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Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

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.


  • Hi all We're working with a client that is in the travel industry and they already have a relatively new site (setup in September 2014) which is on a .com domain We've completed a digital strategy for them and have identified 12 key markets within Europe, North America, South America and the Asia Pacific region. We have suggested an approach of setting up individual local websites for these countries and for countries in the same region sharing a common language (like USA & Canada) we're thinking to use a subdomain on the existing .com (eg. amaricas.clientdomain.com) Does this sound like a solid approach? thanks

    | seobackbone
    0

  • Hello Mozzers, We need to redo some of our meta descriptions as our CTR's are not to good. I've noticed one of my competitors using emoji's which I personally think looks pretty good. They are using the Phone icon and ticks - as calls to action etc However, I can't see hardly anyone else using them on general serps ...so I am wondering , is it a bad idea ? thanks Pete

    | PeteC12
    0

  • Hello, What is possible as far as promoting a local SEO and Web Design Company with a blog? I'm offering simple web design, both informational and product based, as well as SEO for existing informational and product-based companies here in Boise, Idaho. At first it won't be face to face so there's no local SEO. I honestly don't like to sell. I've done it for years and I'd like to spend my time blogging (mainly blogging), doing social media, and volunteering. How can I use this approach to get a beginning agency off the ground? Please don't tell me to go push my services. I'd like to get my company off the ground through avenues that have integrity to me. How do I do this? Feel free to include articles and videos in your response if appropriate. Thank you.

    | BobGW
    0

  • For example, I'd like to type in a zipcode and get the highest ranking websites by DA/whatever metric the software uses, within a 25 mile radius? Does that type of service exist? I'm looking to build up our local links, but most of the websites have extremely low authority. I'm trying to find some good ones without having to manually check each one. Thanks, Ruben

    | KempRugeLawGroup
    1

  • Hey Mozzers! Everything nowadays is automated- social media, content calendars, etc.. I am trying to get more organized with my time so that I can make sure each client is getting a fair amount of work, but this can be tough as one person managing 20 various campaigns; it leaves little time for connecting with influencers and finding those organic connections for link building. I was recently watching an old WBF 'Building a Monthly SEO Action Plan' and it missed the mark a bit on what I was hoping for. I was wanting Rand's time and what he prioritizes; reporting, link building, content refinement... What SEO time management strategy have you found useful? How do you break down your time each month/per campaign? Thanks!!!

    | localwork
    0

  • Good Morning Mozzers, I currently have a client who is trying to place ads on Google Hotel Finder. I've recently conducted a great deal of research on this topic, but I'm still struggling to find anything definitive in terms of creating ads for the property I represent. Likewise, I've noticed that my client's property is ranking very poorly for a number of keyword terms when you click "more places" on the search results page. In short, I need to achieve two items (AND FAST...): being able to create ads for the property on Google Hotel Finder, and figuring out how to get the property to rank more highly in the "more places" section of the search results page. Quite frankly, we are willing to do any and all things necessary at this point to expedite the process. Any and all insight/recommendations would be great! Thank you all so much for reading, I look forward to hearing your comments!

    | maxcarnage
    0

  • Hey Mozzers! It's that time of year to start thinking about gift giving. I am the worst at finding cool ideas! What have you done in the past to show your clients love and appreciation over the holidays? We are setting a budget of about $40-$50/per client. I'd love to hear your ideas..

    | localwork
    1

  • Hi all, I do hope to get some insight into this problem. I look after a webiste - http://www.crownhilldentalpractice.co.uk/ - and the age used to rank for 'dentist plymouth' in the middle of the first page of the SERPS on Google. The ranking then slowly slipped at the beginning of this year and following the Penguin update it has fallen to the bottom of page 1 and is sometimes seen on page two. Their competitors are mostly in plymouth, but there is a site whose physical location is close to my client, and yet they maange to rank more highly. I have tried to see what this domain has been doing - they have a marginally higher domain authority, but the clients domain is older. Checekc Webmaster, (no messages) re-submitted site map, built up internal links, optimised images, bilt up Google + with reviews too. They have some social signlas from facebook too. Any ideas of how to get these guys back up to above the fodl on poage one for that keyword? Kind Regards Carrie

