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Hi Robert, Just to add to David's answer, to really help with local SEO, here are a few pointers which I always have great success with. And yes, keep everything on one site rather than splitting it up. Create your pages On each page ensure the NAP (Name, address, phone) follow the same format Add local information such as "how to get here via bus" - "How to get here via car", etc Add a local landmark for those travelling on foot or car to look out for Add a local map Will people need to use a taxi to get to you? Add a link to a local company These will all help with local results and the more informative the page the better. Remember that each local site can have its own Google Local listing. Here is the information specific to that. Make sure that your page is created at your actual, real-world location. Use the precise address for the business rather than broad city names or cross-streets. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations. If you need to specify a mailbox or suite number within your physical location, please list your physical address in Address Line 1, and put your mailbox or suite number in Address Line 2. If your business rents a temporary, "virtual" office at a different address from your primary business, do not create a page for that location unless it is staffed during your normal business hours. Do not include information in address lines that does not pertain to your business’s physical location (e.g. URLs or keywords). Do not create more than one page for each location of your business, either in a single account or multiple accounts. Individual practitioners and departments within businesses, universities, hospitals, and government buildings may have separate pages. See specific guidelines about individual practitioners and departments for more information. I hope this helps. -Andy

Hi Michael, If you are meeting face-to-face with customers and are targeting a local market, then Local SEO would also be a pool to wade into. Here's a good place to start, unless your business model is virtual/national only: https://moz.com/learn/local Wishing you tons of luck!

Agree with Daniel - according to John Mueller from Google the location of the server is (almost) irrelevant - it's mainly the performance and the user experience that counts. Quote :'For search, specifically for geotargeting, the server's location plays a very small role, in many cases it's irrelevant'. I guess it used to be a more important signal but currently is no longer the case - check this article on Webmaster support: "Server location (through the IP address of the server). The server location is often physically near your users and can be a signal about your site’s intended audience. Some websites use distributed content delivery networks (CDNs) or are hosted in a country with better webserver infrastructure, so it is not a definitive signal." Google is quite capable of determining based on your content (address, etc) which audience you are targeting so go ahead and move your server to California. rgds, Dirk

That's great, Yasir. Glad to hear it!

Hey There, How new is the location? How old and how good are the website optimization, citations and reviews? Are all branches being marketed with proper separateness (no shared phone numbers, duplicated content, etc?). Do you have any reason to suspect a filter or penalty on the business of any kind? This one is going to be very hard to troubleshoot without being able to Look at the actual business Stand in the parking lot with the client and his mobile device but, the above are some first ideas. These situations can be really tough to diagnose.

Hi Mirko Obkircher, Many thanks for a detailed response. Its very much appreciated

Unfortunately, the short answer is that we rarely know ahead of time. When I first envisioned MozCast, my hope was that we had a chance (even if a slim chance) of predicting updates, but there's a simple and obvious reality I overlooked. Google isn't a system of natural laws, spinning on its merry way. Google is being reprogrammed daily, and past updates are no indication of future patterns. We can look to their intent and goals, and make educated guesses, but none of us can say that on October 14, 2015, there will be Update X. On rare occasion, like the Mobile-friendly Update, Google will make an announcement. Usually, you can find those on the Google Webmaster Central blog: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/ In other cases, a member of the Search Quality team may drop a hint on social media. With 600+ changes per year, though, those pre-announcements are the rare exception.

