Local SEO and Penguin
-
All,
One of my client's sites was hit by Penguin. The business has lost almost all of its organic rankings but is still holding on for a handful of local searches for some of its satellite offices.
We've built a new site and are slowly building domain authority.
My question is this: at what point do I swap out the new site's location URL for the old URL in Google places?
I don't want to risk the existing local placement which is all they have left for the time being.
Thanks,
John
-
Thanks Miriam, that was my concern as I mentioned above.
-
Hi John,
I'm in 80% agreement with what our members have replied. Changing the website address should not affect local rankings as a stand-alone fact...but, if the new website is different than the old one, in terms of content, optimization, authority, links, citations, etc., then yes, you could be in for some ranking changes. The strength of the website is the biggest local ranking search factor, so I believe you may see some ranking changes, unless the new website matches the old one in all respects.
-
_Nope, it is not going to affect it as far as my knowledge is concerned. Unless you are making a 301 redirection to the new domain, there is no such possibility of carrying on the legacy of the penalized domain. Keep up the good work and you will be just fine. _
-
Thanks Oleg, my thought was that since domain authority plays a role in local, it could hurt, but I appreciate the feedback.
John
-
If its the places page that is ranking locally, it shouldn't affect it. Had a client in the same situation, made a new site and changed the places page URL to the new site and haven't had any problems.
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
-
Improving SEO Structure of a Page
Our site is an online Marketplace for Services. Naturally, we have a lot of unique content in the form of :
Technical SEO | | Ideas2life
a) Job Posts
b) Profiles of Service Providers We also have 2 very important pages:
a) The Job Listing Page
b) The Service Provider Page The Listing pages have very valuable H1 Titles, but everything else is duplicate content. To capture those keywords currently in H1, we have created a different landing page for each category page, and we`ll optimize around that, so these H1s are not that big of a deal any more. These landing pages are the key to our SEO strategy and we are building new content every day to help them rank I want to make the Listing Pages No Index Follow. This way they pass Juice to Jobs, and Profiles which have unique contents, but are not indexed themselves. Is this a bad idea? I have been thinking about doing this for over a year but it never felt important enough to be worth the risk of accidentally screwing up We `ll soon do a new on page flow optimization and that's why I am considering this again. Thank you so much in advance Argyris0 -
SEO value of InDesign pages?
Hi there, my company is exploring creating an online magazine built with Adobe's InDesign toolset. If we proceeded with this, could we make these pages "as spiderable" as normal html/css webpages? Or are we limited to them being less spiderable, or not at all spiderable?
Technical SEO | | TheaterMania1 -
SEO for mobile
Hey everyone! I had just finished building my first mobile website and i wanna focus on SEO for mobile search. Now, since there is a redirection once a visitor enter to the web domain to the mobile site automatically (e.g. sample.com to m.sample.com). Question is: Where should i refer my back links to to improve my ranking on mobile result page? Would love for some help..
Technical SEO | | Tit0 -
Client with Very Very Bad Onsite SEO
So one of my clients has a really really bad website from the technical perspective. I am talking over 75k in violations and warnings. Granted, the tagging is done well but any other SEO violation you can think of is occurring. In any case, they are building a new website, and I am on a retainer for a couple hours a week to do some link building. I am feeling like I am not getting anywhere. What is your advice? Should I keep on keeping on or advice the client to put SEO on hold until the technical issues are resolved. I feel like all of this link building isn't having the value that it could have with a site like this.
Technical SEO | | runnerkik0 -
What SEO factors do you consider when selecting a CMS?
I'm assisting evaluating 5 different CMS solutions for a client. As a part of this evaluation, I want to ensure we fully explore the SEO capabilities and short comings of the different platforms. Which factors would you recommend we consider? Currently, I'm thinking: custom URLs custom page titles, meta data, etc automatic sitemap updates customize robots/indexing settings site load times rel canonical support code & css quality 301 redirect functionality What else should be on this list? Is there anything on my list that you would de-prioritize? At risk of making this question too large: any opinions out there on what the most SEO friendly CMS systems are?
Technical SEO | | amastix0 -
Looking for sites hit by Penguin for research
I'm doing some link profile analysis and need examples of sites hit by Penguin (not Panda). If you have a site that was hit and are willing to share, please PM me: Your site homepage URL Main keyword(s) you lost rankings for (preferably keywords your homepage was ranked for but no longer is) I will keep your information strictly confidential and will not share it. (I will publish the results of my findings, but will not mention any of the sites used for research.) Thanks.
Technical SEO | | AdamThompson0 -
Where should a knowledge base be hosted for max. SEO benefit?
A client would like to set up a knowledge base to work in conjunction with their website and we are tossing up whether to go with a hosted solution (and therefore set up as a subdomain) or find a solution that we host on the clients domain (which will presumably have more SEO benefit). We are leaning towards the latter (although are mindful that we need to balance the client’s desire for a quality KB solution). Appreciate your feedback.
Technical SEO | | E2E0 -
Local results without geotargeted keywords
i'm trying to rank the site appliance-repair-ny.com for the New York City area. I managed to have the site rank pretty good (the site is less than 6 months old) for keyphrases with NYC, New York and Manhattan but i don't understand how to get the site rank higher for the ones without those keywords. For example: Appliance repair NYC - rank 1 Appliance Repair New york - rank 4 Appliance repair (without location) not in results Anyone can help me please? 🙂 Thanks!
Technical SEO | | atohad0