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Hey David! I like your thinking on that, but from what I have seen, the top 10 results for most established businesses tend to contain all kinds of different things in the description portion of the SERP entry. For example, one will have part of a user review, another will have hours, another will have part of the owner's description. Take a look at some SERPs and you''ll likely see this. Again, not trying to discourage anyone from writing unique descriptions - just saying that the ROI on doing so may not be great, given the way that descriptions are going to be duplicated downstream + the fact that you will not control what information ends up in the SERP display description field for most 3rd party mentions of your business.

Hi John, What you'll need to do here is a fully audit of the business in question and of its competitors. There are several hundred factors that can contribute to why a business ranks where it is ranking. Here are some resources that may really help: https://moz.com/blog/local-seo-checklist http://searchengineland.com/rank-high-organically-not-locally-case-study-240692 Hope these help!

Hi Shauna, This is a great question. I am understanding your scenario this way, but please correct me if I'm wrong: Your client's house is in Dallas. Your client's office is in Farmers Branch Your client would rather be listed in Dallas than in Farmers Branch. If this is incorrect, please let me know, but if correct, please read on. Google does not consider Farmers Branch to be inside of Dallas, according to Maps: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Dallas,+TX/@32.8601609,-96.9429002,11z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x864c19f77b45974b:0xb9ec9ba4f647678f Farmers Branch is outside of the city borders. So, in Google's eyes, we know that Farmers Branch is considered a unique entity - not a part of Dallas. Given this, your client's safe options are based on his business model: If this is a brick-and-mortar business, the client has no alternative but to list it in Farmers Branch on his website and citations. If this is a service area business that customers don't come to (like a plumber) then your client has a choice of whether he'd like to base his operations out of his Dallas home or his Farmers Branch office. Google is okay with home-based businesses, provided that the phone number is dedicated to the business and is staffed during normal business hours by someone who answers the phone with the business name rather than just saying "hello" like a resident. There are very obvious benefits for the client of basing himself in Dallas instead of outside of Dallas, but this is only an option if nobody comes to the business in person. If people come to the business in person, you're back to option 1. Any variation on the above two courses does put the business at risk, and so, as the SEO, it's our job to let the client know of the guideline-compliant options and of the risks of bending guidelines. Hope this helps!

Sounds great. I have a private fb group with some smart guys (and gals) in that are in the same business you are. You are (both) welcome to come check it out Matthew@sawwebmarketing.com There is a lot of us but they are smart and helpful and I would love to make it better. Good luck!

We have found adding Schema via JSON-LD pretty straight forward and easier than inline, see: https://developers.google.com/schemas/formats/json-ld Normally we would put this type of schema in via GTM but Squarespace has issue adding custom code in the body tags. That being said you should be able to add your JSON-LD script of schema directly in the head with no issue. Good Luck

Aloha Robert! Wow great help and response!! This is hugely valuable and I will be sure to be switching up the domain and brand name with many thanks to you Robert. One more quick question concerning Garden Island, we have a newpaper and a few brands here that have Garden Island incorparated to their companies and domain's, would the specificty of www.gardenislandweddingphotographer.com or www.gardenislandweddingphoto.com (Kauai im hoping that engines would indetify or associate garden island to) be enough to have an impact/correlation for "Kauai Wedding Photographer" through engines? I will be sure to give you a shout if anything comes up, and even if everything goes smoothly I will be sure to send a smugmug link where you can download for print a few Kauai scenery photos as a very big thank you for the help! Many thanks again Robert! Aloha, Jon Gibb

Since most of your searches will be city specific, I would definitely recommend having landing pages for each city. There, you can go into more detail about the specific widgets for each city and what makes them unique. It's fine to have some localized content served up on your home page, but I would recommend having some static, non-dynamic content there as well. Spend some time thinking about what the "default" version of the page would be. A good question to try to answer is: what should a user see if they're coming to the site from an IP you don't have content for, or even an IP outside of Canada? A home page is a great place to show who you are in a broader sense, and give users and search engines an idea of what you're about and why they should trust you. You can include that information along with a modicum of local-focused content that appears based on the user's IP address, that encourages them to click through to the local-specific landing page where they can get more in-depth information. I hope that helps!

I totally agree with Logan Ray, Donford and Mike Roberts. It sounds like the content will slightly differ from location to location. If this is the case then I agree with the "rel=canonical" method and with the sub domain method to point to main site's root domain. For SEO Link Juice, I think you probably want to focus little more on the content uniqueness of each individual location "mini-site" and power it from other sites such as Yelp or Google Local. These sites are localized so though it's probably a  "nofollow" link (meaning: no link juice), it does draw visitors to click on the link for your local site. I guess this also ties into how do you want to do your Local SEO and how do you plan on tackling the social media information dissemination. If your client is in fact have full understanding of their business use case as in different branding for each site, then unique content development will also play a key role. At this point, you probably want to focus little more on Page Authority and increase the link equity that goes into this particular page. For the product pages or categories, you probably just want to have a "follow" just on the root domain categories not on your sub domains. In this way, google only crawl/re-crawl and eventually index the products from your root domain while recognizing the other sub domains as location.

You come through again, Laura! I really appreciate the links and guidance you have provided. Now, to explain this to my client -- wish me luck.  

I'm so glad to help, Jon   And that's very kind of you to say you'd hire me - how nice to hear! I'm actually all booked up right now, but we do have a great list on our Moz Local Search Ranking Factors 2015 survey of widely-recognized local SEO experts, should that need arise. If you look in the Contributors box on the right of that page, nearly all of the participants run or work at Local Search Marketing firms and all are recognized experts. Might be something to keep in mind if you need extra help when you've done all you can on your own.

