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Category: Local Website Optimization

Considering local SEO and its impact on your website? Discuss website optimization for local SEO.


  • How does answering Web Design questions on Quora improve my traffic? By having my link on a High Authority domain like Quora? Hoping people will click a link to my site after answering a question? I'm not saying that you are wrong, I'm interested in how it works SEO wise Thanks so much for your time?

    | tombeavan
    0

  • Hi MrSem, Thanks for re-launching this conversation with new questions, which are good ones. My advice here, numbered for clarity: You should only have one "Contact" page on the site, listing all 5 of your locations. You should also have a unique page for each location. These are typically called "location landing pages", "local landing pages" or "city landing pages" - not "contact pages". The contact page should feature the basic contact info of each branch. The landing pages should feature much more than this. They should each be a unique resource of information about that branch, including NAP, driving directions, a map, reviews, special offers, customized CTAs, proofs of community involvement and anything else you can think of that might interest, inform and persuade customers as to the desirability of choosing your company. If you're listing a toll free number, be sure you're designating it as such and that it is the unique LOCAL number you're most closely associating with each branch of your business. If the number of locations you have is beginning to create navigational concerns, you may be reaching the point where you need to consider a store locator widget. Typically, I don't see these being implemented for a business with just 5 locations. More like 10+. For major brands with hundreds or thousands of locations, store locators are an essential medium for helping consumers find the branch nearest them. For your business, with 5 locations, the function simply may not be necessary. You can list all of your location in high level navigation without clutter, and you can also put them in the footer, on the contact page, etc. This shouldn't take up too much room, and should provide good UX for your users. Does this help answer your questions? Please, let me know if you have others.

    | MiriamEllis
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  • Hi, I'll give you an idea how I approach this. If there is an image of red shoes, I describe as accurate as I can: 'red high-heels suede shoes with a bow on the top' (I'm being creative!). There is no harm in adding the brand if the shoes are this brand or if you want these shoes to be shown under Images when searching for your brand. So always be descriptive and feel free to add the brand if it makes sense. Hope this helps. Katarina

    | Katarina-Borovska
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  • Hi Meier, Did Robert van Heerde's answer help you resolve your issue? If so, please mark it as a "Good Answer." If you are still having issues, though, we'd love to get an update about that, too, so we can try to get you resolve this. Christy

    | Christy-Correll
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  • Hey! Yeah you forgot to close some objects + arrays. This is at least validating but please make sure your objects are correct:

    | Martijn_Scheijbeler
    0

  • Hi D E! Thanks for the opportunity of looking at your client's site. A foundational concept to understand is that the company's local pack rankings will depend on their physical address, not on the addresses of the homes they build in various communities. So, as the home builder is in Saint Louis, their local pack rankings will be most achievable for searches containing the words 'st. louis' or stemming from Saint Louis-based devices. They are unlikely to rank in the local packs for any city other than St. Louis because of Google's documented bias towards physical locale of the business. So, where we move beyond this kind of understanding of how local packs work is when we are going after additional organic rankings, instead of local ones. For this purpose, building out content that showcases the homebuilder's work in specific neighborhoods or in neighboring cities supports goals of ranking organically for searches that use these geographic terms. For a good example of how to build landing pages that serve users making these types of searches, please read: https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages In that post, you'll see an example of how a house painter could create a landing page showcasing his projects in a specific community, so that seems quite similar to what you're hoping to do. That being said, I can't predict whether city landing page or style-of-home landing pages will convert better for your particular client. Are you tracking how people currently interact with the website? When a potential customer contacts the business, are the asking what styles of housing are available, or are they inquiring about neighborhoods? Answering questions like these will necessitate some serious research. Without knowing all of the details, I'd be inclined to think that you could have both a set of landing pages based on the neighborhoods of St. Louis, and then a separate gallery depicting popular home designs, regardless of what part of the city the homes are in. You'd have the best of both worlds that way, but if there's a reason why you have to choose one or the other, only real research into the preferences and needs of the client's customers can provide a data-based answer.

    | MiriamEllis
    1

  • Thanks for the response!

    | matt.nails
    0

  • Ideally yes, you would have a separate XML Sitemap file and Google Search Console profile, as well as a separate (and combined) Google Analytics view for each of the thousands of subdomains. If that is not possible, at the very least you should have a sitemap that includes every indexable page on the primary site, as well as an XML sitemap on each subdomain, which is linked to in that subdomain's own Robots.txt file. According to the XML sitemaps protocol, XML sitemap files can not contain URLs from different domains. This includes subdomains. You have to keep all URLs to a single domain per XML sitemap. See sitemaps explained for more info. As for the Title Tag thing, I don't see why you couldn't have a street name AND city -- or neighborhood and city -- so that they would all be unique, while still including the city.

