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Category: Local Website Optimization

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

  • jampaper


    Hey everyone. I recently took on a side project managing a family member's website (www.donaldtlevinemd.com). I don't want to get too into it, but my relative was roped into two shady digital marketing firms that did nothing but a mix of black-hat SEO (and nothing at all). His site currently runs off a custom wordpress theme which is incompatible with important plugins I want to use for local optimization. I'm also unable to implement responsive design for mobile. The silver lining is that these previous "content marketers" did no legitimate link building (I'm auditing the link profile now) so I feel comfortable starting fresh. I'm just not technical enough to understand how to go about migrating his domain to a new theme (or creating a new domain altogether). All advice is appreciated! Thanks for your help!

    | jampaper
    1
  • Etna


    Hi Moz! I've been reading about this a lot more lately - and it doesn't seem like there's exactly a method that Google (or other search engines) would consider to be "best practices". The closest I've come to getting some clarity are these Blumenthals articles - http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/05/14/a-guide-to-call-tracking-and-local/ & the follow-up piece from CallRail - http://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/11/25/guide-to-using-call-tracking-for-local-search/. Assuming a similar goal of using an existing phone number with a solid foundation in the local search ecosystem, and to create the ability to track how many calls are coming organically (not PPC or other paid platform) to the business directly from the website for an average SMB. For now, let's also assume we're also not interested in screening the calls, or evaluating customer interaction with the staff - I would love to hear from anyone who has implemented the DNI call tracking info for a website. Were there negative effects on Local SEO? Did the value of the information (# of calls/month) outweigh any local search conflicts? If I was deploying this today, it seems like the blueprint for including DNI script, while mitigating risk for losing local search visibility might go something like this: Hire reputable call-tracking service, ensure DNI will match geographic area-code & be "clean" numbers Insert DNI script on key pages on site Maintain original phone number (non-DNI) on footer, within Schema & on Contact page of the site ?? Profit Ok, those last 2 bullet points aren't as important, but I would be curious where other marketers land on this issue, as I think there's not a general consensus at this point. Thanks everyone!

    | Etna
    1
  • drikmaslik


    Hey, I was going thru some of results and notice that those guys showing different content to google bots instead of regular users: http://www.classifiedads.com/apartments-299.html vs. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:SHGpkhEinwcJ:www.classifiedads.com/apartments-299.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca. It looks like they using geo targeting for regular user and showing general stuff for google. Can they get a penalty for it? Or is it 100% safe to do that?

    | drikmaslik
    0
  • MattStamant


    I have read so many articles that stress the importance of the Title tag but I am having a hard time really finding good advice on what we should do. Everywhere I read stresses the importance of short title tags due to Google's display limitations but also the importance of including important keywords in our title - talk about a catch 22.  Our Law Firm is "Brock & Stout Attorneys at Law" and we have 3 primary services: Bankruptcy, Social Security Disability, Personal Injury. We have 6 office locations all around Alabama. Our website is: http://www.brockandstout.com/ The current title is: "Alabama Bankruptcy Attorneys | Social Security Disability | Personal Injury | Brock & Stout Attorneys at Law" - 108 characters (well over the 70 recommended characters, but does contain our Brand, and Services) Is this a good title for SEO purposes? Should we consider making a change? We are ranking "ok" for certain locations and then barely at all for others. I know the title tag is just one of a million factors but I would love some advice/opinions from those who know much more than I. Thanks for any input you may have.

    | MattStamant
    0
  • LiamMcArthur


    Hello All, It's my first day using a Moz Pro account and it all seems really good so far! Our business has 26 stores throughout the UK so I created a store locator page that has a page for each store. Inside here, I've created unique content for the same products for each store and it's really working wonders. The problem here though is one of my locations (Rotherham) contains two stores - so I feel that they'll both be fighting for the position all of the time. Would a canonical tag be suitable for this? I do need both pages to appear in Google's map results but as for organic rankings of keywords - it shouldn't matter too much if just one page appears. Thanks! Liam

