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It was a big help!

My great pleasure, and yes, report those listings!

I believe you do have to take an additional step to set up the ads because not everyone wants them. They're done through AdWords Express so I would go here and sign up: https://www.google.com/adwords/express/home-service-ads/

Hey There! When properly deployed, development of tools for any type of business can have several different goals: User engagment Resultant brand recognition via use of the tool Ranking well for tools of that type Customer acquisition Yes, publishing a really excellent tool could indirectly impact your domain's rankings if lots of people engage with the tool and link to it using keywords that are important to your business, but I wouldn't recommend looking at search engine rankings as the core goal of tool development. Simply putting a tool on your site because competitors do overlooks how effective it can be to have a thoroughly-planned marketing strategy that covers whether your potential customers will find such a resource useful, how you will build + deploy this resource and how you will set about marketing this resource so that it becomes a major asset to your business. For inspiration, you might look right here on Moz. We have a free tool called Check Listing that helps local businesses do a quick health check of their local business listings on major platforms in the US and UK. That's something useful that local business owners and marketers would like to be able to do, so the tool serves a definite purpose. If the visitor finds the free tool useful, they've just had a good experience with Moz and might be interested in learning more about our paid Moz Local software. If they like what they see, they might become a customer, and they might tell their colleagues about Moz Local, and they might even write a blog post on their own website, linking to Moz Local. And if enough customers do this, then yes, Moz's relevance to keyword searches like 'local seo software' could be positively impacted. In other words, there are many paths to providing a useful + positive experience to each consumer, and a good tool can be a great option where that is interest/need and a market in which you can compete as a provider of that needed tool. It's definitely something that takes a lot of initial research, planning, development and marketing to be successful, so give this careful thought, and see what your business could do to begin being present on a variety of user paths, which, if deftly done, could yield many rewards.

I agree. This is going to make the title tags too long. Instead build out individual service pages for each location so you can include the city in the title tag of each of those pages.

Hey Joseph, Coincidentally, Rand's Whiteboard Friday today speaks to exactly this topic. Definitely check it out and let us know if any further questions arise! https://moz.com/blog/ranking-multiple-domains-to-own-more-serp-real-estate-whiteboard-friday

Hi Liam,  A little late to the game here, but we put together a sample of how to organize this. https://www.odddogmedia.com/seo-blog/json-schema-for-businesses-with-multiple-locations/ Essentially you first want to establish the Organization, logo and any "same as" social media properties for your brand.  From there you can begin to list each location with its details, location specific social media, etc. The secret with the GMB is to ensure each location has a dedicated webpage on your website and that the GMB page links to its pertinent location page on your site.  As you build citations for this location, be sure to keep the location specific URL.  This will be different with each location, thus why Local SEO is a ton of work. Hopefully you  have already been able to figure this out, but it not feel free to reference our code sample.

An internal page can absolutely compete against a home page. Just tonight I was doing some research, and 4 of the sites on Google's front page were internal pages.

You make a very good point!

Makes perfect sense, Paul! Thank you for the detailed account and what to be aware of. I was already planning something along these lines. The trick is getting people to see the new page once they are redirected. I'll work on this and a header bar or a pop up window may work best. All URLs will be redirected appropriately as well as it's standard practice in shutting down one site to pass authority to another. Thanks again for your insight! - Patrick

Do you mean the spam flag? If so, then it's worth remembering that MOZ doesn't update as often as Google so the next time it gets round to crawling, it should update. -Andy

Hi Eelco, This extract is taken from an article on Search Engine Land "Google Explains How It Handles The New Top Level Domains (TLDs)": http://searchengineland.com/google-explains-how-they-handle-the-new-top-level-domains-tlds-225671 "Q: How will new gTLDs affect search? Is Google changing the search algorithm to favor these TLDs? How important are they really in search? A: Overall, our systems treat new gTLDs like other gTLDs (like .com and .org). Keywords in a TLD do not give any advantage or disadvantage in search." Personally, I think it's inevitable that we'll see wider adoption of these new TLDs (despite them having a 'vanity' feel about them at the moment) because, quite frankly, all of the good .coms are gone! I hope that helps!

Hi Jenn! Ah, I thought this sounded a little familiar So, no, I would not remove main navigation from the homepage. But, I would do this: Have universal navigation for the website including all the major links. For the sake of users, yes, divide the contents of the homepage into two side-by-side sections in whatever way offers the best user experience (one side for the club, one for the wedding service). Have each side link to its respective set of content, but with all normal navigation intact in both sections. You honestly do not want Google to view this as two separate businesses. You don't want them to be confused about whether (222) 111-2222 is the number of a restaurant or a wedding venue. You want to promote the whole thing as a single brand, with a single GMB listing and supporting citation set, for a business that offers a varied menu of services (dining, events, etc.). But, for the sake of users, you simultaneously want them to be able to quickly access the content describing the services in which they have the most interest. So, if they happen to enter to website on the hompage (instead of on the main page for weddings) you can certainly give them a big, visual cue about how to navigate to that section of content. Ranking for these different types of searches is just going to come down to good old SEO, both local and traditional, and all of the marketing you can do to promote the variety of services offered. Authoritative local links to the main page for the weddings (for example) will help in your pursuit of visibility for wedding-related searches in your city, while getting great restaurant reviews on Yelp should bring in diners. I'd seriously urge the owner to view their brand as a brand - one that offers a variety of services, just like a general contractor who does roofing, remodels, fence building and deck design. Each is a different experience, for a consumer with a different need, but all needs are being met by the single, unified brand. Hope this helps!

Hi! I agree with Chris. As long as Google is able to tell that the links should be pointing to your website, and aren't some sort of spammy link scheme, then having links from websites in other languages is fine! Just make sure that the websites you are getting these links from are relevant and have a high domain authority so they will pass on the link juice to your website.

This is good advice, but as far as I'm away if you have a ccTLD (.com.br) that you cannot change the international targeting away from the country of your ccTLD, you can only do this with a gTLD.

Happy New Year to you, Chad! So, typically, here's how you do a service area business: You create a set of pages for the services offered. If the business is physically located in a good city, you can incorporate this into the optimization of these pages, but the main focus of these pages is the services being offered (plumbing, HVAC, etc). You create a second set of pages for the MOST important cities the business serves. You don't create a page for every possible city, but just for the ones that are really key to the business. The content on these pages can summarize the menu of services offered, but the main focus is on the company's work in that city. A good way to approach the 'meat' of this content is UGC including testimonials and reviews (including video reviews) in that city. You can also include videos of projects being accomplished in those cities, with text descriptions. In this way, you have two distinct sets of pages (an no duplicate content) that cover all of your services and your major cities. The main feat here is to educate the clients as to the importance of assembling enough material to make these pages really strong instead of weak. They shouldn't just be thrown together. They should be templated, carefully planned, well written and very engaging to consumers. There are other possible approaches, but this is the one I'd typically recommend. Hope this helps!