Localized SEO for Restricted Niches
-
Sorry for the hypothetical, it's a sticky subject!
Suppose I work for a company that offers Online Widget Counseling. Due to the fragile nature of Widgets, this service is only legal in one state and must be administered by a registered and regulated Widget Counseling company. Widget counseling is only available online so there is no competition from bricks and mortar stores.
Unfortunately the SERPs are dominated by unscrupulous black market outfits offering Widget Counseling illegally.
If we were to use intensive and strong local signals, could we expect the SERPs to favor our pages for searches "in or about" the state in which we are registered?
Thanks for your help
-SEO Newbie
-
I'm going to take a stab in the relative dark and say this:
1. Building local links and citations should help as it would with any site.
2. It is unlikely that Google will assist you further than that. They appear to penalize broadly illegal sites, but they do not appear to get into the details beyond that. If you feel businesses are illegally offering a service, it seems like that would be more of a legal / regulatory issue than an SEO issue per-say.
-
Hi Benjamin
It's rather a question full of riddles, but as far as I see it the search engine only cares about providing the most relevant pages for the search.
Just because the widget counselling service is only available online doesn't really matter to the search engine. If someone searches for "widget counselling boston" and there's a website run by a company showing that they are based in Boston, then it's more than likely that company's web pages will rank highly. Unless of course, there are many other widget counselling companies in Boston!
I'm not sure that answers your question, but I hope it helps.
Peter
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
-
Moving Images to Subdomain: SEO Impacts
For sever work- load enhancements we are planning to move our images to a sub-domain. so the files would be located at something like images.domain.com Rather than domain.com/images/ We are a large Ecommerce site so we have a lot of images. These will be self hosted so we are not using a CDN. I'm hoping someone has done the same and if there were any steps they had wished they had taken before making the move/ if they noticed any traffic impacts things like that.
Image & Video Optimization | | RMATVMC0 -
Carousel bumped us out of our local ranking
Nearly every post I've seen on Carousel states that "the rankings basically stay the same" but that hasn't been the case for one of my hospitality sites. The site went from being in the top 3 of local listings but when Carousel hit the site got bumped. We have high quality images, reviews, citations...we even added some newer, better photos but aside from that I'm a bit stumped as to what steps to take next. Anyone else get bumped by Carousel or have thoughts on any other factors which I might be missing out on?
Image & Video Optimization | | NetvantageMarketing0 -
Any tips for optimising for Local Search/Google Places
I have a client that used to come up on Google Places consistently for some very competitive keywords - when they ranked quite low for them through their normal website - places would see them above all the organic results in normally number 2 position - whereas they would rank between 16 - 26 normally We have optimised the site and have 'A' grade keywords for the ones we are interested in google placing for and just recently we are out of it all together, even though we have improved their optimisation for that word with SEO Someone said that their phone number on the website had to match perfectly with google places and so does their address. Is this true? Is there anything else that will help them keep their position in places ? ie. setting up a Google + page etc., Any advise would be appreciated thanks
Image & Video Optimization | | intermingle0 -
Yahoo! local UK
Apologies if this is a dumb question, i'm struggling to find an answer. I was wondering how to list a business on Yahoo! local UK? Any help would be appreciated, thanks in advance.
Image & Video Optimization | | CWseo0 -
Local listing | Virtual office
Hi Miriam (and all Local SEO mozers), I read a couple of your answers where you advice people in different situations not to consider a virtual office when creating their Google Places listing and I would like to know if you would apply the same advice in my case. This is the scenario: I have a client who's in the limousine service in Orlando, he just bought the URL and registered the business with the City using a "virtual office" in Orlando. This virtual office provides him a physical address, local area phone number, 411 listing, a listing for the businesses in that building and an office to have his meetings. This is the part where it gets confusing when I read your answers and I will give you an example. You said here:
Image & Video Optimization | | echo1
_The requirements in order to qualify for a Google Place Page are that you have: __1. A legal business name__2. A local area code phone number__3. A physical street address (not a P.O. box or virtual office) to which customers either come to do business with you or from which your employees depart in order to serve customers at their locations (think chimney sweep, landscaper, etc.)_Number 3 says "A physical street address (not a P.O. box or virtual office) to which customers either come to do business with you".
My client is going to rent one of those virtual offices, which does have a physical address, on as-needed basis. This office actually does exist. Why would Google have anything against it?
One of the reasons why he chose that location is because he is running the business from home and he does not want the clients to see it.
Another reason is the image he wants to create for his company by having a different address where he can hold meetings and such. The phone number will be either a local land-line or a local cell phone number, in any case, it will be a _local area code phone number. _
So this is where we stand: he dispatches the cars from home (he does not have a garage, the cars stay with the drivers 24 hours) but he meets his clients and business partners at the other address. There is nothing fake about it, he does have a legal business name, a local area code number and a real place where customers come to do business with. Which address should I use for his Google Places listing?0 -
Local SEO, identifying citations
Hello, How do I identify free local citations to target for bobweikel(dot)com I want to rank first for several local results such as nlp boise life coach boise personal coach boise and related terms. Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | BobGW0 -
What drives the position of the local pack in a google SERP?
I have noticed that sometimes search results appear above the local pack, and sometimes the local pack is right at the top. What causes this? is there a way to induce it?
Image & Video Optimization | | adriandg2 -
Are there SEO benefits to Flickr?
Recently I keep hearing "Flickr" and "SEO" pop up together. For example, this mashable article said it was good for seo. I don't understand since it's a no follow. Are there seo benefits to using Flickr. Thanks for your help!
Image & Video Optimization | | DevonIntl0