    | LiamMcArthur
    0
  • EcommRulz


    Hello, We are a multi country/multi lingual (English, Arabic) website. We are following a subdirectory structure to separate and geotarget the country/language combinations. Currently our english and arabic urls are the same: For UAE: example.com/ae (English Site) For Saudi Arabic: example.com/sa (Saudi Arabia) We want to separate the English and Arabic language URLs and I wanted to know if there is any preference as to which kind of URL structure we should go with : example.com/ae-en  (Country-Language) example.com/en-ae (Language-Country) example.com/ae/en (Country/Language) Is there any logic to deciding how to structure the language/country combinations or is is entirely a matter of personal preference. Thanks!

    | EcommRulz
    0
  • everestagency


    I have a client who understands the value of content for SEO - however getting them to provide some content has proven an impossible task. I've tried every way to make it easy for them. I've offered to come over to their office myself and see if I can just take 15 minutes of their time and record their answers to a few questions. The response is that's a great idea, we'll set up a time...and no time is ever good. So I've thought, what can I do without them? Unfortunately, their industry is so technical and so niche I'd need to have a law degree to even begin to understand exactly what they do, and as they are in law it's probably better to have no content than content with something even slightly incorrect in it. For now, all I can do is summarize and share news from a government website to their social media accounts. It's not highly effective. Their on-page SEO for the main site is completely optimized. I've placed them in every free listing I can possibly find - both industry and local sites. I have them update me on any local events, conferences and/or trade shows they attend for possible backlinks. What else can I do? I suppose I fear that if I can't provide them any additional results, they will stop seeing the value in SEO services, and I'd have a hard time disagreeing as I can't think of what else to do for them. Thanks for any help!

    | everestagency
    1
  • WSIDW


    We are building a new site which is a .com site and the client would like to be found in both Google.co.uk and Goolge.ie. What is the best practice to go about this? Can you geo-target two countries with the one site?

    | WSIDW
    0
  • mickburkesnr


    In a bid to improve the visibility of my site on the Google SERP's, I am creating landing pages that were initially going to be used in some online advertising. I then thought it might be a good idea to improve the content on the pages so that they would perform better in localised searches. So I have a landing page designed specifically to promote what my business can do, and funnel the user in to requesting a quote from us. The main keyword phrase I am using is "website design london", and I will be creating a few more such as "website design birmingham", "website design leeds". The only thing that I've changed at the moment across all these pages is the location name, I haven't touched any of the USP's or the testimonial that I use. However, in both cases "website design XXX" doesn't show up in any of the USP's or testimonial. So my question is that when I have these pages built, and they're indexed, will I be penalised for this tactic?

    | mickburkesnr
    0
  • Miles23


    I have a customer that services literally hundreds of towns. I'm trying to figure out the best way rank in each town.  Should I create a landing page or a webpage for each city and optimize for each particular town ( facts/information about the town. SEO titles H1, H2 and alt tags? Thank you!

    | Miles23
    0
  • falguniinnovative


    Hello All, I am Fetching my url in Google fetch pages, But everytime,  i Fetch showing error "Temporary unavailable", But My site is working perfect, Also robots file Also given Allow, But still Error coming Any Expert Can help please Thnx

    | falguniinnovative
    0
  • ReunionMarketing


    I'm implementing schema across a few Wordpress sites. Most (probably all) WP sites use widgets for their footer, which offer their own editable HTML. Is it damaging (or helpful) to implement the exact same markup in the footer and a specific page, like for instance,  a locations page that has the address and contact info (which are also in the footer)?

