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Category: Local SEO

So much goes into building a comprehensive local marketing strategy. Discuss all things local with other marketing professionals.

Subcategories

  • Examine the impact of maintaining consistent and accurate local listings on your local SEO strategy.

  • Dive into how to manage reviews and ratings for your local marketing strategy.

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

  • JohnWeb12


    Hi, we have a client that is a prominent camera store in town.  We are interested in creating a photo contest in which our client would have categories for the photos (people, places, things) and awards (gold, silver, bronze).  We would like to create a badge for the winners that could be displayed on their websites.  We are looking for some tips/tricks on how to get the most out of this promotion for our client.  Also, from what I've read, it looks like we will have to nofollow the links in the badge.  Is that still the best practice?

    | JohnWeb12
    0
  • donsilvernail


    I am currently working with a payroll company that has two separate businesses. Payroll services and Time and Attendance services. Currently the client has 1 facebook page with about 50 likes that caters for both companies. My question is.... Should I separate the payroll and time and attendance companies and create 2 separate facebook pages, or since the businesses are so close together, we could use the one page to promote both businesses. We also have a similar issue with LinkedIn company pages. What do you guys think? Separate pages or combine pages? Currently there are 2 separate websites for each companies services.

    | donsilvernail
    0
  • wright335


    Hi All, Can anyone please guide me on Geo Targeting for Google Organic Improvement? Thanks!

    | wright335
    0
  • UpMedio_SEO


    Dear all, I have bought 30 geo top level domains. This is for an ecommerce project that has not launcehd yet (and isn't indexed by Google). I am now at a point where I can change/consolidate all domains as sub domains or sub folders or keep things as they are. I just worry that link building  would be scattered and not focused and that it might be better to concentrate the efforts on one domain. What are your views on this? Many thanks!
    Ami

    | UpMedio_SEO
    0
  • O2C


    Hi, One of our clients currently owns a .com domain and they are interested in marketing into the Irish market. They have asked us if they should buy a .IE domain name and then forward it onto their .com one. I know that Google has been clamping down on people who use the 'Backdoor' method of buying 100's of keyword rich domains and forwarding them onto their website but would it really make a difference if they just bought one .IE domain? Keen to know if anyone has done this sort of thing before and their experience. Thanks

    | O2C
    0
  • Ria_


    I have a client who owns a cosmetic dermatology clinic. Recently he's been trying to work more on his Facebook page, and has been attempting to boost his posts but they keep getting declined for this, that and the other. "No before and after photos", "Ad is sensitive in nature", etc. Nothing shady, he's a registered doctor and a member of the Royal College of Physicians in London and the Royal College of General Practitioners. Main treatments offered are things like Botox (which I know he can't legally advertise due to strict advertising standards in the UK), dermal fillers, lip fillers, non-surgical lifts. Just general non-surgical prescription-level cosmetic treatments. I don't have much experience in Facebook advertising, but this line of work seems particularly challenging to advertise on Facebook. Does anyone who has experience in advertising this type of business on Facebook have any general advice on what sorts of posts/ads have worked with them before?

    | Ria_
    2
  • Bee159


    Hi all, we have a furniture business with two physical stores and one website, which has the ability to sell online but we hardly sell anything but we're just about to start Google PLA on a few products, let's say our website is at: nicefurniture.co.uk We have nicefurniture.co.uk/first-location and nicefurniture.co.uk/second-location set up with all the store info, a Google Map, contact info, etc. This is linked to from the footer on all pages. Issue 1: I have been told conflicting things about how to best set up our Google My Business page. One person says set the URL for both to our homepage, nicefurniture.co.uk and the other says point each GMB listing to the store location pages OR we should buy www.furniture-first-location.co.uk as our URL and point the GMB listing to that. To me, that doesn't make sense as we'd be spreading our domain equity with a new domain, surely? Issue 2: How do I get each GMB location to show up in Maps, etc when people search for 'furniture location' or even 'sofa location' or 'dining table location'? Would I need to optimize the store pages on our site? Issue 3: Years ago we did set up another URL, let's say nicefurniture-cornwall.co.uk and on it there are about 500 pages, all with links pointing to our main website. Google Search Console for our main website lists this other website as one of our top linking domains. Does that mean if we remove nicefurniture-cornwall.co.uk we'll risk a drop in rankings? Many thanks for your input.