Hi Stacy, Your question is smart! It's good you're working to understand this, and I'll do my best to explain how this works on a local level. I'm going to break this into 4 parts. Because your business is located in Akron, your Google local pack rankings will be confined to appearing for searchers who are either searching from a device in Akron, or, including the term 'Akron' in their search ... like 'magicians akron'. You are unlikely to achieve local pack rankings for any other city than Akron, because of Google's bias toward physical location. In order for you to achieve local pack rankings in Cleveland, you would need to have a physical location there. Because of the above, your ability to be visible for Cleveland is going to be confined to organic results rather than local ones. For starters, you will need a Cleveland page on your website. You don't have a physical location there, of course, but you can strive to create the BEST page in your industry/geography. You'll want to make this page totally amazing, with fantastic content, and link to it from the top level menu of your website. What would be natural here would be for you to thoroughly showcase some of your gigs you've done in Cleveland. Write them up, show photos, videos, testimonials from customers, FAQs, talk about Cleveland, your work there, etc. Be sure you're implementing best SEO practices in the text and tags of the page. In addition to your menu linking to this Cleveland page, link to it from other pages within the site and then begin the work of earning inbound links from third party sites. The better the page is and the more links it has earned, the better your chances of this page showing up in the organic results for Cleveland-based-or-related searches. Once you have built this best-in-industry/geography page, consider blogging to continue to grow your 'Cleveland-ness'. I'm not very familiar with your industry, so you'll likely have better ideas than I would regarding what to blog about, but I'd think further showcasing of your events, posts about magic, posts about magic shops, magic tricks, magic venues in Cleveland would be a start. Promote the posts socially. Each one is a chance for a potential customer to end up on your site, saying, "Hey, I want to hire this magician!" The third thing you have to consider is competition. If local pack rankings in Akron, and your best efforts to rank organically for Cleveland are not getting you the visibility and gigs you need, if may be that the competitiveness of the searches you are going for is just too tough for a new business to surmount and you will need to rely on PPC. You may only need to pay for clicks temporarily, until you've achieved local/organic visibility, or, it may need to be a permanent part of your marketing strategy. Finally, be aware that Google is currentyl going through the greatest upheaval in Local in recent memory, converting formerly free local pack rankings to pay-to-play home service ads (see: http://searchengineland.com/google-home-services-ads-plumbers-locksmiths-san-francisco-beta-226469). In the next few years, you may be _required to pay for placement. _This could be bad, if your budget is slim. Or, for a business like yours, it could be good if Google will allow you to pay enough to appear for searches in a neighboring city where you're not physically located. Not sure if that will work that way, but it might. So, stay tuned in on these developments. Hope this helps!

Hi Gianluca, Sorry for the delay!!! Thanks for your answer. I just got what I needed Cheers

Just speaking from personal experience on this as a consumer rather than as a marketer - some jingles are annoying in actual sound, but regardless of that, I can remember word-for-word, note-for-note, jingles I heard 30 years ago, some for businesses that are no longer even in business. And, in chatting with peers, you start singing one of those jingles and everyone joins in, laughing, because they have these burned into their brains as well. In fact, if someone mentions the name of a business, I find it's very common for someone else to chime in with the jingle, just because they associate the brand with the tune and find it amusing that they do so. Now, I was too young to be a consumer of anything more than dolls and Kit-Kat candy bars 30 years ago, but these days, my family listens to the radio at least once a week to hear football games. One jingle we hear over and over again is a really simple one for an auto parts store. It says, "Oh, Oh, Oh, O'Reilly - Auto Parts!". We've noticed where the local O'Reilly auto parts store is, we sometimes can't keep ourselves from singing the jingle if we notice the sign while driving by and if we need to replace our windshield wipers this winter, you can bet that's the first auto parts store that will come into our heads. We don't have a similar jingle in our heads for Joe's Auto Parts or Bob's Auto Parts because they're not on the radio. Songs are really magical. Listen to how simple this jingle is, but how the repetition of the word 'Oh' makes it feel energetic and fun to mimic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkSDGk67IWI So, again, speaking purely from personal experience, I do hear jingles, I do remember them if I hear them frequently enough, and they do make me feel sort of amused about businesses ... and, while feeling amused, I've given space in my brain over to the business to be recalled when I need their product, because their advertising has put a tune to a spot in the local business landscape where I live.

Thanks for your help!

