edmonton in the domain. If you have any ideas or feedback to provide based on this information it would definitely be a huge help to us. Thanks!

    | Web3Marketing87
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  • Web3Marketing87


    Hi, We have 2 websites built for one client that has 2 companies running from the same physical location. Would having the same address listed on both websites affect their SEO rankings? The 2 websites mentioned are linked below: http://anastasiablinds.ca/     http://www.greenfoxwindows.ca/ Thanks for your help!

    | Web3Marketing87
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  • Web3Marketing87


    Hi, I have a website that has been built with SEO in mind from the beginning but it's failing to rank at all. We have checked everything and found nothing we see that would be negatively affected the SEO value. The link is http://www.fancydoorsedmonton.com/ Any insight on anything you may find would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

    | Web3Marketing87
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  • sfrediktru8


    Hello, I recently took control of my website from a web designer.  I have been reading as much as I can regards SEO etc to make long term improvements to my site. The site was a basic 4 page website for a local cleaning company.  Consisting of a homepage, services page, testimonial and contact page.  The site performed reasonably given it's lack of detail or SEO but probably only because the level of competition isn't great. I am in the process of rebuilding the site in wordpress and with SEO in mind I intend to have more than 1 page regards services.  I have 301'd my services.html page to my number 1 keyword term to gain any little link juice that is available. Now to my questions... Should I be doing this with the other pages?  Is it worth 301'ing my contact us page?  Is there anything to be gained by doing so? Again should I 301 the index.html to the new homepage?  Been reading about this and the issues relating to loops etc but cannot find a definite answer regards the need? Last scenario - lets say my testimonials.html page has some link juice would it be beneficial to 301 that to 1 of my new service pages to give that a kick start as opposed to making a less important page like another testimonials page more powerful? Hope this makes sense, I am a beginner just thinking out loud. Thanks

    | sfrediktru8
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  • EvolveCreative


    I'm looking to find more information on location/local schema. Are you able to implement schema for one location on multiple different sites? (i.e. - Multiple brands/websites (same parent company) - the brands share the same location and address). Also, is schema still important for local SEO? Thank you in advance for your help!

    | EvolveCreative
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  • Kingalan1


    After spending over $50,000 and 3 years on web site development and SEO I realized that advertising on such commercial real estate sites as Loopnet and Cityfeet were  more cost effective for developing leads for identifying businesses seeking commercial space in New York City. My firm is a tenant rep brokerage assisting tenants in the acquisition of office, showroom and commercial lofts space in Manhattan. When my firmswitched to Loopnet I was astounded that this site generated leads at a lower cost and a greater quantity than my private branded website (www.metro-manhattan.com). I would have thought that a private branded site would be more effective. Now 2 years later I am having issued with Loopnet and can no longer advertise there. Does any one have any suggestions concerning business websites where we can  advertise commercial tenant representation services in Manhattan? Sites like www.officespace.com look like they have potential. LinkedIn sounds like a good demographic but I am concerned that advertising would only generate requests for links rather than generating bona fide leads. Thoughts??? Thanks, Alan

    | Kingalan1
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  • cheflekker


    For almost 3 years I am the owner of www.cheflekker.com. A wix domain.... It was sure easy to set up and still easy to change the layout. Only problem is... SEO. For the most part I find it difficult to monitor my site on areas of improvement and actually see the results. What is your opinion on the wix (ajax) program? any tips?

    | cheflekker
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  • Saijo.George


    Hi folks What are your thoughts on targeting Singapore and Hong Kong ( and Australia ) with a .com.au domain with subfolder example.com.au/singapore and example.com.au/hong-kong with relevant hreflang tags. Has anyone does this successfully or come across any case studies for this? The content will be in English on all those pages but they will have local numbers and office in each location. The team and content will also be different on those pages. If I could I would use .com BUT that is NOT an option in this particular case.

    | Saijo.George
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  • ChuckBraman