    | ReunionMarketing
    0
  • Andrew_Mac


    I work with several thousand local businesses and have a listing page for each on my site. Recently a large chunk of these locations closed, and a number of these pages rank well for localized keywords. I'm trying to figure out the best course of action.
    What I've done so far is make a note on each of the closed location pages that says something to the effect of "This location is currently closed. Here are some nearby options" and provide links to the location pages of 3 open places nearby. The closed location pages are continuing to rank well, but conversion rates from visitors landing on these pages has dropped. What I'm considering doing is 301ing these pages to the nearest open location page. I'm hoping this will preserve the ranking of the page for keywords for which the nearby location is still relevant, while not hurting user experience by serving up a closed location. I'm also thinking of, as a second step, creating new pages (with slightly altered URLs) for the closed listings. They won't rank as well obviously, but if someone searches for the address or even the street of the closed location, my hope is that I could still capture some of that traffic and hope to convert it through someone clicking through to an open location from there. I spoke with someone about this second step and he thought it sounded spammy. My thinking is, combined with the 301, I'm telling Google that the page it is currently ranking well no longer has the importance it once did and that the page I'm 301ing to does, but that the content on the page I'm creating for the closed location still has enough value to justify the newly created page. I'd really appreciate thoughts from the community on this. Thanks!

    | Andrew_Mac
    0
  • Thriveworks-Counseling


    Moz Friends, I hope you can help with this question. My company has 25 locations, and growing. Our rankings are strong in the Serps and Local Maps. With each location, we create a new page (with a unique URL) for that specific location (ex: Thriveworks.com/knoxville-counseling). We then write about 15 pages of unique content for that location, each page about one of the services we provide like: Depression Counseling, Couples Therapy, Anger Management, Eating Disorder Treatment, Life Coaching, Child Therapy, and the list goes on and on.... Hence, for each location, we create a pile of URLS like: Thriveworks.com/knoxville-counseling/couples-therapy, ..../knoxville-counseling/depression-therapy, .../knoxville-counseling/anger-management... We do this to rank for medium-long-tail searches like "Knoxville Marriage Therapy." As we grow, this results in us writing lots and lots of original content for each location. Original, but somewhat redundant. We would much rather write one AMAZING article on depression counseling, than 25 'okay' ones for each office we open. So, my question (if you're still reading) is our current approach the right one? Should we continue the grind and for each location create a unique page for each service offered out of that office? Or is there a better way, where we can create One anger management page that would suffice for each of our local offices? Has anyone addressed this topic in an article? I Haven't found one... I look forward to your feedback, and thanks in advance!!

    | Thriveworks-Counseling
    0
  • ILDSEO


    Hi, I have a google+ page https://plus.google.com/+ILoveDiamondsdotcom which is verified and link to http://www.ilovediamonds.com with rel="publisher". Why my companies info is not shown in Google search?Its been nearly 3 months.

    | ILDSEO
    0
  • Sundance_Kidd


    Please note that these old posts hardly get any traffic.  Ive heard both sides on this. thanks, Chris

    | Sundance_Kidd
    0
  • remkoallertz


    Hi fokes, question; which url structure is best for local rankings. For example: when I want to rank on the keyword: "Plumber Londen". And I dont have plumber in my brand. What is the best url structure: example.com/plumber/londen example.com/plumber-londen

    | remkoallertz
    1
  • DHS_SH


    Hi guys I'm looking for any recommendations for local SEO tools in the UK? I keep stumbling across a variety of different tools but they all seem to cater for the US market only. Any tools or tips would be greatly received!

    | DHS_SH
    0
  • Sundance_Kidd


    Let's just say that they want to target the US market.  Should they add a US based IP address? Would love to hear insight from people who have managed this, experienced this or have expertise. Obviously, a US based physical address would help.  Thanks!! Chris

    | Sundance_Kidd
    0
  • ChristinaRadisic


    United Kingdom We have a client who works from home and wants a virtual office so his clients do not know where he lives. Can a virtual office address be used on his business website pages & contact pages, in title tags and descriptions as well as Google places. The virtual office is manned at all times and phone calls will be directed to the client, the virtual office company say effectively it is a registered business address. Look forward to any helpful responses.

