Local Really?
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Hi Robert,
I think you've raised such an important point here:
"I think you are falling into a very bad trap in SEO. You are looking for the "thing" that is going to do it and that does not exist IMO.".
That is quite correct. We know that the Local algo consists of several hundred different factors. Success depends on getting many, many little things right - not just one big thing. I found this comment to be extremely insightful.
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Wow, the last few comments alone have made my subscription here at Moz completely worth it. Thank you really for the advice. I could take a really long time to respond to each of the above comments but I think we all know you guys are right, and I have tons of work to do. I will revisit the thread from before and start working through it. Now to address a few further questions (and I know I'm about to sound really ignorant.)
1. Are citations errors that are causing devalue of the listing?
2. What is NAP? I'm not so great with acronyms in the field.
3. Since my last thread, I have explained to the client that the address is very important and she is onboard now so I will be doing what is needed to fix the citations.
4. The client does offer services in Austin, Denver, and of course wants to travel for destinations. Destinations is clearly out on local which is fine because Google is starting to rank local businesses based on proximity of the user for the terms from what I can tell. The client has physical addresses in Austin and Denver. They are home based businesses, not storefronts.
5. As for my comment in the previous thread about patterns, I have thoroughly researched each one of the listings coming up in the results. The reason why I said what I said is because I don't see many of the things you guys have mentioned on them. For instance, none of them have their address on their site. Most of them don't have Google Plus Local connected, etc. etc. I wasn't trying to be arrogant (although at the time I clearly didn't know how great the advice I was getting from Linda and Miriam was and lucky
it's just hard to believe I need to do all this when I know my competition isn't. I will do it though.6. Google Maps API: I'm a little confused as to what to do. Is there a different plugin for geotagging photos? I see WP Google Maps amongst other plugins for wordpress. Is there a specific one?
Thanks again for your time. You guys are right, I am extremely dedicated to learning more about local and proceeding on a good path that will be helpful to future clients as well. I really appreciate everything.
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Hey Jonathan, Robert, Miriam
That is really a spectacular answer from Robert there and it addresses the one primary thing you can't always write a 1, 2, 3 list of instructions for - mindset. Things have been done badly, they need to be undone and then done right going forward.
In my experience no one specific ranking factor will derail the train here (no address) but there are easy wins and not being prepared to share the address on the site itself means you are unlikely to want to share it on citation sources so that could be a deal breaker.
You are asking very specific questions as well and without really digging in folks can only give you a 'maybe' type of answer. Even with some detailed analysis this is detective work at the best of times and I like to try and make a list of usual suspect problems and knock them down one by one and then be prepared to wait (and wait, and wait).
Your questions.
1. Maybe (and it's certainly not helping - sort them out, see if it helps)
2. NAP - There is a local search Glossary here well worth a read and then Google for more details: https://getlisted.org/static/resources/glossary.html
3. Cool - that's a start. As Miriam mentioned the address does not need to be visible on the listing (although it does need to be entered) but you don't have this luxury with the citations so...
4. If you have multiple supported locations then you need to optimise the site around this. Have a locations page, have a page for all supported locations that have a physical address and optimise these pages and link them to the local profiles, use schema markup etc (Robert gave great tips here but again research on page optimisation for local SEO)
5. Tough break, but it sounds like you have negative factors and have started from a minus here. As Robert mentioned, don't try to swim upstream, except the situation for what it is and do what you need to do to fix things.
6. If these more complicated aspects are throwing you just dial the basics in. You can get schema mark up for the address for the location page(s) here: http://www.microdatagenerator.com/local-business-schema/ - get the embed code for the clients map and link out to the specific location local profile and make that links back and call it good for starters.
Beyond that, as a gigging SEO try to embrace this difficult job as it will make things so much easier next time you have a client or job that has these problems (and so much more pragmatic in your attempts to set something up from the off as it is all about the small details).
Hope that helps
Marcus -
Hi Jonathon,
Very nice reply. Let me bang through these quickly.
