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Hello Tyler!

What an interesting question! Not one I've seen asked before and I don't have an authoritative answer for you. I did find a couple of mentions of this out on the web.

Here's one from http://www.tastyplacement.com/6-best-free-local-business-directories-for-backlinks-customers-hits

4. Yelp.com. Yelp is popular (a fair number of visitors) and its pages rank well in the search engines. So, a listing here might earn you some supplemental results in a Google search. It’s review-based, and there are a lot of “interactive” features you’ll want to skip if you just want to list your business. Valuable and free. One limitation: Yelp does not give dofollow (a link that passes valuable pagerank to the target site) backlinks.

And a discussion at Reddit:

_http://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/jburq/acquiring_citations_from_directories_yelp_hotfrog/_

I tend to think of the value of sites like Yelp as being in their quality as a citation and their ability to host conversation (hopefully positive) about your business. I am going to ask one of our super SEOs to step in and give you an opinion on this. It's a very good question!

Miriam

Hi Joshua,

I was speaking from a Local SEO perspective, but I didn't make that clear. Sorry about that. You write:

"I just have a feeling that Google may see the subfolder landing pages as an attempt to game the Local listings"

Now, typically, when dealing with local clients with multiple locations, I simply create a unique page for each of the locations - just a file, and no need to build out with subdomains or subfolders. It sounds like perhaps you are dealing with a client with more complex needs than this?

I have searched to no avail for any reliable documentation which states that Google would view either subdomains or subfolders with suspicion or favor. I have never seen any discussion of a preference on their part. I'm not sure anyone but a Google Places rep would be able to offer you a reliable answer on this

A final note - be aware that when you designate any URL other than the homepage URL of a website as being appropriate on a Place Page, Google's display is likely to show only the homepage URL, but when you click on the link, it takes you to the page specified.

I'm sorry not to have a better answer to your question. I guess my answer is that there is an absence of data that Google would view either subfolders or subdomains as spammy in relation to Places.

Hi Josh!
Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. I'm the Local SEO Associate here in the forum. You have gotten some excellent feedback on this thread so far. To recap your original question, you are asking whether it's better to use sub-domains or sub-folders for city landing pages.

According to Google Places Help Forum Top Contributor, Archie Watt, there is simply no difference from and SEO perspective. I have never seen any data to the contrary. It's somewhat akin to the concept that Google doesn't care what language your website is coded in so long as they can crawl it thoroughly. Here is a thread on this topic at the Google Places Help Forum:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=3f77dd134ba635b2&hl=en

My advice - do what makes most sense for the user to use and webmaster to manage.

Best of luck!
Miriam

Hi Gary!

Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. I second Vahe's excellent response. It is in the client's best interest that you help them set up their own account, and be sure that they have in writing what their email/pass is for it. Chances are, they will work with many different marketers over time, but their properties should always belong solely to them.

Cheers!

Miriam

Great, Robert! I'm glad my comment was useful in this way and I hope putting it in writing will at least give you the peace of mind that you are offering written guidance to the clients on this. Your care for their welfare is evident and I applaud that!

Hi Robert, I hear you on this: "The difference here is that people in business are good at the business they are in. They do not have time to go out and learn SEO/SEM. They trust the person who seems to know and they hope they have not misplaced the trust." This is so true. I have been working with SMBs for about a decade now, and unfortunately, too many of them have come to me with a sad story of being rooked. The SMB is the busiest man or woman alive, and too often, they simply don't know what to look for to discern whether they are talking to someone who will help them or scam them. This has always been a facet of SEO and it has very much become part of Local. Hate to see this happen. Regarding all of the marketing being aimed at your clients by directories - I know just what you mean. This is what I do. At the time that I am setting up my clients' listings, I tell the client, in writing, that they are likely to be contacted by these companies offering additional paid services. I tell them that they are not obliged to purchase any of these services and that we do not recommend these services. I also tell them that they are welcome to forward any marketing offers to me. I am explicit about this at the time we are doing the work and if the client forgets, I simply keep repeating the same message over and over to them. It's just part of the job, I guess. Some clients eventually get it, others don't. One of our oldest clients still sends me emails from the most ridiculous sources offering to do the most ridiculous things for them. It's obnoxious, yes, but I'm glad the client is at least well-trained not to make a move without consulting me first. That's the kind of trust it takes time to build and of which one can be proud. I enjoyed reading your rant. Hang in there. You are not alone! Miriam