    | ChristinaRadisic
    0
  • dentaldesign


    Hi guys, wondering if anyone could shed any light: just taken on a client who wants to rank for 'Dentist Edinburgh' - using opensightexplorer it looks as if the website has a decent amount of links and authority but it is languishing on page 5 for the above term. If you compare link metrics with some competitors which rank higher Barnton's number seem to be stronger. The site ranks well for less competitive key terms such as '6 month smiles Edinburgh' and 'teeth straightening Ediniburgh'  but we are struggling with the main keyword 'dentist Edinburgh' I've checked webmaster tools and there are no manual actions, so i'm thinking its an algorithmic penalty - any help would be much appreciated. Marcus

    | dentaldesign
    0
  • WeAreDigital_BE


    Hi there, My client has a product URL: www.company.com/product. They are only serving one state in the US. The existing URL is ranking in a position between 8-15 at the moment for local searches. Would it be interesting to add the location to the URL in order to get a higher position or is it dangerous as we have our rankings at the moment. Is it really giving you an advantage that is worth the risk? Thank you for your opinions!
    Sander

    | WeAreDigital_BE
    0
  • odmsoft


    Hi guys, I have a website that has many local based pages. In other words we're featuring local businesses in many many cities. So my question is, will it help if i add schema markup to each page while each markup will be appropriate to the city each page belongs to? Will it help with ranking those local pages? Thanks

    | odmsoft
    1
  • ClassicPartyRentals


    My client has 24 separate subdomains for its nationwide business, one for each specific location. Much of the content is very similar, as the site serves  as a lead-generator for rental reservations. After years of suggesting the approach of using one domain, we have finally gotten the client onboard to eliminating the subdomains and maintaining a subdirectory/page approach for location-specific content and allowing universal content to live at the root domain. I've been looking for any case studies that have any watch-outs or demonstrated benefits when collapsing domestic subdomains (phoenix.client.com; albuquerque.client.com, etc.) into the root, and have been fairly unsuccessful so far. We will be setting up a rigorous 301 redirect tree to ensure we retain as much link juice as possible from any existing subdomain-specific inbound links. Any advice/guidance to help set expectations of what will shake down from this change? It feels like we should see increased domain authority and less cannibalization, as the client ranks nationally for important broad-level keywords, with significantly higher DA at the root level than any tracked competitors, but I'm a little nervous about how localized search results will be affected. Thank you!

    | ClassicPartyRentals
    1
  • MilestoneSEO_LA


    This all began when I was asked to develop experiment parameters for our content protocol & strategy. It should be simple right? I've reviewed A/B testing tips for days now, from Moz and other sources.I'm totally amped and ready to begin testing in Google Analytics. Say we have a restoration service franchise with over 40 franchises we perform SEO for. They are all over the US. Every franchise has their own local website. Example restorationcompanylosangeles.com Every franchise purchases territories in which they want to rank in. Some service over 100 cities. Most franchises also have PPC campaigns. As a part of our strategy we incorporate the location reach data from Adwords to focus on their high reach locations first. We have 'power pages' which include 5 high reach branch preferences (areas in which the owners prefer to target) and 5 non branch preference high reach locations. We are working heavily on our National brand presence & working with PR and local news companies to build relationships for natural backlinks. We are developing a strategy for social media for national brand outlets and local outlets. We are using major aggregators to distribute our local citation for our branch offices. We make sure all NAP is consistent across all citations. We are partners with Google so we work with them on new branches that are developing to create their Google listings (MyBusiness & G+). We use local business schema markup for all pages. Our content protocol encompasses all the needed onsite optimization tactics; meta, titles, schema, placement of keywords, semantic Q&A & internal linking strategies etc. Our leads are calls and form submissions.  We use several call tracking services to monitor calls, caller's location etc. We are testing Callrail to start monitoring landing pages and keywords that generating our leads. Parts that I want to change: Some of the local sites have over 100 pages targeted for 'water damage + city ' aka what Moz would call "Doorway pages. " These pages have 600-1000 words all talking about services we provide. Although our writers (4 of them) manipulate them in a way so that they aren't duplicate pages. They add about 100 words about the city location. This is the only unique variable. We pump out about 10 new local pages a month per site - so yes - over 300 local pages a month. Traffic to the local sites is very scarce. Content protocol /  strategy is only tested based on ranking! We have a tool that monitors ranking on all domains. This does not count for mobile, local, nor user based preference searching like Google Now. My team is deeply attached to basing our metrics solely on ranking. The logic behind this is that if there is no local city page existing for a targeted location, there is less likelihood of ranking for that location. If you are not seen then you will not get traffic nor leads. Ranking for power locations is poor - while less competitive low reach locations rank ok. We are updating content protocol by tweaking small things (multiple variants at a time). They will check ranking everyday for about a week to determine whether that experiment was a success or not. What I need: Internal duplicate content analyzer - to prove that writing over 400 pages a month about water damage + city IS duplicate content. Unique content for 'Power pages' - I know based on dozens of chats here on the community and in MOZ blogs that we can only truly create quality content for 5-10 pages. Meaning we need to narrow down what locations are most important to us and beef them up. Creating blog content for non 'power' locations. Develop new experiment protocol based on metrics like traffic, impressions, bounce rate landing page analysis, domain authority etc. Dig deeper into call metrics and their sources. Now I am at a roadblock because I cannot develop valid content experimenting parameters based on ranking. I know that a/b testing requires testing two pages that are same except the one variable. We'd either non index these or canonicalize.. both are not in favor of testing ranking for the same term. Questions: Are all these local pages duplicate content? Is there a such thing as content experiments based solely on ranking? Any other suggestions for this scenario?