    | Bee159
    0
  • Cleanily


    Hi, hoping to get some suggestions on strategy in terms of building out my site as I'm a bit overwhelmed. We provide home services throughout hundreds of locations - some major cities, others smaller yet affluent towns where demand is sufficient, though have no physical presence in the majority. My question is really regarding ranking organically (given local listings will be so difficult). I am new to Moz and have been using the Keyword Explorer to generate a long list of keywords, which I've refined to those which offer the most opportunity. Do I simply now take this list and append [city_name] to each keyword/phrase? If so, working in [list_of_keywords] + [city] into hundreds of location pages is surely going to be a nightmare to make unique, and most likely a horrible user experience. All my customers really want to see is: that we service their area, some info on how we operate, that we are trustworthy (reviews/site quality etc) clear pricing/information (across mobile/desktop) and an easy way of contacting us. If I was searching for a lawn care service in Manchester for example, I couldn't care less about anything else other than the above information. So is padding out pages with content like 'Things to do in Manchester' etc. really the way forward? Would I be better off focusing on building relationships/links with other local complimentary businesses/influencers rather than building out tons of content (on the assumption of course that what content is there is high quality, contains a smattering of keyword + city, and optimised very well)? Any help hugely appreciated!

    | Cleanily
    1
  • BobGW


    Hi, I'm targeting Boise, Idaho and building an SEO consulting website. Right now I only offer 3 things because that's what I have experience in: 1. On-site SEO 2. Content Audit 3. Start a company from scratch. Ecommerce, Service, or Informational I know #3 involves all SEO, so it will be challenging, but 1-3 is what I've been doing for 10 years. What feedback do you have as far as 1-3 being my 3 offers, and is $200/hour fair? I work off quotes by estimating my time at $200/hour. Thanks.

    | BobGW
    1
  • Webstreak


    Hi All, I am having an issue with https://www.toyotaofwilmington.com/ If you do searches using Ad Preview for “2016 Toyota Camry in Wilmington, NC” or “2016 Toyota Corolla in Wilmington, NC” we are having issues with the website not showing up organically. We have the location set to Wilmington, NC, but their competition which is located in Jacksonville, NC which is over an hour away shows up organically on the first page. I am wondering if there are any obvious reasons as to why this would happen, or if there is something bigger I need to look at? Thank you, Cyrus

    | Webstreak
    0
  • Timemerchant


    (Sorry if this has been answered earlier.) I am thinking of buying a domain, (which is not cheap) and has the keywords of; myniche + directory.com.au in it. On the domain I plan to build out a directory, probably using a word-press theme and word-press directory plugin. It will be an industry specific directory (only for that profession) and will be hand edited by me. It will be exclusive, that is, all listings will be manually approved and no spammy links or bots allowed with the hope that it add value to the user experience. My plan for the directory site is long term as I am qualified in the profession and I like SEO. It will begin with free basic listings, also hand edited by me and I will at some stage allow paid listings for reasonable fee. Directories have a bad name currently in the SEO world, since Panda and Penguin and Poodle (only joking about last one) smashed many of them out of the park for good reason. That bad reputation may stop some in my profession from purchasing a listing or even wanting a free listing. But directories seem to have an influence on local search which could be the value that I add to the business that wants to list on the directory. e.g www.yellowpages.com.au has a PR of 7. I quite liked this article on directories which suggested they may not be dead. Do you agree with that? http://www.seopoint.com.au/blog/are-listings-in-directories-good-or-bad-for-seo/ My question is: Are directories dead? Are directories good or bad for SEO in 2016 and moving forward if they are not spammy? Do directories add value to a business? Therefore should I go ahead with my plan? Thanks in Advance :-).

