Is ReachLocal Killing My SEO Work?
-
I have a customer that I did SEO work for. I cleaned up title tags, content, image tags, the works. Recently, they signed up with Reach Local to do some Pay Per Click. The problem/question I have is that reach local completely copied the entire site and put it on their server. So all my work for this company is now completely replicated. Now there are two sites. ex. windowname.com and windowname.reachlocal.net. It appears they do this for all their customers. Does Google view this as duplicate content? Does my regular website lose positioning to the more powerful ReachLocal?
-
As Greg said, as long as they are Noindexing the page or robots.txt 'ing it out of the crawl index, you should be just fine.
It's still more than a bit lame that they might be able to take credit for content and layout that you did, though.
-
Hi Scott, I looked at the case study mentioned on the ReachLocal UK site... hopefully this is shared best practice?
-
Gregory, You were able to find the site he was talking about? Or did you look at your case study?
-
Yup, Rui and Scott had it right...
The /robots.txt file:
User-agent: * Disallow: /
And the source code shows name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" />
-
Ow... excellent remark actually. I was actually looking at eventually using ReachLocal (last year) but back then never paid any attention to the fact of where and how the landing pages would be hosted.
The only benefit is that the new domain might cause less problems as to the NAP inconsistency caused by using yet another "campaign phone number" for call tracking... and even monitoring.
I just had a look at the landing page for one of the organisations mentioned on the ReachLocal UK website under Case Studies: http://rubber4roofs-px.rtrk.co.uk instead of http://www.rubber4roofs.co.uk/ > the former domain does not show any PageRank, while the latter does (PR2)
Looking at the above I don't think this would cause you any issues as to the duplicate content on this "campaign domain"...
But might there be potential other issues with this?
Looking forward to seeing other members' input...
Cheers
-
I think ReachLocal does this so they can control the pages and track analytics on their side.
I would check if there's a robots.txt file and see if indexing is disallowed
-
Did ReachLocal put a robots.txt disallow or a meta noindex on that site?
If not, best bet would be to ask them to do so. It is possible that without that directive, their new site could be starting to rank organically.
I'd recommend adding a campaign in your SEOmoz account to start rank tracking their new site to see if it is indeed ranking for your desired keywords or not.
Scott O.
P.S. If you enjoyed my response, please consider marking it as a "Good Answer".
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
-
Has anyone tried Captora? Curious about people's thoughts on potential benefits and risks for SEO.
We talked to a vendor called Captora today and I'm curious if anyone else has tried them. It seems like it's too good to be true and could lead to issues should Google get wise to this tactic. So what are people's thoughts? watch?v=SVSCPrcXXDQ
Paid Search Marketing | | VMTurbo-Marketing0 -
What are the strongest and most-Google friendly directories to place my business on for the sake of large SEO gains? for the sake of Exposure to customers? What is the best way to invest for ROI nowadays? Thanks.
I do basic SEO stuff as well as marketing for quite a few clients. But, I am wondering which directories or exposure based groups are worth the money? Is a business.com directory listing for $300 a solid investment to get a strong link? Is yext a good move? How about wildfire? I could use some really high DA links to stack on top of the link profiles I have already built through content, etc.? Please advise me. PS Confession: I was once a pre-panda Fiverr link junkie. But I am in recovery. I have an 18 month chip and am currently making amends. 12 steps to SEO freedom baby.
Paid Search Marketing | | creativeguy0 -
Will a javascript rewrite of city names on a home page from PPC traffic affect SEO negatively?
We have a client that was originally based out of Orlando and the entire website is SEO'ed for Orlando. In the long term we will start SEO'ing for Tampa. But In the short term, we want to drive traffic from Tampa to the website but we want that traffic to know the business specializes in Tampa service (he has local teams there). We are already using a ?_vsrefdom=changemynumber to change the phone number dynamically to a tampa area code for tracking purposes. We want to dynamically change all iterations of 'Orlando' with 'Tampa' using the same javascript. Does this cause any SEO problems or trip any alarms with Google?
Paid Search Marketing | | Highforge0 -
What are the most Important Local Business Directories for SEO
Thanks for any help on this, I wanted to know what are the most Important Local Business Directories for SEO? I have come a crossed a few sites that list tons of directories, but I wanted to know if anyone here is a top list. Also can it hurt to be on to many?
Paid Search Marketing | | quailadv0 -
AdWords *free* vouchers hurt SEO?
Maybe it was the penguin, or maybe it was Panda, but around about the time of the three updates close together and the rumoured 'parked domain' update that went wrong, I used a free adwords voucher. The site in question used to rank for practically every search term relevant to the niche. Now, I can search back to 60 pages in Google results and nothing. Now, I know its not been de-indexed, it still there when I search for info:TheDomainInQuestion.co.uk It also has 6 site links when searching for the url alone. Each and every page is hand written original content built up over many years and also edited and updated regularly. On linkdetective, I have a very nice rainbow type graph regarding the type of links and also a very very good spread of anchors. 118 different phrases pointing in and aside from one site that linked to me sitewide (16000+ but since removed and now down to 3300 and dropping almost daily). Even with that, the highest percentage of anchor text was 20%. Basically, gone through practically everything that is available on the web about combating penguin and panda, yet the site kept dropping and has disappeared completely for keyword phrases. Might sound a bit paranoid, but could Google have done this on purpose to try to make me carry on with adwords?
Paid Search Marketing | | NinJaSkrtel0 -
Seo and ads for Baidu (china)
Has anyone have experience doing seo for the baidu search engine? I have a client who wants to target businesses in china so we are exploring options for PPC and SEO. Any ideas or tips would be much appreciated? I was thinking of getting a bi-lingual mini-site made that would catch leads from seo and ads. Can anyone suggest any chinese PPC/seo freelancers?
Paid Search Marketing | | Netboost0 -
Does anyone do SEO for a % of sales?
I am the CEO of a small company ( 33 employees in Jacksonville, FL ) We have a family of websites that sell office products - we are the manufacture we have a staff of 3 in the website dept - but with 10 active sites its alot of work. We are launching a new site this week and need to do some SEO for the site .. Since this new site has no sales - i want to see if there is someone that will work based on a % of sales - say 10% of sales for 18 months - Here are my thoughts : Option A: - go out and get a "package" for say $5000 and have SEO done and hope it proves results Option B: - partner with someone and give them 10% of sales the site produces - so if we can grow it to $1M in sales - that person could make $100K off the site - ( our competition is a $20M + site) Some would say that im crazy and it might cost me $100K -i like it because we are all on the same page and i pay for results - not promises. Thoughts?
Paid Search Marketing | | BryanCroft1 -
Whats the most seo optimized websites?
Want to hear your opinions, let me know what do you like.
Paid Search Marketing | | DiamondJewelryEmpire0