    | MilestoneSEO_LA
    1
  • lfrazer


    Hello, While I am aware that Google rankings are subject to a number of variables, I still need to be able to provide the most accurate rankings data for my clients in their reports. Most recently, I have been using the Google Adwords Planner and modifying by location and/or device. Now, having found discrepancy in the MOZ rankings, I started trying to again find the most accurate tools or software. Could someone please suggest the most accurate tool, and also how the accurate rankings are achieved? Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!! Thanks

    | lfrazer
    0
  • Sean_Gutermuth


    Hello Moz! I have been beating my head against the wall for a few hours, and I am starting to get a headache. My question is simple: I am doing some work for a local salon, and we started a PPC campaign recently. It's very important that I get accurate ROI metrics from both our PPC efforts and Yelp advertising program, and the best way to do this is by using custom phone numbers and dynamic number insertion w/ CallRail to track phone calls being made to the salon. I can then cross reference the numbers used to call with the salon POS software to see what they spent, how many appts. they booked, etc. A VERY large portion, the majority in fact, of traffic comes from mobile, and in the past I had a big, fat, beautiful CTA click-to-call button that showed the salon phone number. However, I have found that with dynamic number insertion, and my near non-existent programming skills, it is impossible to have the number dynamically insert into an href image. Sooooo...any ideas on how to do this, or is it just not possible????

    | Sean_Gutermuth
    0
  • PeteC12


    Hi Mozzers, I have what is classed as doorway pages on my website. These have historically been location specific landing pages for some of our categories but from speaking to a number of different webmasters , then general consensus is that they are not in google guidelines so I will be getting punished by having them. My options are : I can 301 the pages back to their original category pages . This will conserve some link juice to pass back to the respective category page. I can set these as Follow No index. Not sure what will happen here with regards to link value etc. What would be best ?... Some of the pages do currently rank "fairly well" for some of the locations so I am getting traffic from them but I also know I will be getting a algorithmic penalty for having them so how best I clean these up ?. Also , by cleaning up the site structure , would I see any benefit here ? or will I have to wait for a new panda update/ refresh ? I thought the panda refresh won't use a new dataset thanks Pete

    | PeteC12
    0
  • PeteC12


    Hello Mozzers, I am wondering how do you rank for categories locally where when you operate from multiple branches. Currently our eCommerce website has location pages for every category but I know that this is now classed as doorway pages and spammy so I am in the process of sorting out our site structure. I understand that the general format for having sites with multiple branches is to have a branch page per physical location and that's about it. Is there any more to this ? However, What confuses me though, is that if you offer all these services in all these branches, how are you going to rank for them locally if you don't have a specific page for each of them in that location? So for example - We rent Carpet cleaners , floor sanders, generators in each of our different branches. My site currently has a carpet cleaner hire <location>url , floor sander hire <location>url and a generator hire <location>url.  Every branch has a url for each of my categories.</location></location></location> So if I was to get rid of all of my location category pages. How am I going to rank for these renting these products in different cities where our branches does without having specific location pages for them ? Is it just a case that google knows that because I have branch pages at locations x, y, x , then my carpet cleaner , floor sander and generator category pages will rank locally in those locations providing I have decent citations etc etc etc thanks
    Pete

