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Great question! I'm Director of Engineering for Moz Local, and we think both Hotfrog and Best of the Web are important for us to deliver the value of Moz Local’s listing management. That said, we at aren't using them for link building. The way we look at Hotfrog and Best of the Web (and all of our partners) is not around the direct value of the links on their sites, but what their place is in the local ecosystem (https://moz.com/learn/local/local-search-data-us). Here’s what we consider important in a partner: Are they (directly or indirectly) one of the many sources of local listing information used by major search engines? Do their listings help ensure that our customers’ locations can be found with correct information outside of major search engines? Our approach has always been to make sure we have partners who can help us provide us much coverage as possible so we can ensure that the data you give us is consistent everywhere, and we can reduce the amount of inaccurate data that’s out there. Of course, as the local ecosystem changes, we evaluate whether our partners are meeting those needs — the industry doesn’t stand still and we can’t either.

Hey James, Just want to offer a proviso here: the fact that Google localizes results automatically for queries they feel have a local intent does not mean that the optimization of the local business website can simply overlook local keywords. In fact, it's fundamentally important that each page you create targeting a specific city/neighborhood includes those city terms. Not only does this optimization signal to Google what your page is attempting to be relevant to, but it's also so important that human users know that your Sugarland page is for them in Sugarland, or that your Dallas page is for them in Dallas. I can see why Google's automatic localization of results might cause people to think they can overlook geographic optimization of the website, but to do so would be to fail to send the clearest possible signals of relevance to specific geographic intents or users-as-centroids.

Hi Matthew, Searching from California for the term 'roofing tyler tx' I am seeing Estes coming up in the #6 spot in the local finder view (which you reach by clicking on the 'more places' link at the bottom of the 3-pack. This should be helpful to know, because the client is actually making onto Google's radar, but it's not making it into the top 3 for a search like mine. Curious - when you search that same term and click into the local finder, are you really not seeing the company at all in the local finder results?

Web Code Tools is relatively new, I'm sure it'll be expanded to include more schema types in the future. In the mean time, give this one a shot: https://supple.com.au/tools/local-business-schema-generator/.

Hi both, Cheers for your responses. Links do seem to be the route of the problem, but it's a hard area to link build for. I know people discuss Google 'devaluing' links, but this does seem to show that they are still central to algorithm.

Oh no no it would only be two or three max. I always say to people i do sites for that i will list all areas on areas cover page (now will be on each service page instead) and two or three main areas in titles.

Moderator's Note: A response to this question was deleted on April 6, 2017, at 2:11 pm (as noted above) because it violates the Moz Community's code of conduct.

If you change your domain then expect your rankings and traffic to drop significantly for at least a short period of time (a few months is likely). You'll need to set up 301 redirects from the old domain to the new, pointing to relevant replacement URLs on the new domain; .us/how-to-redirect => .com/how-to-redirect The .us domain will help focus on a US market, though a .com will also do the same. The differences is a .com is also international, so users from the UK, France, etc may still feel comfortable dealing with a .com domain, but may not with a .us one. The most important thing in terms of SEO is the users' experience in finding the answer to their query; too many people focus on using '-' in their URL in order to get the perfect, keyword rich domain, but Google actually looks for the speed and efficiency in which you can answer a query for "easier routes from IL to KY". .com, .net, .org. They're all pretty much the same in terms of value; they're all TLDs. The key difference in them is how your users react to them; a charity/public service website may see better results by using a .org for example, but a multinational corporation would likely only settle for .com or .net.

Hi Rolando, Hmmm... How about we look at this a little different: What are the blogs you're qualified to write for (e.g., some publications prefer authors be active members of the community or have written for similar publications in the past) Which publications would be worthwhile for your brand? Which of those publications accept guest authors? You'll need to do a little digging, but a simple, easy-to-use way to find out if your ideal place to share content accept pitches is to do a simple Google Site search: site:domain.com “submit a guest post” or site:domain.com “guest post by” This will help you figure out if the site you wish to write for offers guest posting opportunities. Read these two posts: The No. 1 Reason Your Content Gets Rejected by Prominent Blogs  and Power Guest Posting for SEO

Great, thank you!

I would track whatever is relevant to your business. Are those villages holding valuable customers? If you rank high for these villages then your exposure could be much greater. It is also easier to rank for small local areas then large geographical ones. With that said if you track just the 3 major towns chances are you are ranking similar to those smaller villages. It all depends on how much info you want and what is necessary to improve your SEO strategy.

