Best Practices For Local SEO For A Nation Wide Property Company?
-
Hi There,
I've recently acquired a client that sells property all over the country (South Africa). It's in their best interests to rank well for localised keywords relating to the areas they have listed properties in. eg. Property for sale in example suburb/town/province.
The project has a number of challenges which I'd appreciate any suggestions for
- The site acts as an aggregator for numerous partner property agents and, as s such, has a lot of duplicate content on it
- The company only has offices in one city. It handles online bookings which it then passes to its partner agencies - this presents me with a problem of creating listings in the areas I need to rank for
- I cannot list the actual addresses of properties
Your thoughts and advice would be seriously appreciated.
-
Hi Matthew,
From your description, these appear to be your client's options:
-
Rank locally (in the local pack) for their single physical office via NAP, content and SEO work on the website + their Google+ Local listing and citations.
-
Rank organically for other cities in which they vend properties via content, on-site SEO and linkbuilding. PPC may be a necessary component, too, given how competitive this market typically is.
It shouldn't be a goal for the client to rank locally for anything but their city of location, and it's forbidden to list for-sale properties in Google's local product, so this isn't a way to get around the lack of location either. Basically, it's going to come down to the organic strength of the business to build a presence for the various cities in which they sell properties. You'll be cleaning up duplicate content and developing new, unique content for each of their major cities + wanting to earn links to this content. A blog could be a BIG asset here if the client has the resources to blog in a hyperlocal fashion about properties and local communities and on-topic subjects like buying/selling a home.
I think you're receiving some good advice on this thread. I hope my suggestions are helpful, too.
-
-
We are similar. Our clients, 1,000+ home builders, are all local. Anything you do to rank locally for properties, is short lived and probably perceived as gaming Google. That said, you can rank for "where to List Your Property" type terms. You can leverage any real address you have that is legitimate. Setting us executive office options for this is probably also not a long-term strategy. There is an alternative.
Have you considered providing local SEO services to your clients? This is not just new revenue, but an opportunity to get your clients to stick. Help them with local SEO and you will naturally promote them. They will link to you because it makes sense. You dominate your terms, they dominate in the 7-pack/map-pack.
-
We're actually looking at the same thing as well, except with a travel company in the US. I'll be honest and say that most of our research is showing that it will be difficult to do, especially without a physical location in those cities. Typically, you'll have a local page for every physical location with unique local content.
1. Aggregation and duplicate content will hurt, especially on pages that you are trying to funnel traffic to. Try to offset that with a lot of unique content on the page.
2. Depending on how the agency structured and the actual business relationship, there is a bit of grey area here. Meaning that often smaller companies will act as business partners for local companies. Typically, they will be subsidiaries. Now, I'm not up on the technicality with Google about it, but if they are legally tied together then it may be possible to use their physical location. But I'm willing to bet there will be big issues with business names and listings this way. Someone with more experience may be able to better answer this one, but this is bordering on a spammy tactic. It can be a hard balance at times, especially with service based companies in surrounding small cities.
I would probably recommend that this real estate firm get a physical location in the area in which they want to rank, even a small closet of a location. Here's where internet marketing and business development meet and I love it. If the potential revenue earned from selling those listings in those cities is worth it, then they should be able to find a physical location at a great price (they are real estate pros afterall). That will give you the tools you need to get them ranked in that city. Simple math will tell them if investment, overhead, revenue, and potential profit are worth it. For me, I use this and even sit down with my clients to crunch numbers. If they have their eyes set on "anything and everything" without thinking about it fully, this little tip can help manage the client expectations (I hate saying "lowering their expectations").
3. The address could help build out local content, but if you're aggregating the properties it wouldn't necessarily matter anyways. *I assume the aggregation is coming from some kind of MLS database or regional resource. If not, and again, there is a bit of legal and ethical issues, if you can manually enter all of those properties with unique content that would be best, but typically that is not the case with most real estate solutions.
Other than that I think you're best bet is to rank for the "domain.com/area-you-want" and try to outrank the competition organically. I'm interested if anyone has found a viable strategy to a problem like this. Latest search updates have given a lot of priority to localized results. My research has not shown much is overcoming it and that is primarily due to anti-spam measures and trying to better understand user intent. Hope this points both you and I in the right direction!
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
-
How can I change my Google Business to be a non local business?
