Moving from Local to National Audience - Ecommerce Site

[SWWebTeam]

I have an e-commerce site that was optimized for local results. We’ve been receiving traffic from all over the nation so recently we've decided to optimize the site for a more national audience by removing the local business indicators. I have below a list of things that I’ve done, I’m contemplating doing and other various questions. One note I want to make is that we offer installation services – which we would still like to rank locally for.

I have done the following:

• Remove [city] from all of the title tags (except for the installation pages)
• Removed NAP (name, address, ph#) from site wide footer – I’m not sure if I should have done this.
• Inserted NAP at the bottom of the body content of the installation pages

Questions

Right now my installation pages are located in a sub-folder (ex: www.mydomain.com/installation-services).  Should I create a sub-domain for installations (ex: city.mydomain.com/installation-services)?

My thoughts are that it would make that sub-domain all about our installation services while keeping our root domain focused on our products and not dilute it with installations. However, this sub-domain will have less juicy juice.

What should I do with our G+ business page? In the back end of the business G+, there are boxes I can check for “my business has service areas where I visit my customers at their location” and “I serve customers at my business address.” If checked, will these make my site less likely to rank Nationally? We DO have a storefront and we DO visit people to do installations, so I would like these to be checked but not if it hurts my national rankings.

There are local “7 pack” results for my main keywords and their installations. So, I would want my root domain to show up locally for “widgets in [city]” and my sub-domain to show up for “widget installation in [city]".

Is it against Google’s TOS to create another G+ business page for the sub-domain? Is this even possible? Do I even need to do this or will Google know that I have a sub-domain all about installation and have my site show up in the local results?

Is there anything in GWT that I need to make sure to have done? I put the geographic target to United States. Is there anything else?

Of course, there is always the option of creating a new domain and optimize it for the installations. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[toddmumford]

Good questions, it's great to see that you have taken the time to carefully consider each step.

Ranking on a national level in organic SERPs is a much different cat than local.

Local SEO

The factors required to impact authority and visibility on a local SEO level involve, to name a few, proximity to centroid, correct (consistent) NAP citations for the business, positive reviews for the business, adoption of localized Title tags and copy, as well as many others.

However, those elements are guidelines, and the level of work and commitment needed to rank in each vertical at a local level is entirely dependent on the level of competition within that vertical X the the competitive level of the city.

National SEO

In order to rank nationally for targeted terms, you will need to build much higher overall authority, which loosely translates to higher quality (and potentially volume) of links. You rank well on a National level when Google believes that you are one of the best choices for the consumer Nationally. This means your audience is National, and therefore your link strategy, content strategy, social media strategy and mind map should all be geared at looking locally and sprinkling at various major cities - starting with your core city.

I wouldn't suggest removing or altering your G+ account or any of your local settings. You are simply telling Google that on a local stage you wish to be known for servicing businesses in a radius, or the consumers visit your business.

This account gives you stability and authority, acting as an anchor and proof / verification of a physical business. This is an important step in ALL SEO nowadays.

Focus on increasing the scope of your strategy, including your National targets, re-target your Title tags to reflect National cities / shorter tail, and work hard, and you should be able to impact that market.

Hope this helps,
Todd

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Jason,

I need to start by saying that I typically work on the other end of things - trying to get local rankings for businesses. I've never had a client in your particular situation of wanting to build national authority while trying to keep local rankings.

For your installation services, do you have a unique office in each city from which staff goes out to install your product at client locations, and if so, did you create Google+ Local pages for each of these offices? If so, do these Google+ Local pages link to unique landing pages on the website, such as mysite.com/widget-installation-san-diego? Also curious to know how many physical offices you have - 3, 15, 100? And, are you currently getting local pack rankings for these various offices, or have your good rankings been organic rather than local? Lots of questions!

The sample URL I've written would typically be how city/branch landing pages would be structured for an SAB (service area business). I wouldn't typically recommend creating a subfolder for this. Google has stated that they don't care if you use subdomains or subfolders, provided they can be crawled, but I typically utilize subdomains as I find them easier to manage and keep track of than multiple subfolders.

It is possible to rank both nationally and locally (think of major brands like McDonalds with a corporate headquarters and multiple franchise locations around the globe). As Todd says, national rankings depend on building a very high level of authority (again, think McDonalds) for your brand.

If you would like to provide some further details, I will be happy to stop back by. And perhaps some members will also pop in who have accomplished, first-hand, what you are hoping to achieve.