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Citations are references around the web to a business' name, address and phone number. So, a listing of a business on Yelp, CitySearch, Bing Places for Business, Best of the Web, etc. = a citation. Citations can also occur elsewhere, such a blog posts or news articles that mention a business' name, address and phone number. Citations also often include a link to the business' website, but they don't absolutely have to. Stated very, very simply, citations with correct information in them build authority and help rankings. Citations with incorrect information cloud authority and negatively impact a business' ability to rank well. It's more complicated than this, but this is my simplest definition.
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NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone Number. All of local hangs on publishing correct NAP in a variety of places.
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Yes, cleaning up your client's citations will be critical to sending a clear data signal to Google and human users and your efforts to earn high rankings. This will take time to do and time to see benefits from.
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It is completely fine that the client is home-based. I am going to link here to one of my own articles:
The Nitty Gritty of City Landing Pages
The core of your Local SEO work is going to revolve around the client's 2 physical locations, but there are organic SEO strategies to pursue for her work outside her cities of location. These are covered in the above article. My advice is: get everything totally in order with her Austin and Denver locations first, then move on to consider how you can promote the business in other places, following the guidelines given in the above article.
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Competitors are often bad role-models. They may lack the education to do things right. If you see a field full of bad practices, you have an awesome chance to outstrip them by implementing good practices.
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I honestly wouldn't even worry about this right now. Get the basics in order first and then start turning your attention to other stuff like geotagging.
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I will be going over all of this over the next few days. Thank you so much for the amazing support in this situation. I spent a few hours today going through 10 pages of google results and correcting the address to one or both of the new addresses. Hopefully this will be very helpful in NAP and lowering some citations! I will continue to work through 5-10 pages of results for the company name search in an effort to really give some solid ground to this campaign.
In the meantime, I'm looking at my options for re-working the website to give equal attention to both cities where I am focusing on local results, Austin and Denver. As it stands, I have those two URLS (http://www.photojennette.com/austin and /denver) 301 Redirected to /austin-wedding-photos and /denver-wedding-photos which are pages directed at organic SEO and information for the those places. I noticed someone mentioned sub domains. Sub-domaining would mean a whole new installed of wordpress and the theme I have running, does /denver and /austin work or do I need to have austin.photojennette.com, etc.? I can easily have /denver and then have /denver/location as a page. and the same for Austin. As for the location page, are we just talking about listing the address and maybe embedding a Google Map of the location?
Again, so very thankful for you guys.
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Marcus,
Thanks for your info. In regards to #6, I used the link to grab the code for the address to post on the Location Listing Page. I'm using wordpress, and when I paste the code in (even in the "code" view thats just says text, It comes up formatted a little strangely. Is there a better way to do this on wordpress? Perhaps a plugin? I thought about pasting into the "Head" section but then it would be on every page. Thanks in advance.
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_So, Jonathan, I think you need to sit your client down and explain to them they have a very pretty site and I love the story of who and what they are. You need to tell them that will be on the story page and you will be handling the other pages. You should create a contact page for Austin, you should do the sub directory for Denver Photog and another page for Denver contact. Use the API, place markup, authorship, review, etc. Make sure the photos are geotagged and that the Denver are on the Denver pages and Austin on Austin. That is what will fix your issue. _
I'm working on this now. I have created /denver and /austin on wordpress. I'm going to be creating two separate pages for contact. One will be under /austin and the other under /denver. They will each have the same contact form, but will have different content on them. Do you know which wordpress plugin I need for the Google Map API to mark up the pages correctly? Also, do i need to do this mark up to every page and post on the site? Again, the client has two separate locations in both Austin and Denver and they are both equally important. The client literally lives in both places currently. I'm waiting on the Google card with the pin code to confirm the Denver location currently on Places. I'm tackling this head on with long term goals of improvement over the next 6 months. I plan to dedicate a few hours a week to this specific subject for that amount of time. I understand that no ONE thing will fix it and hope to continue learning from you guys.