    | Timemerchant
    0
  • MiriamEllis


    This week, I came across an article citing a fascinating statistic from The Harris Poll which surveyed consumers and found that the #1 reason they shop digitally for groceries is when they can’t purchase an item from their routine shopping sources. In other words, if the supermarket they shop at doesn’t carry Seventh Generation Laundry Soap (or some other product), then they’ll turn to a digital provider for fulfillment. This survey focused specifically on grocery items, but what it sparked in my brain was the fact that ANY local store that doesn’t have in place an active campaign to discover unmet consumer desires is likely going to see an increasing loss of sales as shoppers turn to online competitors. I’m going to jot down a few ideas for how better communication could lessen these types of losses, and I would really love it if our community could add to the list of suggestions: Have in-store signage that states, “Don’t see a favorite product of yours? Ask us to carry it!" Have SMS/text messaging that requests this same info from mobile users. Train staff to ask a clear, direct question like, “Is there anything you wish we carried here?” and have a process for aggregating that data to make new inventory buys. Be sure the company website is also asking for this feedback and making it clear that the store will gladly order items not already in-stock. Use social outreach to gather ideas from customers about favorite products that are missing from your inventory. Those are just some ideas off the top of my head. Now, I’m a Local SEO, not a retailer, so some of you will be better equipped to answer this question than I: How would you gauge whether a product is actually popular enough to keep permanently in-stock, rather than just being a one-time thing you’d special order for a customer with unusual tastes? I do wonder about how that plays into this scenario, and how a retailer should invest in new products not knowing whether just 1 customer will buy them or they will be a major hit with lots of customers. One final thought on this: a pain point I’ve noticed in the online/offline equation is time. I’ve had a store offer to special order an item for me, but if it’s something I need right away, I’ll look for a different source locally, or, if there isn’t one, may as well just order it online myself. So this makes me think: If you have access to extra fast shipping (faster than the average consumer could get a product shipped to his home) this would be a point to emphasize. If you can get a product overnight or maybe in 2 days without the consumer having to spring for a big shipping charge, this could influence his decision Google says that 30% of consumers state they would buy from a local store, rather than online, if they knew a product was available. So, this would indicate to me that making it very clear you’ve got the products a customer wants is vital. I recently took a 50 mile trip to purchase a high quality picnic basket from a retailer, because I needed it quickly. I couldn’t wait the 3-5 business days the manufacturer said it would take if I ordered online. Point being, if a local retailer has geographic convenience and fast service on their side, they’ve got an advantage. Please, add your thoughts and tips for strategies that could protect local retailers from losing customers to digital competitors. I’m really looking forward to reading any comments!

    | MiriamEllis
    4
  • Houses


    Hi, We have Google Maps listings for all of our offices but a small office often shows up instead of our head office. Is there any way to get head office showing instead? Thanks

    | Houses
    0
  • smartcow


    Wondering if anyone else has noticed a change in site performance since Google has changed the way Adwords are displayed. We have a site that has been performing well, however this year visits have dropped by 20%. The performance of the keywords has remained the same and bounce rate has actually reduced. My suspicion is that with Google removing the Ad links from the right side of the page and placing 4 ads at the top of the page, this has pushed down the organinc results. Looking at some of the search results we now appear beyond the results page fold despite being the 1st orgainc result. The Ad results has site links and there is the Map with local results all pushing our first organic result of the screen. Has anyone else found this an issue or should I look elsewhere for the drop in visits? (The overall searches for our search terms has not dropped, just our percentage share has)

    | smartcow
    1
  • MissThumann


    HI, Is it ok to have pages on my website that are specifically targeted for one town? Does Google frown on this? is there any thing I should know about doing this, like, does it hurt my seo efforts in anyway? I would be making each page as resourceful as possible to the reader., by Including unique content etc Thanks in advance:)

    | MissThumann
    0
  • MatShepSEO


    I am auditing a Joomla website that uses the MightySites component to create multiple versions of the same site for different state/province areas. For example, the site structure looks something like: example.com/fl/
    example.com/mn/
    example.com/ny/
    example.com/wa/ etc. Each of the state home pages are largely identical and much of the content within each state sub-folder is a copy of the original content on the main example.com site, with minor changes here and there. The client is a national organization and needs to keep this structure to allow each state to be able to edit and change their own content, though as far as I can see content doesn't actually vary much. What's best practice here in reducing duplicate content issues? We can't use hreflang as it is all within one country (although it does also provide two different language versions of content, for which I will use hreflang.) Should we just canonical everything back to the corresponding pages on the example.com site? Any thoughts or recommendations much appreciated.