The unofficial best practice is 100 as the upper limit but in the end I'd try to think of it more from the context of how the weight passes between pages and how you want the engines and users to prioritize your content. I actually wrote an article on this exact subject some time ago on Search Engine Watch where I show the math and how site structures to pass weight differently.  That's probably a better answer that a flat number without reason so if you're interested you can see how the weight flows with diagrams at http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2179376/internal-linking-promote-keyword-clusters. Hope that helps and let me know if you have any questions.

Great great question. From my experience you'll be looking at a roughly 2 to 8 week hit in rankings.  I know that's a wide margin but it depends on more than just the single redirection of your homepage on the city domains to the city page on the global domain but also includes the content and of course the internal links. You'll want to insure that you move any content that's attracting traffic, social signals or links and also redirect the pages with links or traffic to the appropriate page on the new domain. Past that it's really just a matter of waiting and trying not to chew your nails off. I wish you luck, that's a hard call to make but I think you're making the right one. Regards. Dave

Russ, Every detail of your answer is thoughtful and helpful. Thank you. When I present to entrepreneurs, what would you recommend I talk about? Bob

Oh, I see

Hey Pixel, I wanted to mention that, for some reason, every time I've tried to access your site in Firefox, I get a Server Not Found error, though I can access it fine in Chrome. Something you might want to look into. The site is lacking some very basic Local SEO best practices, including but not limited to: No complete NAP in footer No complete NAP on contact page Title tags are not optimized with reference to San Jose Homepage text also makes no reference to San Jose or any geography at all So, while whomever built the site has made some good efforts at visual appeal, this business is hardly coming across as local at all, due to a lack of basic best practices. In addition to working on the optimization of the site, I would suggest running the business through our free Check Listing tool (moz.com/local/search) to start assessing the state of citations. Looks like there is good room for growth in this area: https://moz.com/local/details/JTI1NUIlMjUyMmNlcnRpZmllZCUyNTIwcm9vZmluZyUyNTIyJTI1MkMlMjUyMjk1MTE4JTI1MjIlMjUyQyUyNTIyQ2VydGlmaWVkJTI1MjBSb29maW5nJTI1MjIlMjUyQyUyNTIyMTU2NSUyNTIwV2lsbG93YnJvb2slMjUyMERyaXZlJTI1MjIlMjUyQyUyNTIyOTUxMTglMjUyMiUyNTJDJTI1MjI0MDgyMjYyMjIyJTI1MjIlMjU1RA== And earning reviews will be super important. I'm seeing zero on Google or Yelp. Here's a good post from Casey Meraz on auditing local businesses: https://moz.com/blog/ultimate-local-seo-audit There is great opportunity for this business to improve - lots to do! Good luck to you!

That should not be an issue. Just incase I would put - Updated - in front of your title. and a blurb about what it's updated with in the beginning of your description.

Hi Morgan! Just to clarify, you are opening a new office in TN but are still maintaining an office in Ohio? Or, are you saying you will no longer have a physical office in Ohio? Please, do be sure to explain this as it matters a great deal. If you are running 2 branches now, with face-to-face contact with your customers, you are entitled to 2 Google+ Local pages - one for each branch. You are also eligible to build a unique set of citations for each of these offices on the various local business data platforms. You are not eligible to build 2 listings per branch on any platform, including Google. Yes, both branches need their own local area code phone numbers. If you will no longer be maintaining an office in Ohio, then you cannot continue to list it in Google and should not have a citation set for it. Rather, after you've moved, you should update your existing Google+ Local page to reflect your new office location and update your other citations accordingly. Hope this helps, but please feel free to provide further details if I've misunderstood any part of your scenario. Also, do refer to the Google guidelines ... they help a ton in matters like these: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en

Hey David, Yes, totally get where you are coming from on this, and agree that there is still a small edge in keyword domains. I predict that's one of those signals that is diminishing over time and may one day hold little power, so for me, I'd advised starting with a branded domain, planning to WIN now and in the future

The client is intrigued by the clal only campaigns. You mentioned that you had success with them. Can you please give me any tips for success? Cornelius