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This is essentially what i was thinking too. i was hoping to get a few more responses from the community, but i value your input. I have already started moving in this direction. Thank you,

Hi Roman, I get that, I am just not seeing why moz crawler even found links such as these to throw a 404. I donot think these rss feeds existed on my site at any point. So i would like to find why they are coming up as 404 and fix it properly without redirects. Thanks,

Hi Donald, Thanks so much for the answers. Other than a past SEO doing this for some weird reason for your client, the only other explanation I can think of is that the weird listings are the outcome of some kind of aggregation by the directories in question. Some directories do auto-generate listings, and there is a possibility of your client's business getting mixed up with the details of some other business. But I'm not really leaning that way because of the fictitious address. That "feels like" spam to me. But, I definitely would review this with the client in full to see if anything about it rings a bell to them about past work that may have been done internally or by an agency. I think the best thing to do here would be to discover as many directories as you can that are listing the fictitious business and contact them to request listing removal, as you've done with Manta. You will easily be able to approve that the address is non-existent, that the phone doesn't connect to anything, and, if you've received no reply trying to use the email address, that the email is unresponsive. Show legal proofs of ownership of the brand name if necessary. Then, once you've gotten these odd listings removed, I would make it a practice once a month to search for any new listings that may crop up. Not very fun, but it seems necessary in the instance of such an odd scenario. Good luck!

You make a very good point!

I may have phrased questions wrong. Was just asking if a login page should be indexed.

Kristen, I have done this on multiple occasions and it still has not been taken off. Can you recommend methods to contact google?

Hey Donald, I have 4 questions: Are these local businesses (i.e. do they serve clients in person vs. virtually?) Are they branded separately? If so, how separately? Is it Jones Payroll and Davis Time & Attendance, or is it Jones Payroll and Jones Time & Attendance? Do they occupy the same physical address? Do they each have a unique phone number?

Hi Donald Woops! My mistake. I see your client is a real estate attorney, not a real estate firm. So sorry about that. Interestingly, as far as Local SEO goes, some of the same issue apply in terms of both industries commonly featuring multi-partner practices and that rolling out as citation confusion. But, you say you've done a good job of managing their citations and want advice beyond the average checklist of local search basics, I have two thoughts: I'm hoping you may get some more feedback from community members with legal clients. I haven't personally worked with more than a handful of lawyers over the years and don't have any tips that would be stunners specific to the industry. Are you aware of NiftyLaw? They're a subsidiary of NiftyMarketing.com, owned by Mike Ramsey. You might comb through their blog (http://niftylaw.com/blog/) to see if they are giving away any gems, or, if the client is really having a hard time, you might even consider consulting with them. Hope this helps!

As long as the ONLY thing you're changing is the domain name (e.g. all URLS within WordPress will remain identical) the redirect process can be accomplished with a single rewrite rule in your site's htaccess file. There's no reason to write (or bog down your system with) a redirect for each individual page URL. The configuration of this redirect will depend on whether the primary URL uses the www prefix or not, and whether it uses https. In addition to the rewrite rule, you need to verify the new domain in Google Search Console (and transfer any preexisting disavow file to it if one existed for the old domain) as well as using the change of address tool to further inform Google of the change. To help speed up the indexing of the new domain, it can be helpful to leave the old xml sitemap in place for a week or two so that search engines can more quickly discover the redirects. It's also beneficial to try to get at least some of the most powerful existing incoming links from other sites updated to point to the new domain. This takes direct outreach to the other site owners with the request, but it can help rescue some of the slight loss of ranking authority lost through the redirect, and is another good signal to Google of the change. Finally, be sure you've updated the domain name in your Google Analytics account as well. Hope that helps? Paul

Duplicate title tags are generally not something that you want--but in some cases they are necessary. If the content on the page is different, then it is not going to be a disaster for the site. I would make sure that Yoast is enabled (or use some other way of taking care of your site's meta data, etc.). If you do have a duplicate title tag issue, though, keep in mind that there may be other issues associated with that. For example, you may need to use the canonical tag to take care of pages that are duplicates (thus the duplicate title tags) or use the robots.txt file to disallow indexing of certain sections of your site.

No problem, glad to be of assistance!

Yay! Awesome!