    The context: my market Here, for reference, is what I’d like to see with my website (New York Jazz Events), and I think I deserve to see: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1gf2ajw80iciqii/Screenshot 2015-11-27 12.09.08.png?dl=0 Intrigued by that screenshot? Please read further! I have only a few competitors in my market (jazz bands offered in the city of New York for corporate events and weddings), those being Gigmasters, Gigsalad, and Thumbtack. (Each of those three, by the way, are much more general sites than mine (they offer everything from musicians to jugglers), and should be behind me if one is ranking based on quality and relevance.) Of the next nearest type of competitor, single, individual jazz (which also should be behind me if one is ranking based on quality and relevance), there are a dozen or so. The context: my plans No matter what, at the least I’m going to be doing a complete modernization and redesign of my site soon. Please refer to the following screenshot of my Google organic traffic throughout the life of my site while reading the account that follows: https://www.evernote.com/l/AAOQpSw8Hn9DGpCQAt5onH9WMBiwGTDcCk8 What I’d like to find out: exactly what caused the Penguin penalty (if there was one); exactly what would remove it and restore my site to its previous standing. You can see that when my site launched, it only took four months (12/10-4/11) for it to consistently, and seemingly effortlessly, ranking 5th or 6th in Google for the most important keyword combinations related to my industry (such as “jazz band new york,” “jazz trio new york,” “jazz wedding new york”). That's for a new site with no backlinks. From this I inferred that there is little to no direct competition in this market (i.e., jazz bands in New York marketed specifically for weddings and corporate events). Then, around November of 2013, I paid for some bogus links (51 to be exact) to these keyword combinations in order to improve the ranking of my site, which worked briefly (see Google Analytics screenshot, January 13) until Penguin launched the following Spring, at which time my site was essentially removed from the search results altogether due to an apparent algorithmic (not manual) penalty which I presumed were due to these links (although I could be wrong, it could be penalized due to something else that I don’t understand). After removing most of the bad links (down to 3 from 51, see https://www.dropbox.com/s/kolb665rth47q11/bad links 2013-10-24 explorer.numbers?dl=0) and disavowing all the offending URLs, and after Penguin updated to 3.0, Google still failed to recognize my site, with one odd exception: in Fall of 2014 it began to place the keyword combination "jazz bands new york" ("bands" plural, not singular) back on page one, and tied it to a completely undeveloped Google Plus page with zero reviews on it, that it displayed simultaiously (the “knowledge graph?” or “maps listing”?). (Google works in some strange and not very intelligible ways. For example, in a searcher removed the “s” from “bands” and the site remained banished from the results altogether. The same is true for every other keyword variation.) Encouraged by this unexpected development, last Winter (2014-15) and Spring (2015), I developed my Google Plus Local Business page with lots of useful videos and photos, increased the review count from 0 to 13 (all real and all five star, by the way), linked my YouTube page to it, and, on Google’s advice and against my better judgment, closed down my other Google Plus Local Business pages related to other business services I market on the web (I’m a graphic designer and videographer in addition to being a bandleader). (Unhelpfully, Google keeps them in the search results but just marks them as “closed.” Thanks so much, Google. I probably could have left them up.) I also made a massive effort to clean-up my local directory listings so far as possible, removing listings for my competing businesses (again, against my better judgment), making the format of my business address and contact information consistent so far as possible (I'm a service business and so hide my full address when possible, but this is not always possible depending on the policies of the particular citation website, hence some inconsistencies), and added this information to the footer of all the pages on my site. After making these improvements, rather than improving my rankings, my site was entirely removed from the first several pages of Google’s search results, including