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Category: Local SEO

So much goes into building a comprehensive local marketing strategy. Discuss all things local with other marketing professionals.

Subcategories

  • Examine the impact of maintaining consistent and accurate local listings on your local SEO strategy.

  • Dive into how to manage reviews and ratings for your local marketing strategy.

  • Considering local SEO and its impact on your website? Discuss website optimization for local SEO.

  • culturefoundry


    I have a client who is using a structure like this for site wide title tags: Page specific keyword | Brand Name | Industry specific keyword + locations So in an example it'd look like: Drupal Development | BrandName | Web Services for Los Angeles, San Fransisco, New York I've researched this structure pretty thoroughly to be able to make a case for or against doing this site wide.
    However, I've received many mixed signals on many things. My questions are as follows: Should brand name be last in this structure? Does it matter? The length of this is obviously causing truncated Title in search results, so which is more useful? Is using a keyword intended for site ranking like "Web Services", "Digital Agency", "SEO Specialist" useful for every page to have or damaging? Is this cannibalizing that keyword? Is having multiple locations on every page title helping, hurting, or neutral It seems like all these things could go either way to me, but I don't want to tell them one way or another without having some more detailed explanations to give them. Thanks for your help!

    | culturefoundry
    0
  • Virginia-Girtz


    Hey SEO-ers! I've run a Moz crawl on my clients site, and I'm getting back over 4,000 duplicate title errors which is a real headache for me! The reason why is because my client has 5 different languages on their website, so if you spoke French for example, you could change the language of the website to all be in french, so the domain would change from www.example.com to www.example.com/fr/ The duplicate titles are being picked up because all page titles are in English for all 5 languages - which I know, is an issue anyway - why would a French browser using Google.fr choose a website that has English meta tags!? Crazy. So my question is... if I translate all page titles from my English title to the native language, will this fix my duplicate page titles as now they will be in the correct language? OR will it still be classed as a duplicate because in theory I'm just translating the same content 5 times? Anyone had any experience in this? I'm using Polylang on my clients Wordpress site to change the locales, so if you have knowledge on this plugin too then great!

    | Virginia-Girtz
    0
  • RyanMeighan


    I know EMD's ranking factor have been significantly reduced in the past decade, but do you think it can help at all in 2020? Thanks, Ryan

    | RyanMeighan
    0
  • Transpera


    Hey everyone, 
    We have a tonne of old domains we have done nothing with. All of them are keyword-rich domains.
    Things like "[City]SEOPro" or "[City]DigitalMarketing" where [city] is a city that we are already targeting services in.   So all of these domains will be targeted for local cities as keywords. We have been having an internal debate about whether or not we should just host sales funnel pages on these domains, that are rich in keywords and content......... ... Or ... ... Should we point these domains to landing pages on our existing domain that are basically the same as what we would do with the sales funnel pages, but are on our primary site? (keyword rich, with good and plentiful content) Then, as a follow-up question... Should these be set as just 301 redirects on these domains to our actual primary domain so the browser sees the landing page domain instead of the actual keyword-rich domain? ( [city]seopro.com ) Thanks guys. I know for some, the response will be an obvious one. However; we have probably way over thought this and have arguments for almost every scenario. We think we have an answer but wanted to send this out to the community first. I won't post what we are thinking yet, so that the answers can remain unbiased for now and we can have a conversation without it being swayed any one way. We understand that 301 redirects would be seen as a doorway page. 
    We are also only discussing in the context of organic search only. 
    If we ran the domains as their own sites, they would be about 3 pages of content only. Pretty static, but good content. Think of a PAS style sales funnel. Problem -> Acknowledgement -> Solution.

    | Transpera
    0
  • danieldaher


    I have 17 locations in Google My Business all for one company. Is there any reason NOT to group them and transfer ownership to a new grouped location? It won't have any negative SEO effect, right? Just making sure I won't lose reviews or age of accounts.

    | danieldaher
    0
  • danieldaher


    I run SEO for a multi-location business. Most of our locations are great and others are still ramping. SEO is a long process but we have higher expectations for these stores. While all the normal stuff get going to boost our rankings, is there anything quick I can just throw some money to get a jump start?

    | danieldaher
    0
  • RyanMeighan


    Hello, I am looking for the communities thoughts on location-based landing pages. That is,  writing out dozens, sometimes hundreds of landing pages in the format of domain.com/[keyword]-[location] and recycling the same content over and over to localize organic search engine results. i have done it with multiple websites and seen tremendous success, however, i am considering getting rid of these pages and having all of the spammy location based pages 301 redirect to my main page domain.com/[keyword] I am considering this because the above practice seems to be a bit black-hat / spammy and those pages do not offer any unique or valuable content. While i have seen great results from this practice, i feel like Google will eventually penalize this or may already be penalizing me without me knowing it. At the same time, i am hesitant to because these pages are ranking. i.e. domain.com/[keyword-houston] is ranking but domain.com/[keyword] is not ranking Thoughts?

