Is ReachLocal Killing My SEO Work?
-
I have a customer that I did SEO work for. I cleaned up title tags, content, image tags, the works. Recently, they signed up with Reach Local to do some Pay Per Click. The problem/question I have is that reach local completely copied the entire site and put it on their server. So all my work for this company is now completely replicated. Now there are two sites. ex. windowname.com and windowname.reachlocal.net. It appears they do this for all their customers. Does Google view this as duplicate content? Does my regular website lose positioning to the more powerful ReachLocal?
-
As Greg said, as long as they are Noindexing the page or robots.txt 'ing it out of the crawl index, you should be just fine.
It's still more than a bit lame that they might be able to take credit for content and layout that you did, though.
-
Hi Scott, I looked at the case study mentioned on the ReachLocal UK site... hopefully this is shared best practice?
-
Gregory, You were able to find the site he was talking about? Or did you look at your case study?
-
Yup, Rui and Scott had it right...
The /robots.txt file:
User-agent: * Disallow: /
And the source code shows name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" />
-
Ow... excellent remark actually. I was actually looking at eventually using ReachLocal (last year) but back then never paid any attention to the fact of where and how the landing pages would be hosted.
The only benefit is that the new domain might cause less problems as to the NAP inconsistency caused by using yet another "campaign phone number" for call tracking... and even monitoring.
I just had a look at the landing page for one of the organisations mentioned on the ReachLocal UK website under Case Studies: http://rubber4roofs-px.rtrk.co.uk instead of http://www.rubber4roofs.co.uk/ > the former domain does not show any PageRank, while the latter does (PR2)
Looking at the above I don't think this would cause you any issues as to the duplicate content on this "campaign domain"...
But might there be potential other issues with this?
Looking forward to seeing other members' input...
Cheers
-
I think ReachLocal does this so they can control the pages and track analytics on their side.
I would check if there's a robots.txt file and see if indexing is disallowed
-
Did ReachLocal put a robots.txt disallow or a meta noindex on that site?
If not, best bet would be to ask them to do so. It is possible that without that directive, their new site could be starting to rank organically.
I'd recommend adding a campaign in your SEOmoz account to start rank tracking their new site to see if it is indeed ranking for your desired keywords or not.
Scott O.
P.S. If you enjoyed my response, please consider marking it as a "Good Answer".
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
-
Adwords account suspended for talking about SEO. Why isn't Moz suspended, too?
First let me say that we don't care that much about Adwords. We were spending about 20 bucks a month and we never optimized it, tinkered with it, or cared that much. Business is booming for us just with organic search and referrals from happy customers. (We're a blog writing service called BlogMutt. Motto: We work like a dog to fill up your blog.) But we just got suspended from Adwords. After multiple inquiries and multiple unhelpful responses, we got a note that said: "Please note that your website contains matter which states your site's SEO increases. Anything which relates to SEO is not allowed as per Google Policies. Please make appropriate changes to your website." Now, we don't say your site's SEO increases with BlogMutt. What we do say is what everyone says, that blogging is a best practice for any modern marketing effort. We certainly are less clear about improving search rankings than, for example, moz.com. Why is it OK for Moz, but not for us? Don't get me wrong. I think Moz should be able to continue advertising. I'm just wondering how we got into the Adwords crosshairs. Any thoughts?
Paid Search Marketing | | scodtt0 -
Using the same landing page for seo and ppc
When does it make sense to create one landing page for both seo and ppc?
Paid Search Marketing | | melen0 -
What are the strongest and most-Google friendly directories to place my business on for the sake of large SEO gains? for the sake of Exposure to customers? What is the best way to invest for ROI nowadays? Thanks.
I do basic SEO stuff as well as marketing for quite a few clients. But, I am wondering which directories or exposure based groups are worth the money? Is a business.com directory listing for $300 a solid investment to get a strong link? Is yext a good move? How about wildfire? I could use some really high DA links to stack on top of the link profiles I have already built through content, etc.? Please advise me. PS Confession: I was once a pre-panda Fiverr link junkie. But I am in recovery. I have an 18 month chip and am currently making amends. 12 steps to SEO freedom baby.
Paid Search Marketing | | creativeguy0 -
What are the best ways that PPC and SEO can work together?
This has come up recently internally as we are an agency that traditionally only focuses on SEO. However, when asked to articulate the benefits of how they can work together I normally see rather vague and non-actionable answers that don't really translate to real life always. I can understand how you can use SEO techniques to improve the ROAS of a PPC campaign by improving the quality of a landing page. I am also aware of a number of ways you can use Adwords data from your campaign to improve your SEO campaign but I am curious to know. How else can the two channels work together to help each other out?
Paid Search Marketing | | SearchAcademy0 -
Paid Press Release Site - Our competitors do it... and it seems to work?
Hi Im seeing our competitors use sites like 24-7pressrelease.com to release rather uninteresting and dubious press releases and it seems to be, looking at their link profiles, the lions share of all links to these particular landing pages. Yet since I've joined SEOMOZ all i've seen is that PR sites don't work and arent worth it. So far, I've resisted doing any PR stuff and have just kept on creating and promoting content which is severely time heavy work. Is there really 0 value in these? If i have 0 PR currently and add just a couple is that worth it? The co. we compete against are at it every week with this site and similar paid sites. Are they making a mistake?
Paid Search Marketing | | xoffie0 -
Seo and ads for Baidu (china)
Has anyone have experience doing seo for the baidu search engine? I have a client who wants to target businesses in china so we are exploring options for PPC and SEO. Any ideas or tips would be much appreciated? I was thinking of getting a bi-lingual mini-site made that would catch leads from seo and ads. Can anyone suggest any chinese PPC/seo freelancers?
Paid Search Marketing | | Netboost0 -
Whats the most seo optimized websites?
Want to hear your opinions, let me know what do you like.
Paid Search Marketing | | DiamondJewelryEmpire0 -
Have you seen a correlation in between running a PPC campaing and increased SEO ranking for a new site (< 3 months old)?
I have read many conflicting articles on this topic. I understand that running a PPC campaign at a launch phase of a site can get a lot of insights such as exact traffic patterns etc. But the question is: is there a correlation or not with increased rankings position for new site as search engine are forced to crawled that given landing page to give your ad a score? Thanks in advance for your answers and opinion
Paid Search Marketing | | OlivierChateau0