Hey Donald, What I'm understanding is that your clients use "I offer estate planning services" as opposed to "At Adams Law, comprehensive estate planning services have been designed to help you ..." And that you feel the second example seems more professional. I can see where you're coming from. I can also see that overuse of the word 'I' can start to look rather narcissistic. There's an anecdote about Teddy Roosevelt writing a book so full of the word 'I' that his typesetters had to purchase more of that letter! And, interestingly, this same topic has been coming up in the 2016 primary cycle in which pundits are counting the number of times one Democratic candidate is using the word 'I' vs. the other using the word 'we'. The upshot is, at least in my view, that pronouns definitely set a tone and say a lot about a person or a business. Here's what I think: Legal firms are supposed to sound professional because they deal in matters of serious import for their clients. Most people would not want to entrust their legal affairs to a law firm that seems sloppy or careless. So, a small but significant signal of professionalism is the company's name. Adams Attorneys At Law sounds very official, right? More so than "I do law and stuff like that." would. Then, too, web copy should always be modestly optimized with a brand's name, just for the sake of associating the brand's content with the brand's name in the user's mind. However, mention of the brand's name does not need to exclude use of personal pronouns like 'We' or 'I'. As in, "I want every client of Adams Law to be empowered with accessible, affordable counsel." Or "We will make sure you feel comfortable at Adams Law from your first phone call, to your first meeting, to your final settlement." You can use both. A key point of using first person pronouns is to indicate that a human being or group of humans are communicating something. This is meant to engender a sense of approachability - of someone manning the ship, right? "We are here to help you" is more indicative of a personal communication than "Adams Law exists to help clients". But how far you go with with this depends on the culture of your business. A lawyer who deals with family law may want to project more personal empathy than one who deals with taxes. Or, one who is managing wealth may want to project more of an energetic, hip vibe than one who is trying to appear aggressive because he takes criminal cases. I've written copy for so many different industries over the past 10+ years and my preferred pronoun for nearly all business models is actually not 'I' or 'We'. It's 'YOU'. For most business models, I advocate that 'you' be the most frequently used pronoun, and that 'I' or 'We' come second to that and the brand comes third. How you finesse this relates to how formally a business interacts with its customers. From stuffy to downright laid back, knowing the preferred tone of a client's culture is what should set the tone for all copy, creating consistency and a clear message. Hope this helps!

Mirium responded to a similar question. What she says below is spot on. I really like this link that she shared with me.  https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages

Hi Donald Glad to hear I helped! You really shouldn't ever go over the limit. You want your title to give the user the point of the content in a catchy way and be able to brand it as well with your company name. If you end going over and can't help it, make sure that only the branding potentially gets cut. If the title is good and matches the user's search intent, they'll click, read your fantastic content, and see the brand. That's really the only instance that titles should go over the limit, but again, I'm not advocating that! Hope this helps! Good luck!

These links are coming from when a business advertises with Yellowpages.com. I have seen evidence that they are destroying one of my clients NAP's because each link is coming from a different city that the local business doesn't belong to them. Have your client Stop advertising with them immediately and disavow all links just to be safe.

Sure thing! I hope it helps.

Its funny, I always have the right direction when working for my clients but when it comes to your own websites and seo optimizations it always helps to get a second pair of eyes. We are all bias to our own work. I couldn't agree more

Hi Donald! Good topic! Ideally, this is how most Local SEOs would suggest organizing a business with this model: A single website representing the brand A unique page on the site for each service A unique page on the site for each of the two physical offices Both offices on the Contact page and in the footer A unique Google+ Local page for each of the 2 locations, and a unique citation set for each of the physical locations Instead, what your client has done is to build out a unique website for each of their two specialties. Fortunately, as the business has two unique locations, many of the concerns that would normally surround such a strategy do not apply. If the client only had one office and had built out two websites - that would be a big concern. But, happily, this is not the case with your client. Nevertheless, the drawbacks of your client's approach are that, instead of all of the work he does pouring into building up the strength of a single brand on a single site, he is going to have to split his energy and funding between two different sites. It's not as convenient to do this, but if the client wishes to stick with this approach, here are a few things to be sure not to do: Don't share phone numbers between the two offices. Each must have its own unique local phone number Do a citation audit to be sure that there are no merged listings and that the name, address, phone number and website for location A are not mixed up anywhere with those of location B. Everything must be separate and distinct at all times. The Google+ Local pages and citation sets for the 2 offices must be totally unique. Do not put the address, phone number or URL of website A on website B or vice versa, anywhere. Keep these sites totally separate. Do not link from one website to the other. Do not share content of any kind between the two websites. All content must be unique on the two sites. Hopefully, following these steps, you can prevent merging of details, and can simply market the two sites the way any local businesses would be marketed. Hope this helps!

When you have content of various kinds on your website it can pull in a lot of traffic from outside of your geographic service areas.  If you want to measure how much of this is "local" traffic and monetize the "non-local" traffic I would suggest using Google's DFP ad server. You can set it up on your pages to identify traffic from INSIDE of your geographic area and show those visitors your house ads.  Visitors OUTSIDE of your geographic area - who are not candidates for purchasing your service will be shown adsense ads or ads from some other network. After you have done this the reports available through Google's DFP ad server will let you know the amount of your traffic that is local, the number that clicked through to your sales pages, the amount that is beyond your geographic area, and the amount of bonus income that you earned from people in New Jersey or some other location where your service is irrelevant. Steep learning curve here, but over the next months and years you can earn a load of dough from people who will never spend a penny with you. If you are really smart, you can set up DFP to display ads for colleagues who own businesses in other parts of the country.  They should be willing to pay premium prices for impressions made by people who live in their service area.