Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Concerned about cannibalization for local SEO results. Should we move some of our location pages to a subdomain?
-
Currently we are providing local SEO recommendations for a well known pharmacy chain. Like most major brands they enjoy multiple organic (not just 3 pack results) listings when people search for local phrases such as "Dallas pharmacy clinics'".
The issue is that all these listings are coming from the same domain page. We are seeing multiple listings both branded and non-branded search queries.
Our concern is that Google will someday decide to choose one listing as the most authoritative and nix the rest of the local listings which will reduce their first page search engine saturation. To maintain first page saturation we are considering recommending to the client that they move some of their location listings
to a subdomain (different IP address) to avoid a Google "clean up". Please note that our client is certainly not using any "doorway" pages but some of these are very scarce on content. They do not have an issue with duplicate content either.By using subdomains could we help maintain our client's first page saturation? Any links to articles would be much appreciated.
-
Hi Rosemary,
Thanks for the clarification. For a pharmacy chain (or any other franchise) here is what would typically be appropriate:
-
You have a single website.This website has some basic pages like home, about, specials, contact and what have you.
-
In addition to this, you build a unique page of high quality for each of your locations. I don't recommend subdomains. I recommend subfolders. So, this would look like: thepharmacy.com/sugar-land for your store in Sugar Land Texas, and thepharmacy.com/dallas, for your store in Dallas. If you have more than one location in a city like Dallas, your URLs might look like thepharmacy.com/dallas-deep-ellum and thepharmacy.com/dallas-highland-park. Put the complete contact info (NAP) at the top of each page and then create strong content to make the pages interesting, helpful and unique.
-
From your Sugar Land citations, across the web, be sure you are linking to the landing page you've created on the site for Sugar Land, ditto for Dallas citations, etc.
This would be considered a standard methodology for any multi-location business.
How you then showcase these pages on the website needs to be dictated by the number of locations you have. You want them to be easy to find. You might check out a chain like REI.com. Look at how they are surfacing locations for their users and how they are making their pages unique. They do a good job!
Hope this helps!
-
-
Thanks for the detailed response and questions Miriam. Just to be clear I am not referring to "listings" but organic search results for individual store locations. Would have just one additional subdomain with store listings (and different content of course) be appropriate for our client? Our client does have local Google, Bing and Yahoo! business listings for each store location.
-
Hey Rosemary,
Sometimes, local lingo can be a bit of an obstacle in having a clear conversation. I want to be sure I understand what you are saying here when you are talking about 'listings'. To me, a listing is a citation - such as your Google+ Local listing, your Yelp listing, your Bing Places listing, etc. I believe you may be talking about city landing pages on your website, instead. Is this what you are describing:
-
You have a multi-location business with physical offices in various locales?
-
You do not have a strong page on the website for each of these offices? Instead, all of your search engine results, including local pack rankings and organic rankings, are pointing to your home page?
-
You have a unique set of citations for each physical office? You have a Google+ Local page for each, a Bing listing for each, a Best of the Web listing for each, a Yelp listing for each, etc?
Is this all correct? Please, provide as much detail as would be helpful.
-
-
Since you are talking about specific location-related results, my guess is that there is no much use in trying to have many local pages for the purpose of "flooding" Google results. If somebody searches for "Hyperlinks Media Houston", then Google will serve the results for Houston only and won't serve other locations pages. Therefore the placement of those pages doesn't really matter.
-
These are unique pages showing up in the subfolders. However all of these listings are still from the same domain (same IP address). Some of these extra listings are not that important, however they are nice to have for first page saturation reasons. We were thinking of moving these lesser important pages to a subdomain since they are on a different IP address.
-
Hello, there.
_"The issue is that all these listings are coming from the same domain page" _- It is an issue, indeed. My recommendation would be to create unique pages (I wouldn't go with subdomains, I think that's just too much
for each location. At the same time make sure that you have all locations in local directories. This will help Google not to "nix" the results.I'd say look how big companies do it - let's say Apple and do the same way.
About links - https://moz.com/learn/local - good guide.
Hope this helps.
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
-
Facebook Locations - Good or Bad for Local Rankings?
Our company has multiple (3) offices, including our headquarters, and each has its own Facebook page. Other than the primary company page, the other two locations have only been claimed and do not have posts, reviews, check-ins, etc. Now, Facebook recently granted us access to Facebook Locations, which, if I understand correctly, would remove 2-out-of-3 office pages and add a "Locations" tab to our primary company page where people can see the other offices. _See Starbucks Example: https://www.facebook.com/pg/Starbucks/locations/?ref=page_internal _ I've read mixed reviews regarding using the Locations feature, but nothing definitively answers whether or not this would negatively affect local rankings. Does anyone have firsthand experience going from individual business pages to a single parent business page with Locations? Is there any trustworthy documentation out there about this?
