Welcome to the Q&A Forum

WE LOVE THIS QUESTION. Have you used your site for other content purposes like blogging? If you're a directory, you could reach out to reputable companies (or whatever you're a directory for)  and ask them to either guest post on your blog and then share it on social media, or you could use link building tactics to get people to link to your site. Make sure you add the value to your directory or aggregator, and make it clear what the purpose of your site is.

One thing you could take advantage of is social media. Since you're an aggregator, you probably have a niche or target, and you can reach that audience to funnel traffic to your website through social media. Other than that, we would just recommend making sure your backend is as tight as possible, and make sure it's optimized for mobile, since mobile is a huge factor. Another thing to look into would be to optimize for voice search.

Hope this helps, and looking forward to seeing other responses!

Hi Ben!

Google should be seeing/indexing any of the changes that you make your your website, no matter when you originally published the page. While at SMX this year, one of the speakers talked about making the meta description LONGER than the recommended 160 characters. This will give Google more to choose from when selecting the best meta description for the page, instead of just randomly selecting content from any part of the page. I have not tested this method, but could be something interesting to try if you haven't had luck with anything else!

Good luck!

To echo Brett, it's always good to include as much information as possible to help your user determine what service/product you are offering. With that said, if you can describe MORE within your title tag, you're improving user experience. An example of doing this correctly would look like: Pizza in New York | Pizza Restaurant NY | Pizzeria

Hope this helps!

Hi Brian,

Piggybacking off Kevin's answer, I agree. Typical FAQ questions and answers are all on one page, but if your answers will have enough content (depending on the question), then I would suggest building out individual pages.

Some tips, make sure you directly write out the question be answered and then concisely answer it. The better your answer, the great the opportunity you have to rank in Postion 0 on Google. An FAQ page is a great opportunity to grab this position -- which puts you above all the other organic listings.

Read more on Position 0 here: http://www.bluecorona.com/blog/position-0-google-rankings/amp/

To increase your chances of being featured as one of Google’s rich answers, you should:

• Identify a simple question and include that question within the text of your page
• Provide a direct answer right after the question
• Offer valued added info
• Make it easy for users (and Google) to find
• Use ordered lists, bullets, or tables that Google can read to take up more real estate in the “zero” ranking spot

Learn more about featured snippets and rich snippets from Google »

Hope this helps -- let me know if I can help with anything else.

Hey there!

If there is already a breadcrumb at the top of the page, I don't think this is necessarily something you would need to add. However, I don't think it would negatively impact your SEO results.

Hope this helps!

Hi there!

I suggest reading through this blog from Moz: https://moz.com/blog/are-coworking-offices-eligible-for-google-my-business-listings

While the main topic of the article is coworking spaces, it also addresses virtual offices and how this impacts your chances of ranking in the local pack.

In the article, it says: Virtual offices fail to meet Google guidelines, including:

• Make sure that your page is created at your actual, real-world location.
• Provide a phone number that connects to your individual business location as directly as possible.
• Provide your regular customer-facing hours of operation.
• If your business rents a temporary, "virtual" office at a different address from your primary business, do not create a page for that location unless it is staffed during your normal business hours.

Hope this helps!

Hi Stuart!

My fear in creating two accounts (one for x and one for y) in hopes of changing both their information to reflect xy would be that there would then be duplicate information for xy across all online directories—which could cause more harm than good. Google’s Business Guidelines make it very clear that you should not create more than one listing for each of your businesses locations.

If I were you, I would change one of the companies (i.e. x) through Moz local (whichever one has the better Local SEO score), and then I would see if you could find a way to mark y as closed/delete it's online presence altogether. That way you wouldn't have duplicate listings for xy which could be detrimental to your rankings when starting out.

Apart from just merging company x and y's online directory listings, you will need to figure out how to want to handle merging their domains. I recommend checking out this Moz blog that discusses when two companies become one and how to handle it successfully. Here is some more information on handling two company websites:

• http://moz.com/community/q/how-to-keep-old-url-juice-during-site-switch
• http://moz.com/community/q/301-redirect-subdirectory-to-new-domain
• http://moz.com/community/q/which-page-should-i-301-redirect-to-the-other

Hope this answered your question!

Hi Silvia,

I don't personally have experience with Tradenames.com but from what I've read in a few forums (upon searching "tradenames.com reviews" into Google) I see that people have mixed reviews about them.

According to ScamAdvisor.com the website is 86% safe so if this something you think your client would like to invest in, it should be ok. But I would read through a few forums (i.e. the ones that Thomas provided below) and learn about the different experiences people have had working with them in the past. That is going to be the best way for you to determine if they have a good or bad reputation online.