    | dentaldesign
    0

  • Hello, With regards to hosting, it is my understanding that one of the search engine ranking factors for a particular geographic location (city/country) is where a site is hosted physically geographically. For example, if a site was developed for New York users primarily AND it was hosted on a server physically located within New York (IP address) then it would rank better in New York ... that is, given all other SEO ranking factors were equal?   Is this true? My worry is that once a site is served via CloudFlare via their 64 global cached locations, then do the search engines effectively lose all context as to its origin hosting and therefore hosting in New York (in the example above) would have no different effect than if the site was hosted on Mars (after the site had been cached, that is). Many thanks,
    Mark 🙂

    | uworlds
    0

  • Dear Mozzers, We have implemented schema.org on our website and it's showing up as being correct. However, I've been told by a SEO company that what we have done is incorrect and is therefore giving out wrong signals to google and that it needs fixing but they haven't told me whats wrong with it. Would someone please be able to have to have a quick scan and highlight anything that is not correct. I have enclosed 4 urls belows of the different sections of my website. My website homepage - is -- http://goo.gl/2F80w2 We have a number of branches- An example branch url is - http://goo.gl/8FpcaS example category url - http://goo.gl/gbAaD2 example product url - http://goo.gl/EXI1Sr Any assistance would be greatly appreciated Many thanks
    Peter

    | PeteC12
    0

  • When writing content. Let's say I write fantastic useful content that most home buyers (since I'm a realtor) would benefit from, but they don't have a website, so they aren't going to link back to me anywhere. Whats the best way to get your content seen? Do you recommend putting it on facebook and promoting it? It's just tough in my business because it's such a commodity but I know there has to be a way. I'm just trying to see the best way before I spend TONS and TONS of time on writing actual useful and great content. As of now it's been a risk vs. reward thing and I haven't done it, but I feel like now is the time. Thanks!

    | Veebs
    0

  • Hi Guys,
    I am in Australia and have a client I am working with that ranks quite well for their main keywords.
    The business is based in Sydney but delivers Australia wide. The issue is - their main keyword ranks no.1 nationally.
    If I set google to any of the main cities and type
    Outdoor Mirrors Perth
    Outdoor Mirrors Melbourne
    Outdoor Mirrors Sydney
    My client comes up no.1 But if I leave the city off the end of the keyword and I'm anywhere but Sydney I do not rank well for Outdoor Mirrors. The address of the business is in Sydney hence the no.1 there, but we said in Places that we deliver australia wide. Does anybody know why we don't rank well without the city added to the keyword and a way to remedy this? Thanks Nik

    | nikaus
    0

  • I've just typed "Private Investigator" into Google, location set to "Coleshill" (it's near Birmingham!)
    The search results were surprising:
    Position 6: <cite class="_Rm">birmingham-privateinvestigators.co.uk</cite>
    Position 8: <cite class="_Rm">privateinvestigator-coventry.co.uk</cite> Both sites are the same source of information altered to suit the city - INCREDIBLY SPAMMY. They are just full of SEO text stuffing. No doubt any city you enter they will appear with [city]-privateinvestigators.co.uk..
    How are they ranking with such old-skool dirty SEO tactics? You can't say they will be found eventually, because Google has released algorithm after algorithm updates to penalise sites like this. Could it be the importance of having a local phone number and (supposedly) physical address?

    | Solid_Web
    0

  • A manager wants change our 800 phone number to use letters instead of numbers. This would involve changing our toll free number, changing phone number on website/blog/quote forms (different platforms) and changing on Social Media, Local and citations. i.e. 1-800-GoReds1   versus 1-800-555-5555 Is there any research that shows customers appreciate a Brand Named phone number over simple numbers? It seems it would make using the phone number more difficult except on mobile, where it can be clicked. I have looked online but have found nothing, but am not sure I'm searching the correct terms.

    | RoxBrock
    0

  • Hello - one of my client's is expanding their business and opening new locations across the country. I have been planning to setup up the structure as: www.clientsite.com, www.clientsite.com/location1, www.clientsite.com/location2, www.clientsite.com/location3 and so on . Is there any downside for our SEO by making each of these location1, location2... sites their own individual Wordpress install? The overall look of each location will be the same (and they will be using the same custom Wordpress theme), but there services at each location will be different (or have different names). I'd estimate there will be very few duplicate pages from the "main" site to each location site. Thanks!