    | PeteC12
    0
  • corn2015


    HI.
    Can you please tell me some great blogs/sites to read daily about local seo? I'm really wanting to beef up my knowledge in this area to assist local businesses. Corn

    | corn2015
    1
  • KaitlinNS


    Hi everyone, I have, what I think, is kind of a specific question, but hoping you guys can help me figure out what to do. I have a client that recently changed their entire website (I started working with them after it happened, so I can't comment on what the site was like as far as content was before).  I know they were using a service that I see a lot of in the service industry that aim to capitalize on local business (i.e. "leads nearby" or "nearby now") by creating pages for each targeted city and I believe collecting reviews for each city directly on the website. When they redesigned their website, they dropped that service and now all those pages that were ranking in SERPs are coming back as 404s because they are not included in the new site (I apologize if this is getting confusing!) The site that they moved to is a template site that they purchased the rights to from an already successful company in their same industry, so I do think the link structure probably changed, especially with all of the local pages that are no longer available on the site.  Note: I want to use discretion in using company names, but happy to share more info in a private message if you'd like to see the sites I am talking about as I have a feeling that this is getting confusing 🙂 Has anyone had experience with something like this?  I am concerned because even though I am targeting the keywords being used previously to direct content to the local pages to new existing pages, traffic to the website has dropped by nearly 60% and I know my clients are going to want answers-- and right now, I only have guesses. I am really looking forward to and so greatly appreciate any advice you might be able to share, I'm at a bit of a loss right now.

    | KaitlinNS
    0
  • underdogmike


    Hello Group! I have been tossing the idea in my head of using sub domains for the geo pages for each of my clients. For example: one of my clients is a lawyer in a very competitive Atlanta market http://bestdefensega.com. Can I set his geo page to woodstock.bestdefensega.com? Is this a viable option? Will I get penalized? Thoughts or suggestions always appreciated! Thanks in Advance

    | underdogmike
    0
  • hopkinspat


    I am working with a local service company. They have one location but offer a number of different services to both residential and commercial verticals. What I have been reading seems to suggest that I put the location in URLs, Title Tags & H1s. Isn't it kind of spammy and possibly annoying user experience to see location on every page?? Portland ME Residential House Painting Portland ME Commercial Painting Portland Maine commercial sealcoating Portland Maine residential sealcoating etc, etc This strikes me as an old school approach. Isn't google more adept at recognizing location so that I don't need to paste it In H1s all over the site? Thanks in advance. PAtrick

    | hopkinspat
    0
  • YourHollywoodPortrait


    Hello, We are a photo studio in New York City, our website is
    and our Google Plus page is http://yourhollywoodportrait.com/ https://plus.google.com/+YourHollywoodPortraitStudioNewYork When doing a search in maps for Boudoir Photography New York City we don't appear in the first 10 results, there is even a studio from New Jersey appearing before us. We have only 5* reviews, we did a bunch of local citations and still we are not in the first page of maps. Would you have any suggestions as to what we are doing wrong or should be doing? Thanks a lot for your help! Michael

    | YourHollywoodPortrait
    0
  • Scratch-Kony


    Is it possible for a large global company to compete for SERP rankings against a pop-culture celebrity/movement that is regularly in the news? Thank you!

