How Google's Doorway Pages Update Affects Local SEO
-
Hey Awesome Local Folks!
I thought I'd take a proactive stance and start a thread on the new doorway pages update from Google, as I feel there will be questions coming up about this here in the forum:
Here's the update announcement:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/03/an-update-on-doorway-pages.html
And here's the part that will make local business owners and Local SEOs take a second glance at this:
Here are questions to ask of pages that could be seen as doorway pages:
Do the pages duplicate useful aggregations of items (locations, products, etc.) that already exist on the site for the purpose of capturing more search traffic?
I think this will naturally lead to questions about the practice of creating local/city landing pages. At this point, my prediction is that this will come down to high quality vs. crummy quality pages of this type. In fact, after chatting briefly with Andrew Shotland, I'm leaning a bit toward seeing the above language as being strongly geared toward directory type sites and large franchises. I recommend reading Andrew's post about his take on this, as I think he's on the right track:
http://www.localseoguide.com/googles-about-to-close-your-local-doorway-pages/
So, I'm feeling at this point that if you've made the right efforts to develop unique, high quality local landing pages, you should be good unless you are an accidental casualty of an over-zealous update. We'll see! If anyone has thoughts to contribute on this thread, I hope they will, and if lots of questions start coming up about this here in the community, feel free to link back to this thread in helping your fellow community members Thanks, all!
-
Hi Blake,
What I'm suggesting with those links is that you need to do a thorough analysis of any competitor to discover whether their high rankings are a case of geography, organic strength, reviews, citations and a host of other factors ... or, if the pack in question has been spammed. If the former, you then know what the factors are that are contributing to rank and can identify which factors (if any) you can target to surpass the competitor. If the latter, then you can always report spam to Google. There are believed to be several hundred factors that contribute to rank, and a Local SEO or local business owner who is feeling astonishment over being outranked by what appears to be a weak competitor needs to sit down and put the time in to discover whether these high rankings are the result of strength that Google is responding to, or the result of spam that Google is failing to catch.
In the scope of a forum, it's not likely that a community member is going to be able to take the time to do a full competitive analysis for you, so I'm hoping the links I've provided will get you started on doing one. I totally get how frustrating it can be to find your business or your client's business in this scenario of being outranked, but fortunately, we can use skill to divine the probable cause of this outcome and, hopefully, figure out how to overcome any issues, whenever possible.
Hope this helps!
-
Although confusing, I appreciate the shared links to the threads. It's still not clear to me why google ranks the site I shared #1! in a highly competitive keyword. It's the same keyword in endless local cities but with that city in the title next to it. Does google still see those titles are technically different? So google doesn't recognize www.url.com/keyword-city#1 and www.url.com/keyword-city#2 as penalty worthy? Seems unfair to those taking time to make sure there are no keyword titles used more than once on a large site. OH AND...the content on these endless "city" pages have the EXACT same content on each one but the city in 3 or 4 different areas is switched out.
-
Hi Blake,
These 2 threads may help you diagnose competitors' rankings:
https://moz.com/community/q/do-you-know-what-s-triggering-your-local-packs
https://moz.com/community/q/top-local-organic-rankings-but-nowhere-to-be-found-on-google-snack-pack
Hope these help!
-
I'm super focused on creating non-duplicate content and creating blogs with killer info-graphics but I have a business I help where I created 10 specific city landing pages within the main site with great original content. Then I come across this site seasonsviewwindowanddoor.com and think, are you serious? How is this legal and it ranks high in any city search I do. Of course this conflicts my thinking about what to do. Any of your two cents is greatly appreciated
-
You're very welcome!
-
Thanks Miriam
-
Hi Joanna,
Yes - I would still recommend creating a unique page on your site for each location out of which you operate, and making maximum effort to ensure that the content on each page is unique and helpful.
-
Miriam,
Thanks for jumping on this - very helpful to see some info already being aggregated and questions answered. I know I'm a little late to the party, but it sounds to me like you'd still recommend that businesses (such as a bank, clothing retailer, etc.) that have one business but locations in multiple cities and/or states, create location specific landing pages that match up with individual google+ business pages?
