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Category: Local Website Optimization

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

  • 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 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 site. 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
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  • GarySahota


    Hi there, I am running joomla based website for my transportation website "Limousine Service" I have question what kind of software or tools i can use to improve the SEO on my site?

    | GarySahota
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  • PierreLechelle


    Hi guys, My customer is already well established in France. They have a good Domain Authority and a lot of Inbound Links. They're doing very well in France. They're now looking at entering the US market, however, their trademark is already registered within the US. They therefore decided to go with a new name. Basically: They open an english-only website for the US presence They add English as a language on their French website for their European presence They'll therefore have two domains: aaa.com: US Presence bbb.com: European Presence; 2 languages: French & English My main reaction was that: since the content on aaa.com and bbb.com/english/ will be the same, they'll necessarily have Duplicate Content issue. How would you look at this? What would be the best alternative for them? Thank you

    | PierreLechelle
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  • Armen-SEO


    Hello, We have multiple client who have 2 office locations n the same state in varying counties and would like to have their site rank for two counties. Is this plausible ? For instance they would like their header tags to read "Lawyer in Middlesex & Monmouth County NJ" Rather than "Middlesex County NJ Lawyer" Would this be an effective strategy or be seen as stuffing by Google?

    | Armen-SEO
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  • SafeNet_Interactive_Marketing


    Hi everyone, I've read a lot on forums about the topic of hosting and it's impact on SEO, but I've seen conflicting opinions. I wanted to see if anyone might have a definitive answer for this scenario: Our parent company is based in the EU and wants to move our English domain to their site -- either as part of the main .com or potentially as a new subdomain. One of those things is going to happen; it's just a question of which one. One issue I have is that they host their .com with content targeting English speakers (mostly in the U.S.) in France, so if we moved our content to their site we'd be going from our existing domain hosted in the U.S. (with the majority of visitors coming from the U.S.) to a site that's hosted in France. I've read that folders are still usually better over subdomains in terms of passing the strength of the domain on to pages. So... would it be better to have a subdomain hosted in the U.S., or just have folders under the main domain, but that content would be hosted in France? Our existing domain and the domain we'll be moving to are about even in terms of domain authority and size. Happy to get any feedback you might have. Anyone come across any case studies on this particular topic that would be helpful? Thanks!

    | SafeNet_Interactive_Marketing
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  • Tz_Seo


    Hi, It seems that multilingual sites can be very tricky sometimes. This is the second problem we are facing with a client this month... A company which already has a presence in Spain wants to expand now in Portugal, Brazil and Argentina. There are some linguistic differences between Spain Spanish and Argentina Spanish so we will have a slightly different content but same url (check below) We will also cover the linguistic differences between Portuguese and Brazilian but with different urls, so we will have 4 pages serving the same content in 3 ( technically 4 ) different languages: company.com/idioma -> (original Spain Spanish page - url stays the same.) company.com/es-ar/idioma (Argentina url) company.com/pt-pt/idioma (Portugal url) company.com/pt-br/lingua (Brazil url) Normally we know we should use alternate hreflang to all 4 pages, but now that the url changes, e.g between Argentina and Brazil, the case is the same or we can omit it for these two countries? Thank you!

    | Tz_Seo
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  • tomnivore


    We are a niche web retailer with a world leading product and as such are probably the best option for USA customers (even though we are based in the UK) up to 18 months ago google agreed and placed us high for USA searches and we had good business as a result however since penguin (or around that time anyways) google increased our SERPS for more local markets (UK and EUROPE) and decreased our ranks for USA with a consequent reduction in our USA sales We want to improve rank again in USA (and Canada and Australia and Russia) but need specialist help What's the best way to source that? (short of someone saying they know exactly how to do that) ant recommendation most gratefully received Tom

    | tomnivore
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  • Gab-Tonik


    Hi MOZ Folks, I am looking for SEO advices! I have my own business call : Tonikwebstudio.com... and recently, we bought a other company called Olawebstudio.com... So 2 websites for 1 business. How should I proceed to optimize my Local Seo? I think I have two choices... 1- I make referal links on Ola customer websites that redirect to Ola(+referal link) and then to Tonik. OR 2- I make referal links on Ola customer websites that redirect to Tonik directly... and then, I delete Ola web site... Any advices?

