1 business targetting multiple local locations
-
When researching a new client - I just came across a site in the same field which is ranking really well for all the local towns/cities/villages in the area.
Each page for each town is a duplicate only changing out the town name (which appears 13 times on the page) - all pics and videos are the same. His url structure is along the lines of:
budget-business-domain.com/budget-business-area/budget-business-town/
The domain was registered in 2012 - all backlinks are internal - anchor text is the same.
I think it shouldn't be working.... but it is
Why is this working?
-
Maybe I'll just wait to see what happens over the next few months in the SERPS.
The only social network I could find linking was 4 tweets & their 2 youtube videos, they don't have any Google+ or Facebook pages, no reviews and they don't appear in the local listing. The niche is very competitive
I just noticed that they do however use these Zemanta for what looks like related articles - which I am not familiar (so am just going to do a bit of research on them)
-
What about off-site factors? Do they have well optimised Google+ Local pages for their individual sites (linking to their respective location pages on their site?) What about citations? Do they appear in local and authoritative listings? Have they got any reviews?
How competitive is the niche?
-
Hi Tye
I think you are right, sites/pages like that shouldn't be doing so well, but there are still sites/pages out there that are going under the radar or trying to trick ranking well in SERPs.
I have seen that with a local business in my area too and for a while they were dominating every local search spreading over a 60+ mile radius. In recent months though I have seen their position eroded, maybe because Google got wise to what they were doing.
If you believe a site is spamming by mispractice, then you can file a report with Google to ask them to examine the site and what it is doing. See here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?pli=1
I hope that helps,
Peter
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
-
High ranking nationally but not locally via google
A website I am working on is ranked very well in all tracked keywords at a national level, but not from a local standpoint via google. I find it weird that the site is on the first page if you search from many other states/towns/locations but not locally. Looked on Google Search Console and couldn't see any link to why this is happening. Figured we would clear out the htaccess for any redirect issues and hope it fixes it. Suggestions please? Never seen google do this. It is strange.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SeobyKP1 -
Multiple sites in the same niche (Should we redirect these to our Main Site)
I will keep this short and sweet. We have some websites in the same niche area but want to focus only on our newest site (basically all the information that was being posted on the other sites will now be part of our new site) This will save us a lot of time and increase our focus on 1 entity. Should we redirect these website with a 301 redirect to the specific categories that they focus on in the new site? or should we redirect to the main domain.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CMcMullen0 -
Penguin 2.1: How to recover?
I know Penguin focuses on links but do you need to personally reach out and try to manually remove the links, or can you simply place the bad links in the disavow tool. I know for manual penalties you must manually reach out and try to remove and use disavow as an absolute last resort. Does the same go for algorithm penalties? Any insight would be helpful.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Negative SEO on my website with paid +1's
Hi guys, I need a piece of advice. Some scumbag played me quite well with paid +1's on my two articles and now I'm in a problem.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Fastbridge
http://sr.stateofseo.com/seo-vesti/google-implementacija-ssl-protokola-not-provided-problem/
http://sr.stateofseo.com/napredni-seo/najnovije-promene-google-panda-algoritma/
They are both translated articles (written originally by me on the same website). I've noticed those +1's (476 on both articles) when my website received a penalty for "SEO" keyword on Google.rs (Serbian Google) and I'm now on the 11th page.
Other keywords still rank just fine. Not cool, right? Now, I think there could be two solutions:
First one is to remove my inner link that's pointing to my homepage with "SEO" anchor, and hope for the best. Second one is to completely remove/delete those two articles and wait for Google to reindex the website and hopefully remove my ban. Do you guy have some other ideas how can I fix this or remove / disavow those +1 or somehow explain to the Google crew / algo that I'm just a humble SEO without any evil thoughts? 🙂 Thank you in advance.0 -
Ethical question about setting up a local business directory...