Hi Melissa! A few thoughts on this: I understand that the owner wants to rank as highly as possible - of course. Nevertheless, in order for him to be keeping current with the way search works, he needs to understand that there are no universal #1 rankings. Due to personalization and the user-as-centroid phenomenon, what the owner sees on his cell phone is not going to identically match what his customers see on theirs. Rather than obsessing over rankings, the owner would be strengthening his business by focusing on conversions. Are the pages being created by this business causing phones to ring? If yes, conversions are high. If no, conversions are not what they could be. We've already identified that the page you've shared here is weak. Rather than focusing too much on rankings, the owner needs to start at the beginning by focusing on quality. If he can't invest in this or wait for a careful effort to pay off, he should simply invest directly in PPC. There are 2 ways to approach a multi-service, multi-location business: A: You have a page for each service and a page for each location. You do not develop a page for every possible combination of services/cities. This is the best approach when funding, creativity or commitment to quality may be in question. B: You do create a page for every possible combination of the cities and services. So, you have a shredding page for city A and a shredding page for city B. You have a page for data management for City A and another for the same term for city B. While this approach is possible, it should really only be undertaken where there is sufficient commitment to quality and sufficient funding, otherwise you'll end up weakening the site with thin/duplicate pages instead of strengthening it. Whichever approach is taken, you should always link obviously to all pages. Don't hide them. If they are pages for the public, they belong in a high level menu. Right now, it seems like the business is experimenting with option B, but not doing a really great job at it. So, the business is at a critical point here and needs to decide whether they can continue with option B in a way that adds value and strengthens the site and is fully public, or, if they actually would be better off going with option A. The website is only 1 aspect of rankings, but it's an extremely important one, and a key factor in conversions. Hope this helps

Personally, I think where does matter and is counted as another positive indicator that the site is legit if the TLD and location of hosting match.  I only have limited examples to draw from but I recall there being a 2 position increase after moving from Justhost to a Canadian hosting solution for a .ca.

Thank you, Peter. This is exactly what I was looking for.

Thank you! I have a question related to what you've posted here. I saw that my landing page report in Moz said that I had received traffic to a very strange page: how.to.travel.and.make.42023834.money.online.for.free.with.maps.ilovevitaly.com It has absolutely nothing to do with my site (www.drugjustice.com). I couldn't find it anywhere until I followed your instructions and found it under Hostname. Is there any way to get rid of it? Is it hurting my SEO? I also have a russian site (the address is all in Cyrillic) that I'd like to ditch. I have some traffic going to a hostname "not set." Is there anything I can do to fix that? Thanks so much!

Hi Donald Glad to hear I helped! You really shouldn't ever go over the limit. You want your title to give the user the point of the content in a catchy way and be able to brand it as well with your company name. If you end going over and can't help it, make sure that only the branding potentially gets cut. If the title is good and matches the user's search intent, they'll click, read your fantastic content, and see the brand. That's really the only instance that titles should go over the limit, but again, I'm not advocating that! Hope this helps! Good luck!

Thanks!

Yes, and I think the way that Web 2.0 sites (as defined by the way you are using the term, Jubaer), including those hosted on Wordpress.com and Tumblr, is a great example of why search engines treat subdomains as distinct domains. Practically anyone can set up a site on Wordpress.com like abc.wordpress.com with minimal effort. That is, after all, the primary service Wordpress.com offers, after all. The sites that exist as subdomains of Wordpress.com have very little in common with each other, other than being hosted on Wordpress.com. Wordpress.com has a DA of 96. There are some truly fantastic sites hosted as subdomains of Wordpress.com, and there are also a lot of really crappy ones, too. If search engines treated the value of a link from crappysite.wordpress.com as authoritatively as the value of a link from fantasticsite.wordpress.com simply because both are hosted on wordpress.com (which does, as you say, have a DA of 96), would that be best for users? Nope, it would not. Someone could have made crappysite.wordpress.com for the sole purpose of "earning" a link to their own (self-hosted) site, or created it with good intentions, but never put in the work needed to become a valuable site for its intended audience like fantasticsite.wordpress.com did. And, let's not forget about the importance of relevance. The topics of sites on Wordpress.com  are all over the place. Therefore, it makes sense to treat each one separately, right?

What you touch on is a major flaw with every rank tracking tool I've ever used, because the national results for local focused keywords might not be what actually ranks in that city.  That said, it's one of those "it's as good as it's going to get" kind of things, and it at least gives you a good baseline. Now I want to add to what Martijn suggested above to not track the spin-off pages, because those individual locations are incredibly important to the people at those locations, the focus isn't all on the homepage.  Fortunately Moz has an old tool that can help you, though you will likely hit a limit (my current limit is 100 keywords tracked) based on your account level with Moz. It's the old Rank Tracker, which still exists and it is seperate from the Campaign Level rank tracker, using this tool you can track a single keyword to a single URL, so it's not just showing you keywords for the entire campaign, just a nice straight forward "how does X rank for Y" and it'll e-mail you if you set it up to do that. Moz Rank Tracker - https://moz.com/researchtools/rank-tracker

If you want to track your rankings rather than doing competitor analysis, according to me SEMRush is the best. Cause you can track keyword ranking on local based (city level), national based and global based as well. It's really essential after the pigeon update.