    | Gab-Tonik
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  • ifixcars


    our rankings are all over the place but mostly keywords are dropping from 2-20 to 35 and over 51. it has been happening over the past 3 weeks but don't know what to look for. any advise is appreciated. stevesautorepairva.com  . our other automotive website hometownetire.com seems to be doing better but do not know why. they are 2 separate businesses. Thank you very much in advance for any help. AqDQnRx

    | ifixcars
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  • Baptist_Health_Kentucky


    I had a question about KML Markup language. Do you know if this is still helpful for local search purposes? Or does it hold little value these days?

    | Baptist_Health_Kentucky
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  • varun1800


    Hi Friends I am working for Australian Client who is Immigration Lawyer, I want suggestions to do marketing for Australian immigration Lawyers. Please let me know which sites will be fruitful to work upon. This is my first law project. I am just looking for road-map of online marketing for same. Experienced and valuable suggestions will be really appreciated!

    | varun1800
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  • maxcarnage


    Hey Mozzers, I am pulling my hair out trying to figure out why one of my clients keeps losing their SERP for their targeted keyword terms. We're actively pursuing local citations, making sure their NAP is consistent across the board and refining on-page content to make sure that we're maximizing opportunities. The only thing I've found is a 4xx error that my Moz 'crawl diagnostics' keep returning back to me, however, when I check to see if there's any problems with Google Webmaster Tools, it doesn't return any errors. Is this 4xx error the culprit? Are there any suggestions any of you could give me to help me improve the SERP for my targeted keyword terms. Anyway, any and all insight can help. I'm at my wits end. Thanks for reading and for all of your help!

    | maxcarnage
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  • Lovingly


    Hey wonderful SEO guys, I need your advice. Would the following be considered cloaking, or a black hat SEO tactic. I performed the following search for Guess tops on Google: "Guess women's tops." Please see the attached image (Guess 1) of the description tag that comes up with this search. This not the primary page description tag, but when you visit the women's tops tag, that description is not visible on the page. In fact it is placed in the meta name section (see Guess meta-name description image). The information appears as a description on a SERPS depending on the keyword search performed, but the text is just not visible on the tops page. Can this be considered a form of cloaking? If not, is this a dangerous blackhat SEO tactic, or actually nothing to be worried about? We are thinking of doing something similar with some of lengthy homepage introductions-making them invisible, but still appearing on SERPS, as long as it relates to content that is clearly on the website, or what the website is about. Please advise. Thanks. qiNXxYR.png BXKZn08.png

    | Lovingly
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  • osaka73


    In regards to local search with the most relevant keyword, I can't seem to get ahead of the competition. I've been going through a number of analytics reports, and in analyzing our trophy keyword (which is also the most relevant, to our service and site) our domain has consistently been better with a number of factors.  There is not a moz report that I can find that doesn't present us as the winner. Of course I know MOZ analytics and google analytics are different, but I'm certain that we have them beat with both. When all metrics seem to be in our favor, why might other competitors continue to have better success? We should be dominating this niche industry.  Instead, I see a company using blackhat seo, another with just a facebook page only, and several others that just don't manage their site or ever add unique, helpful content. What does it take to get ahead?  I'm pretty certain I've been doing everything right, and doing everything better than our local competitors. I think google just has a very imperfect algorythm, and the answer is "a tremendous amount of patience" until they manage to get things right.

    | osaka73
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  • TIM_DOTCOM


    I am looking to hire an SEO company each have there own ideas and strengths. My concerns are what is good and what is bad. Here is one company where their Silver Package fits within our budget. But there are a lot of features on here we do know if is it good or bad SEO. I attached the packages they send us. If we were to hire an SEO Company to do our offsite SEO, what should we be looking for that is considered whitehat seo for 2015? zCJowNb

    | TIM_DOTCOM
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  • crpoll


    I am a plaintiffs' attorney with a website that ranks well for my major practice areas. I am considering taking a position with a new firm. As part of the discussion, the new firm would allow me to keep my current site so long as it redirects to my bio page on their firm's site. My goal is to keep my current site ranking well and continuously work on SEO efforts, in case I leave the new firm and want to rely on my current site in the future. My questions are: Is there a way to redirect my site every time it shows up in the listings (I have 1000+ indexed pages) without sacrificing its current rankings b/c of bounce rate issues, etc and 2) If I continue to add pages and work on SEO for my site while it redirects to another, will those efforts be worthwhile due to the redirect? I want to keep trying to build my site even though it redirects to a page on a different domain.