I've just launched a local business directory that allows the small businesses in my local area to get noticed by a very targeted audience. People such as self-employed builders, painters and decorators and the like. As well as helping them out, they'll be helping me out by testing the waters of local keywords and seeing just how difficult and how much traffic they'll get. Kind of like spreading myself across 100's of keywords without the need for domains etc. All the links on there are nofollow, but what are the ethics behind letting my clients have a dofollow link from it? I wouldn't use this directory as a marketing tool for my self and my business, but if I acquired a client from my website or other source, but they would benefit from a dofollow link?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jasonwdexter0 -
Ranking in Multiple Geographic Locations
Hey Mozers, We are a Joomla Web Design firm located in Milwaukee Wisconsin, however, we serve clients all over the midwest (and US) (chicago, madison, minneapolis, etc) I'm curious what the best strategy for ranking in these new geographic areas? Originally I was thinking of creating geographic specific landing pages for each area, however, i'm scared it will hurt us with Google's recent penguin and panda 3.5 updates. Also, won't i need to link to these landing pages from our main website to get them indexed? What about creating mini websites on subdomains: (example) Chicago.SavvyPanda.com?? What are your ideas? Do you have clients who have successfully started ranking in multiple geographic cities/areas?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SavvyPanda0 -
Penguin destroys 1 of my sites! Any ideas why the other was spared?
I have 2 main sites for my business. One is a creaky homestead site about 4 years old Another is a much more sophisticated wordpress site now almost 2 years old. That site's traffic steadily increased until May of 2011 when it suffereed a 25 to 30% decline probably due to Panda. I did all of the recommended fixes with little effect until about 3 months ago when its traffic started going up again and had almost a complete recovery until last week when my traffic is down about 95%. I strongly suspecct the penguin. Interestingly, my old site has been virtually unaffectted even though bost sites are fairly similar, on both sites I started with a lot of directory links including DMOZ, Yahoo, BOTW, some strong lawyer sites like NOLO.COM, Lawyers.com, and others not so strong but I tried to get the best directories I could find. Then I started getting a lot of natural links but some of these aee pretty junky sites and scraper type sites. I am curious if anyone has any thoughts on why www.uncontesteddivorce-nyc.com was hit so hard while www.affordable-uncontested-divorce.com is unscathed. The newer site has, accoring to majestic seo and market samurai, around 35, 000 backlinks, while the older site has around 3500. Thanks, Paul
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | diogenes0 -
Unique businesses - unique domain names?
A client of mine owns a studio space where he teaches yoga and martial arts. It's a new business and we're deciding how to create the website(s) and which domain(s) to buy. The idea right now is to have 3 websites for each side of the business, and I'm looking for validation of this idea. I haven't been able to find an answer in the Q&A forum that quite applies to our situation. Website 1: for the studio itself. The audience is other yoga teachers, martial arts teachers, or personal trainers. He will rent out the studio space to them and they bring in their own clients. Content and keywords will relate to this. Website 2: yoga classes. The audience is members of the public who want to take yoga classes. Content and keywords will relate to this. Website 3: martial arts. The audience is members of the public who want to take martial arts classes. Content and keywords will relate to this. We will make certain there's no duplicate content on the sites, but it makes sense for them to link to each other because they're similar in nature (personal health and fitness at the studio), and the latter 2 services are offered at the studio, of course. Question 1: (a) is it a good idea to get a separate domain for each site? for example: www.city-studio.com, www.unique-name-yoga.com, www.unique-name-martial-arts.com (b) Or would it be better to keep it all under city-studio.com and use subdomains like yoga.city-studio.com and martial-arts.city-studio.com? In either case, the keywords "yoga" and "martial arts" would be in the domain name, which has benefit. Does that still apply for subdomains? (c) Or would these services even be considered similar enough that I just use www.city-studio.com/yoga.php and www.city-studio.com/martial-arts..php There will of course be several pages on yoga and several on martial arts. Question 2: if registering multiple domains, they will interlink as much as possible. (a) what do we consider when buying the domains? (b) use a different address for WHOIS of each domain? (c) can technical contact be the same address (mine, the consultant)? (d) use a different credit card for each? (e) ok if the name on the credit card is the same? (f) can we register them all the same day? (h) same domain registrar? (i) same host? we don't want to appear black hat by having multiple sites, but I think it's very legitimate to have the business split into 3 sites like this just because they're separate sides of the business with different audiences, content, keywords. Question 3: when the domains come up for renewal in 1 year (or more), would it be safe to switch them all over to one credit card then, for convenience to the owner? Question 4: is there anything important I haven't mentioned here? I appreciate any input and discussion.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Kenoshi0