    | Scratch-Kony
    0
  • falgunipanchal


    Hello Everyone, I am having problem to get ranking for this 3 domains http://goo.gl/L5e2Y2 http://goo.gl/QsU9gq http://goo.gl/igTT76 can anyone help, please Thanx in advance

    | falgunipanchal
    1
  • PeteC12


    Hi Mozzers, One of my competitors uses a trick whereby they have a number of different sitemaps containing location specific urls for their most popular categories on their eCommerce store. It's quite obvious that they are trying to rank for keyword <location>and from what I am see,  you cant to any of these pages from their website navigation or search , so it's like these pages are separated from the main site in terms of accessing them but you can access the main website pages/navigation the other way round (i.e if you select one of the pages from finding it in serps) </location> I know that google doesn't really like anything you can't access from the main website but would you class this as blackhat ? / cheating etc ...  They do tend to rank quite well for these  alot of the pages and it hasn't seem to have affected pages on their main website in terms of rankings. I am just wondering , if it's worth us doing similar as google hasn't penalised them by the looks of things.. thanks Pete

    | PeteC12
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  • chris.oursbourn


    So I am trying to rank the domain http://jamesriver.org for the term "Churches in Springfield, MO" Not sure why we are not ranking as well as we ought to rank. I have a few assumptions, but wanted to see what other have to say to get better input. Below are some details about the us: We have done a brand name change in the past 2 years - James River Assembly to James River Church We have two locations: Ozark, MO - which has been there for a very long time and Springfield, MO which is a newer campus We have higher domain authority than others that rank higher for the term We have a new website that was launch about 3 months ago We have a location page for each of the 2 campuses I am wondering what factors might be at play in our lesser rankings even though we are relevant to the term and have higher authority than those that are ranking much higher than us. Thanks for any help you can provide.

    | chris.oursbourn
    0
  • hashtagltd


    I run a photo booth company and have a site for each service I offer. Are smaller sites that are SEO for each service stronger than just having pages for each service on one mother site?thanks,

    | hashtagltd
    0
  • Bvrettski


    I'm curious. Whats in a domain name in terms of search engine ranking and keyword searches. Let me provide an example: If I sell umbrellas in New York City and my company name is Rainy Day Umbrellas am I wise to register both rainydayumbrellas.com and newyorkumbrellas.com as a way of targeting my customers and ranking better in a single search phrase for that subject? Second question. If it is a good idea do you just forward that domain to the primary site or have a second mirrored site? Or perhaps just a landing page?

    | Bvrettski
    0
  • facupp1


    My dear community and friends of MOZ, today I have a very interesting question to you all. Although I´ve got my opinion, and Im sure many of you will think the same way, I want to share the following dilemma with you. I have just joined a company as Online Marketing Manager and I have to quickly take a decision about site structure. The site of the company has just applied a big structure change. They used to have their information divided by country (each country one subdirectory) www.site.com/ar/news  www.site.com/us/news . They have just changed this and erased the country subdirectory and started using geolocation. So if we go to  www.site.com/news  although the content is going to be the same for each country  ( it’s a Latinamerican site, all the countries speak the same language except Brazil) the navigation links are going to drive you to different  pages according to the country  where you are located. They believe that having less subdirectories PA or PR is going to be higher for each page due to less linkjuice leaking.  My guess is that if you want to have an important organic traffic presence you should A) get a TLD for the country you want to targe… if not B)have a subdirectory or subdomain for each country in your site. I don’t know what local sign could be a page giving to google if the URL and html doesn’t change between countries- We can not use schemas or rich formats neither…So, again, I would suggest to go back to the previous structure. On the other hand…I ve been taking a look to sensacine.com and although their site is pointing only  to Spain |   |
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    |   | | They have very good rankings for big volume keywords in all latinamerica, so I just want to quantify this change, since I will be sending to the designers and developers a lot of work

    | facupp1
    1
  • Ryan_V


    Hi everyone, The internal structure of our existing site increase server response time (6 sec) which is way below Google 0.2sec standards and also make prospects leave the site before it's loaded. Now we have two options (same price): restructure the site's modules, panels etc create new site (recommended by developers)
    Both options will extend the same design and functionality. I just wanted to know which option SEO community will recommend?