    | crpoll
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  • lwflc


    Dear all, I have problem with duplicate content on my site and crawled by seomoz as "duplicate content", might be i am not clear enough about how to put "canoncial" but the problem is with my site mostly on blog or tags or categories, so some link that actually different tags ....come with same result..so like: http://www.livingwordfreelutheran.org/news-events/blog/tag/ Gymnastics and http://www.livingwordfreelutheran.org/news-events/blog/tag/ God's Power It will show same result..the problem is,all are dynamic... and what i should put the canonical for that page? Both of link use same page or controller? If i put the canonical itself on each result it will be fix it? Or how? …and also I confusing how I put it also on search result? Like ?query=keywords that show same result? How I put canonical on there? Sorry if this duplicate question... I very very appreciate for the help…thank you! Best regards,
    Harrison

    | lwflc
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  • JoomGeek


    Hello Moooooooooz ! We're currently working on a new website http://www.globalmetal.fr/ which deep SEO issues. The problematic is as always in this case: 1 company + different subsidiaries + different markets + different languages The companies is handling different domains: http://www.globalmetal.fr/
    www.globalmetalbroker.ch
    www.globalmetalbroker.com
    and so on. Until recently I was totally convinced (there is no magic solution I know) that it was better for a SME to focus on 1 domain (.com) and get the other websites per language .com/fr .com/es etc. But in their case their TLD is pretty new: www.globalmetalbroker.com (DA 1) vs globalmetal.fr (DA 15) So I'm wondering: 1- Does Google know understand that globalmetal.fr is the french website of globalmetalbroker.com (maybe via webmaster tool) ?
    2- Does it make senss to move all the (new) language websites into .com/[folders] and once the .com DA is doing better redirecting the .fr to.com/fr ?
    3- Is it better to focus on .com .fr (but french speakers are not just in france) .ru and so on or to keep the .com/[languages] Hope someone got the same issue recently 😛

    | JoomGeek
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  • hagai


    Hi, I run a legitimate online directory. We verify all the listings, do not include do follow links to the clients sites. Allow for and monitor user reviews as well as publish unique content in our niche. Over the last few years we have been hammered with Penguin and Panda penalties and have tried to remedy the issues with little success. Is there anyone out there who has specific experience with SEO for directories? Anyone that has assisted a directory in recovering from these penalties? Please contact me

    | hagai
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  • BrianAlpert78


    Hello fellow Mozzers, This is kind of a hypothetical, but it might have implications for future projects. Do you think there would be any benefits (or drawbacks) to placing pages of a site into a directory named after a keyword? For example, if I had a local store that sold hockey equipment, and "hockey", "equipment", and "hockey equipment" were the main targets being optimized for, would it be better (assuming the actual pages were the same) to structure the site as hypotheticalwebsite.com/about-us/ hypotheticalwebsite.com/hockey-skates/ hypotheticalwebsite.com/hockey-sticks/ hypotheticalwebsite.com/blog/ or hypotheticalwebsite.com/hockey-equipment/about-us/ hypotheticalwebsite.com/hockey-equipment/hockey-skates/ hypotheticalwebsite.com/hockey-equipment/hockey-sticks/ hypotheticalwebsite.com/hockey-equipment/blog/ Additionally, would any of this change if the root domain or the individual pages ALSO used those keywords (or if both of them used it)? pseudonyms-hockey-gear.com/hockey-equipment/skates/ pseudonyms-penalty-box.com/hockey-equipment/hockey-skates/ pseudonyms-hockey-gear.com/hockey-equipment/hockey-skates/ I've got a hunch that some of these are overkill, but I'm not sure where the scale tips from helpful to negligible to actively counterproductive. Thanks, everyone!

    | BrianAlpert78
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  • DohenyDrones


    I am pretty new to web design and SEO, so I am sure I have completely done this wrong.  I work for a U.S. based equipment dealer and before I started working here my company incorporated in Canada under  "(our main product) of Canada".  Even before we had any SEO work done on our website, we ranked in the top 3 across Canada for our main product. The one exception to this was Quebec where we rarely got any traffic due to the language barrier.  We started working to fix this last summer using the Montreal Consulate, our SEO company at the time and a translator.  They each gave me the same French translation of our Company name and I had them translate the 8 most visited pages on our existing site.  I then created a replica of our existing site, hosted it on the French translation of our name and started running inbound links to this site from our U.S. and Canada sites. The first thing I am wondering is if there's any issue with this practice?  We have had good results so far and traffic from Quebec is way up across our three sites. The second issue I have is we just hired our first employee in Quebec and found a partner there.  They are both adamant that the translation we are using is incorrect.  I own the domain for the correct translation they are suggesting but I have no idea how to go about it.  Any suggestions?