    | MatShepSEO
    0
  • falguniwpi


    Hello Dear Moz friends, I am New to This Forum, I just Want to ask How should I get maximum traffic to My website??
    As i Have done All The things Correct, But i am Not getting Good traffic To my website, Posted on Forums, regular facebook posting, G+, But Still i am Not Getting good visitors to my website. Please Suggest me some Good Traffic Generation Sources, Thank you

    | falguniwpi
    0
  • CFCU


    Hi All, I hope someone can assist, We have 2 brands that sell the exact same products.  We have a main and an off brand. We just redeveloped the main brands site and now have to do the off brand (was owned by another company and we acquired them, we then changed their products to match ours). Am I able to pretty much clone the site and just change the branding and rel canonical each page to its original on the main brand?  Granted I will lose rankings but will it be something that will affect anything else? I want to do this so it saves us time in updating products on both sites (and avoids errors in incorrect pricing). Would appreciate some guidance with this one 🙂 Cheers Dave

    | CFCU
    1
  • MiriamEllis


    Good Afternoon Moz Friends! This week, one of my favorite bloggers in the Local SEO industry wrote a post to celebrate his 5 year blogging anniversary. Phil Rozek has brought an incredible level of knowledge to the industry and one of the things I've most admired about his writing is the consistency with which he tackles common, important problems everyone involved is facing. The tip from Phil's anniversary post that I'd like to discuss with you all this this one, about practicing awareness of the obstacles you encounter in your daily work, for the purpose of investigation and possible public sharing of the solutions you discover: "Jot down every idea you have, every question you ask yourself that stumps you, and every question someone asks you that stumps you. Those are yourraw materials.  You probably won’t write on all of them, but you’ll want the ability to cherry-pick." As a Moz staffer and a marketer, I can testify to the fact that my brain exists in a whirl of possibilities, questions and a never-ending search for relevant solutions. Never a day goes by in which I don't say to myself, at least once,"I wonder why that's like that? Why doesn't this work? How do I do that? What is that? Why don't I get that?" or something similar about a new product, new technology, Google issue, customer issue, industry issue or what have you. What I've learned is that if I have a question about something that I can't instantly resolve, chances are, I'm not the only one who has that question. If you're a blogger, a copywriter, an email marketer, a social marketer, if you can solve a common problem, you have just discovered something to share. _But,_if you're not practicing mindfulness, little questions that arise in the course of an 8 hour day can come and go. They can simply get lost. This is why I value Phil's common sense suggestion of jotting each mental query down as it arises. A spreadsheet seems like a great idea for this task. Just think of how many talking/sharing points you could accumulate in a month  ... and how that could translate into blog posts, newsletters, tweets, etc. Now, I'd like to ask if you've come up with a method for capturing your own thought process when questions arise so that you don't lose track of what might be some of your best queries and ideas. If you have tips to share, the community could really benefit! Thanks!

    | MiriamEllis
    4
  • CalamityJane77


    My client Dr. Harris ranks #1 in SERPs and Local results for many terms, including "hair transplant surgeon Denver" However, when I did a voice search w Siri ""find me a hair transplant surgeon in Denver" Siri said she could find no results. A similar search for a clinic returned 2 competitors, but not my client. How do I ensure we are served up in voice queries? This surgeon deserves it, he invented most of the technology in use in the world today.

    | CalamityJane77
    0
  • sfrediktru8


    Hi everyone, This might be quite a long post so please bear with me. I am currently rebuilding my website.  My previous website was built by a web designer and was very basic.  5 page html site consisting of home, services, gallery, testimonials, contact pages.  None of them were great - thin content, not optimised as well as could be - no h1's etc. To be fair I knew nothing about websites and didn't bother much with the site.  As a new business I used it simply as a place for people to visit for more information after receiving a leaflet and never bothered much about driving traffic to the site. A few years down the line and I have realised I need the website to be working for me as opposed to alongside me.  I am building it myself via wordpress as web designer didn't want to work in wordpress.  I have done my keyword research and I'm working on pages as we speak. Previously my homepage - around 80% of visitors landed here for my main keyword (driveway cleaning glasgow) as it was number 6 in the organic listing.  With my services page appearing directly underneath in 7 for the same keyword. I have starting building a new page for that keyword which contains (driveway-cleaning-glasgow) in the url. I have 301'd my previous services page to this url. Now for my questions...
    My 2nd keyword based on volume is driveway cleaning.  How do I optimise for this or will the (driveway-cleaning-glasgow) page rank for this also as the words are contained within this page? I plan on having the same structure for the remaining services - pressure-washing-glasgow, monoblock-cleaning-glasgow etc, etc.   As I am building new pages for each service with location built in, where does this leave my homepage?  Should I be targeting keywords for this page?  It is still my strongest page and apart from the (driveway-cleaning-glasgow) page which will get some help from the 301 these are all new pages so I would expect perhaps initially to lose some traffic.  But as I am not ranking well for anything other than the main 2 keywords mentioned above it can only be beneficial long term when google recognises the specific pages for each service.  And when I start using Adwords I will have a specific landing page for each service. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks

