Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hey Matthew

We have some sites in similar fields ranking highly in local and organic and have done no link building at all. New players, outperforming established players, in organic and local and no links have been built. Times are changing and whilst links (the right kind) are still powerful, there is a multifactorial way of doing things that in many cases is more powerful when going up against folks who have just tried to heavily go after one aspect.

I tend to think and our recent experience shows this that search has several factors and the effectiveness of each factor is amplified to some extent when they all work together. Brand, URL, Local, Citations, Links, Content, On Page etc.

The keyword in the brand / URL is a great example of this where it can still seemingly help as long as it is not abused and forms part of a larger cohesive strategy. A recent client starting out was advised by us to add the location they serve to the company name and it has worked out fabulously for them. This is a local client ranking in organic and local well above the competition with only 8 weeks or so of very light local SEO (and again, whilst it was one of my guys that did the work, I am sure there was no links built as it was just a whole lot easier than that).

Still, there is no better tool than an experiment so try adding some citations and see if you can influence your clients listing as performance for every keyword in every market is different so only through close analysis and tinkering will you know exactly what will move the dial for your client.

Marcus

Hey David

We don't tend to see a 7 pack for web design companies in the UK but we are seeing more and more localisation even in the standard organic results. A search for 'web design' shows local companies and is not a million miles away from a search for 'web design Birmingham' which is where I am based.

Same as my initial response though, I see this being primarily a good thing and most people searching for 'web design' or even one of the more traditional business categories will likely be looking for a local company and Google would want to best match the results to the intent of the search query and in this case, I think they are doing a pretty good job.

So, whether that is more localised organic results or more blending of 1 packs, 3 packs and 7 packs in amongst organic results (which are themselves seemingly more localised) this is a good thing that helps users and levels the playing field.

Hope that helps

Marcus

Hey David

I am seeing similar things in the UK and in most industries localisation has really been turned up in the last 12 months (and seemingly even more since penguin 2.0 / 4.0).

In most cases it seems this is a good thing and searching for the kind of business that would generally have a local intent returns local results. We also now see a 7 pack of local results directly after the PPC for a wide range of queries and business categories.

Now, if we search for the obvious ones: accountant, lawyer, builder etc it is almost always localised. No need for a city or town either as it uses the assumed location.

I think this is interesting in a number of ways

• click to call from mobile meaning folks don't even need to visit the website
• organic #1 is now really #11 at best for many highly commercial terms
• even organic listings seem much more influenced by localisation

I tend to think that this will train people to search like this more and more and for many commercial terms traditional SEO will lose a lot of value. Obviously, search still has tons of opportunities for organic and content marketing but if this helps small local businesses get found more easily and further halts the tiresome tactics that have tainted this industry then it's all good in my mind.

We are having some great success with small companies with Local SEO, localised organic and region specific PPC campaigns and it's always nice to help the little man get found over the big national brand.

Marcus

Hey Matthew

There is really no substitute for tinkering and running some experiments of your own but we can do a bit of digging and see what we can turn up here.

1. The site is weak from a link perspective, no doubt about it

2. The keyword is only returned as moderately competitive (34%) in the Moz keyword tool and there are other sites in the top 10 with only one link.

3. How long as the page been there? How spammy is the competition?

4. They do have some decent UK citations which you can dig into like this:

"Kitchens4DIY" "DY5 1TX" -site:kitchens4diy.com

You can even expand that to look for the keyword in those citations to see if we are seeing more of this co-occurance that is such a hot topic at the moment:

"Kitchens4DIY" "DY5 1TX" -site:kitchens4diy.com "diy kitchens"

5. They also have tons more unstructured citations with the brand + keyword combination.

"Kitchens4DIY" -site:kitchens4diy.com "diy kitchens"

Summary

• The keyword is not terribly competitive in link power terms
• There does not appear to be tons of competing sites for the term
• This is a new site with no negative equity
• Possible spam signals amongst the competition
• Lots of unstructured and a reasonable amount of structured citations
• Frequent co-occurrence of the keyword and brand
• Homepage title is well optimised for this term

Obviously, this is a five minute analysis but really, I see no mystery here. The keyword is not competitive, the site is new, has a clean profile, plenty of citations and good co occurrence of the keyword.