    | SundialStudios
    0

  • My client is a franchise business and they want their location landing pages to rank for every one of their 60 plus locations nationwide. They are performing extremely well for geomodified terms. The argument is that people rarely ever search using the city name. Are there stats to back up whether this claim is true, and if so, do you know where I can get a hold of such data (outside of searching in Keyword Planner... unless that's the answer!)

    | Treefrog_SEO
    0

  • We lost our site in an actual meltdown at our hosting provider in January, and decided to do a new site instead of bring back a dated backup. So we've only been "active" at our URL since about May. That said, I have not seen any irregular or unexpected penalties. Not showing up is natural if you have literally nothing to show. We have had a site since then, though, and while it isn't going to win any award, we've built it with best practices using sites like this, trying to use natural, helpful, actual language to convey what we do and why we do it (we're web developers for small business making WordPress sites). Paying attention to titles, keyword frequency and variability, alt tags, etc. Always erring on the conservative side. While we build sites for people across the country (and a few in places like the UK), we just moved into an actual office space in our hometown so it's never been more important to push our visibility locally. We've just come back on the scene, in relative terms, so there's no expectation we'll crack the top five or ten; they all have teams of people and bags of capital and have been around many, many years, plus they link to the dozens upon dozens of sites they have done and promote their appearances in press releases and such. Their content is not bad, and most of it is good and not spammy. They are being genuine. That said, we're in the late 40s to late 50s right now. Happy to show up at all, but after that first group of legitimate sites, there are automatically generated webpages (which I thought couldn't even be listed...one is an MP3 download site that mentions one of the top companies in the page title, and just has a random video on the page) local companies touting themselves as SEO "experts" that say things like "Here at Company X, we work hard to bring you the best Rochester, NY web design in the hopes that when you make your Rochester, NY web design decisions, you'll think of us first Rochester, NY web design." I changed the company name and the location, but that's an actual line from their site job listings from places like Craigslist and Indeed hair stylists dentists (?!) Our code validates, we've incorporated Schema for our addresses, our site is usually fast (650ms to 1.3s in Pingdom from Dallas). We don't do any redirecting, our metas likes everyone else's don't count for ranking but are thoughtfully produced, we pay attention to using concise and accurate URLs without stop words, etc. There are also very very few resources loaded on a given page. That said, there's not a lot on the blog that's new and all told we have I think 13 total pages including a few posts. Is it even possible to get close to the actual pack if we, for example, posted more regularly? I was just reading here about how we shouldn't put our links in the site footers of our clients (which we don't always anyway), so I have them only as branded links, only on the homepages, and only on sites that, when crawled, didn't have nonzero spam scores (everyone else has a nofollow link in our portfolio). I realize this is a super generic question but I wasn't quite sure how to search out this particular use case given that our aspirations are so basic...just trying to figure out if there's something obvious we're missing and shooting ourselves in the foot over. A thousand pledges of gratitude! (if this is too common and I just didn't see a duplicate, let me know and I will delete it or ask for it to be deleted....also, I don't want to appear spammy so I am not linking to my site unless it's absolutely necessary...not sure what protocol is...I'm pretty self-aware so I do believe everything I've said above is true).

    | eaglenestmedia
    1

  • We are redoing a hospital site, and one of the goals is to increase traffic for the various practices associated with the hospital. Which brings up an interesting dilemma -- how to optimize these practices with respect to local SEO. Currently, the sites are listed as in a directory, one after the other, with multiple addresses. Would it be best to create individual pages to each one? Should these then link to the practice's website, if applicable? Any other insights would be appreciated.

    | SecondSEOMOZAcct
    0

  • I have recently embarked on an SEO strategy for my website. I've done a lot of reading and researching here on Moz and on search engine land and have got a good idea of how to build a basic SEO strategy. My own expertise is in PPC, so keyword strategy came easy to me. I rebuilt my website and focused on the on page SEO with every single page, this has brought really great results - instantly. For some of my chosen keywords I have gone from not being ranked to being on Google's first page - within a couple of days of my new website going live, for other's I've gone from being outside the top 50 to being ranked in the top 50, so my on page SEO has really strengthened my position and I now understand how important it is as a ranking factor. I've also started to create content on a regular basis with 2 or 3 new blogs being uploaded each week, the blogs are based around my businesses main target market's - PPC, Web design, digital marketing etc. These blogs have a lot of links out to good websites, EG "to learn about adwords check out the adwords fundamentals course on lynda.com" and useful info like that. I also signed up to whitespark for citation idea's so have started adding my site to all relevant directory suggestions that it gives me. So my question is this, after seeing great early results because of my on page SEO, what are my next steps to increase my rankings? And more specifically how do I use Moz to help increase my ranking? During the week, I've started using Open site explorer to find my competitors backlinks, should I now spend my time trawling through these links to find opportunities to add links for my website where I can. Is this a good thing to be doing at this stage? Anything else that I should be doing now to capitalise on my early results please let me know what it is and please tell me how to take full advantage of Moz to gain a better ranking. I appreciate all insight!