    | sfrediktru8
    0
  • sourabhrana


    Hello Fellow members, I am sharing the problem what I am facing from client which is another division of my company ( taking as a client). Please recommend me a full proof solution. My client runs a fashion e-commerce site by .com domain in India but after 2 years they took decision that in India, only .in domain site would run with INR prices & outside in "$" prices. Now when If someone is searching with .com domain in India site is 302 redirecting into the .in domain. In India only .in site is working & outside .com but Google is indexing pages of both sites. With .com domain 5 lakhs + pages are indexed & from .in domain only 2600 pages. Content of both sites almost 95% same. I already recommended to put rel=canonical tag on both sites but this is not the permanent solution. They have started .in domain to show prices in "$" & "INR" only. Can you recommend me the best possible answer to solve this issue.

    | sourabhrana
    0
  • AbsoluteDesign


    I am working with 2 local businesses that are joining forces to create 1, new business. Both individually hold consistent position 1 and 2 in Google for the majority of their chosen terms. However, the merger will see a new brand name and therefore a fresh out of the box domain. I have suggested setting up a partition on the hosting for both old URLS. All that will be hosted there would be .htaccess files with 301s to the like-for-like pages on the brand new domain / website. This will obviously also aid UX. However, is this overkill? I personally think not... but would a domain level 301 redirect work just as well from preserving / passing on any authority to the new URL.

    | AbsoluteDesign
    1
  • Paul17


    Hi there, My client has a .com.au site (www.example.com.au) for Australian visitors and a .com site for US visitors (www.example.shopify.com). The .com.au site has a lot of content while the .com site has little content, due to only recently starting business in the US and due to seasonal offerings. The client does not want US visitors to see the .com.au site.  Se we set up an IP redirect, so users with a US IP address are directed to the .com site. This negatively and significantly effected our Google organic search rankings on https://www.google.com.au  My question is what is best practice solution in this situation? thanks

    | Paul17
    0
  • hemantt


    Hi Folks , I'm trying to help my friend , I need your suggestion. I gathered all the data , Please find the attachment  ,  our spam score is 5 as compared with competitors 0 root domain 0 total links 1.)How can we increase the page authority ? 2.)Should i buy more backlinks ? Which website you will recommend me ? 3.) How can i reduce my spam score to 0 or 1 ? I'm not  sure about the links which are attached to my website? However, I read in moz article it could be because large domain and few links. It doesn't show any thing on open site explorer. It looks like we haven't discovered link data for this site or URL. We are running google ads , Facebooks ads and twitter. MpYq1

    | hemantt
    0
  • hemantt


    Good Evening , I have few quick questions for you . Please find the attachment . 1.)  How can i improve Moz rank and domain Moz trust ? 2.) if you see the numbers , Mine is 0 external links and 0 followed root links domains , How can i work on it to improvise my stats ? 3.) Mine domain is dental clinic ( dentalxyz.net ) , there are other dentalxyz.com and dentalxyz.ca . When i type my my domain name it's shows irrelevant information like other location office. In addition , my youtube channel and facebook name is also different , It's not showing on google search. 4.) I'm trying to upgrade my  old nice to new niche. how can i use this moz keyword tool? Where can i use that keywords. 5.) Has anybody tried buying back links from blackhatworld ? Fkmu4am

    | hemantt
    0
  • manuanr


    A competitor of mine got 2 websites at the same niche, ranking places one and two. They are buying backlinks and do whatever it takes to stay in those positions. They are big company so competition might be very hard… What would you do? Do you think reporting to google can solve this issue? Thank you very much for your time…

    | manuanr
    1
  • Ruudst


    Hi Folks, At Lightspeed we decided to setup local websites with CCtld's. Momentarily we have issues with the Google cache. I'm not sure what's going wrong. For example if I check the Google cache of www.lightspeedhq.be in the Belgium Google it refers to www.lightspeedhq.nl. See link: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fm0XIZ8sEe8J:https://www.lightspeedhq.be/+&cd=2&hl=nl&ct=clnk&gl=be We have the same problem for our www.lightspeedhq.co.uk website, which is referring to www.lightspeedhq.com: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:OXdAIIFa7AYJ:https://www.lightspeedhq.co.uk/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk Does Google sees it as duplicate content? Or don't we have to use 'Alternative Hreflang'? A week ago we changed our canonical links which were actually randomly referring from .be > .nl and .co.uk to .com. What can we do now to make sure all is properly indexed? Best, Ruud

    | Ruudst
    0
  • OrendaLtd


    I'm getting a lot of traffic from different regions throughout the US. I need to personalize the content in my website or on a certain landing page based on the users state/region. Is it possible? For example, forwarding a user that lands on page "x" to page "y" if he's from California and to page "z" if he's from South Carolina. And of course, can this somehow affect my rankings in Google? Thanks!!

