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Sorry for any confusion about that. Yes, that page is incorrectly showing the American partners for Canada. We do still use Google and Facebook as verification sources, but our Canadian distribution partners are currently: Bing Factual Foursquare Hotfrog I hope that clarifies things!

Hi Wayne, I vote for a good mix of: Locally relevant sites, like local newspapers, local business organizations and possibly local blogs Industry relevant sites, like industry publications, industry organizations and industry blogs I wouldn't focus on one over the other. I'd go for both!

Hi Wayne, you case is interesting and, obviously, it would be a little bit easier offering a potential answer if - at least - you could tell us what is the market niche your client is operating. I don't if you are asking the question having in mind ranking for keywords like "xyz in "region"", xyz in "region"", and so on. Personally, I consider that the common product/service description pages should be just one and valid for all regions, than it should be in the conversion funnel, when people already are in a buying/requesting contact step, that you ask them in what region they reside, therefore funneling the customers to their regional funnels. Then, what I would do in order to have the site earning more relevancy on a regional/local base, I'd design a content strategy that look at local problematics related to the products/services your client sells, so to obtain the attention of local influencers, local news site, local bloggers... In this strategy I would not even exclude local offline marketing, paying always attention to have these very geo-targeted campaigns mirrored online in the site and social media profiles.

This may be an issue. Because these are extremely technical sites I have never done anything with Google+ but it might be time to revisit that.

I like Frederico's response and agree with it. If you are providing additional content and value (which is good for the site visitor), you are fine. We actually do a very similar thing with highly technical data and the only time we ran into duplicate content issues was when we accidentally had three pages about the same product because it applied to three different categories. To fix the issue, we created a new product page listing all three categories on the page itself, and applied canonical tags from the other three duplicate pages to the new page.

Nope No value. Another SMB scam tactic...

Hi Wayne, You've received some solid responses. Were any of them helpful? Christy

Thanks Miriam. I understand that all of this is dependant on the amount of competition, domain authority, and  links to specific pages, as it is with any page. The is and does stuff I think falls under the category of including as many variations of the related phrase as possible, which I also try to do with any page.

Hi Miriam, I think budget issues are always a consideration. I'm with you: if the owner doesn't get that this is a long term effort to increase their business, then I tell them I can't help them. I tell them that my job is to increase their business and that I need a commitment of time and money to do so. I generally try to get them to commit for a one year period and a budget large enough to actually accomplish something. These kinds of customers are harder to find, but, once I do, because I have the time and money to get a result, they tend to become more or less permanent customers. My biggest challenge is explaining what I'm going to do and how this will result in more business.

Great. thanks Linda. My big takeaway here is that Yellow Pages and Industry Canada are primary data aggregators in Canada.

Hi Wayne, Your local area code phone number is the 'P' in your core business NAP (name, address, phone). Listing it consistently as your primary phone number is crucial to you sending a clear signal. Glad you asked, as this is very important!

ouch that's going to be hard unless the client is really open to talking to you and actually wants to trust you. They usually are guaranteed something when it comes to "services" like that vs traditional seo where you offer audits, "long term", "outreach" and words that tell them that it's going to **"take time" ** What I would do is just tell them that it is their decision if they want to go with them and you as a friend, would like to ask him to check out these (then name articles about it penguin or penalties) Ask them if they are willing to change their domain in the future once they get dropped by google. And if their site gets destroyed by google, then they will have to pay you 4 times the amount to help them recover which isn't always guaranteed. Worked for me, should work for you.

no worries!

Hi Wayne, There are some good tools out there for what you want to do, but I need to let you know that getting a one box result is not generally a Local SEO goal. Google seldom displays a single result for common queries. In general, what you want is to go for the highest ranking in the local results (the grey pinned results) whether Google is displaying 2, 3 or 7 results for a given query. My favorite local search competitive analysis tool is from 51 Blocks, and it's free: http://www.51blocks.com/online-marketing-tools/free-local-analysis/ It's really nice. You may also want to check out the suite of tools offered by Whitespark.ca, especially when it comes to the art of citation building for local businesses. So, the job here is to set common goals (a high local ranking) for specific terms and then create a plan that will typically incorporate a mix of on-page work and off-page citation creation, review acquisition and other factors. Hope this helps!

...ask Gravity — why didn't I think of that? Good advice, thank you both.

Nope, GWT is the fastest thing I have come across. When I guest post I find between 2 weeks and a month and its in GWT.

I use Majestic in combination with OSE. The former is great for raw counts and fast discovery, the latter gives me generally more reliable data (in terms of links that still exist, come from relatively stable sources, etc) and better metrics/filters. I thought Eric Enge's comparison was quite good: http://www.stonetemple.com/majestic-seo-open-site-explorer-shootout/

No problem JP. Glad we could help out. Feel free to reach out to us if you have specific questions on link building. We've trained many folks and are happy to help out.

Wayne, I hate to say it, but it is because like life, Google is not fair... Not that it is their fault, you can only do so much even if you are Google.  When I went to the site in OSE I was surprised to see what they are getting away with. I cannot suggest to you what to do, but if they were my client I would work on making sure this in some way changes. (Hope I haven't said anything that offends anyone engaged in this type tactic). Best, Edit: One question I would have is are they doing the same in PPC? If so, then you really have an actionable issue given the sites are all the same.