This is a bit of a melon-twister - Anyone have any ideas?
-
As a novice I created my main site, (waspkilluk.co.uk) and it was geo-targeted for my local City (Bristol). As I got better I created sub-domains(nailsea.waspkilluk.co.uk) for the smaller towns. Now I am suffering because I need to create a sub-domain for BristoI, allowing the main site to be free from geo-targeting and thus rank more cleanly for specific topics e.g flea control, wasp control etc, etc.
My question is simply this - How do I avoid or limit damaging my existing rankings when I swap the site content over to the sub-domain and remove the key word Bristol from the root domains pages.
Not a short question, but any thoughts would be lovely to hear.
-
Hello Simon, Can you fill me in on the factors that have led to you wanting to make your main pages free of geo-targeting? I ask this because, if your business serves local clientele and has a physical address and local phone number, Google is going to see you as most relevant to your city of location, making Bristol (or wherever you are located) an integral part of the SEO/Local SEO of your key pages. Secondary cities (for example, cities where you go to serve beyond your city of location) can have their own pages, but these will be secondary keywords and not your core terms which would be your services + your city of location. Am I missing something? It would help to understand why you want your content to be separate from your company's locale.
-
Hi Simon,
Check ou this thread from January, http://www.seomoz.org/q/best-geotargeting-strategy-subdomains-or-subfolders-or-country-specific-domain
Theres some Good and Endorsed Answers in there.
Also check out Rand Fishkins post from late 2010, a little dated but the essence remains the same. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/ranking-for-keyword-cityname-in-multiple-geographies
Hopefully these should set you in the right path.
One additional point to note is to make sure you setup Google places correctly, I feel that will benefit your site greatly.
Cheers
Aran
-
That makes a lot of sense, but the big question now then is simply this - how can you overcome the issues of duplication when you are targeting specific areas for a given product or even sub-category?
e.g. pest control - flea control - flea control bristol
This makes the issue of targeting local areas with out being penalized, a tricky task.
Of course I could be over-complicating things.
Do you have any ideas on work-arounds for this kind of challenge?
-
I think you are likely to have duplicate content issues. All that subdomaining with the city name being the only change - probably not a good long term strategy for you.
First, you are diluting your authority on the various subjects. The search engines will not know which pages among the many near duplicates are the important pages on a subject.
Second, you are risking future penalties from search engines. They are constantly improving the algorithms to improve user experience, and all those subdomains with duplicate content do nothing for user experience, except to perhaps confuse them.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is it a good idea to optimize for keywords that have no search volume if they're ranked?
Hello Moz Community, I have some questions I hope some of you can help with. We’re doing SEO work for a client that provides outsourced IT and managed IT services in Phoenix, AZ and cities in the Phoenix metro area (i.e. Glendale, Tempe, Scottsdale, etc.) They’re currently ranked for or targeting the following keywords: • consulting phoenix az (1)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marnipatterson
• outsourced it phoenix (2)
• phoenix it support (3)
• it services Scottsdale (5)
• it consulting firm phoenix (targeting)
• it solutions phoenix (targeting) We have recommended the following keywords based on monthly search totals, competitive level and difficulty ratings in Moz. • IT consulting phoenix
• it consultant company
• outsourced it
• it support services
• it consulting services
• outsourcing it
• outsourced tech support Questions
1. While I know it’s a good idea to optimize for keywords that you're currently ranked for, there’s no search volume for any of these. So, I recommended non-geo versions since Google provides search results based on the user’s location. Will this preserve the company's current rankings?
2. If not optimizing for their current keywords will hurt their rankings, will using the current keywords as secondary keywords suffice? If so, do we need to include them in the content for keyword density?
3. Since search engine algorithms now focus so heavily on user intent, I assume we’re covered for all variations of a keyword (i.e. outsource it, outsourced it, outsourcing it, etc.) Is this correct?
4. They want to rank for “cloud services” and “cloud solutions.” Both are very competitive with high difficulty rankings. So, I recommended “cloud migration” and “cloud strategy” as alternatives since these are the main services they provide. Will including “cloud services” and “cloud solutions” as secondary keywords help them increase their rankings for both? If you’ve dealt with a similar situation, I'd appreciate your insight and advice. Thanks!0 -
Is anyone aware about a tool that can be used for tracking YouTube video ranking on SERP & YouTube?
I am looking for a tool that can track ranking position of a YouTube video on SERP and YouTube. An example would be, Suppose I have a video X. I want to know the position of the video for keywords A,B,C on SERP and YouTube. Do let me know your inputs.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SameerBhatia0 -
Bit.ly backlinks
Hi all, what experience do you have with Bit.ly links? Can I use it for backlinking management?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tormar3 -
Does anyone have any experience with DakWak?
We are looking at using it as a translation service but I have SEO concerns. Does anyone have any experience or see any potential problems?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite1 -
Has anyone else noticed a big change in SERPS in the past week or two
We've had a massive change in our position, we were pretty stable on certain keywords for quite some time, however in the past week we were bouncing around and then thrown completely off with some of our keywords dropping to page 4 and some to page 2. I've noticed a lot of changes on the google uk serps, and not sure if it is just a penguin refresh or if its a new one that hasn't been announced. anyone else notice?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bassbuds1 -
Has anyone else seen a Google Plus Local listing displace a regular search listing?
I have a particular site that I have been working on for about eight months and had the site on Page 1 of Google search results for eight keywords (they are fairly small local-based keywords, so I'm really not trying to boast). Perhaps six weeks ago for two of the keywords we popped into the #2 position for Google Plus Local results. When this happened the site completely disappeared from the regular search results. A couple weeks later, the Google Plus Local listing was gone, and the site was back on Page 1 in the regular listings. This has gone back and forth several times, with either a very high Local result or a very high regular search result, but only one at a time. I suppose it would make sense for the same site to only be able to have one position on the front page at any given time, but my searches for info on this have been entirely fruitless. Has anyone else seen anything like this or have any thoughts? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IanKietzman271 -
Does anyone have tips for optimzing a daily deals site?
I'm looking into ways to optimize a daily deals website. Any best practices or tips out there other than promoting on social sites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BostonWright0 -
Any ideas for capturing keywords that your client rejects because they aren't politically correct?
Here's the scenario: you need to capture a search phrase that is very widely used in common search, but the term is considered antiquated, overly vernacular, insensitive or outright offensive within the client's industry. In this case, searchers overwhelmingly look for "nursing homes," but the term has too many negative connotations to the client's customers, so they won't use it on-page. Some obvious thoughts are to build IBLs or write an op-ed/blog series about why the term is offensive. Any other ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jeremy_FP1