    | RyanMeighan
    0
  • chamberlinksales2


    Good day My company is trying moz for the first, and I am their web developer, I looked through the moz report and found something confusing when checking the issues. For example, I have URL:https://www.cham-training.co.za/free-skills-development-assessment.php and the mentioned URL can have parameters as follows: 1. https://www.cham-training.co.za/free-skills-development-assessment.php?target=Internship 2. https://www.cham-training.co.za/free-skills-development-assessment.php?target=Learnership the target parameter is just used to hold a value regarding the clients actual request, learnership, internship etc.  However moz seem to recognize the same link with different parameters as different links and this makes the issue count to go up.  For me, then this becomes false report. Please take a look at the attached image for reference. I got issues regarding duplicate title, but the truth is there's no duplicate titles its just that moz picks up the page as different because of the url parameters. Can someone please clarify why is that so or if there's any reason moz does that. I hope to hear from you guys soon. Thank you open?id=15uTf6Wn3jQWxELQodLgtlkswZKOtNSol

    | chamberlinksales2
    0
  • SeobyKP


    For example, www.laskeimages.com Outside of Google Search Console, is there another way?

    | SeobyKP
    0
  • VeroBrain


    Hi Moz fans, I face an issue with Google for Jobs, Dublin, Ireland market.
    My client, a local job agency lose rank, his posts appear mediated by other big job companies who have high DA, over 60, client has less than 30 DA.
    Any ideas?
    Thanks in advance. Mª Verónica

    | Mª Verónica B.
    1
  • Tumul


    For example, the entire content is in an Indian language called Gujarati and the script is also Gujarati. However, when I did a keyword research, I found that majority of the searches are in Gujarati langugage by roman script e.g. "gujarati sahitya" meaning Gujarati literature. Any ideas would be appreciated.

    | Tumul
    0
  • mounirigomorocco


    For exemple we set a UK  subdomaine for : www.igomorocco.com www.uk.igomorocco.com Does having a subdomains UK affect SEO in UK google results? How this should be set up correctly?

    | mounirigomorocco
    0
  • ChrisCanada


    Hello and thanks in advance for any help. I'll try to keep this simple. I am about to do some major SEO for our Law Firm. We have 4 practice areas and I will be focusing on Lemon Law Attorneys for this example. I always try my best to keep it clean, organized and for the user. This one just has me a little confused about which direction to take as its a little more complex. The business is 1 location. The office is in San Diego but we service all of California. CURRENT PAGE STRUCTURE
    .com (home)
    .com/practice-areas/
    .com/practice-areas/lemon-law-attorneys/
    .com/practice-areas/service-two-example/
    .com/practice-areas/service-three-example/
    .com/practice-areas/service-four-example/ I did some research and got better keywords (listed below) KEYWORD & SEARCH VOLUME lemon law 40500
    - california lemon law 9900
    - lemon law california 9900
    - lemon law attorney 3600
    - california lemon law attorney 880
    - lemon law attorney san diego 170 It would be nice to rank for both California and San Diego search terms but I'm ok if that's not the right way to do it. These are the options I can think of using Lemon Law Attorney as an example. I'd love to hear what you think would work best and im open to other options. PAGE STRUCTURE (Option A)
    .com/practice-areas/
    .com/practice-areas/lemon-law-attorney-san-diego/ PAGE STRUCTURE (Option B)
    .com/practice-areas/
    .com/practice-areas/california-lemon-law-attorney/
    .com/practice-areas/california-lemon-law-attorney/lemon-law-attorney-san-diego/ PAGE STRUCTURE (Option C)
    .com/lemon-law/
    .com/lemon-law/california-lemon-law-attorney/
    .com/lemon-law/california-lemon-law-attorney/lemon-law-attorney-san-diego/ PAGE STRUCTURE (Option D)
    .com/lemon-law/
    .com/lemon-law/california/
    .com/lemon-law/california/san-diego/ PAGE STRUCTURE (Option E)
    .com/lemon-law-attorney/
    .com/lemon-law-attorney/california/
    .com/lemon-law-attorney/california/san-diego/ The biggest problem I see if having to make unique Lemon Law content for both California and San Diego Lemon Law Attorney pages. I dont want the site to look spammy to the end user. At the same time I want to make sure im setting myself up for success from the start. Thank you,
    Chris

    | ChrisCanada
    1
  • triveraseo


    I am working on building an area guide page for a local hotel website. The hotel itself has a lot to offer in forms of on-site entertainment and they are concerned about sending people away from their website (and their business). However, it's also important to write about the area and local attractions in close proximity to their hotel for many reasons, including building local authority. Is there any benefit to adding links to the Google My Business/map listing of the local attractions? Or can we just simply not include external links?