Hi Stevej24, Just thought I'd respond to your comment. According to the Optilocal post I linked to in my longer response to Ryan: Howard Lerman (CEO of Yext) confirmed that an expansion in Europe and Australia is scheduled. However, according to him this would not happen before 2013. So, looks like expansion will happen in a year or more. Cheers! Miriam

Hi Ryan,

Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. Am I right in thinking that you are asking for opinions on Yext's Power Listing service? You didn't mention this specifically, but I'm guessing this is the product you are considering.

I haven't personally used or test-run any Yext tools, but I thought you would be interested in this piece by Nyagoslav Zhekov - a colleague for whom I've come to feel increasing respect over the past year in the Local sphere. Here is his piece, published around the launch of Yext's tool:

http://www.optilocal.org/uncategorized/yext-a-good-way-to-straighten-your-nap/

Also, a good discussion on Greg Sterling's blog:

http://www.screenwerk.com/2011/04/25/yext-tags-survives-now-powerlistings/

Also some good comments on this TechCrunch piece from around the same time:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/17/yext-powerlistings-30-000/

I thought these would be some good, unbiased resources to consider while you are making up your mind about whether you'd like to move forward with Yext.

Hope this helps!

Miriam

Hello Cakes Website,

Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. I'm the Local SEO Associate here in the forum. You've brought up a meaningful concern. I would strongly recommend that you keep your clients' emails consistent across the major local business indexes...including but not limited to Google Places. As you are a Local SEO, you are probably already familiar with David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors annual survey, but just in case you aren't, here's the link:

http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml

I'm referencing this so that you can take a gander at the 10 most important citation sources in the document. In these, and all of the major indexes I would consider it best to use a standard business email throughout.

And then, train your clients to either forward emails containing sales pitches from the directories to you so that you can offer them guidance, or teach them to delete them. We all have to deal with spam, unfortunately, but avoiding some of it is not going to be of equal value to maintaining consistency across all citations of the business.

This is my opinion on this, and I hope it is useful to you.

Miriam

Hello Alex,

Yes - at the very least, the NAP needs to be in real HTML text in your footer - not within an image.

Identifying your business as being in Atascadero is not going to hurt your rankings in other towns. It's going to help establish you where you are located. Bear in mind, though, that Google is always going to consider you as being primarily relevant to the town you are located in - not the towns in your extended service area. The point of doing city landing pages for your service cities is to try to compete for ORGANIC rankings - not local ones. Google will almost always show your competitors who are actually located in the other cities in their local results for these searches, whereas you will have an advantage for Atascadero searches if they are not located there. So, Atascadero is your true local city for which you are hoping to get locally ranked (with a red/grey pinned result) - your service cities represent opportunities for you to attempt to do content creation/link building for secondary organic rankings.

Your sample meta description looks more like a title tag to me. Meta descriptions should typically read like a complete sentence - a mini sales pitch. What you've written with the pipe symbols is the common format for a title tag.

Finally, regarding ALT tags, you could experiment with adding NAP to some of them, and using others to highlight some of your main keywords, such as 'carpet cleaning in atascadero, ca', etc. ALT tags should always be an accurate description of what's in the image. Perhaps the image of your company truck would be a good one to put NAP on, but images of you doing work with various machines could be good opportunities to focus on other key terms.

Hope this helps. I'd like to close with the suggestion that you consider consulting with a good local SEO at some point, if this is within your budget. I can only provide limited guidance here in the forum, but you've got lots of questions and would probably find it very valuable to seek professional consultation at some point. I'd be happy to work with you further in future, Alex.

Good luck!