    | michealbren
    0

  • I operate a local print and direct mail company located in Houston called Catdi Printing (www.catdi.com)We do very well with our local rankings and rank 2 or 3  in our main keywords (  Houston Printing , Direct Mail Houston & eddm Houston ) We are looking to upgrade our online quoting and ordering system. The software is very expensive and the only way we can incorporate this new system is to move our site and redirect our domain. The new hosting provider is located in California and might even be hosted by Google but im not certain on this point.  Our current host provider is Hostgator and they are based in Houston so im not this provides any benefit. I guess my main question is will this new change affect our overall regular and local rankings? I would hate to see our positions and ranking fall because of this change. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks CATDI

    | ChopperCharlie
    1

  • I am looking for a good backlinker or backlinking company to hire.  I just have too many marketing tasks to do it myself. I am not looking for quantity but quality.  Any recommendations would be appreciated. Sincerely, Garret

    | eWebify
    0

  • Hi, I have a client with multiple locations. One of the locations manager is searching for branded and non-branded keywords on his mobile phone and not able to locate the business (within the parking lot of the location). Our ranking reports via a local search platform and manual checks indicate the location is actually ranking well. and we're seeing progress in GA. Has anyone deal with something like this before? This is a location that recently opened to the public. The concern is around mobile web and app results. I'm looking for some guidance around how to approach the situation. I'm sorry I cannot provide more details on the client.

    | burnseo
    0

  • Hello everyone, Our website has NOT yet ranked on page 1 for any of our keywords but something strange happened two days ago when we noticed that 7 of our Leeds keywords and 2 of our Manchester keywords were ranking between position 5 and 8 on ''page 1'' so we made a list of them. To make sure that we were not mistaken, we checked this at 3 different occasions over a period of 3 hrs and 2 of my colleagues witnessed this too. We were really overwhelmed as we were not expecting this rise at all. But we were shocked when we rechecked these rankings today and noticed that ALL these rankings have dropped from position 6-7 to 15-25 and this has happened for 9 keywords. There has been no Google message in the webmaster tool etc. Has someone ever noticed something similar. At the time of rise in rankings, we were spending huge money on PPC campaigns, could that be a reason why our organic rankings went really high??? I dont think there is a connection between organic and paid rankings but that is the only thing that I can think of really. Any advices will be highly appreciated Thanks in advance

    | Imy84
    0

  • We know about Panda... Penguin... Hummingbird... but I heard another major update is going to happen. Where do you find out the google updates ahead of time? Maybe a stupid question.

    | kpexpressions
    0

  • Hello everyone, My name is Stacy and I run an entertainment website.   We are magicians based in Akron Ohio.  I have researched, read and watch every video I can find on SEO.  I have a amateurs understanding of SEO and hope this isn't a dumb question. Even though we are based in Akron Ohio, we receive a majority of our work from Cleveland.  My question... how do we target Cleveland?  To begin with, I'm not sure how to layout the site.  Should we choose 4 of the biggest terms and then target smaller more specific via blog?  When I began keyword searching for terms that might fit our business I found terms such as Magician, magicians, and Magicians for hire rank rather well.  When I add "Cleveland" in front of these terms, i'm receiving 0 search results.  I guess this is where I get confused.  Since we are trying to target this city, should we be long tailing with Cleveland in front of our terms? Truly having a hard time targeting this city and not sure how to go about it.