for the keyword combination "jazz bands new york.” On occasions when my site could be located (several pages down), it was no longer associated with my Google Plus Local Business page, unless one searched specifically for my site’s name, New York Jazz Events (which nobody does, because 99.9% of people searching on Google don't know my business name). Some questions this raised in my mind: Why did Google make a link between my site and my Google Plus Local Business page back when the page was undeveloped? Why did Google then break that link (stop the association my website with their business page (or knowledge graph, or maps listing, whichever it is now), apart from the exception noted above) once the Google Plus Local Business page was developed? And indeed, why wouldn't developing that page, along with cleaning up my citations, logically result in more search term combinations bringing my results back to the first page, along with the link to the Google Plus Local Business page, rather than the opposite? Then, unexpectedly, this last November my website rank for "jazz bands new york" in Google briefly returned from "buried" all the way to #1! And the 1st page of the search results was dominated by my site in three places, all #1: the top spot for paid ads (as usual), the very top of the natural search results (first time ever), and the top and only local listing, on the right! I was even ahead of two giant national corporate competitors, which would seem to be impossible to me as they probably have thousands of backlinks. I basically “owned” page one of Google to an extent I’ve never seen for anyone before. It was actually a bit bizarre. You can see this here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1gf2ajw80iciqii/Screenshot 2015-11-27 12.09.08.png?dl=0 Now, what is also bizarre, was that, as before, I was still buried for every other keyword combination that's relevant to my site, including extremely similar combinations (for example, substituting "band" for "bands," or "NYC" for "New York," etc.). These keyword combinations essentially return the exact same results, only with my site missing from organic and local. As I mentioned, these astonishing results were temporary, and now my site is again buried for all keyword combinations including the once and sometimes astonishingly-performing “jazz bands new york.” Something else interesting and relevant to this conundrum: I’ve done searches for all my three major keyword search terms in Bing, and guess what? In the top three results for two out of the three of my search terms in organic results, with my Bing local listing right up there, and my other website (NYCJazz.com) not far behind! Now, it's strange to me that these incredibly great (and, as far as I'm concerned, high quality) Bing rankings lead to no inquiries, that nearly all of my customers find me from my paid advertising in Google, but that's another bafflement for another day… what is relevant to this discussion, is that my Bing results makes the essential invisibility of my website and my local business listing in Google's natural results all the more baffling. One could speculate that Google is a more sophisticated search engine and is returning more relevant results, except that that's not true… my site is in fact the most relevant for those terms (or at least, to be generous, in the top few in terms of relevance). And in the past, before Penguin, it used to be in the top few results in Google, just like in Bing. It's hard for me to swallow that I'm just lacking in proper SEO, when it used to rank great, when I've subsequently been working hard to further improve the SEO for years, and it's a top site everywhere else. Something has to be up with Google… I wish I knew what it was and what I could do… What I have done already: I’ve worked hard over the last five years cleaning up bad backlinks and making citations consistent. I think I understand well my most important keywords already, and have my pages optimized for them. I understand on-page optimization and think my site’s in pretty good shape in that regard (and I will further improve the on page optimization when I redesign it very soon.) It could use more good backlinks, but that’s a problem for the future as far as I’m concerned, and not related to the penalty in any case. I understand AdWords well and my ad is at the top of the search results consistently for all relevant keywords, so I don’t need any help there… Anyone who may have any insight to this… thanks very much in advance!

