NAP question about wider service area
-
My business is based in Suffolk, UK, but I serve an area that includes Essex, Cambs, Herts and Norfolk.
I've been making an effort to include a constant NAP across all my local citations for Suffolk in an effort to rank better in local search.
However, what effect does this have on pages when trying to rank for searches for areas where I have no physical location? If my entire site has NAP across it referencing Suffolk, does this impact the ability to rank organically for areas outside Suffolk?If so, what would be the best practice for increasing organic rank in these areas?
-
Hi Alex,
Regarding testimonials - no, I am not referencing testimonials from websites. I'm talking about getting written testimonials from your customers (either on paper or via email) and uploading them yourself using Schema review markup to the respective city landing page on your own website. These on-page testimonials can be a powerful way to add unique content to your city landings pages, and they also sometimes show up in the SERPs with stars (though Google's display of this keeps changing).
As to why Google is showing you results for a city 30 miles away when you're not adding a geo-modifier, I'm not sure. Could it be that there is something about that city that is particularly relevant, or, could your location possibly be set to this city in Google, causing Google to show you results for that city? Have you tried checking from other computers located in your town? Clearly, you're doing pretty well for your own local city, and this is where you can expect to rank in the local pack (not in a city where you're not physically located) so if pursuing rankings in other cities is important, they will almost certainly have to be organic rankings, not local ones.
-
Miriam,
Thanks for that response.
One clarification:
You can also work to add on-page testimonials from clients in these service cities to the respective city landing pagesI'm assuming you mean links from clients websites in these areas to the respective pages on my site.
If I do a search for my service without any location modifier, all the results in the local pack are for a city 30 miles away where I have no physical presence. I appreciate that this local pack will change dependent on my/the searchers actual location, but it seems a bit off that 'out of the box' Google is suggesting businesses in a city 30 miles away. Does it default to the nearest city? Or does it look at a density of related businesses and assume that area should be shown? If so, how does one compete? Organic SERP for that particular city? If we add a county modifier the local pack results are now a little bit more widespread. Ideally this is where I'd like to place for local pack rankings.I've been working on gaining local citations and going back through old NAP mentions and having them updated. What else could I do to to improve those county level local pack results?
If I add my local town modifier to the search my site appears in the local pack at #4. So Google seems to be picking up some of my info.
-
Hi Alex,
Good question! Google's bias toward physical location has built into local search a specific way of handling website optimization for service area businesses like yours. Typically this looks like this:
-
You optimize the overall website for your city of location, meaning that you put your complete NAP on the contact page and in the sitewide footer. You also typically optimize your core pages (home, about, service pages) for this city of location as well. You develop your Google+ Local page and your citations to reflect the NAP of your city of location, as well. You work on earning reviews on these profiles, as well as social mentions and links. The goal of all of this work is to achieve high local pack rankings for your business for queries that either contain your city of location or that stem from devices based in your city of location.
-
For your service cities where you have no physical location, you don't have NAP. But, you do have the ability to build a unique landing page on the website for each of your major service cities. Be sure that the content is unique and terrific for each page you create and then link to these pages from a top level menu under a heading of something like "Cities We Serve'. Work to earn social mentions and links to these pages. You can also work to add on-page testimonials from clients in these service cities to the respective city landing pages. Do not put the business' NAP on these pages, because it does not apply. The goal of this work is to earn secondary organic rankings for these service cities, because it is highly unlikely that you will earn local pack rankings for any city in which you're not physically located.
Having NAP on the rest of the website will not harm your ability to rank organically for your other service cities, but you have to go into this with the understanding that you're aiming for local rankings for your city of location and organic rankings for your location-less cities.
Hope this helps!
-
-
I just made a similar response here.
http://moz.com/community/q/localize-homepage-or-service-pages
You do not need a physical location to rank but it helps. You can rank for location keywords like Essex or Cambs. There is no easy way to do this if you want to keep it legit.
Things you can do.. Get a business location in the locations specified, tie them into separate parts of your site dedicated to that area.
Widen your service area on google places to cover all these areas specified. Make your places account keyword rich and you will start to come up. With a good amount of reviews, people call even if you are far away.
-
If you only have a physical location in Suffold than your local search result efforts will be focussed on Suffold and the immediate area through your citations, reviews etcetera.
This does not mean that you can not rank in the normal search results for queries about other areas such as Cambs and Herts. Your website could state that these areas are part of your service area as well.
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
-
Does A Local Therapist Need A Blog, or Should They Focus on Main Service Pages?
Hi everyone! I am just starting to practice SEO by assisting a friend with her local relationship therapy practice, and I'm not sure whether or not she needs a blog. Here's the content they currently have: A page for specific categories within relationship therapy (unmarried couples, marriage, divorce, pre-marital, etc) On each page, she describes what that type of therapy is, what clients can expect, and how she will help them during the process. My question is this: Does it make sense to start a blog, or, is it better to build out the main, static service pages with more content? I'm worried that if she does start a blog, that it could potentially take away from the authority of the main service pages. For example, let's say she writes a highly specific post titled "how to talk to your husband about marriage". Is it better to just incorporate aspects of this post on the main marriage page, or keep it as a blog post? I really appreciate any suggestions and I'm happy to answer any questions.