    | StacyMagic
    0

  • Hi there, I’ve got a question regarding SEO and Geotargeting The following is my business scenario. My business is based in Spain and its goal is to sell a product for both foreign students from all around the world that come to study here in Spain and to Spanish students as well. Considering this scenario and the fact that for the resources I have at the moment I can just maintain two versions of the page I decided that the best option would be to establish two page versions – one in Spanish and one in English both with very different content. NOTE – The main goal is to rank for different keywords according to the language. Therefore, the content will be different because I’ve conducted two types of keywords semantics strategy using Adwords Keyword Planner - One with Spain as country and Spanish as language, the other with Spain as country and English as language Ideally the Spanish version would serve results for users searching in Spanish (Spanish, Mexican, Argentinian, Peruvian..) while the English version would serve either users searching in English being English their native tongue (American, British, Australian) or users with a nationality that doesn’t belong to a country where English is the official language but still (I suppose) search in English (Chinese, Brazilian, Swedish, Japanese…) I thought that the best option would be to create two different and separated domains www.example.es and www.example.com Indicating in GWT that for both the domains the country is Spain. And then I would use the following hreflang attribute to indicate the language. For www.example.es And so on…. While For www.example.com And so on…. My question is, do you think this configuration is correct for my needs and goals. Do you have any suggestion? Can you see any pitfall? Thanks a lot for your help!!!

    | Midleton
    0

  • So I have some questions (probably more of a discussion really) about how to do traditional advertising in 2015. I started working with a local company that has done very well for themselves throughout the years but has lacked in the digital marketing space. Today we are doing a lot better digitally and I have been put in a position that will also affect how we do traditional...which I've never really done before (I'm a digital marketer so why would I?). Here's my question (or discussion item): If we have always done radio jingles (include Pandora here too), cheesy commercials, and traditional billboards and they seem to have done well through the years should we keep doing those? I have 2 issues here as a digital marketer: I have virtually no data on people that see or hear our advertisements because there isn't an Analytics platform for the real world. This means that I can't stay with them, better their experience, or nurture them along the way with my advertising. My thinking here is that I want to get them to my website then -- Please correct me if I'm wrong or if there are other ways of thinking for this out there that make sense. I want to test test test these jingles, commercials, and billboards but I'm unsure how to. How can you tell what's working and what's not? Also, are there others out there doing things like this that can at least show me that jingles work (or do not work)? My impression is that they work because people remember the cheesy jingles and such but also that they don't work because everyone's take on them is "they are so annoying!" -- Again, please shed some light here and correct me if I'm wrong in my thinking. My final note here and MAIN purpose for posting here is because I want to change the way things are done with traditional. It all seems to be the same thing over and over, and I want to get creative with this and push the limits. This is why I have turned to the Moz community, because I think we have those types of minds here.

    | HashtagJeff
    1

  • Hi, A client of mine offers loft conversions and wants to make a go of it. So he has a website dedicated to loft conversions. He is also a joiner/carpenter and has another old website which offers general joinery work and insurance work. Both websites have the same business name and same address and phone number. There is only one Google place page for the loft conversions website. The loft conversions website is not ranking as well as we would like locally. Could it be due to the same NAP? What are the best options? Redirect the old website to the loft conversions one (he might not like that idea) Change the address and phone number on one website?(and all subsequent citations?) Would love some help on this!

    | AL123al
    0

  • Does anyone know how much internal linking is helpful in ranking? And, what is the recommended amount of internal links in a page of the website? I have seen some websites adding so much internal links ranking good but not sure about the recommended amount.

    | BrianBotts.
    0

  • First off, thank you for any help or advice. I appreciate it. I own a large tour company that operates tours in Savannah Georgia and New Orleans Louisiana. Savannah is where we started and I purchased the domain ghosttoursinsavannah.com when I started. It ranks very well for all relevant search terms my customers are searching for. Very often either #1 or #2. In New Orleans, I have ghosttoursinneworleans.com. Since it is a relatively new website, around 10 months old, it doesn't rank as well, but we are in the top 7 results for many search terms that are relevant. Now, my company is called Ghost City Tours and I also have a website at www.GhostCityTours.com. For almost a year now I have been thinking about consolidating all of my websites under my brand website, www.GhostCityTours.com. So, the homepage for www.ghosttoursinsavannah.com would be copied over and 301'd to my Savannah subpage at www.GhostCityTours.com. All blog posts would be redirected, etc. Same for New Orleans. Understandably, I am nervous to do this as my 'city' websites rank very well. I know how I would do it, consolidating them, but I am curious on everyone's thoughts. For example, I am assuming I would see a traffic drop and probably a drop in the serps too. Best guess, how long would the recovery take, so I could regain my search positions? Any tips or pointers would be greatly appreciated. OR, should I even consolidate (I really want to).