    | triveraseo
    2
  • jazzydan


    Hi Guys, First time question. I'm going to be creating some Adwords search campaigns. When I create these campaigns I will be targeting specific post codes in London. I've checked this and all is fine. However I need to forecast costs for my client before creating the campaigns. Google Keyword Planner only allows me to forecasts volume and CPC costs for London, it doesn't allow me to drill down any further than this. What would be the best way to try and forecast costs for these postcode specific campaigns? Even if its using a third party tool. Or is it just not possible? Thanks Dan

    | jazzydan
    0
  • CORSOLUTIONS


    Best practice?? I have a client that wishes to get found for services in several towns across the UK. They only have 1 physical location I have so far created a blog ( i use easyblog) and put a list of these towns..then added TAGS with the town names (this means each TAG gets a URL too) ..also i need to then monitor in moz pro somehow. Alternatively i could create web pages with additional information and give the URL the town name....however i think the tags will help...any advice welcome.

    | CORSOLUTIONS
    1
  • CJ777


    Hello, Thank you to anyone who takes the time to share their thoughts on this. I will preface this by saying that I am very new to the community and have lots to learn, so please forgive any obvious errors on my part. That having been said am very happy to receive positive criticism and feedback 🙂 Quick Background: We are a high end mobile wellness business based in Toronto Canada offering in home/office servicing including: yoga, pilates, nutrition, meditation, chiropractors, etc... As we are expanding  we are transitioning form new leads coming from business partners and word of mouth to driving new business online As such we have an new Squarespace site (which is the first site I ever built, so any feedback is welcome) and are venturing into social media, SEO, local citations etc... for the first time We have a significant content catalogue originally  for client and instructor education that we are now repurposing for this new digital adventure but have not yet deployed While currently focused in Torotno, we have plans to expand to several other countries in the next two years. As the site is quite new and we have little content or incoming links I was thinking now is the time to switch to .com from .ca before we roll out Website: www.anahana.ca Risk Reward? & Other Issues? Both domains are currently verified with Squarespace, and it seems easy enough to switch. What could blow up by making this switch which I might not be aware of? Our emails and business card use the .ca, but I don't think this would matter too much 6-12 months out... is there something else I might be missing on this? .com and using subfolders or subdomains as opposed to country specific TLDs ? This is something I am still working on understanding, but from what I have learned thus far, if we are going to progressively roll out a large content library, is it not better from an SEO standpoint to have this all in one domain? Local SEO and legal considerations for TLDs when operating local Service Area Businesses. I am sure there are many other angles here that I am missing and am not really looking for any hard answer on much of this, but any general advice, suggested resources, and experienced insights would be extremely helpful. Thanks so much, cj

    | CJ777
    0
  • MizRabble


    Hi there, We have a variation on the subdomain/sub-directory question... Our business has two monetising areas, a clinic and a shop. To market them, we do recipes, blogs and social media, rather than relying primarily on SEO, but we do want to up our SEO game. Our primary site is www.example.co.uk This is Wordpress and where we market the clinic, host the recipes and blogs, and is our main email domain. Our second site is Woocommerce, at  www.example.shop Our shop market is primarily in the UK, but we seem to pick up a fair amount of international business, partly because the clinic does virtual consultations to many countries. The shop is online only. We have physical clinics across the UK. Both sites cross link extensively, eg with blogs advertising products in the shop. The branding is intentionally related yet different, because they have very distinct functions, and eg. I don’t want to clutter the interface or distract people with blog or clinic once we have funnelled them to the shop checkout. I would also like to separate the blog and recipe elements from the clinic, using a slightly different theme with different functions. We use a lot of plugins, and the more we aggregate functions on the same Wordpress instance, the more likely something is to go wrong. I like the new TLDs because they are more “human”, and they identify where you are and what you are doing more clearly. We do email footers with links to example.clinic (redirected to www.example.co.uk) and example.shop. They are simple and explain what is going on. Conversely, shop.example.co.uk is not so easy to write or read out. www.example.co.uk/shop looks like an afterthought, rather than a shop in its own right with its own home page. So there would have to be a really good SEO reason for me to merge the shop into the main site with reverse proxy or multisite. Do you think that there is such a good reason? If not, by the same token, would it make sense to separate out example.blog or even naturedoc.recipes from example.clinic  and use .co.uk as a single page portal to the three separate sites? My instinct, for what it is worth is that Google is smart enough to have started thinking that domains linked by topic TLDs can be equivalent to subdomains, and to recognise that we are not trying to build links from spammy unrelated sites. My last area is about human behaviour... Are people are as happy to click on or type in a new TLD like .clinic as a local .co.uk one?  ...when (a) it is not a discredited TLD like .biz, and (b) it gives them more insight into what they will get when they arrive. And since we have the .uk domain, should we switch to this shorter version at the same time? I already use it for custom shortcodes (eg. example.uk/fte6 for people to type in from printed material or instagram). I can’t help feeling .uk has been unsuccessful, and its use now looks bad, even if it is shorter. Many thanks in advance.