Would be interesting to see your clients site to do a side by side comparison though as that would likely reveal more insights than this general overview.

I wrote about this a little here if it helps:

http://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/blog/types-of-citations-for-seo/

Hope that helps you dig in and build your plan of attack!

Marcus

Hey, I think Simon pretty much nailed this here. Responsive is ideal and the stated preference from Google HQ but with the caveat that you should first consider what is best for the users.

I tend to prefer simplified mobile sites (on the same URL) with some of the content pared back to responsive sites for some of the gaming blogs I read as they are just so image heavy and it provides a simpler, faster and ultimately better experience whilst I am in areas with a less than stellar mobile data connection.

So, responsive if that is suitable but always consider the end user first and tailor your approach to suit.

Hope that helps!
Marcus

Hey Dan,

Sorry, got ya.

You know, I am not sure how you go about this with any kind of reliability. Like you say, sometimes it crops up that someone has both but not very often in our experience. That said, the more abstract and hopeless the results then the more wacky and repetitive the organic results seem to get of late.

You could try and optimise some of your citations to get them up in the results on page one and possibly look at content on other sites to try and crowd out the results some with other pages that ultimately link to your clients site. We have had some good success with that for local clients.

Or, alternatively, like Miriam mentioned, try and create other, authoritative pages on the site that are also highly relevant but that may be a bit of a thankless task compared to the relative ease of standard local work.

Sounds like a greedy client wanting both.

Marcus

Obviously, not a direct answer, but you could always look at getting some of your citations to rank within the results for your targeted search terms. Also, this is where possible content on other sites can be used to further crowd out those results a little more.

It's good when all rivers run to the same place!

Yep, same here. Not a great experience on android or iphone.

Hey Dan

That's kind of confusing to wrap my head around. Have you got an example you can post?

In essence, if you have a local business with multiple locations you are doing two categories of work here.

1. Organic SEO for the site as a whole

2. Local SEO for each location

Local SEO for each location requires a few things to work well in my experience.

2.1. A page on the site optimised for each distinct location (think address, schema, NAP etc)

2.2. An individual Google+ Local listing for each location linked back to the location page

Then the normal rules of local SEO apply and you need citations, local links, reviews etc for each of your individual locations.

A consistent address is important for businesses with a single location but here the scope for things to go wrong is greater so you have to be fastidious in your approach to keeping this consistent.

Audit existing citations, standardise everything, try to get reviews for each location and if they can mention location and service it seems to help more ("If you could mention the office location and service in your review we would really appreciate it").

Your locally optimised page for each store should be able to pop up in local and organic depending on obvious factors (competition etc) and you are creating a solid landing page for localised organic traffic and pure local results (7 pack etc).

The one point here is that you will usually have lots of citations kicking about that you have not created so be sure to audit the existing listings and treat each location as a separate entity. Competition and the approach may be different in Birmingham, Manchester, London etc and the approach may need to be tailored for each location depending on the strength of competition in each area in each location.

Hope that helps!
Marcus

Yep, that's it, seems it only effects the responses and not the main post.

Well that is weird, it worked in the question. I wonder if it will work in the responses which is where I noticed it.

• another example
• and another

I expect no gap here.

Hey Moz

The Q&A interface lacks any spacing after a HTML list item so it makes things look a bit messy. It looks right when being edited but wrong when posted so.

• example list
• more list
• list keeps going

Paragraph after bullet list with no space.

1. example list
2. more list
3. list keeps going

Paragraph after number list with no space.