Local Website Optimization | | onitamara0 -
Service Location links in footer and on the service page - spamming or good practice?
We are are a managed IT services business so we try and target people searching for IT support in a number of key areas. We have created individual location pages (11) to localise our service in these specific areas. We put these location links in the footer which went to the specified IT support pages respectively. Now we have created a general 'managed IT services' page and are thinking of linking to these specific pages on there as well as it makes sense to do it. Would having these 11 links in the footer as well as on the 'managed IT services' page be spamming? or would it be good practice? If this is spamming, which linking location should hold preference. Would appreciate the feedback
Local Website Optimization | | AndyL93
Thanks
Andy0 -
Need Awesome Examples of Well-Designed Service & Product Pages
I'm looking for some examples of really well built product/service pages that have great conversion points on them. I find most small businesses do a terrible job at highlighting their features & benefits (the "why") for their services and wanted some inspiration from those that are doing a fabulous job.
Local Website Optimization | | JoyHawkins0 -
Local Service pages guide?
There are a lots of Local landing pages guide on the internet. Is there any guide for Local service pages? How to create them, what to include?
Local Website Optimization | | Michael.Leonard0 -
Doorway Pages & Service Area Business
I see many national brand franchises that offers restoration services such as water damage (Servpro, Service Master etc.) There are local websites for each franchise. Each franchise has 50+ locations that they service They currently have pages like 'water damage + city' that have about 500-700 words each Some websites have 30- 100 location pages optimized for 'water damage city' These location pages do not have a physical offices None have duplicate content (word for word) above 20% The only different between these pages is perhaps 200 words about the city Example: www.servicecompany/water-damage-los-angeles www.servicecompany/water-damage-reseda www.servicecompany/water-damage-van-nuys Are these doorway pages?
Local Website Optimization | | MilestoneSEO_LA0 -
Company Knowledge Box Questions
I've been keeping track of changes in my company's Knowledge Box, and it's been responding in completely unpredictable ways. We are currently in the middle of a site redesign -- the current site has not received any SEO attention in a while, apart from two major edits: 1. Adding the social media schema (which Google has not picked up -- we did this close to two months ago). 2. Citation cleanup through Moz Local and BrightLocal What I've noticed about the Knowledge Box is that it would show up for the query "Now Media Group" if and only if the location was set for San Diego, CA, which is where we're based. Now, it will only show up for the query "Now Media Group San Diego." My first question: If the location setting is already set for San Diego, why would Google need the additional qualifier to show the Knowledge Box? Any theories? My second question: Is our local SEO efforts hurting our online presence? We don't provide services locally, except to a handful of clients. We have clients throughout the United States and Canada. It'd be nice if our Knowledge Box showed up regardless of where someone is searching our brand name from. The reason I point at local SEO specifically is because I've noticed that an ex-client of ours has a knowledge box no matter where you search from, and she has no local SEO whatsoever -- the Box shows the address: Douglass, KS. Is our local SEO sending Google mixed signals and affecting when/where the Knowledge Box shows up? Thank you!
Local Website Optimization | | nowmedia10 -
Targeting different cities for my service - Geo landing pages
I am breaking my head trying to figure out the best way around this... so we have an hvac company located in nyc. We want to also target all the different boroughs. We have a bunch of different major keywords hvac repair + location hvac service + location along with keywords such as air conditioning repair + location, heating service + location , and so on..... Should each borough + keyword have its own page? Or should we just have one page called brooklyn and in that page target all the different keywords like hvac, air conditining, and heating ? Also does it matter how we have it laid out? Domaim/hvac-repair-brooklyn or should I add domain/service-area/hvac. ..... Some of my competitors have the same content written on each borough page just moved around a little with different city names, how are they ranking so well? Isn't that duplicate? Would love to hear from some people with success in this local area. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | interstate0 -
Duplicate content question for multiple sites under one brand
I would like to get some opinions on the best way to handle duplicate / similar content that is on our company website and local facility level sites. Our company website is our flagship website that contains all of our service offerings, and we use this site to complete nationally for our SEO efforts. We then have around 100 localized facility level sites for the different locations we operate that we use to rank for local SEO. There is enough of a difference between these locations that it was decided (long ago before me) that there would be a separate website for each. There is however, much duplicate content across all these sites due to the service offerings being roughly the same. Every website has it's own unique domain name, but I believe they are all on the same C-block. I'm thinking of going with 1 of 2 options and wanted to get some opinions on which would be best. 1 - Keep the services content identical across the company website and all facility sites, and use the rel=canonical tag on all the facility sites to reference the company website. My only concern here is if this would drastically hurt local SEO for the facility sites. 2 - Create two unique sets of services content. Use one set on the company website. And use the second set on the facility sites, and either live with the duplicate content or try and sprinkle in enough local geographic content to create some differential between the facility sites. Or if there are other suggestions on a better way to handle this, I would love to hear any other thoughts as well. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | KHCreative0