    | OrendaLtd
    0
  • David-Kley


    So we have a client that has a ton of great links, solid social profiles, content with good keyword-to-content ratio (7.5-9%), etc. This site has been around for a while and performed well. Recently a new competitor showed up with a very long keyword driven domain and has been outranking our client (and everyone else) for a large quantity of keywords. We own a keyword driven domain that could be used, but should we switch? I am always for branded domains vs keyword, but in this case it appears to be working and undefeatable. We have waited for 6 months to see if it's a fluke, but it has only gained additional ranking. The site in question has bad backlinks, many spam items, and stuffed content on the homepage. We will not copy that format obviously, but should we take one more step and beat him at his own game? Our client has Yext Premium, MOZ local, AdWords, social paid campaigns, location targeting pages, fast load time, etc. Overall a good presence. He seems stuck around the 3-5 position on page one, and is looking to push into the top 3 consistently.

    | David-Kley
    1
  • JohnF8


    Hi ! New here I'm trying to help a customer rank in the 1st page on a low-mid competition term in a specific city.  I did a comparison of both URL in MOZ "Compare link Metrics" & we beat them on 85% of the metrics.  They are on the 1st page, often top-3, the closest position we can get is about 13-15. The only higher metric they have is Domain MozRank & MozTrust + equity passing link (??) We are running WordPress with Genesis, they are running a custom site.  See attached printscreen of the report. Help ! b60HidT

    | JohnF8
    0
  • shauna7084


    I have a client that is based in Dallas TX but has a physical location in Farmers Branch (technically inside Dallas according to the client).  He wants me to make his address Dallas TX even though the standard mailing address should read Farmers Branch.  Is this safe to do?

    | shauna7084
    0
  • CRO_first


    Howdy Folks - I run a small (but growing!) SEO agency in Tennessee. I serve, primarily, local service businesses with Organic SEO and website development.  I'm a completely self taught SEO and had an average client rank last year of just over position 2. I have long been dedicated to running my own SEO experiments to try to stay on top of what is working. With the constant changes to SEO, and the growing agency, I find I don't have the time to run all of the SEO experiments that I'd like to ensure that our packages are still giving the best value to our clients. I'm looking to see if 1 - 4 individuals, also running local SEO agencies, would like to form a sort of  "mastermind group". Share ideas, successes and failures on a level that wouldn't be practical in a forum setting.  I'm happy to share what has been working for my clients and would welcome a fresh set of eyes to see what we're missing. **Discussions like:  ** Link Acquisition Scaling Staff, Content Creation and Systems Scaling Social Media Outreach Local Outreach Successes - Email Templates White/Black Hat SEO Techniques If you think it would be a good fit.  Please PM me or comment. Thanks!

    | CRO_first
    1
  • RosemaryB


    I have a client with a simple one page landing website hosted on Squarespace.  Is there any method to easily apply structured data to this format?

    | RosemaryB
    0
  • Jon_Gibb


    Hello everyone, Thanks for stopping by to check out my problem and to help shed light on it for myself and hopefully others in a similar boat! As Ive gotten more into this process of SEO and my online business (with the great help of many community members here, many thanks everyone!) I have begun building a wordpress site in prep of canceling my squarespace site (Im a Kauai based wedding photographer) for more SEO value, faster page load time, and more data and plugins to the site. During this time however Ive noticed that my business www.balihaiphoto.com has a lot of confusion/search results and content I think may be leading potential clients in other directions, or even google down the wrong track of what my business is. The reason I suspect this is a restaurant that hosts a lot of weddings, and in turn, wedding photographers blogging about the location (the venue is called Bali Hai and its not located in Hawaii) as well as a reality group here and that Im getting occasional hits on my site for "Bali Wedding photographer" when I'd like to be known/indexed and ranked for "Kauai wedding photographer" and am working on a lot of long tail content to add to the site once its finished up. I feel like Im answering my own question slightly as I feel that I need to change the domain and name to something new, unique, and not attached to anything other than Kauai and Hawaii, but dont know exactly why that may be the best thing to do, or, if it even is the best thing to do? I greatly appreciate any help or elaboration as to why or why not a domain and brand name change would be helpful or not. Many thanks everyone and Aloha! -Jon Gibb