    | MizRabble
    0
  • BLUEvennMOZ


    Our CMS creates Call-To-Action buttons that use a meta refresh to redirect and MOZ stops it's crawl. The MOZ crawler hits these redirects and is unable to pass to the desired URL and so reports issues. So could this be happening to other crawlers or will most indexing be unaffected by this method? Essentially, is using meta refresh as a redirect method bad for our SEO?

    | BLUEvennMOZ
    0
  • Ryan_Marshall


    I have a company that rents, repairs, and sells product both new and used. They also have 3 locations in 3 states and service multiple cities out of the locations (ie... los angeles and orange county). Having a hard time redesigning the website so that it fits for customers to look around and for the best of Organic SEO. The issue seems to be fitting the locations in the mix in order to get the customer to the right area without being too confusing. In the end, I'm thinking well maybe the homepage should just be some content to get them to choose the location first then they can go into silos where they pretty much remain in the location for rentals, repairs, and sales but I'm not sure how having the locations on the home page would affect the site. Obviously, we would be trying to rank the silo locations more but they would be 2-3 pages in on clicks to get to the right section 'if' they started from the home page. We need to do this right from the beginning though because we are working on expanding nationwide one day. Thanks for any help on this manner. (PS> Thought about doing subdomains like locations.example.com or state.example.com and rentals.example.some and shop.example.com but I think that will dilute the rankings)

    | Ryan_Marshall
    1
  • Unbranded_Lee


    I have a dilemma, we're merging 2 websites, one an Australian branch and one a UK one. We've decided to have a UK page and a AUS page so agency.site/uk/ agency.site/aus/ but what is the best tactic for the service pages? ideally, we'd like a web-design service page to rank in Australia and the UK but not sure if this is actually possible, or whether to duplicate the pages and localise them i.e. /web-design-leeds/ and /web-design-melbourne/  What's everyone's thoughts on this? localised landing pages with some duplicate content or one master page with both locations mentioned? Thanks!

    | Unbranded_Lee
    1
  • NEWCHOPPER


    We operate a full service printing and direct mail company located in Houston (www.catdi.com ). We have been in business for quite sometime and had enjoyed top tier position on page one for many years. However after revamping our website and  main page it was determined that we used "Houston" way too often. Our keywords are ( Houston Printing , Printing in Houston)
    I suppose to the pros it looked and it seemed a little spammy with all the references to our city. But after the changed we have now dropped to mid - bottom of page two. Should we worried or does after sometime
    will be move back up? I dont want to hastily change back but to our surprise those aren't really searched terms I would hate to see our positions and ranking fall because of this change. Thanks CATDI PRINTING

    | NEWCHOPPER
    0
  • WalkieTalkie


    Hello- Please see this Manta email below. It's mixing there data up with other companies around the web i think.  Wonder why this Paving company from Manta (not our client) be associated with my client Affordable Striping vlqxu?

    | WalkieTalkie
    0
  • Eric_S


    Hi all, I am currently doing keywords research and matching it to our sales data. With an input of resources, do you know if there is a good way to create a growth forecast as a result of SEO investment? How do I work out a strategy and align it to a compelling financial forecast? Your experience on this will be super helpful! Many thanks, Eric

    | Eric_S
    1
  • KevnJr


    We received Google Beacons for each of our physical locations, the info from Google is: It transmits a signal via BLE to smartphones within 11 meters It will provide information to visitors and offer opportunities to see products and add reviews It's connected to your Google Ads account somehow It is "on" as soon as it's removed form it's box It has to be activated via a provided code My question: Where does the data transmitted by the Beacon come from? How can I control that data? Is it pulled from our GMB account? THX for reading and responding, I'll add more to this as I learn more about Beacons. KJr PS: See ya @ MozCon 🙂

    | KevnJr
    1
  • formandfunctionagency


    I have a question for the local SEO crowd: when it comes to creating keyword tracking lists, what are your best practices in reference to tracking from a set location? Do you typically create national keyword lists that include the location operator in each term or are you better creating a list of locally-tracked keywords around a business' location and dropping the location operator from the keyword? Or some combination of the two? To clarify, if I had an example business of a realtor in Chatham, MA, would I want to track -"realtor in chatham ma" (national)
    -"realtor in chatham ma" (with the location set to Chatham, MA)
    -"realtor" (with the location set to Chatham, MA) Or some combination of all of the above? Right now, I track waaaay too many keyword variants on my local campaigns! Hoping there's a better way from some more-seasoned Moz users. Thanks in advance!