Local Listings | | MPlata1 -
Local Search - can I use a shortened company name
Can I use a shortened version of our company name for local search or does it need to match the name registered at companies house exactly?
Local Listings | | paulfoz16090 -
Subdomains or separate domains for dealers?
We are setting up websites for our dealers. We are considering whether it is better to set them up as independent domains (i.e. www.dealer-state-brand.com) or as subdomains (dealer-state.brand.com) Any thoughts?
Local Listings | | bcmull0 -
Average Percentage of Clicks on Google (Adwords vs Local 3 Pack vs Organic)
Does anyone know the allocation, percentage-wise, of clicks that go to Adwords vs Local 3 Pack vs Organic on Google Search (average)?
Local Listings | | OhYeahSteve0 -
Do You Know What's Triggering Your Local Packs?
Hey To All My Local Pals, Here 🙂 Recently, I watched a totally fascinating LocalU video in which Mike Blumenthal introduced a hypothesis that there may be a way to analyze what, specifically, is triggering a specific local pack. Now, Mike is stating that correlation is not causation in explaining this, but basically what he starts talking about at around 4:40 in the video is that what you are seeing rank well in the local packs may be demonstrably caused by what you see ranking organically beneath the pack, or may be caused by totally different signals. Mike says, _"If you're seeing the top 10 results are all IYP industry sites, and there's a pack showing, and the highest local site is 24 or something in organic, it's unlikely that that's what's triggering the pack. And so then you want to look at third-party triggers and see if that's what's actually triggering the pack." _ Obviously, all of us who do Local are familiar with the idea that a tremendous variety of elements contribute to pack rankings, but I am particularly intrigued by the idea of looking at the organic result beneath a pack and determining that there is little or no correlation between them, and this then driving one to look elsewhere for contributing factors. In a recent response to another thread here on Q&A, I discussed some common local pack ranking failure causes when organic rank is high. What I'd love to see is whether, if you look at some of your clients' desired packs, can you tell if organic signals are driving them, or can you see that it's not organic signals driving the pack, as Mike suggests. What, in those cases, does appear to be driving the packs? I'd be so interested in a discussion on this. What do you see? What do you think of Mike's suggestions?
Local Listings | | MiriamEllis9 -
Local SEO: Special charakters in brand name?
Hey guys, we run a local gym in Germany located in Nuremberg called: "STUDIO N°1 - natürlich fit". Our domain is: www.studio-no1.de We are currently working on a new website since our current Website isn't really SEO optimized. Until then I would like to start optimizing some off-page attributes. As far as I know one of the main points in Local SEO is that your firm is registered at important directories. In our case we are already registred in most of the important german directories. The problem is that our oficicial company name has a special charakter included. This means that in some cases we have "N°1" and in some others "No1! Our Google Business name for example has "N°1", facbook not (no special charakter allowed). Germanys most important site for listings: Gelbeseiten, doesn't even allow special charakters in brand names.... On which name should I focus to get all the business listings to have identical NAP informations? Does it even matter? Schould I focus on "STUDIO No1 - natürlich fit" or "STUDIO N°1 - natürlich fit"? I hope you could understand my problem. Big Thanks Jonas
Local Listings | | Jo_Da0 -
Google Local Storefront or Google Service Area?
We have been seeing some strange things happen in Google local after the most recent update. We used to show up in the maps all the time and have made no major edits or changes to the profile. Now when we search for our services, we show up high in the organic results, and not at all in maps (local listings). We have our profile setup as a service area since we do meet with people and provide services at their location, but also have checked the option that we also serve people at our address. I am wondering if the recent update favors actual storefronts when people are searching for services. Any ideas? Technically all the actual work is provided at our location, and the service we provide at the service area locations is based upon consultations. If we switched it to an actual storefront listing could that possibly help? Our profile is fairly strong, and has reviews, long history of posts, etc. What gives Google?
Local Listings | | David-Kley1 -
Google My Business- Will a large service area dilute local search results?
I am considering adding our actual service area to our Google My Business profile, but I don't want this to dilute our local search results. As it is, we come up in the top 3 or so when searched in our HQ's city and several nearby cities when you search for us in Google Maps (although when I look at the top 10 organic for Google for some reason when you search for these cities + our keywords Google doesn't show any local results). Our actual service area is fairly large, comprising the states of CA & Hawaii & parts of CO, AZ, and UT. I would be adding the service area by zip code rather than radius, as a radius wouldn't make any sense in this case (particularly considering the distance between HI and CA). Is it better to keep our relatively high ranking in local results? Will adding the service area not affect local results negatively? Also, do you know why Google isn't showing me local results when I look for our keywords + our nearby cities? When I look for these keywords in larger cities like LA or San Diego, Google always shows me local results.
Local Listings | | BohmKalish1230