    | Jon_Gibb
    0
  • ebk


    Hello, We are building a guide/directory that will service multiple cities across Canada.  Currently, our home page will detect your IP, and display local content on the home page.  Although we feel this is incredibly useful to the end user, we are worried about how search engines will interpret our home page. In addition to our home page, should we have landing pages for each city that we are in? and should we follow site structure like this? www.thesite.com/vancouver So if a user from Vancouver goes to our home page, they will see Vancouver related content, but how would a search engine see the home page? We would like to know the best approach to placing well for searches in different Canadian cities. Most of our searches will be city specific: Calgary widgets, Vancouver widgets, etc. Thanks

    | ebk
    0
  • fraserhannah


    We have a client who has approximately 25 retail sites (mini department stores) selling in general the same merchandise ranges - some stores carry all the ranges (brands) while others have fewer due to space restrictions. Each destination is different has its own branding and unique selling point which needs to be reflected. The client wants us to build individual websites for each location as they want to promote each location individually. I know that the search engines don't penalise duplicate content, but the core of each website is going to be essentially the same. My concern is there is no way you could write 25 different pages about the same Colony Candle range! Any ideas suggestions would be much appreciated - a one site option would not work as the client wants individual website and due to the different branding, USP and the fact they want to market them individually I would agree with them. Thanks Fraser

    | fraserhannah
    0
  • JanetJ


    I work with an interior design whom I've persuaded to purchase a virtual street address in the town she wanted to work in years ago. She has a Skokie, IL business address that has been claimed and confirmed across the internet. Now, she is growing and wants her new website to not only be optimized for the more affluent areas of Chicago but she also would like to gain Global notice, (I'd settle for National).  My problems: She doesn't want to purchase a street address in Chicago because it is a pain to go get her mail. What do I do about all her directory listings and review sites that have her located in Skokie if I can persuade her to get a Chicago address? Do I leave the Skokie address and add more content targeting keyword phrases with Chicago? What should be my initial focus here? I feel it is a smaller target and less competition to go after Chicago but she wants to start spreading her wings and work all over the world. Help!!

    | JanetJ
    0
  • CRMI


    I recently purchased two custom domains (www.greenvillencshredding.com and www.shreddinggreenvillenc.com) that are being forwarded to a page on my site (http://www.crmi-online.com/shredding-greenville-nc.html).  The purpose for this is because I am trying everything I know to get my rankings above my competitor for shredding services in our market of Greenville,NC.  I thought that purchasing a custom domain might help but I have not seen any results and they are ranking in the bottom 50's.  Any suggestions to help get my rankings up for my service/area? Thanks a bunch!

    | CRMI
    0
  • 411Locals


    Working mostly with SMBs for 8 years now, we have gradually developed the notion that small business owners are hard to reach by phone. Our Customer Service agents spend hours unsuccessfully trying to reach business owners. If a potential customer calls the business, they'll have to face the same outcome. This means missed opportunities for both parties. Needless to say, one of the most important KPIs in local SEO is the number of generated phone calls...but no one's there to answer. We wanted to dig deeper into the matter, so we did a small study with 85 businesses. Results show that: 37.8% of calls are answered by a person. 37.8% of calls are answered by an answering machine, where no actual conversation (nor conversion) is possible, so we treat these calls as unanswered. 24.3% of calls are unanswered. We also gathered a list of possible solutions to the problem, but what we really need to know is WHY do business owners neglect such an important part of their business? And what resolutions can you think of?

    | 411Locals
    0
  • ben_dpp


    I've just been running a report on a site and noticed that while they have a .co.uk domain it is hosted on a server in the United States and just wondered if anyone was aware, if the physical location of a server mattered to search engines for ranking purposes especially with local search?

    | ben_dpp
    0
  • Bear.Group


    The main conversion point on my site is a contact form completion. Approximately a third of my conversions last year were from an international country we don't sell our services in, and all those conversions were attempts to sell us services. We are considering blocking the traffic to the site from that country. I'm trying to figure out if that will negatively affect my SEO rank here in the US before we proceed with that plan. Does anyone have any experience with implementing this tactic?