That helps a lot, thank you. I've tried very hard to make the 6 pages unique, now to wait and see:)

The homepage will likely always be the page on your website with highest domain authority. While there are situations where this might not be the case, the homepage is likely the be the page that has the most backlinks (don't internally and externally). That being said, I don't think creating local landing pages for multiple locations would harm the keyword rankings for your homepage. Instead, this provides an opportunity for your client to dominate the search engine results pages and take up more than one of the listings. As they build out these localized pages, I would spend time focusing on both the geo-targeted keywords, but also building authority for these pages. Are there any local organizations, associations, teams, etc. that would link back to the localized service page? As Julie said, your homepage is going to do the most work for you. But utilize these landing pages to enhance the results!

I think you could spend a ton of money and time on a strategy like this just to discover that it was a disaster. Google is smart. They can figure out when content is just churned out and is the same as every other website out there. You can use some filler content, but pages without any unique content rarely rank, are often penalized, and don't convert customers very well. It's best to offer something that the consumer can't get elsewhere, so that they buy and refer friends to you. If you're same same, why should they return?

I love Robert's advice.  I would also suggest adding some long tail keywords. Finding a church is very personal and I'd guess that lots of your prospects are searching things like "Bible based church" "church with active single group" or "church with great music".  Don't put all your emphasis on generic phrases.

Thanks, Stevie. Apparently, there's been a 'phantom' update which I suspect is the culprit...

Hi Aviad, The answer to this depends on the following or at least these should be kept in mind while making a decision on it - 1. Resources company is ready to allocate - Is company willing to spend more money buy having different websites on TLDs or just having one website is feasible? 2. What does the company want from brand point of view? This is bit of a vague question and maybe no one has the answer to it but its probably worth considering this. Now, talking from SEO POV, different TLDs could potentially yield you better results as these are dedicated sites for different locations. 1. GEO TARGETING - You could host these sites on their local respective IP addresses. 2. LOCALISED CONTENT - Localise/customise the content of the website better since the websites are dedicated to specific countries. 3. USERS EXPECTATIONS/PREFERENCE - TLD might give you an added benefit as search engines tend to show few TLDs on first page (from my observation). Also, if you think about it from user perspective, they prefer browsing a website that seems more local. Buying a product from company.uk might be much more appealing than buying it from company.com or whatever the global website is. Now talking about having a global website, its not that bad at all if you optimise it well. 1. GEO TARGETING - You dont need to host the website on separate ip addresses since its just one website. In order to have it load fast in different countries, you could use CDNs. CDNs are really good and if you get a good subscription, it could give your website a good SEO benefit. 2. LOCALISED CONTENT - In order to talk to the users from different geographic region, you could have specific dedicated pages sitting within the subfolders such as company.com/uk, company.com/jp etc. This way you will be able to speak to the users by customising these dedicated pages. 3. USERS EXPECTATIONS/PREFERENCE - I mentioned above that users prefer to shop from TLDs more. If you have subfolders on the website, then you that good however, users can still see that you are a global website. This is something that you might wanna think about. Hope this gives you a bit of idea on the thought process for understanding what will be best for the company. Malika

Mirium responded to a similar question. What she says below is spot on. I really like this link that she shared with me.  https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages

Thanks Miriam, It's a unique situation where the greatest distance between two clinics is 30 miles, but as the crow flies there are two in between them at a distance of 5 miles each. I see  several ways to approach this based on the links you provided and some further research.  What is difficult about siloing each treatment they offer is that it is the same one they offer five miles away.  I figure the best thing to do is to make sure each businesses NAPs are the same and that they then make each directory unique with content relating to the nearby businesses, parks, showing different photos and using ppc as well as referral marketing techniques. I really enjoyed the tool discussed in https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages, it is http://answerthepublic.com/  which generates what, why, how, when, where long tail questions.  It is simply brilliant! The way REI creates their landing pages for individual cities is very smart.  They are super NAP on page and have created a blog roll of events coming up.  The only thing I don't like about it is when you click on the menu items on the left all you get is a pop up window with non-linkable bullets. The same is true for the rental page.  The location urls on the rental page should connect you with a page where you can order gear for pickup. thanks again! michael

Hi Paul, Thank-you for sharing that.  Question, over the past few weeks we've seen our new domain climb back up into the spot the old domain was at before we made the domain change.  I still haven't added a sitemap of all the old urls to the new google webmaster property for the new domain.  At this point I'm questioning whether I should even do this at all since I'm concerned doing so at this stage may produce some sort of negative result.  I can see the index amount of the old site urls slowly climbing down but there is still a decent amount of them:  https://www.google.com/#q=site:citychurchfamily.org .  Does it still make sense to submit a sitemap of all the old urls at this stage?  If I don't will all the old urls eventually stop being indexed by Google?  Should I remove the old site entirely at citychurchfamily.org but keep my 301 redirects in place on the server?  I appreciate your first response and any help/insight you offer here. Sincerely, Andrew