    | ghostcitytours
    0

  • Hello, I'm looking for easy (yah right, correct?) ways to market locally my web solutions company. I do web design, E-commerce web design, and I start informational and E-commerce companies for people starting at $1000/month - only new companies, later I'll do a little more E-commerce stuff. Looking for inexpensive, fairly easy ways to market locally. Thanks!

    | BobGW
    0

  • Well hello there! We run a local directory site for a specific vertical and use several thousand call tracking numbers (one per listing) to track calls to the local business and report on those metrics (number of calls, appointment set, etc). We are familiar with dynamic phone number insertion to be able to track phone calls back to the type of traffic or campaign sending it.  If we wanted to implement this, it would require an exorbitant amount of call tracking numbers as we already start out with several thousand numbers to begin with. We are toying with the idea to hide the phone number in the directory listing and require the user to click to show the full phone number. We know this is an additional action required by the user, but we assume that this would then help us see the folks who are more serious about calling the number of the local business. We could then use that click metric to then tie out all the goals within GA to look at how effective a given medium is and even look at what content is sending traffic that clicks on the phone number. Two areas for comments: Any input on others who use this metric?  Any input on if anyone thinks this is a good/bad metric?  Anyone have a better idea/technique? Do you think that the search engines would see this technique as a negative? If so, why or why not? Thanks!

    | HeaHea
    0

  • Hi all, Just handed the keys to this site "newly" designed and put together by a large well known company during a small business experiment they were running. They took a dated old non-responsive site with questionable architecture and even more questionable SEO practices and made it responsive and well... what you see now. I skimmed it and started to review and audit but decided I was a little too close to be neutral so thought some third party opinions would be helpful as a start. I guess I'm just hoping for some fresh eyes to take a look and give me your overall impression re: structure, coding, SEO etc and then some idea of how you might tackle all of what I was handed if it were a perfect world scenario where there was actually a good, strong budget and a lot of time to spend. WWYD in other words! 😉 Thanks so much for any comments in advance! www.certifiedroofing.info 

    | Pixelwik
    0

  • Client has rebranded and has a new url. They have a lot of great video content on YouTube that has old branding on it. Bad phone numbers, old url, old company name. I was planning to download, rebrand, then re-upload... But some of the videos have 200 - 2000 views and I prefer not to loose that traction. I assume responses will be along the lines of "you have to weigh which is more important - the brand or the current video rank". Where I'm stuck is how valuable is 200 - 2000 views on 15-20 videos. Not at all I guess, if they are sending people to the wrong place. I guess I'm just thinking out loud, but would love to hear some thoughts other than my own!

    | vernonmack
    0

  • Hello! I am in the process of building my second location, and will be moving to Nashville TN.  My first location is located in ohio, and I am changing my primary location to nashville, but still want to keep my clients in Ohio... At least for the first year. As for directory building, what is the best option?  1.) Should I create two separate directory listings for each location and then direct www.domain.com to Nashville directory, and then www.domain.com/ohio-wedding-photographer/ to the Ohio listing in the directory? Or do you create one directory and mention I have offices in both Ohio and nashville? Is it bad to have two listings for each location  if they have different addresses and phone numbers? Thank you!

    | jean7878
    0

  • So the general idea for domain names is around to keep it around 15 characters, but I'm considering getting a mycitywebdesign.com type domain specific to my location and it's 23 characters. No hyphens. The original site hasn't had any seo work on it, so the original won't lose any progress. What suggestions/experience do you have with this type of situation? Thanks in advance!

    | blakewenloe
    0

  • Hi,
    Can you please tell me what is the best cost per call tool to use? Is the google mobile click to call feature effective? A client who runs a local business wants to increase the amount of calls their business receives.