Miriam

Hi Alex,

I'm delighted my input is helpful. To get you in the right mindset for approaching Local SEO, in general, it's important to understand that the whole thing hangs on NAP. Your legal business name, physical address and local area code phone number are the three most important details about your business in the eyes of all search engines. Without these three items, you don't qualify as local and don't qualify for a Google Place Page.

Because of this, you want to send the strongest possible geographic signals from your website. This means optimizing your footer (or masthead) sitewide with your complete NAP, having it on your contact page and possibly on other pages such as your home and about pages. All tags and text should also be written with your local focus in mind (your cities, regions, neighborhoods, zip codes, etc.) Approach everything from the perspective that you are A) a neighbor who needs information B) a bot that needs to understand you are local to a certain location.

I do recommend using hCard as it strengthens the signal.

Finally, I want to address this comment you've made to be sure I'm giving you the best advice. You write:

i really try and keep my address of the page as much as possible since it is not a commercial building, just my home and a shop, but I am open to it if there is a benefit SEO wise or if you feel the end user would appreciate it.

We've just addressed how critical NAP is to your entire local campaign, and lots of businesses are run out of a home office. The one thing I wanted to double-check on is your mention of a 'shop'. Do you mean there is another business (a shop of some kind) running out of your home at the same address? If so, come back to me about this as there will be different issues to consider. But, if that's not what you meant and yours is the only business running out of the home address, that is no problem. Bottom line: highly publicizing your NAP is the foundation of Local. Hope this helps!

Miriam

Greetings Alex!
Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. I'm the Local SEO Associate here in the forum and will do my best to give an honest, helpful answer.

My first impression on hitting your website is that it needs big help, both from a Local SEO standpoint and a human usability standpoint. Most critically, I have no idea when I land on your homepage where you are located or where you serve. 'Wine Country' is too generic a term to help me instantly 'get' your geography. I live in N. California and to me, the phrase 'wine country' means the Napa/Sonoma region - not Atascadero. I realize that this is your business name, and that's fine, but your header, which occupies nearly half of the screen space above the fold of your page should absolutely include your complete address and local area code phone number. This will be the very first signal to visitors that you are local, and you've got to make it super obvious.

You are on the right track creating landing pages for each of the cities in which you serve. This is a standard best practice for on-page Local SEO. I am seeing two areas of improvement you can work towards. Firstly, the decision to bury the links for these important pages down near the footer of the website is not ideal. You should be putting your location and service areas front and center on the website. Put a tab in your top nav for 'where we serve' or something like that and put the links there.

Secondly, as other members have noted, the content on these pages is thin and I also find it to be awkwardly optimized. Yes, it's good to have your keyword phrases in the content, but when you have only a couple of paragraphs on each page and they are so obviously using italics to highlight the phrases, the end user experience is not satisfying. I am not convinced, as the visitor, that real effort was put into showcasing your work in your 4 distinct service cities. I am left feeling that these pages were put together solely for the sake of SEO - not for my benefit as the visitor. I recommend looking at the pages again and asking yourself honestly whether they are displaying real care for the education and engagement of human readers.

Don't get too focused on the percentage of difference between each page. I have a copywriting client who runs a carpet cleaning company and the ONLY thing that is duplicated from page to page on his city landing pages is his linked list of services. Everything else is unique and different. Different text, different photos, different stories to share. This is what you should be shooting for - telling a story that is persuasive.

In addition to things I've briefly mentioned here, your website lacks overall Local optimization. Your contact page has not been optimized - don't let this page be nothing more than a form. Your complete NAP (name address phone number) preferably coded in hCARD or utilizing schema or what have you, and more unique text about your business will take this page from weak to strong. Don't forget hours of operation, a Google MyMap of your location and other good things like that that can be added.

In addition to putting the complete NAP in the header of your website, I would suggest that you put it across the footer, site-wide, and I recommend hCARD for this as well.

I hope my straight-shooting advice is empowering, Alex. All of these problems are actually major opportunities for you to improve. More care put into the design, layout, optimization and copywriting, coupled with your claiming of your local business profiles across the various indexes, is going to make your business a force to be reckoned with, and that's what I'd love to see happen for you!