    | Everett
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  • Hey There SEOJaz, As you mentioned the word 'optimal' my own description of this would be: A single website representing the brand A store locator linking to an excellent set of landing pages representing the physical locations of the brand. These pages feature unique, compelling content and good CTAs. A submenu or sitemap somewhere on the site linking to these landing pages to sure they are indexable. And that's it. When we start throwing subdomains, 20% different content and micro-sites into the game, what you typically wind up with is confusion, mistakes, content of less than sterling quality and marketing efforts having to be spread too thin across an ecosystem of properties instead of being poured into a single, very strong, branded website. What I've described is optimal, but I'm not sure I've answered your questions...

    | MiriamEllis
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  • Thanks Patrick, I am based in Australia so unfortunately can't take advantage of MOZ local. But hopefully it will be available here too. Ill get hacking away at the business directories then. We have 3 business sites that need to be uploaded. All have different details, can anyone suggest a quicker fill option. Ive heard Google has a extension Call Auto fill but I cant seem to get it to work. Ive also heard of CSV files? Anyone with advice or experience with this? Thanks

    | Fetseun
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  • We are just optimizing our business with different local branches and are going to add according json-ld schema markup for that shortly, so we are facing similar questions... Honestly I think that this particular setting will have a minor impact. I would go for Denver instead of USA. By the way the could also come from outside the USA... People will search for "hotel Denver" or just "hotel" if they are already in Denver. To do Google My Business the right way, i.e. clean up all unclean NAP citations if there are some is probably more effective. Maybe you could add Denver also in Google My Business company name... I know its not 100% clean and not adhering to their terms but I always got away with it. Moreover different people at Google's My Business support who noticed that during calls regarding other thinks mentioned it but said that it was OK like this. Its a rather strong signal and works very well actually...

    | Cesare.Marchetti
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  • You need to. use either a local domain and choose that domain or create a subfolder if you are writing all of this in Arabic or use a separate domain that ends in com.PK  hreflang or make sure you have correctly set up targeting in Google search console for .com.pk hreflang if you want to rank in English-speaking countries & com.pk or make sure you have correctly set up targeting in Google search console for .com.pk you are going to continue to write in English? make sure Google understands where you are targeting your website. Set a country target https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/62399?hl=en On the International Targeting report, click the Country tab. Check the Geographic target checkbox and choose your country target. If you want to ensure that your site is not associated with any country or region, select Unlisted in the drop-down list. find Pakistan if you want to rank more than one country or region look at the information below. hreflang https://www.branded3.com/blog/implementing-hreflang-tag/ http://www.aleydasolis.com/en/international-seo-tools/hreflang-tags-generator/ Respectfully, Thomas

    | BlueprintMarketing
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  • Just to piggyback off of Miriam, we do a lot for clients in the home services category who want to show up in markets like this. Our clients are service area businesses, so we build targeted pages that talk about the service they provide for that market. What we have found is that by making that page unique to the market has helped us with gaining some of that sweet page one visibility. You will almost never rank higher in a market outside of your physical location, but yes, it's possible to get some visibility. Just make sure you're being honest in your representation to customers. An SEO strategy that ends with an angry, non-paying customer is not a strategy at all.

    | brettmandoes
    1

  • Hey BigChad, Embedding a G Map wasn't considered a Top 50 local or organic ranking factor in this year's Local Search Ranking Factors survey (https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors). That being said, one thing that could potentially help you is to drive users to Google Maps to get driving directions to your business, as this behavior could potentially influence rankings.

    | MiriamEllis
    1

  • Will, Write amazing content!!! So start with what your competitors are doing (market research) see what type of content ranks locally. Then produce a content campaign that exceeds usability, engagement and information that your competitors are producing. I don't think it is as necessary to do exact match domains these days. If you want to dominate the local space you have to do the technical local objectives, such as listing and google my business verification, Facebook page and Moz Local. Thanks, Don

    | donsilvernail
    1

  • I am saying this as a business owner and as a former employee who has foot prints on his back.... The business owner should be well aware of the number of clients, the amounts that they are charging, and the number of people who are on staff to do this work.  It seems to me that a choice is being made to collect payments rather than to provide service. Some people might not like what I am going to say, but if I was the employee here, I would find another job rather than work in an effort to improve this company.  Their actions are likely deliberate. You have a very generous attitude and ethic that deserves a better work situation.  I hope that you discover an employer who deserves you! I wish you all the best.

    | EGOL
    0

  • Hey Glen, I'd leave the example.com for the US version as it is. If you would do example.com/us,then you would need to redirect the .com version anyway to avoid the duplicates. Then, you would need to do the hreflang setup for the diferent locations, since you have the same language for all the versions. Regarding the backlinks, if the website has .co.uk, it should point to the relevant page, such as ._com/uk_and so on. Hope it helps. Cheers, Martin

    | benesmartin
    0