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Status Update:
I have created two separate contact pages that are linked to from the menu as well as the footer. The contact pages have a little bit different information but any advice on these would be appreciated.
http://www.photojennette.com/austin/contact
http://www.photojennette.com/denver/contact
They each include the correct NAP. I have also linked to these pages directly from the information page for Denver wedding photography as well as Austin wedding photography.
I've also read all the above resources. Miriam, I was a little confused as to whether I need city landing pages for this business because the business has physical locations in each place, but serves a radius in each location as well as worldwide, but I went ahead and did it. So now there is a /austin and /denver that will have information for wedding photography as well as engagement photography in the designated areas (might even touch on other types of photography as well.) From those pages you will be able to easily get to a page about Austin wedding photography and Austin engagement photography and the same for Denver.
Does all this sound like a baby step in the right direction?
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Hi Jonathon,
You are so welcome. I am concerned that you are still not quite understand what a citation is. You write:
"Hopefully this will be very helpful in NAP and lowering some citations!"
Citations are not a negative thing you want to reduce or lower. They are positive references to your business NAP. They only thing that would be negative about them is if they have bad NAP on them (i.e. a wrong address, phone number etc.).
Yes, I would have a unique landing page for the Austin and another for Denver. These could be the contact pages, provided you include lots of great unique content on them as well as the complete NAP. These would be the pages you would be linking your Google+ Local pages to for the respective locations.
Beyond that, in future, your client may want to develop additional city landings pages for other cities where she serves but does not have a physical location. For example, let's say she does a series of ten weddings in Dallas, TX. She might create a Dallas Wedding Photography page, with unique text content and a showcase of her photography of weddings she's done in Dallas. But, this type of work should be set on the back burner until the core work has been done surrounding the two physical locations, in my opinion.
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You're right, I mis-pronounced. I do understand citations I think. I should have hopefully my work will start to fix the NAP in the citations.
You said-
These would be the pages you would be linking your Google+ Local pages to for the respective locations.
So I would link these as the website on the google plus local page business information as just :
http://www.photojennette.com/austin/contact
???
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Hi Jonathon,
Yes, it is typical for multi-location businesses to have unique landing pages on their websites and for them to use the URLs of these landing pages as the URLs entered into the respective Google+ Local pages, rather than linking all of the Google+ Local pages to the homepage. This serves to further differentiate the pages/locations from one another.
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Ok guys I have been hard at work and found tons of good input as well as missing and incorrect listing (and I know there are probably even more) and have either fixed, requested a fix, or am currently waiting for an email back. I also ended up with a Yahoo / Yext Power Listing that has really helped add correct listings into the mix.
I also have pages /austin and /denver fixed up with the address for each city and then have a separate contact page for each of them at /austin/contact and /denver/contact with the "schema.org" listing of the address I think*.
I do have a question about NAP. It's not NAPW so if the the listings have different website url's is that a big deal? I know some of the listings say photojennette.com, and then on my power listing I did photojennette.com/austin/contact and then some are just photojennette.com/austin.
I really want to fix them all and think I'll be able once Yahoo approves my listing because it says I can edit at that time, but thoughts?
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Hi Jonathan,
I recommend you pick one landing page for Denver and one landing page for Austin and have all citations point to these chosen, respective pages.
I also recommend that you not necessarily rely only on Yext to help you find problematic listings. Read:
http://www.ngsmarketing.com/why-yext-might-not-be-the-best-fit-for-your-business/
Yext is good for some things and many people like it, but the article I've linked to will explain some of the apparent weaknesses in the system that could cause problematic listings to be overlooked.
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is it common for the places listing to take a plunge when you first start working on it? In a matter of 4 days the listing has gone from page 10 to page 18 (in the maps listings) I could see that being a possibility since there is so much changing so quickly but just looking for some professional insight.
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Hi Jonathan,
This thread has moved beyond its original topic and I'd recommend that you start a new thread for additional, new questions like this, so that you can receive maximum feedback from the community. Hope this helps you to receive good answers to all of your different questions!
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