Miriam

Hi Again, AWC

Thanks for coming back with such complete information. I've re-set this thread as an on-going discussion, so hopefully that will stick and the topic can keep going. I agree, you should get 2nd and 3rd opinions on this, and I'm going to ask one of our traditional SEOs to step in as well with an opinion from that viewpoint of expertise.

My opinion is this: by putting local information on your product pages site-wide, you are sending a very pointed signal to Google that you deem your data to be most relevant to Oklahoma residents. If you're including the city as well as the state in all tags and text, you are sending a further signal that you consider your data to be most relevant to your own community within the state. Now, whether Google abides by the signals you have sent or not is where the grey area lies.

You are selling items out of state, as you say, but you've got them all, in a sense, labeled, as Oklahoma products. A truly national site wouldn't really take that approach with its SEO. And yet, there was real sense in your approach to start out small to get business locally because that cut your competition for product keywords down considerably. What you did makes perfect sense to me.

Now, with your question as to whether so boldly labeling everything on your site with state or city/state labels is going to be a detriment to you attempting to rank beyond state borders for the product, I honestly don't know. My gut feeling can be summed up in my observation that a national SEO campaign would not include those geo terms. That being said, Local and traditional SEO do not cross one another out. If going national is now your focus, you could trim back the heavy usage of city-related terms, and stick to spelling out your city in your footer site wide, on your contact page, about us page, home page and maybe a few other pages that talk about the ability for customers to do business with you in person. And, of course, you can list the local business in Google Places, Bing Local and all of the other relevant local business indexes.

State-related terms (Oklahoma) are not local, so that needs to be treated more as you would traditional SEO. You need to determine whether potentially losing some dominance for phrases that include the 'oklahoma' in them will be worth making the site look more truly national, in terms of its SEO. I haven't done any keyword research, but I'm doubting a ton of people are searching for 'barn kits oklahoma' or similar terms. My feeling is that they would either be trying to find one locally (in which case they would include the city name in their query) or that they would be comparison shopping on-line.

Bottom line: I think the decision rests with you as to whether your main SEO thrust needs to be truly local (city+state), statewide (in which case you'd keep optimizing everything with the state name) or truly national, in which case, you don't really want geographic modifiers all over the tags and text. You know your customer base and can look at your books to see what percentage of your business is coming from where (local vs. state vs. national). In situations like these, that is the best metric I can provide to help someone discern where their main efforts need to be placed.

Let's see what our traditional SEOs have to say! Sit tight.

I'm just jumping back in here after reading your remark: "This store has been here 20 years." So, it appears you have a physical location at which you are vending products directly to people, but that you also have an e-commerce portion of your website for national/international sales. Is this a correct description of your business model, AWC?

Hello VernonMack,

Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. I'm the Local SEO Associate here in the forum. I think the most important point to respond to in your post is this one. You write:

Using the actual physical address, seems to be what google would prefer, but the address is actually on the outskirts of the city and would mean that competitors that have addresses closer to the city center would show up before us.

It isn't so much a matter of Google's preference, but a matter of adhering to their guidelines which specifically state that you must use your real physical address. Unfortunately, this means that businesses likes yours on the borders of major cities do not have the strength to overpower the rankings of competitors actually located within the big cities. As you can imagine, this is a very common issue for all local businesses located just outside of metropolitan locations. Google will always view you as most relevant to the city in which you are located, so for your company, that will be El Cajon - not San Diego. I cannot recommend attempting to mash up the city and zip of the two different locales.

You can, of course, create content on your website about any work you do within San Diego, but should not expect this to take precedence over your actual physical location.

I truly sympathize with the wish to compete for the big search terms, but the usefulness of Google Places depends on accurate representation of data. For now, you are located in El Cajon and should correctly list yourself as such. If it becomes clear to you in future that you need to move locations into the city of San Diego, you will be doing what some other local business owners have done due to Google's handling of location. For some businesses, moving shop just isn't feasible, but for others, getting that inner city address is a must and a smart move.

Hope this helps, and good luck!