Any chance of fixing that? It will make posts more readable and satisfy those of us fussy enough to go back in and edit posts so they are laid out correctly. (Sorry, I am English, I can't help myself).

Cheers!
Marcus

Hey, that is a great big question posed in a very succinct way.

As ever, there are a lot of moving parts and it depends on every keyword in every niche regarding how tough it will be to rank.

Main elements to consider are:

• Structured Address (NAP) + Consistency of Address
• Structured Citations - total number, quality
• Unstructured Citations - total number, location, relevance of citation site / page
• Optimisation of Google+ Local page (images, updates, video, completeness)
• On Page SEO for site
• Local Links & Citations
• Site Popularity (Search & possibly social)
• Reviews on Google+ Local and other popular citation sites

I wish it were just that simple though and any approach has to consider the industry and existing competition. We tend to review the competition, try to understand their strengths and weaknesses and use that to formulate a customised plan for each local / small business client.

Review the competition, find out who is where they are and how. Understand the strengths and weaknesses of the competition. Do the basics really, really well - citations, on page, Google+ Local page. Then, look at local links, general site popularity. Create  review strategy and try to encourage (without cheating) mentions of your keywords  and targeted location in the reviews.

Don't be tempted to cheat. Don't just buy 100 crappy citations. Do things properly, craft each mention, work on getting good reviews. Do real company shizzle #RCS. Consider each citation a possible advertisement. Love your customers, ask them to love you back.

I will stop here as this is starting to sound like Baz Luhrmann song:

"sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind…the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself."

You really have to avoid an SEO by numbers mentality though as it is easy to fall into that trap here and whilst you may see some initial flourish you won't win the race with that approach and returns will rapidly diminish and you may see a bell curve with an improvement and then a drop around low quality tactics.

One last thing, consider co occurrence, it is a hot topic but think about mentioning your keywords where you mention your brand, URL, NAP or elements of. If I was creating a citation or unstructured citation on a site then I would look at mentioning my brand, phone number, location and possibly URL - something like:"

"At Bowler Hat we concentrate on technical SEO Audits and small business SEO for companies in Birmingham. You can call us anytime for help on 0121 314 2001 or visit our site at www.BowlerHat.co.uk.".

The highlighting is mine to better illustrate the important aspects of that sentence and how it can be done cleanly and naturally without the need for crappy writing etc.

Citations often boggle people but they are just directory listings really - a little more on that here:
http://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/blog/types-of-citations-for-seo/

Remember that citations are abused by folks in the medical world to artificially inflate the worth of a medical paper or report so as soon as you factor money into it and add the dirty SEO word then citation abuse can and will be rampant and google knows about this and is on the lookout for it. So... play nice!

Back to the original question - where to learn?

Well, here for starters, search the blog then:

• http://www.localseoguide.com/
• http://www.davidmihm.com/blog/
• https://getlisted.org/ - will get you on the right track.

Some good tools:

• https://www.whitespark.ca/local-citation-finder/
• http://www.brightlocal.com/

Hope that helps! 
Marcus

Hey Steve

You state that your biggest problem is backlinks but that probably is not what you want here. Search results are becoming ever more localised so if you are based in Boston and target Boston customers you will be able to gain more visibility by focusing on local SEO strategies and the GetListed.org site is as good a place as any to start.

I am in the UK but we are seeing more and more 7 packs of local results above the organic results for localised search queries and for specific service based queries (plumber, web design) where the user is in the location they are looking for.

If we search for graphic design boston or web design boston I am seeing some localised results and yelp listings but if I search for "graphic design in boston" and "web design in boston" then there are even more so.

This is what i would do.

1. Survey the landscape - search for your key terms: web design, website designer, graphic design, graphic designer + then localise them and then localise them including 'in'. Look for localised results in the organic listings and look for results pulled from Google maps. Make yourself a little spreadsheet and keep note of localised results and 7 packs.