    | formandfunctionagency
    2
  • DmitriiK


    Howdy, Saw this new(?) feature in mobile rich snippets (attached here). Anyone knows what part of schema (or whatever else) is making this appear? P.S. From all responses, and some thinking, it looks like the answer would be "who knows", as usual with Google. But most likely it would be related to usual LocalBusiness addressLocality itemprop. 0739Z5v

    | DmitriiK
    0
  • brooksmanley


    Hey friends! I work for a local digital marketing agency in Greenville, SC – serving primarily local small businesses. Over the past six months, we've increased our monthly organic traffic by almost 100%. The majority of this traffic is coming to blogs we've written over the past year on industry topics and trends. I love seeing our traffic increase, but it hasn't necessarily translated to more quality leads. Conversion numbers have largely remained the same. I think one reason is that a lot of this traffic isn't local. Here's my question: as a local business, how valuable is content that ranks well and drives organic traffic, when the traffic isn't local, and from users we would never work with? A lot of this content has earned links and grown our authority, so I suppose we've seen benefit, but I'm struggling to convince myself that it's really that valuable. I know local content is key, but it feels like what we want to educate on isn't searched locally. Would love to hear your thoughts! Thanks!

    | brooksmanley
    3
  • cptrevisani


    I have a domain in the UK with ccTLD ending in ac.uk our website is www,metfilmschool.ac.uk and it ranks really well in the UK, we also own metfilmschools.com and we want to improve our SEO in the USA? Should I use the ccTDL domain and create a subdomain or should I use the .com domain? Also. because both sites are in English what are the best practices not to duplicate content and avoid being penalized by Google? Thanks Cassio

    | cptrevisani
    0
  • kc_hotsoupgroup


    Hi all! I am trying to figure out why search rankings have decreased. I am currently outside of the US but want to see SERP results from the US. My search results keep reverting and showing me SERP's for the country I am currently in. Not only that, I want to see if featured snippets are showing for a different country. Please help! KC

    | kc_hotsoupgroup
    0
  • Smileworks_Liverpool


    So I understand that I'm never going to get google review stars appearing on my homepage.  The only term I really want my homepage to rank for is the term 'dentist liverpool'.  This figures. But what I'm seeing from my google analytics is that I can rank pretty much any keyword really well (with stars and a great serp entry) except my homepage.  Which is languishing at position 3-5. Now I made some observations from the data and the only people who are landing on my homepage are branded searches.  So people who are searching for us. Why cannot I just make a page and optimise it for 'dentist Liverpool' and go for the number one spot?  That way all the branded people can end up on the homepage and everyone else looking for a dentist in Liverpool can land on my highly optimised 'dentist Liverpool' page? I think I might be missing something really obvious here and know i'd need to de-optimise the home page.  But I find it so easy to rank for all sorts of keywords but our homepage (because it has everything on it) is just not getting to position one.  It's not specific enough to that keyword. Also how awesome would it be to have the only serp entry with 250 google reviews and stars and sitelinks and all that cool stuff?

    | Smileworks_Liverpool
    1
  • Globalgraphics


    Hi there - we have noticed today a big shift today around for some clients major search terms. Some minor - some considerable! The search results have been mainly aimed at local search phrases i.e around cities etc.. Has any one else noticed a major shift is search results today or aware of any Google algorithm updates?

    | Globalgraphics
    1
  • HubMDP


    We have a website, which is written in British English. There are no other versions of the site in different languages and the website only serves a UK audience. We have not set an hreflang tag up. Is this something we would still need to do and what would the benefits (if any) be?

    | HubMDP
    0
  • TrinityPower


    Hi, Our company has three branches in Canada and opening a 4th in the United States soon. Our target market strategy will differ in the States and I would like to know your opinion if we should launch a second site under a slightly different brand or not. I don’t want to do anything that could negatively impact our site’s current organic ranks. I feel I have to give some history on our company so you understand the dilemma. It is a little complicated. So, in Canada, we rent large generators and all the equipment needed to distribute and transform that power. We don’t own the generators. We re-rent generators (broker) from our partners. What we own is all the distribution equipment that typically accompanies a generator rental. We make money on the generator also, but the real money is in the distribution portion. In terms of messaging, our current site is tuned to target the end-user, the same market that our re-rent partners target. As a result, our re-rent partners and our company will bid on the same project in many occurrences. Our strategy in the United States is to primarily target the re-rent market. That is a very small segment in comparison to the end-user. From a marketing perspective, all that is really needed to target that group is an outside sales team. There are maybe 40 re-rent partners we will target in our first U.S. GEO… Texas. In the States, we will not rent generators. We will not run ad campaigns that bid on any generator rental type terms. We will not offer the same level of turn-key solutions we offer in Canada. All of the equipment we manufacture will be very generic in appearance, think Acme. Branding will look completely different than what we have up in Canada. We want the re-rent companies we target in the States to feel comfortable we are there to support them not compete against them. Regarding website strategy, I see three options: 1. We create a sub domain or sub page of www.trinitypower.com that explains the services we offer in the States. This for me is the safest solution. 2. We launch a second domain www.trinitypowerrentals.com that has similar content in-terms of the type of equipment we rent, but speaks directly to re-rent partners. That may not be enough of a differentiator though and I fear two sites owned by the same company with similar content will have negative SEO implications, if not right away, a year down the road. 3. We launch a new website under a completely different company name. This still carries some risk as I understand it, even if we have different phone numbers, company registration info, etc…
    Would love to know your thoughts. Thanks everyone. J

    | TrinityPower
    0
  • mohamednabil


    Hello guys I have my own blog called Hero-t3ch ,How can I get more traffic ??

