Is it possible for a web site to get 'Pigeon Holed' geographically?
-
I have a site that sells widgets. It's called widgets.com. I want to sell widgets locally in 10 different geographic areas so my url structure/kw goal is as follows:
URL KW I Hope to Rank For
widgets.com 'Widgets'
widgets.com/houston/ 'Houston Widgets'
widgets.com/dallas/ 'Dallas Widgets'So I've optimized my site accordingly where my home page has no Geo optimization and my 'city pages' are all geo optimized, complete with hcard brick and mortar addresses that are all legit offices that sell our widgets.
My problem, is that despite all that, my home page (which again, is not geo-optimized) is now ranking for 'Dallas Widgets'. This is messing up my strategy and very frustrating because the home page does not have any information Dallas residents will find helpful about widgets.
So my question is, am I better off just owning this 'Dallas' label is forcing on my site and just optimize the home page for dallas and keep the rest of the 9 cities in their directories? Does anyone have any experience with getting pigeonholed geographically speaking?
-
Thanks Colin - very good feedback. I was leaning that direction but you're advice pushed me over the edge. I agree, I think all the 'off site signals' are what's got my non geo home page ranking for Dallas.
-
I've actually seen this happen quite a bit. I work with a lot of service area businesses who take this same strategy.
I think the pigeon-holing comes into play because of the off-site signals (maybe a bunch of listings with a Dallas address and link to your homepage?) ...I don't think hcard, schema, etc. do much to keep it from happening.
So what I wind up doing most of the time is optimizing the home-page for their primary high-traffic city, or headquarters. Unless they're actually trying to rank nationally and it seems possible, it's the way to go. I've seen huge advantages doing it this way - especially if you have the off-site signals to go with it (which I would guess you do).
So if you had "Dallas, TX Widgets" somewhere in your home-page title, you may wind up ranking well for just "widgets" when searched in the Dallas area.
In my opinion, optimize that homepage for Dallas, then watch and see. To me, Google already kind of preferring that page is a good sign.
-
You're getting off just putting your entire business into a single domain. Unless you have the time to test an experiment running 10 different domains it's better just to build one big quality website. With 10 domans you need to build backlinks to 10 different sites. It's hard enough building one up.
To rank geographically, I would continue optimizing the front page for straight "widgets", let Google pick up whatever they wanted, and develop backlinks to your sub widget pages.
Quick question. Are you using the same widget product in multiple locations. For instance:
widgets.com/houston/car-app-widget/widgets.com/dallas/car-app-widget/ (where this is the same widget)
Each directory should have unique widgets. Using the same content will get you in trouble (duplicate content).
-
It's challenging to say. If you have the time to develop an SEO experiment for something like that, you should totally do it!
Create a web page like dallasSOMETHINGwidgets.com, create a basic site, tie it to your brick-and-mortar, and create something like SOMETHINGSOMETHINGwidgets.com which has the same content, but not tied to your brick-and-mortar, and see how they compare in rankings.
That's the best way to know!
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
-
Is getting views to an infographic through Imgur beneficial to SEO?
I'm considering posting infographics to Imgur in addition to hosting them on my site in an effort to leverage Reddit a bit more this year. My concern is that, if all goes well, we'll get a ton of views through Reddit to Imgur, maybe a couple clickthroughs to the site, and links to (probably) the Imgur page. I don't see that Imgur gives your profile a followed link, so how would any of this help SEO. I assume it would, because respected guys like John Dougherty espouse the benefits of Reddit, but I can't see how and I need to justify the effort to my department head.
Image & Video Optimization | | MattHolden1 -
Posting a video on your site and also on youtube
Hi, Quick question. I have a content page which contains a youtube embedded video. I want to rank that page for a specific keyword phrases on google. I also want to rank the video youtube url aswell for the exact same specific keywords. Does anyone from experience know if this would be considered duplicate content (same video) or work? Same video on both URLs but the video on my site has additional valuable content surrounding the video. Regards, Jerry
Image & Video Optimization | | MBASydney1 -
Web 2.0 seo
How to use web 2.0 properties for SEO.IF we are posting articles to Web 2.0 do we need publish one article to all web 2 sites or unique articles to each web 2 site ?