2. Ensure your pages targeting graphic design and web design are localised and have the location you are targeting in the page title.

Graphic Design Company in Boston - YourBrand.com
Web Design Company in Boston - YourBrand.com

3. Look at Local SEO and make sure you have that sown up.

• Ensure your name, address and phone number is standardised (NAP)
• Optimise your site and use schema markup on the contact page
• Add your NAP to the footer of every page
• Start looking at building high quality citations
• Optimise your Google+ Local listing (fill it in)
• Start building reviews and create a review policy
• Try to build co occurrence of your keywords in your citations
• Get creative with your citations and make sure the big social platforms are utilised (get your address in your Facebook about us section, get your city, postcode and phone number in your twitter bio etc).
• Try to build some local links from important Boston sites and directories
• Look at industry vertical directories
• review top competitor citations and get them yourself

There is plenty of info out there about Local SEO and https://getlisted.org/ is a good starting point. In my experience, most companies that do link building are lazy when it comes to local so the door really is wide open. You need a policy to build reviews and gradually add citations but there are plenty of

Some good tools

• https://www.whitespark.ca/local-citation-finder/
• http://www.brightlocal.com/

Some More Reading

• http://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/blog/name-address-phone-number/
• http://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/blog/quality-not-quantity-citations-for-seo/
• http://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/blog/find-your-competitors-best-citations/

Steve - I did some quick searches and most of the top 7 from the local results have no Google+ reviews which is likely a good sign that this is not mega competative and with a bit of work you can easily compete. This is real small business SEO that we do every day at BowlerHat.co.uk for UK folks and there is some serious David and Goliath fun to be had here.

Hope this helps!
Marcus

Hey, Thomas's response really nails most of the obvious causes here but as a simple n=1 oppinion this happened to one of my clients last week. Homepage disappeared for around 48 hours. No problems I could detect, but it was not indexed. Weird, but just as I was scratching  my chin it popped back up.

Check the obvious things, make sure there are no problems and then leave it for 48 hours and see if it pops back up.

Not hugely scientific but after such a big update we often see little aberrations and this could be one of those if everything else is as it should be.

Hope that helps
Marcus

This is totally right. Search the Q&A and find many, many instances of this question.

Likewise, there is a solid post here going into the reasons:

http://moz.com/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites

I also like the common sense approach. Is your blog part of your site? Yes? Then have it as part of your site. Are you going to write around the topic of your products and services? Yep, Great. Then have it as part of your site so you can link them when natural to do so.

As it happens, blogs are what can earn links and shares and commercial pages rarely do this so consider it a tool to drive traffic and potentially inflate the sites popularity through links and shares and all that jazz.

Hope that helps.
Marcus

Hey Alex, personally, I would focus on getting your citations put together well with ideally unique descriptions that include your keywords. Don't worry too much about building links and certainly don't worry too much about anchor text. Go for the easy wins first and we are seeing great results in local search for existing sites with just some local branded links, solid on page optimisation and a sensible site structure, citations and well put together and optimised Google+ Local profile page.

Put together a review strategy and try to get keywords and location in your reviews.

Maybe do a small bit of AAA guest blogging on a relevant site with a relevant blog topic and get a link back. Work in keywords if you really want to but be sparse, varied and sensible.

Links, links, links is not the way to do, do, do things any longer and especially not in local.

Hope that helps!
Marcus

Hey, they should be one and the same.

I am working with a commercial photographer and it is an area that is wide open in local where he operates. But, we are mostly optimising his pages for the broad term + area + brand. Obviously, we carry this through his page name, page title, meta description, breadcrumbs and actual content so we have something like.

