Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Karen,

I have some qualifiers on hosing your video on the site.  As long as your web host if fast enough you will get a bump in Google's algorithm as they ding you for the slow performance off of Youtube.  If you hst the videos you might also want to use a content delivery network to speed this up further.  Finally you should submit a site map for your video to optimize how you are indexed.

I would also host on Youtube simply because this is yet another way to be found. I believe this also creates an inbound link as well(I am not 100% sure on this).

Ron

I really like the Spyfu Recon files tool.  It give you the words and content that people actually click through on both on your site as well as your competitors.

Jessica,

I was referring to on line reviews.I was specifically referring to Yelp, Google, and Bing.   I tell all my clients that their goal should be 10 reviews on each platform. I get a lot of pushback on Yelp because of the filters.  There is a perception that Yelp does not publish positive reviews. This is not true as ar as I can tell. What is true is that they do filter people out who do not write reviews on a regular basis.  Unfortunately the guys that review all the time often had a bad childhood ;).

So along with getting them to review I would encourage them to have their clients write multiple reviews while they are on Yelp.  A way to encourage people to write these reviews is that Google is using these local "citations" as evidence of a local establishment.  This will give companies a boost on mobile if people from the company are writing reviews on a regular basis.

Ron

Jessica,

I would look at a few things.  First I was not clear on my earlier comment.  Have you set up all the local directories? This would be both Google and Bing local, yelp,text,merchant circle, etc...

Second I would look at relative review strength.  Your quantity and quality of reviews can be up to 40% of your ranking if everything else is equal.

Finally I would look at your competitive position on key words.  I would use a tool like Spyfu to find out how your content compares. If there are some short falls you can expend your content in these areas.

Ron

Prager,

This is fine.  I would set up google Authorship for the employees as well so their content is attributed to your web site.

Ron

Jessica,

I would suggest some off page SEO if you have not done this already.  I have had phenomenal results in a situation like this.

Ron

Jon, I took a look at this(the screencast was helpful). I would go to this blog and read about the local directory ecosystem: https://getlisted.org/static/resources/local-search-data-providers.html One of my suspicions is that the other office has more local citations than your head office. The other things is that your site and many of the references on the site do not really differentiate between the locations. For example on Careers each address directs to the same page. You may want to consider modifying you map so that there is a mini site under the main site for each location. This would help signal multiple locations and a hierarchy to the different search engines. Ron

Harry,

My guiding principle on all this type of thing is will this provide a better experience for end users.  In my opinion your URL set up would as it logically lets people find what they are looking for.  I would just make sure the navigation for the site takes advantage of this set up and gets users where they need to go.  So I do not believe this URL structure would hurt you.  it might actually help you as long as the content is relevant to the URL, meta description and tags.

Ron

Brent,

What I would suggest is moving the blog from the blog site to the main domain.  I would set it up so that people are automatically redirected to the main web site when they hit the blog (I think both Word Press and Blogger will do this for around $20 per year). I would import the content from the old blog and update the tags to make are they are consistent and that you do not have any duplicate content on the main web site.   This way you do not lose your old following and you start building inbound links and following on your main web site.

Hope this helps,

Ron

Tammy,

Have you done any off page SEO.  it does not look like you are in any of the local directories for your area.  This is going to hurt your clients visibility.

Ron

I was considering developing some presentations with voice overs for slide share.  Will this create in bound links for my clients if I include their NAP?  If I put the NAP for my company will this create a link for us?

You know one thing you may consider if you have not already is using Google voice so you can track calls for lead generation stats.

If these links are going to be posted on line somehow, otherwise no

I believe this would resolve the issue.

have you done local SEO?  if not you need to populate all the local directories.  You can go to get listed.org for a start.  Make sure that these listings are populated with photos and other media for the search engines to index and populate in things like carousel.

Not really sure of the question here.  This has been around awhile.  Like all these schemes they really do not add any long term value.  Talk to newt Ginigritch ;). http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/aug/04/newt-gingrich-twitter

NO

Martin,

I think Slick plan is a great tool. This makes it more of a drawing operation to create a site map .  Once the site map is completed you can export this out to XML.

Rin

I agree with EGOL.  I would take it a step or two further.  I noticed you have reviews.  Do you mark these up so they will be indexed by the review sites? Reviews can be p to 40% of your ranking if everything else is equal.  So these reviews are an asset if you have them marked up properly.

The content as EGOL said is very week.  This is hurting you in a couple ways.  As EGOL has indicated Google will see this as a thin web site.  The other (and I think bigger problem) is that there is not content or media that engages people.  This is probably resulting in a low engagement that creates a low conversion rate.

It does not look like there is a lot of media on your web site. This is hurting you on searches as this is another way to be found.  This is also hurting you on engagement and ultimately conversion (which is what people never focus on but should).

A few questions: 1) Do you have a physical store front? 2) Who are your main competitors and how do they rank relative to you 3) How many inbound links do you have relative to your competitors. 4) Is there a face or mascot for the company? People buy from people?  5) Is there a market positioning for the company and is this reflected in the content?

In other words there are a lot of things I would look at outside of what you are specifically asking about. I think if you fix some of these other things it would go a long way towards fixing the issues you are talking about.  You may want to consider focusing on conversion optimization and coming back to SEO after this is addressed.

I hope this helps,

Ron

Laurie,

This is an interesting problem.  This is how I would look at it.  If these were bead and breakfast's with separate web sites and addresses Google would not penalize anyone for setting up multiple Google Local accounts.  On the other end if you had a single property and listed each condo as a separate entity and they all had the same phone number you would probably be penalized.  As you say this is in an undefined area so what I would suggest is this:

1. if there is a separate phone number and address for each location I think you are OK setting up separate listings. If they all have one office and one phone number coordinating the rentals I think you might run into problems.

2. If this is not the case what I would do instead is set up a sub page on the web site with appropriate schema mark up (schema.org) for each local address.  The pages themselves should have localized content for each address. It would serve you to have video as well as pictures with localized descriptions.  If oyu are doing blogs at a minimum I would set up your tags so that there is a tag for each location and create blogs specifically for each location. I would also consider setting up google authorship on your G+ page so that your localized content for each property is distributed in this way.

As far as the G+ profile this is is easy to set up under the Google account by simply filling out the profile information in the account.

Let me know if I am on track with my answer or if you require further clarification.

Ron