    | corn2015
    0

  • Hi guys, I'm co-founding a company called Comp'd and we're currently in the final leg of an accelerator program right now. Our demo day is one week from today and we got our product out later than we would have liked. Long story short we need to get 70 new/initial users within the next 7 days or we're screwed. I'm asking anyone and everyone I possibly can for help. If you have any advice on specific things that I can be doing to make this goal happen, please share, I'll take any and every idea I can get. Some background on the product: -The product is a $25/mo subscription for unlimited concert tickets. We're also offering users their first month for $10 for easier onboarding. Also, we have the economics of this worked out, so those aren't a concern from a business perspective. -website at compdapp.com if you want to take a look. -Currently only available in Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska (though neither is a traditional "big" city like New York or Chicago, they're still cities with populations of 250,000-450,000 with thriving/busy downtown districts). -We've got about $7,000 in capital right now and are willing to spend what we need to. If you have any other questions just let me know, otherwise I'd really appreciate your ideas on how I should be spending my time to get users. This is an emergency situation and I'm willing to do whatever I have to to make this happen. Thanks guys! P.S. I know everyone's primary focus here is obviously online marketing, but we're all still marketers here, and if you have offline marketing ideas I'm more than open to hearing those as well, particularly if they can offer a quick or instant turnaround.

    | Dillon_Whittier
    0

  • I am completely stuck on one of my SEO accounts. In Search Queries (the OLD search), it is showing me that my client is ranking for keywords on pages that I know they are not ranking for. They are ranking for keywords in New Jersey when they are not New York. No where on the website do we say anything about New Jersey at all. So it makes absolutely no sense. Then in Search Analytics, the data seems to be much more accurate. All the New Jersey keywords are gone. But then the clicks are all ZERO! Which I know is wrong because they are showing up in Google Analytics. I have been at this for over a week now and I am racking my brain trying to figure out how to fix this. Anyone have any advice?

    | blackrino
    0

  • Does anyone have experience with geo-specific content on their homepage and how the location of the Googlebot impacts rank and/or traffic? I ask because looking in Search Console today, I noticed the thumbnail image of our site is different than usual and it was pulling in a specific geo-location and wondered if there is any value/concern on how Google sees our site from different locations and if it could impact SERP's.

    | Shawn_Huber
    0

  • Hi Moz Community! We operate a business where we have a network of 2,000+ technicians around the country who help people repair their mobile phones. These techs do the fixing at the customer's location, making them service area businesses. Even after scouring all of the go-to places on local SEO, I'm struggling to find best practices for this type of situation - the fact that our techs are operating in service areas presents a number of challenges. The biggest one, it seems, is that inevitably service areas are going to overlap. When I talked to a Google rep on this he said this "might" cause our locations to get de-listed and we'd just have to test and find out. Other challenges include the fact that we cannot bulk upload the service areas of our techs, and we cannot bulk verify - meaning there is a ton of work to do at our scale. Any suggestions on where to go to find resources on this specific topic, or an example of someone doing this well we can model? Thanks everyone!

    | JohnGroves
    1

  • With algo updates like Pigeon, should citation building still remain a core part of our link building strategy?

    | AfroSEO
    0

  • Hello, I realize that in order to get business in SEO, you really need to specialize. The most experience I have is with the nuts and bolts of small business E-commerce and and many types of small business web design. I've run several online stores for about 9 years and I've been doing small business web design (and a bit of development) since 2001. I've had several other SEO clients over the years. I'm in Boise, Idaho at this site What would be a profitable approach? I'm thinking I could mainly build and market small online stores for locals. Maybe something like 'Ecommerce Web Design and SEO in Boise, Idaho' for a home page title. Or I could learn Local, but I have less experience with that. Or I could try to get national clients in an even smaller niche. I'm trying to find a good approach. I only charge $75/hour and I give generous quotes when appropriate, so an 'affordable' approach would be good Thanks, Bob

    | BobGW
    0

  • Hi there, I have a photobooth hire company in and have been working on getting our site onto the top page for keywords relating to our service and location for almost a year now, but am really struggling to see rank improvement despite my best efforts. After a major penguin update back in mid 2014 I noticed that due to some bad practises from a company that we previously hired, our rank began to plummet. So in the aftermath of that, I found myself having to clean up and disavow a lot of spammy and broken links. This was back towards August last year and despite trying to "clean the slate" and continue to build better backlinks (mostly through reputable directories) I'm still getting little to know rank increases. Is there a possibility that the site is still being black listed by Google in some way and thus all my best practises for the last 6 months haven't really helped at all? Thanks

    | 16seo
    0

  • I have a client who has 2 locations approx 20 miles apart. He wants to reach new customers at the second office location. He is an owner of a law firm he practices elder law, in the second location he has an attorney who practices injury law. The second location is in an area where targeting prospects for elder law could also be lucrative. We currently have two separate websites for each area of law. My question is... Would it be suggested to create another elder law website to target the potential clients in this second location. Also for the first location we have put in place a content marketing strategy that has increased revenue considerably. Basically creating content (blog posts) that resonate with the target audience. If a new website is in order can the blog post be posted here too with a canonical referencing the original website. Im thinking a slow redistribution of content on the new site. Advice here is greatly appreciated as this new market for my client could increase revenue even more.

