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... and if your 5-city example did become a duplicate content concern, wouldn't Moz Analytics highlight it?

So glad to come across this thread today - thank you for your help!

Those are great suggestions. I just found out that the team has already started some geo pages way back I was unaware of, and I'm giving them a look. Since we do a lot of volunteering/charity in each community, that may be a good hook as well. We're talking something evergreen, correct? We wouldn't have the bandwidth to keep this regularly updated. I could do a refresh one a year at most.

Thanks!

... and this concerns me because it seems non-manipulative and useful to the customer to see a list of service areas. Sure, there may be an SEO benefit, but I think in this example it shouldn't be penalty-worthy (although the verbiage clearly states this is the case).

Is it a distinction between a line of text and a block of text?

Hi Miriam,

I hear this suggestion a lot for my company's website (dedicated page for each geographical location), and I'm having a really hard wrapping my brain around it, but I do want to try it out. For the city landing pages, what is the nature of the content? In my case, I work for a credit union with 70 branches in 3 states. Would it be something like "Hey Salt Lake City, we're here for you [insert local references, etc.] to provide [products, services, etc.]

My concern would be, if this is the case (and I could be totally off-base), what is the value of those pages to the user? It brings them in, but would the page seem disingenuous? And, the concern of the user above, that there could be duplication in discussing products and services (and if you're not talking about products and services, what do you talk about?)

In there an example you can direct us to?

Great thread - thanks for your insight!

Say you have two separate pages, each featuring a different product. They have so many common features, that their content is virtually duplicated when you get to the bullets to break it all down. To avoid a penalty, is it advised to paraphrase? It seems to me it would benefit the user to see it all laid out the same, apples to apples. Thanks.

I've considered combining the products on one page, but will be examining the data to see if there's a lost benefit to not having separate pages. Ditto for just not indexing the one that I suspect may not have much traction (requesting data to see).

Thanks Michael!

Are you referring to the order or just the presence of the terms in general?

Right. But, how about the order? If you have a dropdown of several suggestions, are they sorted in order of search volume?

When Google drops down and tries to predict what you're searching for, are the terms in order of popularity from the top down?

You are not alone. I don't understand as well and would love to hear an answer on this!

He didn't even mention the tool. I just connected the dots. It's a component of their overall suite of tools. Aside from hosting the event, there was no self-promotion.

As for the rest of your response, my sentiments exactly. I feel reassured that I'm thinking about this correctly. I came up with a system using a variety of sources, including common sense, looking at competitors, Google Keyword Planner, Wordtracker, and Bing. I still need to tweak my process, but when I heard that it kinda deflated me because I really like the tool.

Our internal data isn't really helpful because we don't have much traffic now for what I'll be optimizing for. I'm basically on the ground level of what's going to be a re-launch. Presumably over time afterward, I'll have better insight.

And yes, that definitely helps. Thanks!

So I went to a panel a while back that said Wordtracker is basically useless. I'm not using it as an end-all, be-all, but more for insights and context. Do you agree with that statement? The hosting company provides a keyword research tool, so I wasn't sure how seriously to take it.

Have you guys been using Bing for the search data previously provided by Google's Keyword Research Tool? Do you find that to be a viable resource?

Thanks.

I saw that too Linda, and will be keeping an eye on that. Am I right to assume there's no harm in implementing it anyway? By the time we get to that point, it may be moot.

Thanks! I'll start the conversation with our content team then. I think the ends justify the means.

Thanks Dave, that does help!

What I'd like to be able to do implement is the author tag, but I don't think associating a face with the tag is an option. We could associate it with a staff writer, but I don't know that it would be a good idea. I assume the authorship option is for experts with clout and, although our staff writer(s) would be gathering the content from such experts in our company and turning them into blogs, I don't know that it's the intent of Google Authorship. Is that frowned upon?

Using a staff writer or two could be a workaround, but I wouldn't want a staff writer to be mistaken for a virtuoso - he/she would be a conduit of good information, taken from the experts and put into nice, readable blog posts. And we'd be transparent about it - for example a Q&A with an expert published into a blog.

Hi there,

One of the things I want to get my department to do is pursue Google Authorship. I don't think assigning a person with rel=author is the best idea for us, so I am going with the rel=publisher option. Are there any other actions I should take - aside from having good content that will be +1'ed by Google - to ensure that I am taking full advantage of the benefits of having strong Google Authorship?

Thanks,
Sarah