Hope this helped!

Hi Bill! I agree that those features would be very helpful for users. I also think it would be beneficial to be able to use the Keyword Explorer tool to look at volume/opportunity/etc. in specific geographic locations.

You're right! To add on to Gaston's response, the nice thing about the rel=canonical tag is the fact that it passes on the same amount of link juice that a 301 redirect does, and it's a lot easier to do (that fact that these links are supported by Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other top search engines doesn't hurt, either).

Just always keep in mind that rel=canonical pages won't appear in search results!

Hi there Linda!

I agree with Oleg. I would sort through the reviews and see which service or product they mention, and then place the review on the page for that service or product! That way you're not just adding content to add it, but adding relevant content that could help convince people on the site.

Hi Surreyroofcare! Sometimes it takes a little while for Moz local to pick up on the listing -- even if you provided them with the exact URL. I would give it some time, continue to monitor it, and then if it still does not pick up the Facebook listing I would reach out directly to the support team. Hope this helps!

Hi Alastair,

Moz has a great blog post that discusses how many links is too many. I would check that out for advice—while there isn't an exact number of links you should not exceed, many people suggest having fewer than 100 links per page.

Something I would be worried about is link juice. When your website receives a backlink from another website, hopefully with a high domain authority (YAY!), the link juice is being spread out to ALL the pages being linked from the page they are linking to.

This means if www.cnn.com (who has a domain authority of 96) links to your company's homepage, they would be spreading some of their authority to you through "link juice". But instead of retaining majority of that juice/authority on the homepage (thus increasing the authority on that page), you are going to be spreading fewer and fewer amounts of that authority through all 120+ pages linked from the homepage.

Check out this link juice diagram to get a visual representation of what I am talking about.

Hope this helps!

Hi Jason!

I agree 100% with what Miriam and Ben have said.

I would go through all your listings and take out the geo-modifiers if that is not actually part of the legal company name. This could be causing confusion for Google and negatively impacting your rankings—not something you want to do!

However, if Google has not caught on to this (if the company's name does not actually include the geos), and you change these, it could impact how you rank for local search results. By having the city in the company name, you increase your chances of showing up in the local pack.

This is a situation where you will need to track, test, tweak, repeat until you find the right process for your particular situation! Hope this helps.

Hi James,

By having several pages that target similar yet distinct keywords, the site is maximizing its web real estate and not harming its root domain's rankings. It is possible that both the root domain and a more narrowly targeted page can both rank for the same keyword; however, if you don't mind which one shows up above the other because they both take you to the same site, you don't risk hurting the results of either page.

Long story short: the pages targeting longer-tailed, more specific keywords should help capture additional traffic that a more general page (like your root domain) would not.

Hope that helps!

You can optimize and create your landing page content however you see fit. If you want to optimize the content for more than one keyword, go ahead! The most important thing to remember is not to overstuff your content with keywords—but utilizing multiple keywords can definitely help this.

Before focusing on very specific keywords that you think are the most important for the industry, make sure that these are the keywords that people are actually searching. You should be writing content that attracts and helps users. You need to write for what they want to hear, not necessarily what you want to share.

Hi gygnyc! Have you purchased a paid Moz Local account? If not, I would go ahead and do that and you will be able to provide Moz with the correct URL for your Facebook page. Sometimes it takes a little while for Moz local to pick up on the listing -- even if you provided them with the exact URL. I would give it some time, continue to monitor it, and then if it still does not pick up the Facebook listing I would reach out directly to the support team. Hope this helps!

This quote is from Moz's domain setup guide:

"Since search engines keep different metrics for domains than they do subdomains, it is recommended that webmasters place link-worthy content like blogs in subfolders rather than subdomains. (i.e. www.example.com/blog/ rather than blog.example.com) The notable exceptions to this are language-specific websites. (i.e., en.example.com for the English version of the website)."

I think that quote is pretty compelling towards the idea of subdirectories. But I think the value of subfolders versus directories certainly makes sense especially from a linking, age, and juice perspective. Ultimately, it comes down to you and what you want for the website.

Hi there!

I have to agree with Miriam. Because Google is constantly changing or getting rid of things they offer, I would be weary of building out all your online citations with a phone number that could eventually need to be updated—causing you a lot of headaches until you get this updated across the board.

I would look into setting up some type of call tracking. This will be an easier way for you to determine where users found your number, which location they're calling into, etc. If you're interested in learning a bit more about why we suggest call tracking, check out this blog we wrote about it.

Let me know if you have any other questions—happy to help!