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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?

_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.

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.

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.

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.

I find Domain Authority to typically be a much stronger candidate for results.  Installing the "mozbar" to your browser and using it (make sure you are logged into Moz) will really help show you what I am speaking of.  Many times, websites like Yelp will list on the first page for a business with a page that has a Page Authority of 1, but the DA of the site is so strong that it outranks other pages with a much higher PA.

The way I see it, PA will help get a certain page to rank, but DA will get all your pages to rank (which will help diversify your SEO thus bringing way more traffic to your site for different sets of keywords.)  Remember, each page should be for a different topic, so if your front page is for your main target keyword strand, and you have a high PA but a low DA, your site is likely to rank for that one term, but all the interior pages wont.  Whereas, if you have a higher DA, you can rank higher for every page on your site with different keywords.  The best way to do this is to link multiple pages from your site.  For instance if you are guest blogging, don't just include a link to your front page.  Try to include a few links to interior pages as well for relative topics.  Also, I have actually seen Google Adwords give stronger DA.  I know many will argue this, but when campaigning on adwords, you can send different keywords to different pages.  Users entering your site through interior pages is a good thing, as Google seeing everyone come to your site from the front page can sometimes lower your DA.

Hope this helped!

Honestly, OpenSiteExplorer gives the fewest links of any site I check including webmaster tools.  Webmaster Tools shows twice as many links as OSE, and no its not showing them, Roots or Total links.

I've asked this question before and got some strong advice ( I think ) but the results have been not so strong.  I'm looking for advice on local.  I have this profile:  https://plus.google.com/u/0/114370561649922317296/about

That I need to rank for "austin wedding photographers" and I have yet to figure out a way to get it to move on the map results.  I understand these things take time, but its been a couple of months, and as far as I can tell, its still ranking on page 10 of the "local results" (meaning you search for austin wedding photographers, then click under the map listings to see Google Maps with the listings to the left.)  Furthermore, all my organic competition for the most part is now on the local results and the map is ranking higher than all but one organic.  Suggestions would be a huge plus.  Last time some folks analyzed the google plus local page and gave some tips.  Since then a few things have happened.

1.  I notice most of the Google Local listings that come up on page 1 in the map have a similar page when clicking "more info."  They mostly have a map as their cover photo on their listing.

2.  Google has merged my Google Places and Google Plus Local account so that when you click "more info" on the listing (on page 10) it takes you too the branded Google Plus Local page.  I like this, but it worries me that most of the high ranking pages don't have this.

3.  I have added a Geo Sitemap to Google Webmaster tools but it doesn't show as indexed yet.  I understand this can take up to 6 weeks?  Does this help?  It came when I bought Yoast SEO Local and generated KML files.

4. The address for Google Plus local is real address of a home, so Google doesn't show the specific address.  I used to have a mailbox center as the address but was advised to fix that.  I have sense changed the address on as many sites as I could (Yelp, YP, Superpages, etc.)

5.  Do I need an address on the website?  The client does not want her home address listed anywhere for privacy reasons.

Hope this is enough information for someone with knowledge to help.  The website is ranking first page (3 or 4 organically) for the terms I need for the most part but Local seems to be stronger.  Thanks in advance.

I'm asking for specific techniques and or examples.  I have been link building strong links from related websites and yet my DA has fallen two points in a month.

I'd love to rank the website on Local results for both Austin, TX and Denver, CO.  I got some pretty bad advice early on so Local has been a rough ride back up for me and I have yet to see any improvement on ranking in that area, but I did just install Local SEO by Yoast on the wordpress site which let me submit a Geo Sitemap and includes kml files for both locations so I'm hoping that helps with that.

Everyone always just says "get ranked on local..." but I find that harder than Organic search results.  Anyone else have an opinion?

Can you explain a little more about Geo Tagging and the Google Maps API?

To explain further, I am working for a wedding photographer that has an address in Austin and Denver.  The link is here:  http://www.photojennette.com.  I have been working on the site for about 6 months tweaking things, link building, etc. and have been able to rank on page 1 (as high as #2) for Austin which was the first focus, and page #2 for Denver.  I have had some issues with bad advice for Google Local and have not successfully gotten the listing into the "Map Listings" but am working on that as well with KML and Geo Sitmaps but I just started that a few days ago.

The site is wordpress.  I have the Mozbar installed and can see all the PA and DA for the sites ranking higher and lower and PA seems to be the main issue because the site is ranking page 1 most of the time for Austin given that the front page is optimized for Austin mostly.  When I flip the switch and try ranking a page for Austin and Denver, I can never get to page one and the PA of those pages is 1 currently... So I would need links to those pages to build PA correct?

Can you explain this more?  I think you're on to something I haven't thought about, but the broken english or poor grammar is making it tough.

Anyone else that does can you help him explain?

What you are forgetting is PA.  I have already done this and it does nothing because there are people in the second location who's main priority is to rank for that location.  My "inner-page" with 1 or 2 PA isn't going to rank page 1 or top 3 at all because others have DA and PA ranking their site in those spaces.  We are talking about highly competitive markets here, not some random fish word.

I have a client that needs to target two different citys for her service.  I have her front page ranking first page for one of the cities, but I have tried all sorts of things and can't get her front page to rank first page in the second (and less competitive) city.

I know the drill about making a second page and trying to rank that page but is there a better way?

Id like to open this discussion back up.  About a month ago, I made some changes to the Google+ profile and the client has agreed to change the address away from the PakMail in hopes of better results.

The Google Plus Local and Google Places accounts have merged yet still when searching Maps for austin wedding photographer she is on page 9.

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=austin+wedding+photographer&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&channel=np&ie=UTF-8&ei=u0cuUtzePJKO2gW494DwBA&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAg

Anyone see anything else really wrong with the profile?

https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/114370561649922317296/114370561649922317296/posts

I have a couple of questions about this.  First of all is one more important than the other?  Also, I currently have a website setup for www.domain.com, should I try to change that to domain.com without the www?

How is it possible to grow page authority yet I am having a hard time growing domain authority.

The client never wants her home address to be listed any (even if is hidden) so I guess I will just continue to work on her website SEO and we can forget the Local part (which is what I wish all these other photographers who don't actually have studios or storefronts would do.)

There is just too much risk in knowing that people could know where she lives also knowing that she owns and uses expensive camera gear.  Thank you endlessly for your very detailed posts but I can't find a solid solution for this problem.  Google just needs to realize that there are fields where the map shouldn't show up.  I could see "Photos" being listed before the map.

See in this screen shot how I have UNchecked that customers come to the business location?  That should mean that I'm telling customers not to drive across town to the Pak N Mail correct?

places_settings.jpg

Thank you both for your response.  I understand better what you are saying and appreciate it greatly.  I certainly have not charged her for the Local management as Local was not part of our contract and would hate to go to her now and let her know that I have done something for which she now needs to pay to fix.

With that being said, I do have a very important question taking into consideration what you have explained.  There are some options within the settings for a listing that offers service at someones house, for instance a yard man, or house maid, etc.  The business address is the Pak N Mail address with the Ste. number and box number.  I also understand that Google probably shouldn't be showing a map for a term like wedding photographer as most of them don't have studios and perhaps in that case the map should only be listed for "photography studio" or the like but alas this is what we deal with...

Thoughts?  I want to do this correctly and acknowledge that you ladies really know what you are talking about.

Miriam,

I have people contact me daily wanting to guarantee me placement on the map... I am a SEO and would much rather learn about the topic than just pay someone else to tell me their opinion.

Thank you for the links, I will definitely check into those.