So, home page is something like:

URL:
www.url.co.uk

Title:
Matthew Smith - Commercial, Architectural & Fashion Photographer | Birmingham

Service pages are like this:

URL:
www.url.co.uk/commercial-photographer/

Breadcrumb:
Home > Commercial Photographer

Title:
Commercial Photographer in Birmingham | MatthewSmith.co.uk

URL:
www.url.co.uk/architectural-photographer/

Breadcrumb:
Home > Architectural Photographer

Title:
Architectural Photographer in Birmingham | MatthewSmith.co.uk

---

So, any citations will also at least mention the location, feature his consistent address and his main keywords (without any localisation).

So, I am not sure, if we do this the right way, there needs to be any kind of distinction and I am certainly not going to cram search keywords together like 'commercial photographer birmingham' and miss out general stop words like 'in' to somehow 'optimise' it better. Likewise, I am unlikely to want to build links with 'commercial photographer birmingham' as an anchor as it is probably completely unneeded and unnatural + possibly dangerous.

For most small businesses in the UK local SEO is so easy and so open that just build something that does things the right way

• The right keywords (commercial photographer instead of the bigger volume commercial photography)
• Well optimised landing pages and a solid information architecture
• Good content that matches the intent of the user searching
• Well optimised social platforms
• Lots of well put together citations (quality matters - think of each one as an advert for the biz)
• Unstructured citations on important sites (twitter bio etc)
• Maybe some local links
• Consistent NAP
• A review strategy that builds reviews in a sensible, steady manner (preferably steering the reviewers to include the location and service keyword in the nicest possible way)

This should not be difficult and certainly don't approach it in a spammy or manipulative way & try to build quality into your workflow and increasing visibility locally (in the UK at least) should be easy.

Some further reading that may help:

• http://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/blog/name-address-phone-number/
• http://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/blog/quality-not-quantity-citations-for-seo/

Hope that helps!
Marcus

remote

Hey Virginia

That is essentially what we call near duplicates and is the kind of content that can easily be created by pulling fields out of a database and dynamically creating the pages and dropping name, address etc into the placeholders.

Unique content is essentially that, unique content so this approach is probably not going to cut it. You could have certain elements pulled like this such as the address but you need to either remove these duplicate blocks and keep it more simple (like a business directory) and ideally add some unique elements to each page.

These kinds of pages often still rank for very specific queries and also often well thought out landing pages that link to pages like this that have value for users but are not search friendly can be a strategy.

So, assess how well these work as landing pages from search or are they coming in elsewhere? If they come in elsewhere you could no index these pages or block them in robots.txt. Then, target the bigger search terms higher up the tree and create good search landing pages that link to these other pages for users.

This is a real good read to get a better handle on duplicate content types and the relevant strategies:

http://moz.com/blog/fat-pandas-and-thin-content

Hope that helps

Marcus

Hey Mark, given the Panda correlation I would look at content issues first and see what we can dig up there.

So, the 60 second SEO audit:

1. I grabbed a chunk of content from one page:

"Female PE Teacher, Permanent - Bath - Pay to Scale Full time role paid to scale depending on relevant teaching experience Required for September 2013 Full time as in accordance with the Teachers"

Run that through Google and what do we see.....

Lots of listings for that exact piece of content - approx 40 reported. But, we hit the third page and we see:

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 21 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

No sign of your clients site though!

So, we open it up and look at the omitted results and there are now over a hundred results and your clients site is in something like 95th position.

Conclusions?

The client site is basically a conduit to other sites like totaljobs.co.uk and re-purposes content available in several other locations. Therefore, they are being filtered as they are not the originator of the content and they bring nothing new to the table.

Pros & Cons

Pro - It's content so can be sorted easily enough by creating unique content.

Con - there seems to be a lot of it

---

Your client needs to do a content audit and create descriptions of the jobs that add some value and uniqueness. Given how many other folks there are pumping out these same descriptions there is likely some opportunity there but the old model is broken and they have to bring some value.

Caveat - this was the quickest of quick looks but certainly, it seems there are no real mysteries here so just dig in and do some deeper analysis. I imagine the site might give copyscape.com a heart attack!

Hope that helps!
Marcus