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I am not entirely pleased with my website's name and have been willing to change it for years. I feel it is not brand-able.

But since its an old domain name and overall figures of DA, PR, Moz score etc. are very good, I have been wary of changing the name and doing a 301 permanent re-direct from the existing name to the new one.

Please suggest me if I should go for it. If yes, what are the best practices to go about it.

Hi Miriam.

I agree with  your gut feeling. What is wrong is wrong and one should not play games falsify facts and present them as true.... not at least with Google. They are smarter than everybody of us out here.

I'll stick with the following tactic:

• Find a person or a partner in these countries who is ready to genuinely partner with me... or at least is willing to take calls, talk to leads and direct them to me. A local listing will be created for this/these guy/guys when we have genuine NAPs.

• Focus on organically promoting my website for these locations without local listings.

Thanks for your help everybody.

KS__

Will it be fine if I add my friends' residential addresses in multiple cities across Country A in Google Places and buy toll free numbers for each of these addresses/cities? So all locations will have different NAP.

Sitting in Country A I want to see how much traffic a particular keyword receives in Country B. Whats the best way to do it?

Also, will the search results differ if I am analyzing the above sitting in Country A viz-a-viz Country B. In other words, will the IP of the country I am making the search from play a role in the results?

Thanks Miriam.

Here are my answers:

1. Are we talking about other countries ... or maybe other counties? I want to be sure I'm understanding if the business is national or international.

Other countries, not counties.

2. Are you meeting face-to-face with customers in the various cities and countries? Can you describe this in as much detail as possible?

No personal contact. I have international numbers listed on the website, so they just give me a call (I use VOIP and Magic Jack) or fill up the form. The conversation begins there.

Hope that answers you.

Thanks for all the help John.

Awesome links Patrick. Thanks.

Thanks Miriam. Waiting eagerly.

I am on a job to finalize a list of keywords for my website... but I must admit after days of brainstorming I am thoroughly confused with what all to go for. I understand this is a very important decision that has to be made else all the hard work I will do in the coming months will go down the drain, thus, this request fr help.

Before I ask my questions it is worth considering that my website has a DA of 39, Domain Age of 8yrs and PR of 4.

Here are specific questions that I have:

1. I am using Good Adwords for the research. Is that appropriate?

2. Since I am just beginning with SEO, should I opt for keywords that have

• extremely high competition + extremely high traffic?
  or

• high competition + low traffic?

or

• low competition + low traffic?

3. Should I go for long tail keywords that don't attract a lot of traffic BUT make sense?

4. Please suggest a good tool to research competition.

Please will me with the above and direct me to videos/books/blogs that can help me with this.

Ok. www.mywebsite.com/chicago is better or www.chicago.mywebsite.com? The only negative with the latter is that all pages (FAQ, How it works etc.) within the sub-domain website will have to be re-done with fresh new content while in the first option there's only one page for the location while other pages like FAQ etc stay the same for the root website as well location specific pages.

What say?

Great help Miriam.

Since it has been a couple of since you typed this answer, does it still hold true and 2015? I posted a similar query on http://moz.com/community/q/how-to-rank-for-a-location-country-without-having-a-physical-address-in-that-location-country#reply_297693\. Will be great if you could help me out there.

So if I want the website to rate well in Chicago, California and New York, the pages that I should create will be www.mywebsite.com/chicago, www.mywebsite.com/california and www.mywebsite.com/new-york. Is that right?

And when I'm done with that, I have to build location specific links like ' <keyword>in Chicago', ' <keyword>California' etc.?</keyword></keyword>

How do I go about it if my physical address (office) is in Country A but I want to rank my website in Country B, C and D (without having an office or physical address in the countries B, C and D)?

I am aware of people setting up virtual offices in other countries/cities and adding them to Google Places/Maps with toll free phone numbers, but I don't wish to do any of that. I know Google will catch up with this one day or the other and punish me hard for trying to play games with it.

Is there a way rank a website in another country without actually having a physical location there? If yes, please guide me how to go about it.

Thanks Miriam. You are as good as it can get!

I just came across your post on http://www.seomoz.org/q/local-websites-for-raking-in-google-places and that was very helpful indeed too.

Thanks for all the help. I'll get back to you if I need further help.

Hi Miriam. I read a lot of resources on Local SEO and found your above description to be very comprehensive and includes almost all details. So I'll stop running elsewhere and stick to you for further queries

1. Should I give a lot of weightage to Directory and Classified submissions for  Local SEO?

2. IF yes, I read that it is important to make submissions in area specific Directory and Classified sites? Is that true? If yes, how can I find area specific Directory and Classified sites?

3. Should I follow this up with Organic SEO?

4. This question is very important. What are LOCAL SEO RESULTS? Does it mean results that will be presented when somebody in Calgary, Canada search for  "palliative care"

or

Does it mean the results that Google will display when somebody searches for "palliative care calgary" from anywhere across the globe?

I am new to Google Local and just bagged a project. Can somebody guide me how to go about it.

Is Google Local all about listing the business in Directory and Classified sites with complete address and profile?

Any help will be highly appreciated.

Thanks for the awesome write up Miriam. I will bring all your suggestions into action later today/tomorrow and get back to you if I have more queries. I am sure you will help:)

Thanks for the help.

So the updated keywords should be:

palliative care calgary
home health care calgary
home care calgary
respite care calgary
senior care calgary

Is that right?

Can you suggest me how to go about 'local business listing'? I have never tried that earlier. Any good resource that you can direct me to which can help me do it?

I am doing SEO for a client in Canada.

A few of his keywords are:

palliative care
home health care
home care
respite care
senior care

He wants to attract vistors only from Calgary specifically, not Canada wide.

What should I do to optimize his website only for Calgary region? Should I add the word 'Calgary' to all his keywords?

okay so since a Canadian host will help in SEOing the website for the Canadian market, you suggest it makes sense to go for a Canadian host rather than a US host where the .com site sits.

Cool. Definitely  makes sense. Thanks for the suggestion.