Hey guys, Do you know how to change my Google business account to be a non local business? I want my Google Knowledge Graph to be clean and neat like this. Does it mean that this company doesn't claim the business? Will removing the address from the Google My Business solve it (which I don't know whether we can take down the address)? Thanks
Local Listings | | attic0 -
No Appearance in Local pack - group practice favored
Hi, One client has a website, Google My Business etc of his own. He ranks ok to good locally for search terms. However, his entry simply won't show up within the local n-pack (where it objectively should) and also does not appear in the map. It seems to me that instead a group practice with a colleague that has both their names in its name/title. (Moreover, it is in the same spot - they decided to go with different websites and entries of their own, though.) For some reason, this practice is also connected to the ranking website of our client. I suppose (NAP problems and previously used phone tracking numbers aside) that this group practice essentially blocks the real client-entry from appearing. Has anybody made such experiences? (My provisional ToDo would look like: Disconnect the group practice from the client's website; erase/merge it if possible; do proper LocalSEO otherwise.) Regards Nico
Local Listings | | netzkern_AG0 -
Local citations from business directories in other countries
Hi all, I normally work for clients in my home county (The Netherlands) and with local citation building I focus on Dutch websites or well know .com websites in the Netherlands. My rule of thumb kinda was, if it’s not known in the Netherlands it isn’t worth getting mentioned there. Since The Netherlands are pretty small and I think Google ain’t perfect I was wondering if it makes sense to list a Dutch business on any .com business listings that are internationally big, but aren’t well known in the Netherlands. Two reasons that got me thinking this direction: A big well known Dutch company offers a service such as Moz local and did integrate their service with several international business listing websites that I never heard off, since these business directories focus themselves on other parts of the world. Google ain’t perfect and I think they got more budget to identify trustworthy business directories with an international focus or a focus on America then with a focus on The Netherlands. So I’m wondering if it makes any sense to list a Dutch business on let’s say the top 20 international business directories (although these directories don’t have any brand recognition in The Netherlands).
Local Listings | | Bob_van_Biezen0 -
Local Citation with multiple offices
We have 5 different offices and each has its own google+ page and yell page. At first they were ranking poorly and the wrong offices were coming up for searches in that town so we change the name to :
Local Listings | | EJmoz
BusinessName (Location1)
BusinessName (Location2) Etc. those listing all starting to rank top for searches in Location1 and Location2. We have now been told that it is bad for our overall SEO to have the business name appearing differently in different listings and this led me to look at Moz Local. My question is should I remove the (Location1) from the Google+ business listing so that all our offices have the same name (but obviously different addresses) even though it appears to have a negative impact on rankings? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks0 -
Rankings on Google local search
Hi, I have been experiencing different rankings while searching with Google local site such as on: google.com.mt > English interface google.com.mt > native language interface but still searching in English. The search phrase is always in English. Also in both occasions the SERPs would contain English listings. There would be no Local/Map listings that affect results order. What is the solution to increase visibility on both English interface and native language interface? Thanks! Conrad
Local Listings | | conalt0 -
How to keep local citation solicitations away
Is there a way to get a client good citations for local SEO without them being badgered by solicitations by the citation sites, or at least minimize it. I realize once a company is listed they are on the telemarketing radar, but in specific keeping companies like manta , yelp etc. I am finding when I list manually for my clients that they are receiving an onslaught of 'your listing doesn't count unless you upgrade' kind of calls from the companies who I verified with. Does this happen when you list with an automated listing system such as Moz Local or any of the competitors? Thanks.
Local Listings | | DVOH0 -
2 listings on Google Local....Need Help!
Hi All, One of our client have 2 business listings on Google Local for same business (same NAP but different website). Actually, their first website was under Google Penalty. They tried to remove the penalty but could not get rid of it so they bought a new domain and started working on it and listed the same business with new website URL. Now, their business is having 2 listings but with different URLs. How can we merge these two? Please advice. Thanks in Advance.
Local Listings | | sachin-sv0 -
Google+ Local and a Google+ Company Page
I have an established G+ company page but also want a G+ Local listing in order to appear on Google maps. The company does have a physical address, phone number etc. to qualify for a G+ Local listing. No current local listing exists to claim. Should I: a) Switch the currrent G+ company page to be a G+ Local page; or b) Create a new G+ Local page and keep the G+ company page; or c) Ignore G+ Local and create the listing through Google Places Thanks
Local Listings | | bjalc20110