    | DohenyDrones
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  • perkfriday


    I'll try to setup this question: I go to Google.com and set the search tools to a particular city that I am not in (say I live in Nashville but set the search tools for Rockville MD). I do a search for a specific term without a location modifier such as "chrysler town and country" and I don't see the website I'm looking for in the first 100 results. Then I keep the search tools the same, but change the specific search to "chrysler town and country rockville md" and the website I'm looking for is now the #1 result. What would affect the difference? I would have expected the website to have a similar ranking in both situations.

    | perkfriday
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  • Adam_RushHour_Marketing


    We have a client in need of a ticketing solution for their domain (let's call it www.domain.com) which is on Wordpress - as is our custom ticket solution.  However, we want to have full control of the ticketing, since we manage it for them - so we do not want to build it inside their original Wordpress install. Our proposed solution is to build it on tickets.domain.com.  This will exist only for selling and issuing the tickets. The question is, is there a way to do this without damaging their bounce rate and SEO scores?
    Since customers will come to www.domain.com, then click the ticketing tab and land on tickets.domain.com, Google will see this as a bounce.  In reality, customers will not notice the difference as we will clone the look and feel of domain.com Should we perhaps have the canonical URL of tickets.domain.com point to www.domain.com? And also, can we install Webmaster Tools for tickets.domain.com and set the preferred domain as www.domain.com? Are these possible solutions to the problem, or not - and if not, does anyone else have a viable solution? Thank you so much for the help.

    | Adam_RushHour_Marketing
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  • Bob_van_Biezen


    I hope someone can help me make some decisions. I did read a lot about Local SEO lately but I’m not sure what way to go with this client. Client: Service provider with two physical locations (service is provided on the physical location). In the coming 12 month there will open 1-2 new physical locations in other cities. Has only one phone number. I will try to advise them to get a local phone number for both locations. But they prefer one (mobile) number to keep things simple. Clients are willing to travel for the service, since it’s a one day course they take. Current clients do come from a lot of different locations. The competition for around 5-6 big cities is pretty low since there aren’t a lot of service providers who deliver these courses. Questions: Should I put both addresses in the footer? It’s a best practice with only one location. I think it’s handy for users with two locations as well but I’m worried about how Google sees this. Also this will get confusing when the client passes 3-4 locations. If the client sticks with one mobile phone number, should I make a Google + local page for both physical locations? The Google guidelines clearly state they prefer a local number as much as possible. If I add “Our service areas “ to the top navigation and make a unique place page for every city (to rank organic aswell) is it wise to link those local Google + pages to the unique page about this service? Normaly I would go for yes, but I want to add places with and without a physical location under the same navigation. With just one location I would just focus on that city and add unique pages for the other pages. I’m getting a bit stuck between best practices since the client got opportunities with multiple strategies. I hope you guys (and girls 😉 ) can help!

    | Bob_van_Biezen
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  • RossM


    Ok I am asking this question to hopefully confirm my conclusion. I am auditing a domain who's owner is frustrated that they are coming in #2 for their regionally tagged search result and think its their Marketer/SEOs fault. After briefly auditing their site, the marketing company they have doing their work has really done a great job. There are little things that I have suggested they could do better but nothing substantial. They are doing good SEO for the most part. Their competitor site is ugly, has a terrible user experience, looks very unprofessional, and has some technical SEO issues from what I have seen so far. Yet it is beating them every time on the serps. I have not compared backlinks yet. I will in the next day or so. I was halted when I found, what seems to me to be, the culprit. I was looking for duplicate content internally, and they are doing fine there, then my search turned externally...... I copied and pasted a large chunk of one page into Google and got an exact match return.....rutro shaggy. I then found that there is another site from a company across the country that has identical content for possibly as much as half of their entire domain. Something like 50-75 pages of exact copy. I thought at first they must have taken it from the site I was auditing. I was shocked to find out that the company I am auditing actually has an agreement to use the content from this other site. The marketing company has asked the owners to allow them to rewrite the content but the owners have declined because "they like the content." So they don't even have authority on the content for approximately 1/2 of their site. Also this content is one of three main topics directed to from home page. My point to them here is that I don't think you can optimize this domain enough to overcome the fact that you have a massive portion of your site that is not original. I just don't think perfect optimization of duplicate content beats mediocre optimization of original content. I now have to convince the owners they are wrong, never an easy task. Am I right or am I over estimating the value of original content? Any thoughts? Thanks in advance!