    | Ryan_V
    0
  • lkilera


    Hi- When I look in the search console at the queries and see my average rank for words am I right in the assumption that this does not include the map packs? For some target words we appear in both the packs and the organic results.  For some we appear in one or the other, for some we ONLY appear in the map pack. For the words where we ONLY appear in the packs, the search console does not show us ranking at all for our target word. Thanks for the help 🙂

    | lkilera
    0
  • Nic89


    Hello Fellow Mozers I am looking to open a discussion for my question. I will give an example to clarify things. I have a keyword I want to rank "London Luxury Apartments" Which title would be best or what would you suggest in addition to the titles below: Option A) London Luxury Apartments | Luxury London Apartments | Brand Name Option B) London Luxury Apartments | Luxury Apartments in London | Brand Name Option C) London Luxury Apartments | Luxury Apartments for Sale in London | Brand Name Any other option not displayed above that you have extensively tested and know it works. Have in mind the following : I am aware of the 55 character limit so lets not make this discussion about the character Limit. I want to keep the discussion on the Keyword Format and Keyword Logic of using the same keyword just in a different order. The above is just an example in order to best illustrate what I wish to talk about. Round one... Begin!!

    | Nic89
    0
  • KevinViner


    I'm a professional magician and mentalist who travels nationally for corporate events, social functions, and trade shows. Unfortunately, the landing pages are all for different venues and locations, but the product stays the same. How do you recommend optimizing for somebody whose product is essentially themselves? The pages have similar content, videos, etc., so I don't want to be dinged for duplicate content.

    | KevinViner
    0
  • edward-may


    Hi Mozers! So I watched a video about Matt Cutts he talks about creating multiple web pages just for one keywords is an absolutely no go.  So I was wondering we serve a clients in NZ Australia and USA, If we target phrase like Psychic Readings California, Psychic Readings San Diego etc (USA) Psychic Readings Melbourne, Psychic Readings Sydney (AU) Psychic Readings Auckland, Psychic Readings Wellington (NZ) What is the best practice or right way to go about structuring my pages to do this without going against googles guidelines. Many thanks

    | edward-may
    1
  • morg45454


    I'm moving to a different state and want to keep my business and clients in both locations.  Is it better to build two separate sites, one for Ohio locations and create a new site for Tennessee content? (www.ohiosite.com & www.tennesseesite.com) Or is it best to keep one site, and install a second wordpress site in a separate folder like ( www.site.com  + www.site.com/tennessee )

    | morg45454
    0
  • timfrick


    We are currently working with a client who has one national site - let's call it CompanyName.net, and multiple, independent chapter sites listed under different URLs that are structured, for example, as CompanyNamechicago.org, and sometimes specific to neighborhoods, as in CompanyNamechicago.org/lakeview.org. The national umbrella site is .net, while all others are .orgs. These are not subdomains or subfolders, as far as we can tell. You can use a search function on the .net site to find a location near you and click to that specific local website. They are looking for help optimizing and increasing traffic to certain landing pages on the .net site...but similar landing pages also exist on a local level, which appear to be competing with the national site. (Example: there is a landing page on the national .net umbrella site for a "dog safety" campaign they are doing, but also that campaign has led to a landing page created independently on the local CompanyNameChicago.org website, which seems to get higher ranking due to a user looking for this info while located in Chicago.) We are wondering if our hands are tied here since they appear to be competing for traffic with all their localized sites, or if there are best practices to handle a situation like this. Thanks!

    | timfrick
    0
  • music100


    I have a local business and put additional city names (7 of them) into the main title page along with the biz description in order to expand into these areas. I included these same cities on 3 other pages in the site as well, along with the custom descriptions for these pages.  Is this overuse of city names in title pages? Will it negatively affect my rankings? What are the best ways to expand your marketing territory for a local biz? Thanks for any and all responses.

    | music100
    0
  • otex


    Hi, I've created a bunch of landing pages for local areas, reading, windsor, slough etc for the title tag I have  for Windsor Emergency Electrician Windsor - BrandName should I be using a pipe in the tag to further help search engines learn/identify the location? Emergency Electrician | Windsor - BrandName Thank you Kev

    | otex
    1

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