    | Bear.Group
    0
  • White_Shark_Media


    I have a website nativeamericanpalmhut.com that has been up and running for months. The sitemap was created and submitted in GWMT and the site was indexed pretty quickly. Here's where I'm lost all of the pages are indexed but only the homepage ranks and only for the exact match domain query "Native American Palm Huts". What's even more confusing is that Google Analytics and HotJar Analytics are both showing hundreds Google organic search traffic coming to the site on multiple pages (not just the homepage). This on top of the fact the that website is ranking well for several different terms in Bing and Yahoo lead me to believe this is a Google search specific problem. I have checked the backlinks to see if maybe there was a penalty on the domain but couldn't find any record of it. I've searched the Moz Q&As, Countless Google forums, etc with no luck. I'm scratching my head at the moment so if anyone has any ideas on what could be causing the problem that would be great.

    | White_Shark_Media
    1
  • donsilvernail


    I am doing a site audit for a potential new client. The previous web design company used very long titles like this (Case Management | Client Advocacy | Expert Witness | Legal Support | Medical Consultation | Pennsylvania and Michigan) 117 characters. This is the title for  a services page. What is best practice here. To me this is key word stuffing but it is relevant to the clients page. Is it alright to grossly overdo the title character limit for the sake of keyword optimization? I would probably do something more like (Medical consultancy services | company name with location) What do you all think? Looking for a quick response!!!

    | donsilvernail
    1
  • KempRugeLawGroup


    What's the best way to approach fixing thin "city+services" pages? Would recommend doing one page at a time? Or doing a little on a bunch of pages at a time? For example, rewrite one page with 1,000 words of unique content, adding city specific images/videos of services rendered and local testimonials over the course of a week? Then go to the next page the following week? Or, one week add city specific images/videos to all the pages you can? Then, the next week add something else to all the pages? I'm trying to figure out the best way to scale this, and also which way google/search engines would prefer/look more kindly at? Thanks, Ruben

    | KempRugeLawGroup
    0
  • Jubaer96


    If I get several backlinks from same web 2.0 (wordpress, tumblr or so on) will it be beneficial as 1 ? or each backlink will equal? if you say, "will count as 1 cause from same domain" then why don't google give you credit for getting link from 96 DA site? (wordpress)

    | Jubaer96
    1
  • Mutatio_Digital


    I have very recently taken on a local business to manage and quite new to all of this. Your posts on the subject of multi-location SEO have been incredibly useful and the original blogpost on Local landing pages by Miriam Ellis is in my reading list and I am sure will be revisited regularly. I have another question on this obviously complex subject, what to do about tracking your keywords in MOZ Pro? I have subscribed and set up my main keywords and linked each to the 40 different service locations for our business, which is based in a single location but services a wide area,  however this now gives me 400 keywords to track, which seems way too much and unmanageable. Can you give me some advice on how to make this much more effective? Many thanks, Sarah

    | Mutatio_Digital
    0
  • coolhandluc


    Hi Can anyone recommend what they think the best tool is to track local rankings. I want to manage several small businesses' visibility and I am not sure which one is the best. I have been told that "Bright local" and "SEO PowerSuite" are the best in the business. Is that true? or is there something better out there Thanks

    | coolhandluc
    0
  • 4RS_John


    We're a directory of industry-specific services, so a lot of people find their way to our site by searching something like "tire repair near me." For every keyword we rank for, ("tire repair"), we also rank for the "near me" version, ("tire repair near me"). I'm looking for opinions on if is worth spending ~50% of the keywords included in my plan to track these "near me" keywords, or if we would be better off tracking some of the most important "near me" keywords, and some of those same base keywords on a local basis for major population centres, (for example "tire repair nyc"). What does the forum think?

    | 4RS_John
    0
  • maxcarnage


    Hey Mozzers, I currently have a client in the medical industry who I'm trying to build some keyword rankings for, but I'm having a hard-time finding low-/no- cost link partners. The client specializes in 'breast augmentation procedures' (ex. breast reduction, breast enhancement, reconstruction, etc.), however, a lot of the sites I've been finding throughout my link prospecting efforts are either low-quality or haven't published content in at least several years. My question to you all is: Have you found any SEO strategies to be particularly successful for medical industry-based sites or plastic surgeon sites? Thank you all so much for taking the time to read this! I'm looking forward to reading your responses!

    | maxcarnage
    0

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