    | RossM
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  • dogscatsandpets


    Hi Run a pet listings website and we had tonnes of duplicate content that we have resolved. But not sure what to do with the localised landing pages. We have everything pointing back back to the main listings URL http://www.dogscatsandpets.co.uk/for-sale-stud-and-adoption/ but haven't pointed the URLs that show pets for specific towns and cities eg http://www.dogscatsandpets.co.uk/for-sale/dogs-and-puppies/in-city-of-london/ back to the main url. Obviously this is giving us duplicate content issues, but these pages do rank in local search and drive traffic into the site. So my question is should we canonicalise the local pages back to the main url and if we do will this mean our local landing pages will no longer rank? Is there any alternatives?

    | dogscatsandpets
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  • theindic


    Hi I have had a .com domain for many years linked to my google plus page and local verified to my UK office address. This site sells and advertises my products, some of them are uk only like the school and computers I sell and the rest are digital and world wide. I decided to start a .co.uk domain to be more targeted to the uk and advertise only the school and computers which I sell to the uk and just link to the .com for digital products. I want the .com domain to attract world wide customers and the .co.uk for uk customers. What do I do, does it make sense to connect my google plus business page to the .co.uk site? Should I still have a google plus page for the .com site? I only have 1 office and thats in the uk. Not sure what to do here. I dont want to lose rankings or do anything negative. Thoughts? Thanks.

    | theindic
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  • Spartan22


    I currently have a service based website with landing pages for surrounding towns. For example the keywords targeting and url for the town are "service+town+state". I recently noticed that I am not showing up at all for "service+zip" even though I have the zips included in all the landing pages. I was told if I made more landing pages dedicated to zip I would risk killing the rank on other landing pages. Would it be advisable to make another totally different website that focuses on just the "service+zip" landing pages. The name of the page would be the same the company obviously but the phone numbers and content would be different along with domain url. Any advice or suggestions are welcome. Thanks.

    | Spartan22
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  • bennyt


    OK, so I am helping a client with a new site build. It is a lifestyle/news publication that traditionally has focused on delivering content for one region. For ease of explanation, let's pretend the brand/domain is 'people-on-the-coast.com'. Now they are now looking to expand their reach to another region using the domain 'people-in-the-city.com'. Whilst on-the-coast is their current core business and already has some search clout, they are very keen on the city market and the in-the-city domain. They would like to be able to manage the content through one CMS (joomla) and the site will deliver articles and the logo based on the location of the user (city or coast). There will also be cases where the content is duplicated for both regions. The design/layout etc. will all remain identical. So what I am really wanting to know is the pros, cons and ultimately the best approach to handle the setup and ongoing management from an SEO (and UX) perspective. All I see is problems! Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks,
    Confused O.o

    | bennyt
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  • nowmedia1


    I've been keeping track of changes in my company's Knowledge Box, and it's been responding in completely unpredictable ways. We are currently in the middle of a site redesign -- the current site has not received any SEO attention in a while, apart from two major edits: 1. Adding the social media schema (which Google has not picked up -- we did this close to two months ago). 2. Citation cleanup through Moz Local and BrightLocal What I've noticed about the Knowledge Box is that it would show up for the query "Now Media Group" if and only if the location was set for San Diego, CA, which is where we're based. Now, it will only show up for the query "Now Media Group San Diego." My first question: If the location setting is already set for San Diego, why would Google need the additional qualifier to show the Knowledge Box? Any theories? My second question: Is our local SEO efforts hurting our online presence? We don't provide services locally, except to a handful of clients. We have clients throughout the United States and Canada. It'd be nice if our Knowledge Box showed up regardless of where someone is searching our brand name from. The reason I point at local SEO specifically is because I've noticed that an ex-client of ours has a knowledge box no matter where you search from, and she has no local SEO whatsoever -- the Box shows the address: Douglass, KS. Is our local SEO sending Google mixed signals and affecting when/where the Knowledge Box shows up? Thank you!

    | nowmedia1
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  • MilestoneSEO_LA


    I see many national brand franchises that offers restoration services such as water damage (Servpro, Service Master etc.) There are local websites for each franchise. Each franchise has 50+ locations that they service They currently have pages like 'water damage + city' that have about 500-700 words each Some websites have 30- 100 location pages optimized for 'water damage city' These location pages do not have a physical offices None have duplicate content (word for word) above 20% The only different between these pages is perhaps 200 words about the city Example: www.servicecompany/water-damage-los-angeles www.servicecompany/water-damage-reseda www.servicecompany/water-damage-van-nuys Are these doorway pages?