    | mohamednabil
    0
  • Virginia-Girtz


    Hi all, I have a client that is debating changing their URL from www.example.co.uk to uk.example.com. I'm searching around trying to find an argument as to why they shouldn't do this, but I can't find anything concrete. I know the difference between a subdomain and ccTLD, but the push back I'm getting is that it will be better to switch to uk.example.com because the subdomain is country specific. Personally, I think that is bull. Does anyone have a good argument to help back me up? (or prove me wrong!) Thanks, Virginia

    | Virginia-Girtz
    1
  • formandfunctionagency


    I know local rankings are a complicated matter and I'm not looking for a single answer to this question, but I'm curious if any local SEOs have noticed similar issues to what I'm experiencing with trying to rank a multi-location-based business. Overall, the visibility trends for the business are up, but we keep popping into the top three spots (happened 2-3 times over the past year) for some general, particularly high-volume search terms only to fall back out and settle a week later into placements below the first page. This is particularly frustrating because the terms we're seeing this volatility for are the exact dream keywords we're hoping to rank the site for. Has anyone else experienced the same thing and had specific findings about what was at play? Is Google testing us and finding us unworthy? Any and all insights from pros with similar experiences would be helpful!

    | formandfunctionagency
    0
  • Smileworks_Liverpool


    My local dental practice has some pretty awesome number 1-3 rankings locally and nationally for all the keywords and topics we're interested in (thanks Moz) I was searching on my mobile locally for a keyword and notice that each time I search on my smartphone the first thing I see is a competitors ad for that keyword or phrase.  Then you scroll through four ads and the map pack (which we're in) and you find us at the number one position. I want to completely dominate the serp and was reading this: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/37161.pdf but if I' honest I don't really understand it. Should I run ads on the mobile to get that number one position on the ads so that everyone who searches locally for our keywords sees us on their smartphone before they even start to scroll and then see us again in the map and again in the 1-3 position? Is this a good idea or a waste of money?  PPC had never delivered decent ROI for us and will typically break even so we are just busy fools chasing leads for not much gain.  But I was thinking a more 'branding' related number one position ad might increase the conversion rate, CTR or help in some way.  Would it cost a fortune to keep it at the top of the mobile results for maybe 10-20 keywords just on the mobile? I know this is what google want me to be doing and i also want to choke my competition and completely dominate the SERPS because we provide the best service by miles and often the ads are shoddy and poorly executed.  What's the consensus amongst you wonderful PPC / SEO experts.  Obviously there's lots of SEO's saying it's a great idea because they just want to sell SEO services.  And google is in this camp.  So I don't know who to trust for the right answer.

    | Smileworks_Liverpool
    0
  • Eric_S


    Hi fellow Moz users! I am managing SEO at our company. Perhaps some of you out there also have the problem of wanting to make SEO changes on your website but lack the developer resources to make significant changes? What are some of the things I can do in my power (can't do any backend work) to make SEO better? Currently, I have: Social media (including Moz local tips of business listings) Blog site Refining pictures Google analytics to see where we can improve Internal and external links Please feel free to expand on the above but ideally it will be new things that I could get on with! Many thanks,
    Eric

    | Eric_S
    3
  • Trent.Warner


    Wondering the opinion on blog category subfolders, in the URL? Example: www.website.com/blog/**category/blog-post **vs www.website.com/blog/blog-post. Thanks !

    | Trent.Warner
    1
  • WhiteboardCreations


    Hey Mozzers! I'm working with a client who has 2 websites (different URLs completely), which one is for all parts and the other is for accessories only. They have multiple brick and mortar locations throughout the US and have done a nice job creating Google My Business pages for each and all verified. Their question is will it benefit them to create and verify another GMB page with same address, but place in "Suite B", a new phone number and apply the other URLs for the accessories site. The business name would also be different, but similar meaning Business 1 = ABC where as Business 2 = ABC Accessories. Their goal would be to try to have both rank or display to improve their local SEO. In theory it sounds like it will work given NAP would be satisfied within the GMB, but wanted to get the Moz community thoughts on this first before moving forward. Look forward to the replies. Patrick

    | WhiteboardCreations
    0
  • iepl2006


    hello i have a Domain https://goo.gl/OoigRF, which I am Doing SEO last From 16-18 Months, wordpress platform, Everything 100% as per Yoast , But Then After My rankings position changes Everyday. from 1st-2nd page to 7th-8th & sometimes After 10th page. What can be Reason ?? What are the things i need see, For making My rankings Stable ?? please Suggest Me Some ranking Recovery Steps

    | iepl2006
    0
  • Gab-SEO


    My website is gabseo.ca Lately I have been following keywords my town in Canada from Mexico and I have the impression that the Google updates the SERP almost every hours for my target keyword. It is possible that the CTR on the SERP can be that powerful? Sometimes I am number 1 for "SEO Gatineau" for example and overnight I am #9 or #10, the next day I am #3... Is there another way that I can test the search result? Whn you try this query, what do you see? It started happening this week and coincidentally I didn't publish any blog articles this week... is it related? I am stressing out right now because my agency is a startup. So how can I beat the other agencies if I don't have a good CTR? I know that I will do a casestudy about this! Any comments, ideas?