Obviously, each page has elements like a unique description and service set list as appropriate, unique hours/timezone, potentially customer reviews, unique driving directions from major areas, etc. Essentially - true content users would be looking at.
My understanding is this is still the "best practice" path for ranking in local pack and/or queries that drive location-specfic serps. Accurate?
Thanks again!
-
Thanks Miriam!
-
Hey Rod,
This is Google's def. of Doorway Pages: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2721311
If you read through that carefully, I think the conclusion you may draw is that the difference between what Google is describing as a doorway page and what you may hear Local SEOs referring to as 'local landing pages' or 'city landing pages' or what have you, would be uniqueness and quality. This is my reading of this, anyway.
If you are going to create landing pages, as in the case of a local business serving multiple cities, I would suggest making maximum effort to ensure that each page is a thorough, unique, stand-alone resource for visitors. Don't throw up a bunch of thin, similar pages. Go for uniqueness and high quality. Hope this helps.
-
I'd like to hear the differences between doorway pages and landing pages. I see Google utilizing multiple local landing pages, so if we follow creating pages similar to this we should be fine?
-
Hey Rod,
I'm trying to understand what this service does. I looked up a random business in it and it simply seems to be giving a sense of how the business is listed on Google. I'm not seeing actual landing pages. Is there something particular that you are looking at on this site that concerns you in regards to doorway pages?
-
Google updated - now it goes to city/town: https://www.gybo.com/pa/norristown (after you put in your town)
So I'm thinking this is in line with what we currently do for town landing pages.
-
Hmm... that link is redirecting me to a homepage.
-
What are your thoughts if local landing pages are created similar to the gybo.com pages?
http://www.gybo.com/pennsylvania/ is one example (my state) - thanks for the link Miriam!
-
Thanks for sharing Miriam!
-
Hey Rod,
While there hasn't really been any more news that I'm aware of on this, you might like to check out the thread on Linda Buquet's forum, which has some additional discussion and some other links in it, for further reading:
-
Any updates on this topic? Thanks!
-
That's great, Linda! I bet you'll be getting stories from your community about things they see happening with this. Really glad you'll be covering it.
-
Hi Adam,
Good comment! I'm also thinking about the multi-site scenario - particularly the multi-mini-site scenario. I've never been a fan of this approach and it does seem like the update could be applied to this scenario. Not sure yet ... but could be.
-
Agree with you, Ryan, that creativity is so key. One thing I have long stressed to my own clients is that owning a website = having become a publisher. You want to publish great stuff - not junk.
-
Thanks Miriam, we've been discussing in the G+ Pro community all day and I'm working on a forum post for tomorrow. I have Andrew's post in there and I'll include a link to your post here as well.
-
Hi Miriam
The other aspect of this that got me thinking when I saw the update was around multiple sites for the same business. I have seen this in several niches where the same business has 2 or 3 different websites ranking on page 1 for their main term. Each of these sites has unique content etc however they are all linked via the same address. I have been waiting for Google to resolve this issue as it is technically a doorway page unique just more sophisticated. It wouldn't be hard for them to devalue a site if they see it ranking well and it is the same business as another site ranking.
I wonder if they will deal with this issue in this update.
-
Great update Miriam. There are a lot of things site owners can add to these types of pages to help with unique content: drive time to the nearest branch from City / Neightborhood X; mobile service schedules in City / Neighborhood X; Images of service radius; highly localized testimonials, etc. Will be interesting to see the impact with franchisees..