    | MilestoneSEO_LA
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  • OptiBacUK


    Hi All, Let me start by explaining that I am aware of the rel="canonical" and **rel="alternate" hreflang="x" **tags but I need advice on implementation. The situation is that we have 5 sites with similar content. Out of these 5: 2 use the same URL stucture and have no suffix 2 have a different URL structure with a .html suffix 1 has an entirely different URL structure with a .asp suffix The sites are quite big so it will take a lot of work to go through and add rel="alternate" hreflang="x" tags to every single page (as we know the tag should be applied on a page level not site level). 4 out of the 5 sites are managed by us and have the tag implemented so that makes it easier but the 5th is managed in Asia and we fear the amount of manual work required will put them off implementing it. The site is due to launch at the end of the month and we need to sort this issue out before it goes live so that we are not penalised for duplicate content. Is there an easy way to go about this or is the only way a manual addition? Has anyone had a similar experience? Your advice will be greatly appreciated. Many thanks, Emeka.

    | OptiBacUK
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  • SimonWorsfold


    I'm looking to find a program that will do the following: Scan for page errors including code issues, hosting issues, redirect issues, etc. Pages missing Google Analytics Google + Local audit to identify issues with NAP, citations, category selection etc. Find pages with title issues including missing page titles, duplicates or titles that are too short or too long, header tag issues such as missing H1 tags Meta description issues including missing meta descriptions, duplicate meta descriptions or meta descriptions that are too short or too long Link issues including broken internal or external links or missing anchor or ALT text Identify internal or external links using rel=”nofollow” Image issues, such as missing ALT or title text and broken images Identify pages using Schema.org microdata I know there are probably a couple programs that will do little bits here and there so I'm open to suggestions. Thank you.

    | SimonWorsfold
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  • malekmz


    I want to rank a website based on 3 german keywords. i see there is possibility for that because i didn't see optimised website in first results. The domain name is based on my main keyword. how to start building high authority links to my website. Can i place my anchor text backlinks on English high pr websites?

    | malekmz
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  • HB17


    Hi all, A bit of an interesting one but I am sure you can all help. My client has a business in a town called location A. Surrounding town A there are several other towns - My client wants to make sure they also appear in SERPs for these surrounding areas, even though their business is not physically located there. E.g. Product town A
    Product town B
    Product town C
    Or even just being physically searching from one of those locations and typing the product name, they want to be on that first page. For example if you live in town B which is 20 miles away, my clients still wants to appear right at the top of the SERPs as they are competing against other businesses for that area. They also want to appear for town C, D, and E, all of which are surrounding town A. How can I make this happen? Would I need to create multiple landing pages and focus the SEO on each individual location? I'm just worried Google would see duplicate content but with varied location keywords. I don't have any room left in the page title to add every location. They do legitimately serve these areas, if you are looking for their product there are a few competitors around but this is in their 'territory' so to speak. Any help big or small would be great. Thanks!

    | HB17
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  • GSO


    I've noticed on a few occasions where two subdomains share the same brand and are also attempting to rank for phrases specific to one city - the stronger subdomain tends to send the other subdomain to the "omitted search results" for those city specific queries. The subdomains do tend to have some duplicate content that they share but if the two pages on the different subdomains are unique for the search phrase in question wouldn't Google choose to surface both results? Or is this a question of domain diversity in the SERPs where the 2 results would just be too similar since they share the same root domain and have topically similar content? I've seen cases where they can share the first page of results but more often than not it seems that one is sent to the "omitted results". Any thoughts on strategy in this situation? The companies being described end up wanting to rank for the same city because they both serve a portion of the city in case anyone is wondering.

    | GSO
    0
  • SEOhughesm


    We have a website that offers services to various cities in a state. However, since we don't want to do keyword stuffing, how do we rank this website for all of these cities when it comes to the **title tags? **For example, how do we optimize the homepage title tag? Obviously I know we can't put all the cities into it, so how do we choose which city to use? I know we can add city/local pages and optimize them for those locations, but I'm referring specifically to the homepage and other main pages of the website. How do you determine which cities to use in those title tags?