    | ChuckBraman
    0
  • YourMark.com


    Our small town news site provides coverage in a lot of seasonal areas, and we're struggling with the current year's content ranking above previous years. For instance, every year we cover the local high school football team, and create 2-3 articles per game.  We'll also have some articles preseason with upcoming schedule and general team "talk". We've seen where articles from past seasons will rank higher than the current season, presumably because the older articles have more links to them from other sources (among other factors).  We don't want to delete these old articles and 301 them to the newer article, since most articles include information/stories about specific players...and their families don't want the article to ever come down. Should we rel-canonical the older articles to the newer one, or perhaps to the "high school football" category page?  If to the category page, should we rel-canonical even the new articles to that main category page? Thanks for the help.

    | YourMark.com
    0
  • plinggtre67


    Does having an HTML page in a PHP website affect SEO? I have a PHP website but one of my targeted pages have an HTML page. Will it cause any harm to the website or is it fine to have a html page in a PHP website?

    | plinggtre67
    0
  • Michael.Leonard


    There are a lots of Local landing pages guide on the internet. Is there any guide for Local service pages? How to create them, what to include?

    | Michael.Leonard
    0
  • ChuckBraman


    I have a website, http://NewYorkJazzEvents.com, that promotes jazz bands that are available for brides looking to hire a jazz band to perform at their wedding, or event planners looking to hire a jazz band to perform for a corporate event, etc. This identity, that my site is an Entertainment Agency, is made clear by all of the content on my site, as well as all of the content on its associated sites (such as its linked Facebook, YouTube, and Google Business pages, and many local citations). Yet, contrary to all of this data, the mere presence of the word "events" in my URL and business name has led Google to believe that my site is a Live Jazz Guide, i.e., a site that lists public performances of jazz groups in New York City. The problem, then, is that Google displays the site when people search for local events listings, and not when they search for jazz bands to contract for private events. For example, do a search for "jazz bands new york" and up pops the listings for sites catering to searchers looking to hire bands for private events, like Gigmasters, Gigsalad, right at the top of the list, followed by lots of individual bands. My site is buried (in my results, anyway), on the middle of page 2. (My paid Adwords ad, on the other hand, shows up at the top of paid ads.): https://www.dropbox.com/s/sv4we4gvnb6wkyb/Screenshot%202016-04-11%2019.22.40.png?dl=0 Now do a search for "new york jazz events." Boom! I'm #1 in the natural results, and, unlike in the search for "new york jazz band," my Google plus page and map (or is it the "knowledge graph"?) display right at the top of the right column: https://www.dropbox.com/s/nob24x1b8u1g4or/Screenshot%202016-04-11%2019.18.49.png?dl=0. (Pretty useless to people searching for live jazz listings in New York, though.) (This, by the way, is an additional related frustration: why does Google display all of its local information (its map, links to my Google reviews, etc.) next to my site listing when people are searching for events, but but hides this valuable information next to my site listing when people are search for jazz bands (when my site comes up on page 2)?) For a further confirmation of Google's confusion, see this data from Google that indicates the top search queries that it is using to display my site are centered around searches for local live jazz listings: Google Search Console > Search Traffic > Search Analytics > Queries: https://www.dropbox.com/s/t8blxv6a077iuw6/Screenshot%202016-03-07%2012.28.38.png?dl=0 See also see this data from Google that indicates that it see "events" (which it understands as local live jazz listings) rather than "new york jazz bands" as the essential keyword describing the identity of the site: Google Search Console > Google Index > Content Keywords: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6nk6skfgx9zjzgc/Screenshot%202016-03-07%2012.46.04.png?dl=0 It's been this way for several years. I thought Google was supposed to be smart, but it's pretty dumb in this case (all the other search engines, including Bing, are quite a bit more intelligent). All this trouble, essentially from a word within a URL? Does anyone have an idea of the cause of this issue, and any potential cures? What can I do to clear up Google's confusion?

    | ChuckBraman
    0
  • Michael.Leonard


    Today I found below guide, Is this best guide to follow for the website and service pages content, layout design? http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/guide-to-local-seo/

    | Michael.Leonard
    0
  • interstate


    I am breaking my head trying to figure out the best way around this... so we have an hvac company located in nyc. We want to also target all the different boroughs. We have a bunch of different major keywords hvac repair + location hvac service + location along with keywords such as air conditioning repair + location,  heating service + location   , and so on..... Should each borough + keyword have its own page? Or should we just have one page called brooklyn and in that page target all the different keywords like hvac, air conditining,  and heating ? Also does it matter how we have it laid out? Domaim/hvac-repair-brooklyn or should I add domain/service-area/hvac. ..... Some of my competitors have the same content written on each borough page just moved around a little  with different city names, how are they ranking so well? Isn't that duplicate? Would love to hear from some people with success in this local area. Thanks!

    | interstate
    0
  • dkeipper


    Should we structure it starting at the homepage with the user selecting for home or for business, that way they have to make a selection before moving further OR should we somehow differentiate in the navigation using the top menu tabs, dropdowns, etc?

    | dkeipper
    1
  • rachaelpracht


    If we have a section of our site that we have branded separately from the rest of the site, does it make sense to provide a landing page on our current, high authority site that has content and links off to the separate site, or would just a domain.com/keyword redirect to the page be a better route? Does it matter? I have an idea, but I'd like to get feedback on this. We are a newspaper, http://billingsgazette.com and we have an auto branded site called http://montanawheelsforyou.com. The URL and branding is fubar. We're wondering if we can increase the ranking if we swapped out the http://billingsgazette.com/autos from a redirect to http://montanawheelsforyou.com to a landing page with content and a link to http://montanawheelsforyou.com.

    | rachaelpracht
    0
  • SEO_Matt


    I've been working on SEO for a local website for a few years, last year a new competitor has popped up and started kicking my tail.  So I figured I would pose the question and see if someone could point me in a different more helpful direction.  I'm mainly stumped as to why the newer competitor has a higher DA and PA when I look at his link profile and lack of website content. A few Comparison notes Competitor is using SSL on the entire site. I am not (Checkmark for him) Competitor has a spam score of 8 out of 17 I have a 1 out of 17 (Checkmark for me) Competitor has a DA of 18 - My DA is 17 (Checkmark for him) Competitor has a PA of 32 - My PA is 28 (Checkmark for him) My Established Link Domains 14 and 127 Links.  Also the PA and DA of my external links are much better than the competitor. Competitor has Established Link Domains 9 and 30 Links Also the PA and DA of my external links are much better than the competitor.  (Checkmark for me) I have created around 50 custom blog articles along with the pages on my site he has 0 and only 5 pages indexed by Google. (Checkmark for me) The major issue when I do a comparison on OSE is that he has more external links and external equity passing links even though the links are very low value.