    | Gab-SEO
    0
  • MiriamEllis


    First, I want to thank all of our awesome community members here who continuously post interesting, tough and good Local SEO question in the Moz Q&A forum. I love chatting with you all, and I hope you'll keep asking away, giving us all the opportunity to muse and learn together. I think 2018 is going to be challenging and fun, and have a few thoughts on that I'd like to share, hoping you'll reply with your own tips and predictions. In the new year, I believe: Quality is going to further solidify as the most apparent differentiator of local businesses, giving those companies with the most considerate and excellent service and policies the upper hand. Memorably good customer service will drive the high-star reputation and word-of-mouth marketing that leads to success. Small local businesses have an advantage here, in their agility to implement the most genuine home-town excellence, but bigger brands can strive for this, too. From skilled phone service, to adequate in-store staffing, to employee training, to dedicated management of all online local assets, to initiatives that make a lasting, positive impression on consumers, quality is the key ingredient to loyalty, which is what every local business should most pursue in 2018. Speaking of loyalty, I would especially advise SABs to leave no stone unturned in earning it. Google's LSA program will be a serious disruptor of business-as-usual in this sector, changing the makeup of local SERPs and striving to become the middleman in the service industries. SAB owners won't love having to rent back their customers for a fee to Google, so developing Google-independent streams of leads and repeat customers will be vital in any city where LSA rolls out in the coming year. Serving in a smaller town? Begin working on Google-independence anyway, particularly via word-of-mouth marketing so that you have these streams running in advance, should LSA move beyond the more densely-populated areas. While developing Google-independence, don't overlook Google opportunities that are still free. I think Google Posts was the most interesting development of 2017, and there has been some anecdotal evidence that weekly use of this form of knowledge panel microblogging may give a small ranking boost. Be an early adopter and take advantage of that. 2018 may be the year in which Google finally cracks down on two things: keyword stuffing of the business title and review spam. I'm sure they're tired of the complaints surrounding the former and if Google's commitment to identifying quality remains in place, sooner or later, they have got to deal with this false signal of relevance the same way that have with EMDs. As to the latter, Google's increased focus on reviews over the past year is apparent in the sheer number of emails they are now sending out regarding them. Also fascinating to see that we're closing out 2017 with third-party reviews finally reappearing in Google's local products, after years of absence and trouble with the FTC. Overall, Google knows that their review corpus is dependent on consumers trusting it, and better spam detection methodologies and better/faster response to review spam reporting has got to be on their to-do list. This could be the year! For local businesses, protection lies in abandoning any type of spammy practice (from keyword stuffing to self-reviewing). And, being proactive if you are the victim of review spam. Report it. Raise a polite but firm hullabaloo. Let Google know you hold them to reasonable standards of accountability in their role as public arbiter of brand reputation. The best Local SEO agencies and local business will dig deeper into the history and tactics of organic SEO than ever before. We need to understand Hummingbird, RankBrain, and matching content to the buyer journey with the best of them. We need to master not just linkbuilding, but the relationship building that makes it most authentic and of most lasting value - and this is an area in which local businesses have a massive advantage over virtual ones, in that we can actually meet our neighbors face-to-face to build beneficial bonds. And we need to get a real handle on the technical side of SEO, understanding how site structure, handling of the robots.txt file, and the management of indexation and accessibility issues impact us. When we put high-level knowledge of all these considerations together with our Local SEO know-how, we can be successful in new, exciting ways we may have overlooked in the past. Oh, there's so much more I could say about the interesting things I see coming in 2018, but I'd love it if you'd talk now. What do you see in our industry's near future? I'd love to know. And let me take this opportunity to wish you all a fun, exciting and prosperous new year!