    | SEOhughesm
    0
  • morganlindsaycole


    My word press site used to be at morganlindsayphotography.com/Wedding I moved my site from /Wedding to the root domain three years ago where it is currently at www.morganlindsayphotography.com.  Top pages in the open site analysis are still finding ONLY my old  pages, titles and posts that were in the /Wedding - which are not even on my site anymore. http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/Wedding/ http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/Wedding/2012/11/04/a-new-product-addition-to-weddings/ http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/Wedding/2012/06/22/brittany-reis-jason-mcclaflin-tiffin-ohio-wedding/ http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/Wedding/2013/10/06/andy-mallory-cleveland-ohio-engagement/ http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/Wedding/category/weddings/ Does anyone know why this could be happening?

    | morganlindsaycole
    0
  • BWrightTLM


    Hey all, I have a client who I have been having the WORST time getting traffic and ranked for relevant keywords. I've tried so many things and have yet to see much progress after about 9 months. Site is mgmcdallas.com. I realized something REALLYY weird with this site a couple weeks ago. The business has a Dallas, TX address and really only services the Dallas/Fort Worth metro area. They recently started getting some of referral traffic from yelp.com/biz_redir. Weirdly, they've also been getting more sales calls and more salespeople filling out their contact form. Take January for example, they had 164 sessions and 119 of those were from this yelp referral. They DON'T advertise with Yelp, or get traffic from Yelp anywhere in Texas. You can see from below screenshot that they are all coming from California. analytics I've had our <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">SEO</acronym> and developer look into and we can't figure out what's happening.  Any thoughts? iubnZdu

    | BWrightTLM
    0
  • emerald


    Hi Mozzers,
    Hoping for your advice on how to handle the SEO effects an image URL change, that changed 3 times, during the course of setting up a CDN over a month period, as follows: (URL 1) - Original image URL before CDN:www.mydomain.com/images/abc.jpg (URL 2) - First CDN URL (without CNAME alias - using WPEngine & their own CDN):
    username.net-dns.com/images/abc.jpg (URL 3) - Second CDN URL (with CNAME alias - applied 3 weeks later):
    cdn.mydomain.com/images/abc.jpg When we changed to URL 2, our image rankings in the Moz Tool Pro Rankings dropped from 80% to 5% (the one with the little photo icons). So my questions for recovery are: Do I need to add a 301 redirect/Canonical tag from the old image URL 1 & 2 to URL 3 or something else? Do I need to change my image sitemap to use cdn.mydomain.com/images/abc.jpg instead of www.? Thanks in advance for your advice.

    | emerald
    0
  • lileng


    Hey there everyone! So i’ve got this new client who hired me to do some web design and offered to pay me to do some seo work for them. Im not really new to paid search marketing. I also am pretty familiar with the basics of seo and have had some minor successes in the past. However, a lot of those successes were attributed to low market competition and really strong and pertinent urls. As I build sites and come up with content, its all thought out for what these companies are selling. So content is optimized for keywords as well as images etc. Here’s my current issue. I am really not great at backlinking. First off, let me tell you how I found this client. Lets say this particular client is in real estate in new york city (which is very close to the market theyre in.) Lets also assume I typed into google “the best apartment buildings in nyc.” Now, I come across an article from a site with a very high page and aite authority (over 90) and the article, lets say, is a “Top Ten Apartment Buildings In NYC.” The very first building on the list (the presumed best) is obviously the one most people are going to check out. The page for that building is so keyword optimized and the content is relevant. Turns out, this building is the creator of this article. Naturally, they add 9 more buildings to the list and my client falls at number 7. Now, they ARE getting some traffic from this article, but not nearly as much as number one. I did some investigative work and went into the building who created the article. Turns out they have a barter partnership with the website the article was published on. This gives them a complete competitive edge. (This website is like the TECHCRUNCH for apartment buildings.) Right now, my client is spending huge amounts on ppc and unfortunately, dude the competitive nature and the amount of options in the market, doesn’t necessary see roi its needing to. People will come into the building and check it out (but of course, in the back of their mind there are always the other 6 rated buildings ahead of it.) I am trying to develop a strategy to win here. My client doesn’t have a very strong social presence, which is an easy fix and something i’m working on. Their site has some duplicate page errors and simple title tag fixes but is built with squarespace and overall is very comparable to the competition. What do I do next? Even if I guest blog on some other sites, their competition is already a huge step ahead because they have an article out on the MOST authoritative site in the space. Thanks for the help!

    | lileng
    0
  • FrankSweeney


    Hello Mozzers! With the importance of homogeneous NAP information on Local SEO, could using Call Tracking numbers have a negative effect? Is it better to use Javascript to place the number, or to hard code it? Thanks in advance!

