Welcome to the Q&A Forum

That's right you posted that about link research tools in my other question but I haven't checked them out yet I will do that asap. I definitely have some more investigation to do but I still think that having a massive portion of their site as duplicate content is hurting. I will talk to them about adding content and see where that goes.

I usually recommend noindexing search results pages, since Google has said they don't want "search results in their search results." I was thinking about this this morning and I think one way to go would be to give advice on owning a dog in different areas of the city. For example you could say something like "In the City of London, the area is more urban and green spaces are fewer and far between. Dog owners in the City should expect to take their pups to a dog park for some regular exercise, and may want to consider smaller, lower-energy breeds who don't need as much time to run." Something like that. You could talk about nearby parks and dog-friendly attractions, endorse some local vets, list nearby pet hospitals, that sort of thing. It will take time to build out this content, but you can prioritize based on the existing organic traffic each page is getting, or start with your top converters and go from there.

Hi, thanks for the responce, maybe I should create a brand page for the .com domain and keep my google business page for my new .co.uk targeted domain? Would this be advisable?

Hi There! Not quite sure I'm following your thought here. What would you be keeping the NAP off of? I understood that your original idea was to build out separate landing pages for zip codes or build a separate website. I'm recommending against either approach. Having 2 authoritative websites (with the same business name) would potentially be confusing to both humans and bots, and building out landing pages on your original site just for zip codes sounds like it might lead to thin or duplicate content, and could even fall under Google's new doorway pages update. If you want to optimize for zip codes, my best recommendation is to find an way to work this into your existing site and existing city landing pages (as in my Monterey example). I can't think of any other approach I'd be comfortable recommending. Hope this helps!

Thanks for your help Ryan - much appreciated. So from a technical perspective, how would you deal with duplicate content served on both sites? Simply no-index dupe content on one site? There will be lots of this (feature articles, major events etc.) posted daily-weekly.

If a lot of your citations are San Diego based then perhaps. Even Moz doesn't get a knowledge box from time to time unless you enter Moz Seattle, WA, and their brand is very national / international. Again, a big part of the knowledge box is user intent and search volumes.

Are these doorway pages? Doorway pages are a cluster of very similar, low-effort required pages that are produced for no reason other than to generate search traffic. I don't think that you are going to get a rock solid answer.  In my opinion, you will only get opinions unless Google is giving an official answer. In my opinion, what you describe are ARE doorway pages.  They are a little better than "cookie cutter pages" that simply swap the name, address, phone, etc. in and out between pages,  Google has been killing cookie cutter pages for at least ten years, though some have survived for at least that long. The pages that you describe have a higher chance of survival but if anyone was going to produce a massive number of these pages they would start taking conscious or unconscious short-cuts that would probably make them moderately vulnerable to an algorithmic penalty. If you want to do a good job on these pages.  Get the manager at each location to take a photo of the building, take a photo of the staff, write text about the physical location with a google map, write a little about the staff including their names, describe some of the jobs done in that area, include photos of their work if possible.  Hold their annual bonus until they hand in this work.  Hold next year's and each subsequent year's until they have a fresh update.

Unfortunately yes, it is needed to be rerun the process with the tool.

Don’t really want to add anything more, the one word answer to your question is “Screaming Frog”! Hope this helps!

Can i place my anchor text backlinks on English high pr websites? Yes, you can... if those websites are really used by your German audience (i.e.: Mashable). But if you mean "pr websites" something like "press communicates web sites"... than I would say no: Because those are links that usually can generate problems (crappy sites); Because they must be nofollow links (as Google told) because they are not editorial links Because the press communicates will end being published, maybe, in sites your audience is not, hence useless for referral traffic; Because of at least 10 others good reasons I won't list. Moreover, if you want to rank in Google.de, you need links from German websites for simple better geotargeting and for a simple question of logic: Google, in fact will consider that your site is not relevant for the German public if it doesn't have links from German sites.