Image & Video Optimization | | innofidelity0 -
Videos not displaying within YouTube search results (query starting with '@' symbol)
We recently uploaded a video to YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah0CgZ22NNU) only to realize that it wasn't being displayed within YouTube's internal search results when searched for by the brand name. Our partner's brand name is @WashULaw. If you were to search for @WashULaw on YouTube, you'll notice it returns a 'No Search Results' page (http://screencast.com/t/ZP3SGM5sr). However, when you search for keywords without the @ symbol (i.e. washulaw, wash u law, etc) within YouTube, our video is discovered. However, if you enter the @ symbol within their search bar and choose one of the auto-suggest keywords, you'll notice the query returns video matches (http://screencast.com/t/wkghMhRY). Looking at the view counts of these videos, they appear to be over 100K each. Our video has been indexed by YouTube (http://screencast.com/t/6xV3kW2DHQ6R) and Google (http://screencast.com/t/r4jloA0BpPf). We've even added @WashuLaw as a tag. My question, does anyone have an idea as to why our video isn't displaying when someone searches for our brand @WashULaw with the @ symbol within YouTube's search? ZP3SGM5sr
Image & Video Optimization | | 2uinc0 -
Video Site Map Question..
Hi ! It's really good guide... I have few questions... We own ecommerce site. we are in process of building videos realted to our niche. I'm planning to host videos like this 😆 www.ecom.com/videos where videos folder i m going to manage with wordpress and wordpress has plugins like :- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-video-plugin/ I am planning to host video on youtube and vimeo. as both will have same videos. which service provider i should use for my own sitemap... we know both can rank in google and my ecommerce site too.. Keeping SEO benefits and traffic in mind. what should i do... Thanks vinku
Image & Video Optimization | | vinku0 -
What's the best way to host video for SEO purposes?
Hello SEOmoz folks, I'm curious as to whether it will be more beneficial for a website to host a video on the site itself or to host it on YouTube and then embed the code on your site. The options so far, as it seems, are: 1.) Host the video on YouTube or Vimeo or wherever else, then embed the YouTube code into your own website's HTML. 2.) Host the video on your own website by itself. 3.) Host the video on your own website AND YouTube AND Vimeo. I'm wondering which option is best. And if hosting your video on your own website is a good way to go, whether to go that route solely or in addition to hosting on YouTube, what is the best way to go about that? Do I have to embed a player AND the video info into the HTML of my website? What player is best for this? Flash, or something else? And once I get the video on my site one way or the other, how do I write the code to make sure the video thumbnail shows up next to my search results in Google to maximize the SEO potential for the video clip? Sorry for the long question, but I've been searching everywhere for this and I'd love just a direct answer on it. Thanks for your help! Cheers, Dani
Image & Video Optimization | | MountainMedia0 -
What is the best way to host a video on my site from a SEO perspective?
Hi, we are in the process of creating a video about a topic that is highly relevant for our customers. Once it is completed we want to offer the video to our customers so that they can embed it into their own websites for free. What is the best way to do this and still receive maximum SEO juice? If we use a a video service like youtube or vimeo, then the link will go to vimeo or youtube and not our site. One thing we are thinking about is asking our customers to link to our site in return for embedding the video, but if there is an automatic solution then this would be a lot better. Any tips will be highly appreciated! If you have anyother tips regarding video content then the same of course! Many thanks! Daan
Image & Video Optimization | | daan.loening0 -
Switching to a domain name with keywords in it, is it possible to make this happen smoothly?
Hello, We have been working on the SEO of our site for almost a year now, and we are still not really seeing the success we would like to see. I notice often we get outranked by other sites that have lower PA/DA/citations/reviews etc than us, and the only explaination i can find is that they are getting a boost for a Partial Keyword Match in the domain name. Right now our domain name is: http://www.storwell.com And we are considering switching to http://www.storwellselfstorage.com and of course 301 redirecting all the individual pages from the old domain to the new domain's pages. How much would we risk loosing out in this transition? Can we safely transfer domains, or do we risk loosing the majority of our PA & DA because the backlinks will point at redirects instead of the actual location? Has anyone successfully managed to transfer domains and keep their DA & PA?
Image & Video Optimization | | adriandg0