    | SEO_Matt
    0
  • MiriamEllis


    Hey Everybody! I'd so appreciate feedback from our web developers and Local SEO wizards here regarding store locator apps (you know - type in a city/zip and get shown the stores nearest you). There are a number of different paid options out there on the market, and a couple of free ones. If you are managing the websites/SEO for multi-location clients, would you share with me which store locator app you chose, why you chose it and how you like it? I am particularly interested in two things about these: Does you app allow you to build a permanent landing page for each store location, including the ability to fully customize the content on that page? In terms of ensuring that these landing pages get crawled, have you used an html sitemap, some type of directory page with crawlable links or some other feature that allows bots to reach the landing pages? Or, if you're not doing any of that, do you believe Google is crawling javascript/ajax/something else to get through your store locator widget to the landing pages? Thanks, in advance, for helping me with my research on this topic!

    | MiriamEllis
    0
  • AinsleyAgency


    Hi Mozzers, I've noticed something strange that I can't quite wrap my head around. I'm hoping it's an easy fix and I'm just overlooking something. Backstory: I'm managing all things digital for a local flooring retailer that has 6 showrooms in the region. I've done basic local SEO - local landing pages with proper markup, GMB set up and verification, Moz Local scores are in the 80% range for each location and improving steadily, etc. However, one of my locations is way behind all of the others in both organic searches and the map. Recently, I did a search for "city + brand" for this particular location in an incognito window and the page came up on the 4th page. When I perform the same search for any of the other locations, the respective landing page come up 1st or 2nd along with the homepage. I even searched using the title tag as well as a few more specific searches and still nothing on the first page. This is weird, right? Has anyone experienced this before? Search Console came back perfect, so no penalties and it's definitely being indexed. For reference, the page I am referring to is http://www.nextdayfloors.net/locations/columbia/ and the location query I am using is "Columbia, MD" Any help is much appreciated! Thanks! Tim

    | AinsleyAgency
    0
  • PayPro


    Currently I’m working on the local UK business website www.londonlocksmith.london and I have to say a few practises of the competition got me confused. For example websites like these:
    http://lambeth-trusted-local-locksmith.co.uk/
    http://clapham-trusted-local-locksmith.co.uk/
    http://streathamhill-trusted-local-locksmith.co.uk/
    http://hernehillse24-trustedlocallocksmith.co.uk/ All of them rank decent for the main regional keyword (e.g. Lambeth locksmith) and have an ok-ish DA. But as you scroll through these websites you see that the content is the same for all of them except for the location name, plus they all link to each other (see the footer). Now my question is: can this be a good technique for higher local ranking by creating dedicated websites (not just landing pages) with the target keyword in the domain name? And also: what is your experience with such ways of keyword targeting; what do you think in general about content spinning for local services with high competition?; what are your suggestions?

    | PayPro
    0
  • MiriamEllis


    Hey Awesome Local Folks! I thought I'd take a proactive stance and start a thread on the new doorway pages update from Google, as I feel there will be questions coming up about this here in the forum: Here's the update announcement: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/03/an-update-on-doorway-pages.html And here's the part that will make local business owners and Local SEOs take a second glance at this: Here are questions to ask of pages that could be seen as doorway pages: Do the pages duplicate useful aggregations of items (locations, products, etc.) that already exist on the site for the purpose of capturing more search traffic? I think this will naturally lead to questions about the practice of creating local/city landing pages. At this point, my prediction is that this will come down to high quality vs. crummy quality pages of this type. In fact, after chatting briefly with Andrew Shotland, I'm leaning a bit toward seeing the above language as being strongly geared toward directory type sites and large franchises. I recommend reading Andrew's post about his take on this, as I think he's on the right track: http://www.localseoguide.com/googles-about-to-close-your-local-doorway-pages/ So, I'm feeling at this point that if you've made the right efforts to develop unique, high quality local landing pages, you should be good unless you are an accidental casualty of an over-zealous update. We'll see! If anyone has thoughts to contribute on this thread, I hope they will, and if lots of questions start coming up about this here in the community, feel free to link back to this thread in helping your fellow community members 🙂 Thanks, all!

