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Hmm I find it hard to make a decision on this point. I fear that treating this as a brand isn’t optimal for the local SEO and will put the company in a disadvantage over competitors which are “based” in that city. Although the guideline does state “staffed during normal business hours”.

Normally I would say that’s the way to go but in this industry it’s very common to only be staffed when there are courses. And 50% staffed feels like the same as an entrepreneur who has a part time job as well (let’s say a coffee corner which is only open in the weekends). In that case I would say having a local page is just fine.

Decisions, decisions…

What is your view on point 1 and 3?

Thanks for your response Ryan. The client rents this place full time but it isn't always staffed. There are 2-3 courses every week at the location (these take the whole day).

I hope someone can help me make some decisions. I did read a lot about Local SEO lately but I’m not sure what way to go with this client.

Client:

1. Service provider with two physical locations (service is provided on the physical location).
2. In the coming 12 month there will open 1-2 new physical locations in other cities.
3. Has only one phone number. I will try to advise them to get a local phone number for both locations. But they prefer one (mobile) number to keep things simple.
4. Clients are willing to travel for the service, since it’s a one day course they take. Current clients do come from a lot of different locations.
5. The competition for around 5-6 big cities is pretty low since there aren’t a lot of service providers who deliver these courses.

Questions:

1. Should I put both addresses in the footer? It’s a best practice with only one location. I think it’s handy for users with two locations as well but I’m worried about how Google sees this. Also this will get confusing when the client passes 3-4 locations.
2. If the client sticks with one mobile phone number, should I make a Google + local page for both physical locations? The Google guidelines clearly state they prefer a local number as much as possible.
3. If I add “Our service areas “ to the top navigation and make a unique place page for every city (to rank organic aswell) is it wise to link those local Google + pages to the unique page about this service? Normaly I would go for yes, but I want to add places with and without a physical location under the same navigation.

With just one location I would just focus on that city and add unique pages for the other pages. I’m getting a bit stuck between best practices since the client got opportunities with multiple strategies.

I hope you guys (and girls ) can help!

Hi John,

Beside the great points mentioned before these suggestions might help you.

1. I ones saw a few inserted casino / gambling URL’s pop up in a Google Analytics reports. Might be worth your time to check if there are any new URL’s created.
2. Run some security scans on your site to find any vulnerabilities that might have caused the hack.
3. Since you didn’t find it in your database, you could check for any hard coded links with the search through files option in Notepad. If the link is hard coded you should be able to find it.
4. If you are using a CMS like Wordpress, check if all your plugins and themes are up to date. Poor maintenance could have caused the security breach.
5. If your website is hacked, could it be that the hacker changed links to prevent an easy discovery? Might extent your search to more generic spam terms.

As Dirk said, don’t wait too long solving this issue. If you are depending on your SEO and you can’t fix this issue within days I would rather hire an expert then wait a few weeks.

Goodluck!

Ofcourse!

I think your website isn't ranking on HTTPS at the moment. I couldn't find any HTTPS urls when I used the site:https://ryanyoungdesign.com.au command in Google.

Also, I don't think you have any backlinks pointing at the HTTPS domain. When I check your backlinks MOZ is automaticly showing the results of the HTTP version (see notice in Open Site Explorer on top). When I manualy ask for the links of the HTTPS domain I still get links that point to the normal HTTP domain (I checked a few manualy). So I think there isn't much of a problem there. Althrough I'm curious, were did you get the list that you included? I Couldn't replicate it through Open Site Explorer.

Your latest server provider is right about not setting up HTTPS. That's exaclty were the problem is. Every website has a 443 port and if the server provider doesn't do anything with it it will automaticly search the first configured 443 port. In this case it found the port of a other website on the server that does has HTTPS set up.

Disallowing it in the robots.txt file won't solve the issue of showing a different website. Your server provider should configure this by either showing a blank page (404) or by requesting the HTTP folder through the 443 port. I would prefer the second option since it's the most user friendly.

Hope this helps!

If your PPC pages use a part of the content that's already on the SEO page (duplicated content) I would noindex those pages. Trying to get both pages indexed can only backfire. A other quick indication, if those pages are only attainable through your Ads and offer no new information to users who started there visit on the home page I would also noindex them.

If however, your PPC pages offer unique value to your visitors they can't find on other pages on your website (or on your organic landingpages) you could let them get indexed.

For point 2: Having a useful internal link structure is a best practice for SEO. If your pages offer unique value I would add them (in a logical way) to your internal navigation structure. If however they **do not ** offer unique value those links won't be useful for your visitors and will only be there to support your SEO. In this case it won't do you any good.

For point 3: Your building a triangle. It doesn't make sense to try to give your PPC pages any status through internal links and then giving a canonincal to merge any status with your organic pages. Either way, I would not canonical those pages. Give them noindex or treat them like a normal page.

Since this question is pretty old, I would love to know how you handled the situation!

Hi Swendt,

Personally I would stick to what fits your overall branding strategy best. this means I wouldn't change anything about how your business name is displayed just because it's in the meta description. A few things I would consider when making this decision:

1. Is your business name merged or separated in your logo?

2. If your a existing brand, do people search for your brandname merged or separated? This gives you more insight in your customers perspective. (you can check this through Google Keyword Planner in Adwords)

3. If your business name tells potential customers something about what you do I would definitly consider readability aswell. If your business name contains two worlds I would, in most cases, separate them.

Also, I'm not a huge fan of TM aswell, but I'm from Europe so I'm not sure if it's more common in other parts of the world.

Good Luck!

Dear Felicity,

From what I'm seeing on https://www.ryanyoungdesign.com.au the 443 port isn't configured correctly. This is the standard HTTPS port. There are either two options:

1. The 443 port is set up, but is requesting the wrong files.

2. The 443 port isn't configured at all and picks up the first files it finds.

Either way you will have to ask your webdevelopment company to fix this and make sure they set up the 443 port to process the right files.

Hope this helps!