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
I cant rank well on google or bing
hi guys, I hope I can make some sense to you guys with what is occuring with my website. I am an absolute novice here. I used a drag and drop website 3 or 4 years ago, not sure exactly at the moment when i purchased the domain. however I did pretty well using paid search on both google and bing for quite some time and fairly descent in my area long beach, ca for organic for some of my keywords ( tv install, tv wall mount installation , and tv mounting service). At some point I noticed a drop last year and so this year I decided to try and do a better job on my website by making it mobile friendly and the whole https thing. I basically had to redo it and then after I was finished, the company I use for my website then transferred my website over to original domain. www.coastlinetvinstalls.com Now, If i do a search for some of the keywords im trying to rank for on google , I show up on the first page in my area on some days, and on the google maps for my local business in my area. On bing, however, Im nowhere to be found for any keywords I used to rank for. It use to be the opposite before I did this whole website fix up or whatever you want to call it. I would be on the first page for anything related to my keywords. Wat happened with bing ? any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance,
Local Website Optimization | | Matt160 -
How to Do Local Keyword Research
I am familiar with how to do regular keyword research, finding opportunity based on competition, search volume, etc. For local search, do I go to all the trouble of finding hidden gems or just pick higher volume terms that have local intent. For instance: A search for "physical therapy" is a high volume term that Google thinks has local intent. If i pick a low volume national term, that has 11-50 avg searches per month, I have lower chances...and even less chance that someone is searching locally. What say ye? Nails
Local Website Optimization | | matt.nails0 -
Multi location silo seo technique
A physical therapy company has 8 locations in one city and 4 locations in another with plans to expand. I've seen two methods to approach this. The first I feel is sloppy and that is the individual url for each location that points to from the location pages on the main domain. The second is to use the silo technique incorporated with metro scale addition. You have the main domain with the number of silos (individual stores) and each silo has its own content (what they do at each store is pretty much the same). My question is should the focus of each silo, besides making sure there is no duplicate copy, to increase their own hyperlocal outreach? Focus on social, reviews, content curated for the specific location. How would you attack this problem?
Local Website Optimization | | Ohmichael1 -
Do location pages boost the homepage?
Google has stated that businesses should spend time creating location pages for the various service areas that businesses operate in. What I want to know is, it is equally about boosting the relevance of the site as a whole, as well as ranking that individual page in the local area. Does Google take into account the fact that you have the location page and reward the homepage by favoring it more in that local area, or is it simply about ranking an individual page in each town/city?
Local Website Optimization | | OliverNeely2 -
Virtual Offices & Google Search
United Kingdom We have a client who works from home and wants a virtual office so his clients do not know where he lives. Can a virtual office address be used on his business website pages & contact pages, in title tags and descriptions as well as Google places. The virtual office is manned at all times and phone calls will be directed to the client, the virtual office company say effectively it is a registered business address. Look forward to any helpful responses.
Local Website Optimization | | ChristinaRadisic0 -
Subdomain versus Subfolder for Local SEO
Hello Moz World, I'm wanting to know the best practices for utilizing a subdomain versus a subfolder for multi location businesses, i.e. miami.example.com vs. example.com/miami; I would think that that utilizing the subdomain would make more sense for a national organization with many differing locations, while a subfolder would make more sense for a smaller more nearby locations. I wanted to know if anyone has any a/b examples or when it should go one way or another? Thank you, Kristin Miller
Local Website Optimization | | Red_Spot_Interactive0 -
Local Area SEO - Directions Page and Multiple Use of Direction pages
Hello, We are looking to focus on multiple local areas and it has been suggested one way to mention lots of different locations on pages without doing lists or using grey SEO practices is to create directions pages. We are trying this with a client who has 2 business at the same address. The layout is:- Introduction - 2-3 sentences Directions by Car Park Parking info Directions by Public Transports Closing - 3-4 sentences - using clients keywords The hope is the having locations/areas and the clients keywords on the same page will capture some of the local areas with the clients keywords. I have some questions:- 1. If we use the same directions text and just change the opening and closing paragraphs on the different website will this be enough to not have a duplicate content issue. 2. Are the directions pages the best way to capture keywords and local area/locations on the same page. 3. Is there anything I am missing or could do instead? Looking forward to everyone's input....
Local Website Optimization | | JohnW-UK0 -
If I mention a client in a blogpost about SEO, do I have to use a rel= no follow link?
I do SEO and webstuff (obviously, that's why I'm here). I want to write a blog post congratulating my client for getting to #1 in the local listings for a search for "plumber". When I include my link to my client's site, should it be rel=no follow? Could they be penalized if I don't? Thanks,
Local Website Optimization | | aj613
Adam0