    | FrankSweeney
    0
  • bisibee1


    look forward to your advice My client is a local business in australia but has a dotcom site which is hosted in US.  We are just moving it to wordpress and new hosting. I want to ensure that Google.com/au will be able to index and rank the content. How can I tell google its a site for people in australia? I thought best to set up a subfolder like this hissite.com/au and redirect anyone from australia to go to this url? Thanks for your recommendations

    | bisibee1
    0
  • dogtopiamichigan


    Hello, I have a strange issue that I have not come across before:My subdomain is: michigan.dogdaycare.com. Some of the Keyword searches show our subdomain being nested under the main domain for Google searches instead of being indexed individually. Example search term: Dogtopia Bloomfield https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=dogtopia+bloomfield -This will show two subdomain links nested under the main domain Example search term: Dogtopia Birmingham https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=dogtopia+birmingham -This shows the subdomain showing correctly in searches and not nested. Any idea as to how to fix this? Thanks in advance!

    | dogtopiamichigan
    0
  • HB17


    Hi all, I've been looking at some SEO work on our new CMS site that's been up for a few months now and when doing a search for a particular page which I know has good SEO and received a 'B' rating on the MOZ on page grader, our home page shows up and not our relevant page. I don't exactly want to worsen the SEO on our home page so that it doesn't show up, but why would my home page which is fairly generic and covers a large area of the business show up rather than the specific page which I am searching with exact keywords for? For example: If I was searching for 'bananas' my home page for fruits would show up rather than my bananas page which has been tailored around those keywords. Thanks

    | HB17
    0
  • mittcom


    I have a client, let's call him "Bob".  Bob has 2 stores where he sells "Widgets", Bob's Widgets and Bob's Widgets South.  These locations are roughly 40 miles from each other and serve two different marketplaces.  Each location has their own website "www.bobswidgets.com & www.bobswidgetssouth.com".  Each location is run by different individuals.  The Store Manager at Bob's Widgets is complaining that when you type "Bob's Widgets" into the search engines "Bob's Widgets South" website is indexing in the 2nd and/or 3rd position.  The Store Manager at Bob's Widgets feels that Bob's Widgets South could be stealing business from him because of the way Google is indexing the sites. I have explained to him that the keyword the user is typing in is in both names of the locations and in each URL and this is prompting the search engine to index both sites.  Am I missing something else???

    | mittcom
    0
  • ScorePromotions


    Hi MOZers, We are looking for some advice on whether to have a single TLD(.com) or 2 separate domains (.ca) & (.com) Our website will have different products & pricing for each of US users(.com) and Canada users(.ca). Since, we are targeting different countries & user groups with each domain - we are not concerned about "duplicate content". So, does it make more sense to have a single domain for compounding our content marketing efforts? Or, Will it be more beneficial to have seperate domains for the geo-targeting benefits on Google.CA & Google.COM? Looking forward to some great suggestions.

    | ScorePromotions
    0
  • friendoffood


    My home page has links to major cities.  If someone chooses a specific city I want to give them the choice to choose a suburb within the city,  With say 50 cities and 50 suburbs for each city that's 2500 links on the home page.  In order to avoid that many links on the home page (or any page) I would like to have just the 50 cities and pull up the suburbs as an ajax call that search engines would not read/crawl.  This would be better than clicking on a main city and then getting the city page which they then can choose a suburb.  Better to do it all at once. Is it a bad idea to ajax the subregions on the home page and to code it so Google, Bing, other search engines don't crawl or even see anything on the home page related to the suburbs?  The search engines will still find the suburb links because they will be listed on each main city page.

    | friendoffood
    0
  • brfieger


    I am thinking about creating a local business directory type website that lists all local Tattoo Shops. I am familiar with both local and global SEO and how to differentiate between them, however, I am not sure how I should approach this type of website. It isn't an actual business, but I want to target local searches that are looking for tattoo shops. In other words, when someone types in "tattoo shops" or "tattoo shops near me", or "tattoo parlors", I want the website to appear. Is this something that is manageable, or will the individual Tattoo Shop websites always show before mine since they are real local businesses with google+ pages?

    | brfieger
    0
  • ajgar


    I have a client with a double name and a & like: Jones & Jones.  I and using all in one SEO on a Wordpress site.  Their home page is not ranking even though I have Jones, Jones & Jones and Jones and Jones listed in the keywords. Interestingly enough other pages where I did not list the home page rank when you do a serach for "Jones & Jones" I have not had this issue with other sites but have never had a name repeated and and & in between... any advice woild be appreciate.. I just signed up for a trial of MOZ...

    | ajgar
    0

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