    | MiriamEllis
    9
  • MattRoney


    Hi there, Moz Community! In Tuesday's post on the Moz Blog, "Overcoming Your Fear of Local Landing Pages," Miriam Ellis asks: When tasked with developing a set of city landing pages for your local business clients, do you experience any of the following: brain fog, dry mouth, sweaty palms, procrastination, woolgathering, or ennui? Then chances are, the diagnosis is a _fear of local landing pages. _ Which brings me to today's question! What are the toughest challenges you've faced when creating local landing pages? How have you overcome them? What successes have you had, and what lessons have you learned along the way?

    | MattRoney
    4
  • CRO_first


    Hello Everyone - I am trying to lock down the best Local SEO and link acquisition order for 1 1/2 month old Domain. The Domain is clean - No History - Registered in WMT's on January 20th It's a service franchise website consolidating about 5 independent locations into a single branded site.  The each location now has it's own location page on the new site:  www.examplesite.com/Location-1 I'm considering the best timing to add  301's to the current Locations individual websites, to the locations pages on the new site.Some of which are currently ranked well (position 2) for one of their primary commercial terms. www.individuallocationsite.com ---> www.examplesite.com/Location-1 I don't want to lose that ranking, but will need to do the 301 redirect at some point. Should I - A.)  Complete all of the Citation Work, Natural Profiles, Blog Posts...etc FIRST and let the new website age before 301'ing the locations?  Giving it the best chance to have no interruption in those rankings? B:) 301 All the properties into the new website first and start all of the other Local SEO work second? C:) Something else? Thanks in Advance

    | CRO_first
    0
  • Ant-Built


    Hello everyone! Ive recently taken on a client that has a fairly large plumbing company. We're doing okay so far at almost number 10 on the local search for plumbers on google. Our #1 competitor however.. has an interesting backlink profile that I simply cannot understand. They are linked and yes, the links are followed, from a bunch of comics? Heres an example of one of their links. http://endlessorigami.com/comic/modern-day-fight-club-2/ moz reports that the link text says "Brooklyn Plumbing" .. Where are the links on these pages? I don't see a single link... how is this even related to a plumbing company? Im so puzzled, and it appears this is where the majority of the link juice is being passed to my competitor. There are at least 15 links that are just random comics.. Thank you everyone. I hope this isn't a silly question.

    | Ant-Built
    0
  • Roboto1970


    Hello, I am a photographer based in the UK, I have recently increased my prices, so SEO has become more important then ever as I need to target additional cities and wedding venues. I am looking for suggestions on ways I can ethically improve my websites on-page SEO and regional landing pages. I am running out of ideas, so any suggestions would be welcome. Do you think search engines will see these regional pages as low quality spammy pages are they not advised! If so how can I target other cities with out paying for PPC. Home page Additional Issues Is the 404 server script any good? I also have an issue, with old deleted wordpress pages, redirecting them even though there are no redirects set up in SEO yoast. I am not sure the server script on the shared hosting for 404 errors is any good, does anyone have any experience with this. For example this page returns the 404 page, however the header status is 200. http://www.robertsail.co.uk/derby-wedding-photographers-2/ If I moved to a dedicated server would this help me out.

    | Roboto1970
    1
  • TysonWong


    I haven't been paying attention to my sites SERP for the past year, and only realized I've dropped to page 2 on a keyword search. Specifically, on Google.ca, searching the keywords "wedding invitations" My site, www.stephita.com, used to consistently rank in the top 3 links.  While my competitors have leapfrogged me. 😞 I realized that my site wasn't "mobile-friendly", and had a few other issues like keyword stuffing, long meta descriptions and titles.  I've fixed these issues "now", but wanted to know does this mean my site was severely penalized by the Panda/Penguin updates for the last few years? Does having a PR3 site mean anything?  My competitors who our rank me on SERP, are all PR1 sites. Greatly appreciate any feedback you can give me! 🙂

    | TysonWong
    0
  • Anti-Alex


    Hey guys, I'm working with a new company that doesn't have a brick and mortar storefront, they deliver. They basically deliver pre packaged smoothies in a VERY localized area (Vancouver, BC). I'm wondering how grandiose their goals should be re ranking for keywords that have non localized authority. What do I mean? Lets say their marketing pillars are "health education related to smoothies" "convenient veggies for smoothies" "(insert health benefit here) for smoothies". Should they be trying to compete for these keywords? Or should they really be trying to rank with keywords especially to Vancouver? Side note: What kind of effect does Country and Locality have on keywords that are generally used by content providers and not service related companies building out an inbound strategy? Thanks in advance!

    | Anti-Alex
    0

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