Hi Harry, Agree with Ryan here that your client is in an excellent position to rank organically (if not locally) for additional cities, given the non-existence of competitors in his 30 mile radius. However, you have 2 major challenges to address and overcome. A car dealership is a brick-and-mortar business without any obvious relationship to any city beyond its own. This is not a service area business that goes to towns B, C and D to repair plumbing or trim trees. So challenge #1 is to sit down with the client and do an honest assessment of whether the two of you can discover a legitimate connection to cities B, C and D. Just off the top of my head, this might include: Sponsorship of events, sports teams or other things in cities B, C and D Rotating regional specials, as in, bring us a piece of mail with your address in City B and receive a 5% discount on X at our dealership Participation in industry-related happenings in these other cities. For example, blog coverage of an antique car show, an auto race, a vintage car club, teaching at a driver's training school or teaching road safety to students. Blog coverage of industry-related news or laws pertaining to cars, traffic, safety, etc. that is applicable to each of the specific cities Endorsements of or tie-ins to businesses in the other cities. For example, partner with an auto garage in City B to provide some kind or special for doing business with both companies. These are the types of things you need to brainstorm. If no relationship to the other cities exists, then the customer can't move forward. He must either mine his business model to discover these relationships or begin to build them so that he can prove he is a relevant result for these other cities. Challenge #2 hinges on the quality of what you and the client develop together. You mention that you are already working on city landing pages. The client should aim for just 1 page per target city on the website and make it as interesting, useful and strong as possible. Do not create thin or duplicative pages. This is not a good marketing strategy for any business, under any circumstances. Once you have got the basic page in place featuring the 'relationship' content, consider developing an on-site blog to continue on with this work, producing new writing on an on-going basis about contests, events, specials etc. You don't have to do tons of this, because of the lack of competition. Even a single blog post a month for each of the target cities will likely get you pretty far in what you're hoping to achieve, because of the client's fortunate lack of competitors. In all efforts, stress quality to the client and this should be a viable strategy. Hope this helps!

Great blog post Miriam, and thank you very much for the response!

Hi Deedra, Are you saying you have multiple physical locations from which you are serving multiple cities, or just one physical location from which you are serving multiple cities? And, also, are you meeting with clients face-to-face or is this a virtual business model? These nuances are important.

Hi Morgan. The example that you just posted is working fine, i.e. when you try to go to http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/author/pnkspikchik/ you're redirected to http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/ and now when you try to go to those old Wedding 404 pages it goes your current wedding package page.  Seems to all be in order. Cheers!

Bump. Just curious if anyone has any new ideas on this? We still have not found a solution.

Sorry I missed this follow-up earlier. Within the site map you'll want to change the http://WWW to http://CDN for these image files. The www version of your site, and the cdn server are on two different IPs / server. You want images to be serving from the CDN one. For 2, if you do use 301 redirection I'd recommend scripting it so that the script inspects whether or not it's an image file and then applies the cdn change. A pro in your area that works with REgex and htaccess will be able to guide you through that. The username.net-dns.com thing... That's not your server is it? You can't apply redirects on servers outside of your control.  Cheers!

Really nice discussion going on here. Just want to add one quick tip, regarding some of the advice about focusing on Local. Be sure the business meets Google's Guidelines, which describe this as an ineligible business model: Rental or for-sale properties, such as vacation homes or vacant apartments. Sales or leasing offices, however, are eligible for verification. See: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en

Hi Frank. Here are a couple posts on this: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/11/25/guide-to-using-call-tracking-for-local-search/, an update of: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/05/14/a-guide-to-call-tracking-and-local/.  That should clarify it for you. There are pros and cons obviously, but that should give you the full scope.

I've got a client in a similar situation. They have a .com domain but they only offer services in Australia. The good news is they rank just fine for the search terms that are relevant to their business (these are primarily queries with local intent). In Webmaster Tools, you'll want to tell Google that your site is targeted to an AU audience. There's an option to set this under "Search Traffic" -> "International Targeting".  Click the "Country" tab and then you can choose to target users in a particular country. We also made sure that it was very clear from the content on the site that the business was based in Australia paying particular attention to local search optimisation (See: http://moz.com/learn/local ) - getting local business listings in reputable, authoritative directories etc. It's best to think of it from a visitors point of view - what are the on-page signals you need to provide to give them confidence that they are dealing with an Australian site. (Local address, Australian phone number, mentions of relevant places / people / events, associations/badges/certifications from relevant Australian bodies etc...) Hope this helps - Good Luck! Doug.

Thanks for your advice and tips!