    | MiriamEllis
    11
  • Smileworks_Liverpool


    I'm a local dentist and have a very successful 'veneers price' blog page. People really want to know the cost of veneers and it gets hundreds of visits a day locally and nationally.  I also have a main Veneers services page talking about how you get veneers and what they are etc. This gets lots of local visitors but less nationally. I have recently tried to replicate it's success with 'dental implants price', 'tooth whitening price' and others but they've just bombed.  I replicated the style and the blogs are similar in structure, same links etc - but obviously totally unique content and topics. The price articles get no search and it's seemed to hurt the main services pages too.  They are all linked to one another in a systematic and helpful-to-the-user hierarchy and structure. Maccabees doesn't seem to have made any difference to the veneers traffic but should I consolidate the other price articles into their respective main pages or leave it and see what happens.  They have been at less than position 20 for months now. Whereas if you type in Veneers Cost UK, you'll probably see us in the featured snippet and position one or two. How do I know whether google regards the price of something to be a different topic from that thing and worthy of it's own page? Do they just want everything all on one massive page? That seems a bit clumsy to me. Thanks! 🙂

    | Smileworks_Liverpool
    0
  • Undergrnd


    I'm running a dentist's website and I've been wondering if there is any additional benefit to achieving local backlinks from other medical sites versus larger international ones? For example, if I had a blog article that I wanted another site to link to, would you choose the local medical website within the same city or the international one that has more viewers?

    | Undergrnd
    0
  • Cesare.Marchetti


    Hi, I'd like to know your opinion on the following case and gather new ideas on how to optimise our strategy: Starting situation: local store (B2B) in a bigger city in Europe that produces high quality prints mainly for photographers on paper (or other materials like canvas, aluminium, etc. ). They really take care of your images (e.g. Color Management) and produce printouts that look how they really should look like. Target audience: photographers (pros), museum, exhibitions and hotel people that would like to produce high quality prints of their images. Almost never the ambitioned private photographers (until now). **Actual situation: **its really a local business (people around 30 km). competition: big online stores where you can upload your pictures and get your prints sent home (quality: not bad, but not exceptional, no special requests; more for private customers) Already done (with relatively little results): _AdWords: _very "tight" keyword combinations, not broad at all, targeting area around business location. results: small traffic, small costs: not a lot of conversions. _SEO: _for organic search we now achieve very good positions for tight" keyword combinations, not broad ones. results: little traffic: not a lot of conversions LinkedIn-Ads targeting the above target group: results: little traffic: not a lot of conversions Facebook Remarketing (targeting his newsletter mail-list: results: little traffic: not a lot of conversions Optimized the landingpage (in my opinion far more to the point than before) PROBLEM: Basically we now get to the right people but traffic is really (too) small. At least we don't waste money at all but we don't gain a lot either... If we broaden the "keywords" the private customers will come in and waste our advertising money. Do you ever had a similar situation? What did you do? Any suggestions? Other target groups? Alternative channels? Thanks for your input. Cheers, Cesare

    | Cesare.Marchetti
    0
  • Meier


    Half of my landing pages have suddenly been de-indexed without warning. These have been ranking for over two years! Climbing from the bottom of page two to the top three of page one with fundamental content marketing and healthy real links. I'm desperately trying to figure out what has gone wrong. They even deindexed my Medford Oregon landing page, then reinstated in and I asked to be re-indexed on search console and deindexed it again. I've checked screaming frog, and I see no robot issues. There were some wp-media attachments with kind of similar URLs (city name-locksmith) ranking on page four that I found (i thought I set Yoast to redirect all attachment, strange) and I deleted those because I thought that might be the problem. But they have deindexed even more today! We are a 12 year old company and our livelihood was built on search, which is why we have maintained good ethics (which most locksmiths don't care about) and have done our best to play by Google's rules. I checked with wp-engine and everything seems to be perfect for our hosting. Any suggestions would be so greatly appreciated.

    | Meier
    0
  • MiriamEllis


    Hello to our wonderful community here! I'm updating an old list of free tools to use in a local search marketing campaign. The original list was created before there were quite so many paid tools in our industry, and it definitely needs an update! I'd like to ask, are there free tools you find yourself using these days in marketing local businesses? These could be related to any aspect of your campaigns. I'd love it if you'd share your favorites with me, especially if they are things you feel others might not be aware of but which are working really well for you! Thanks for any suggestions you can provide.

    | MiriamEllis
    1
  • Gabe_BlueGuru


    I have researched and researched on this question, and I'm still not satisfied. Most of the answers on the Moz forum and otherwise are all from 2013, as well. So, I thought I'd bring it up again. I have two distinct audiences for a real estate business I'm working with (very different needs and interests): Farm Buyers Residential Buyers My client is wanting to expand their presence in the farm market. Their main competitor is ranking for, more or less, an exact domain name match. They want to spin up a site focused only on farm buyers. Here are the pros/cons in my mind of creating a separate site: Pros: Reaching/targeting a specific audience (better user experience), having domain name with keywords (I won't keyword stuff...promise), a site completely devoted to content regarding farms, a blog completely devoted to farms (we have a content strategy in place) Cons: NAP issues (same address), splitting up domain authority, a bit of brand confusion (though the same logo/brand will be on both sites) In my mind, the pros outweigh the cons. Any ideas on how to address the cons? I could just not include address and phone, but that seems ridiculous...catering to the bots and not the user. Thanks, everyone!
    Gabe

    | Gabe_BlueGuru
    2

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