    | donsilvernail
    0

  • I've been thinking about ways to deal with referral spam in Google Analytics. From what I can tell, most if not all of this is coming from outside the U.S. I'd love any insight into the following questions related to this issue: For U.S. based local businesses, I'm wondering if we should just block all traffic from outside of the U.S. -would there be negative SEO factors if we use this approach? Would it be better to just create GA segments to filter out this traffic, rather than actually blocking it? Has anyone found success in using filters or segments in this way? Is anyone seeing referral spam from within the U.S.? Edit: I just came across this suggestion, that setting 2 filters (for invalid hostname and screen resolution) can solve most of the issue. Any insight on this alternative vs. my ideas above??  https://www.distilled.net/resources/quick-fix-for-referral-spam-in-google-analytics/

    | irapasternack
    1

  • Howdy Mozzers, We are a new UK solar comparison site looking to implement video to help buid our site traiffic / leads. We currently make a 1 min video summary of our blog posts using Animoto and embed the video at the top of the blog post on our site. The original thought of introducing video was to help our blog posts rank higher. My question is, which of the following strategy is the best for building traffic and generating leads for our site 1. Hosting video on Youtube and embedding it on our site 2. Hosting video on Animoto and embedding it on our site (not sharing on youtube) 3. Hosting the video on our own domain and not sharing it on Youtube and other third party sites 4. Embedding the video from youtube or animoto on our site and sharing it everywhere (dailymotion, vimeo,etc) Our target audience is UK only for the time being. We would like to build traffic quickly and are focused on the short term. I would be appreciate any replies discussing the different advantages disadvantages of the options and a final personal opinion. Thanks!

    | MozBoy
    0

  • Hey Everybody! I thought I'd post about this because pretty much all of our members who do Local SEO are bound to run into this. Last week, when I was in the middle of training someone, I ran into something bizarre. Using Google's search settings to set my location to a remote locale, the local packs were returning me results for the correct city, but the organic results accompanying the pack were showing me results that appeared to be based on my own IP address instead ... in other words, Google was overriding my designated geolocation in favor of where it knows I'm actually located. I was relieved to see Mike Blumenthal post on this (helped me realize I wasn't going crazy - haha) and I recommend that everyone who does Local for a living take a look: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2015/05/24/google-location-results-still-screwy/ I also recommend checking out this G+ convo going on between John Mueller and others: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+TerrySimmonds/posts/1BZ6guvy9mE John's initial thought was that nothing has changed ... but something has definitely changed. Do some of your own searches and see what you come up with. Main takeaway here is that if you are trying to approximate clients' rankings in cities not your own, the results you are seeing may be very weird right now. Not sure if this is a temporary glitch or the forerunner to some change coming our way. This is a story to stay on top of, for sure. What do you you all see?

    | Moz.HelpTeam
    0

  • I have a business that provides on-site services out of a central location. For instance in Denver, we have a warehouse location where we can perform repairs but the majority of business is performed within a 50 mile radius of the city center- on-site, a homes, businesses, etc. Our Google local page is set up to reflect this (mobile service as well as physical location). In order to capture business organically within this 50 mile veil, we have set up city specific service pages on our site to reflect the more than 30 municipalities that fit within the 50 mile veil. This strategy seems to work pretty well in Colorado but in Minnesota we are not having the same outcome. The following city page is created specifically for the term "iPhone repair Minneapolis" and has been live for over a year. It is not even in the top 50. Is this a regional issue or a specific page issue? Our domain actually ranks 15th for this term. http://www.shatterbuggy.com/service-areas/minneapolis/iphone-repair/ Thoughts?

    | BenjaminH
    0

  • Lets say I have: www.domain.com/au www.domain.com/uk www.domain.com/nz In Webmaster, should each of those be setup as a separate site, targeted to the relevant country? Does the country targeting in Webmaster bear much weight? Cheers 🙂

    | blitzna10
    0

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