Local SEO + Best Practice for locations
-
Hi All,
Based on a hypothetical scenario, lets say you are a plumber. You live and operate within Chelsea in London. You have established a Google places profile and incorporated schema data to tell Google your fixed place location.
In addition you operate in several nearby towns with no fixed location presence. i.e Brentford, Bromley, Catford, Cheswick and Tottenham.
I create a feature rich page on 'How to find a quality plumber'. Within the page I incorporate the following description:
blah blah, as a quality plumber serving the community of Chelsea, we also offer our services to nearby towns of Brentford, Bromley, Catford, Cheswick and Tottenham.
I create hyperlinks for the towns (Brentford, Bromley, Catford, Cheswick and Tottenham) that allow the user see in details a full list of services, operation hours, etc. Naturally all towns will have there own unique content (no duplication).
Question
Is the above scenario the correct way to provide local seo or is this approach considered spammy to Google?Thanks Mark
-
Hi Andy,
Thank you very much for the great advice.
Thanks Mark
-
Hi Mark,
There is a mix of both paid and free sites listed. Before you commit to a year, perhaps just try a month for $30 to see if it meets your needs?
Well worth a punt
-Andy
-
Hi Mark,
-
It comes down to substantial editorial discretion/review by the paid directory for it to be legit in Google's eyes. Best of the Web, BBB, and many other paid services that have substantial editorial process to review the business leads to a high quality paid directory and Google is totally okay with that, as Matt Cutts states in the link above. The video explains it well the difference between acceptable paid directories and those that are not.
-
Andy mentioned a great source Whitespark that I use as well. However, I would start here: http://moz.com/learn/local/citations-by-category its free and Google approved if you will citations, to start out with. Sure enough they have the plumber category: http://moz.com/learn/local/citations-by-category#Plumbers
Also: https://moz.com/local/search and http://moz.com/learn/local/local-search-data-uk
If you take care of these especially all if not most in the last link I sent, you should generally be in good shape, if not you can them get even more with whitespark!
Hope it helps!
-
-
Hi Andy,
Thanks for the additional info.
Had a quick look into Whitespark and see they offer a $200 yearly package.From your experience of this product are the results provided (lets say for directories) of significant value. Are most directories provided subject to annual/monthly costs or can you get quality free sources?
Thanks Mark
-
Hi Mark,
Sorry to butt in...
Have a look at Whitespark. They are great at finding niche sites for cocitation purposes and I have used them myself many times (read, monthly subscription).
Some directories are not really frowned upon because they aren't selling links, but listings. Take Yell, Thompson, etc. You will get links to your website, but not something that would benefit it in the way Google would object to.
-Andy
-
Hi Mark,
Very very good questions!
-
There is a distinction between general web directories and link farms and local citation directories. Local citations in relevant directories is still a must method for local seo ranking. As Google Local itself aggregates information from authoritative and relevant web directories such as: Yelp, Yellowpages, Foursquare, Yahoo Local, Bing Local, Citysearch, etc. **The distinction is that Google uses this for local results for your local business, and not for organic results, for an online business, as an example. **So for organic results, online businesses, you can still have few solid and relevant directories such as BBB or Best of the Web, but you dont want to over do it here. For local results as much relevant and authoritative directories is the name of the game. Hope that clarifies this, if its still confusing let us know.
-
By if the client has a blog, I was going off your hypothetical example of the plumber. What I mean here is writing **on your own blog **if you have one. Again it does not even have to be a blog, you can create a page, you can even call it a landing page appropriately. It will be a quality content rich page, that you are trying to rank for organically. Good you are aware that Guest Blogging is now considered by many an abused tactic that is now crossing over into the spammy category. So you are correct in this.
Hope this clarifies it for ya, again let me know if you have any more questions!
-
-
Hi Andy + Vadim,
Thank you for your thoughts.
I have the following questions and concerns.I have read that web directories offer little or no seo value. Google simply see's them as link farms.
I'm confused with regards to placing a 750-1500 word article on a 3rd party client site. Is this not the same as 'Guest Blogging'. Again, I have read how Matt Cutts frowns upon this practice.
Please kindly clarify....
Thanks Mark
-
Hi Mark,
If the client has a blog, I also had good success, creating articles on talking about a plumber in [other city you want to focus on] and having this be a solid article at least 750-1500 word article with maybe a contact us or a business info on the sidebar for that location. These articles would rank organically for the the city plus industry that you are interested in.
Being a blog you have the flexibility about being creative in what you write in the article about the certain area you would like to rank for!
Hope this helps, and if you have more questions about this definitely ask!
-
Hi Mark,
There are so many ways to try and achieve the same results, but in the past I have had good success by creating a page based on the key location (London), creating a title something like "Plumber in London and covering surrounding counties".
Make sure you have your address and telephone number on the page, then create a section that explains you also cover the following places "Brentford (TW8), Bromley (BR1 to BR8), Catford (SE6), Chiswick (W4) and Tottenham (N17).
I would then be looking to create cocitations and gain links from local sites / directories that offer the ability to do this.
I hope that gives you a little to work on.
-Andy
-
Hi Andy,
Thank you for the information. I will read this shortly.
May I ask you for your advice and how you would tackle such a grey area.Thanks Mark
-
Hi Mark,
Local SEO is a pretty big subject, and I would highly recommend you have a read of this post over at eConsultancy to gain some valuable information.
MOZ also have what is probably the best local search resource I have seen here. You will find info there from over 30 SEO professionals and is probably where I would start.
Edit- Sorry, I should also say that I wouldn't personally handle local SEO in that way, as my own feelings are that this has been done to death, and is what everyone tries.
-Andy
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
-
Mysterious Location Based SERP Disappearance
Hi Everyone, I've got a bit of a confusing SEO issue which I'm hoping you'll be able to help with. Apologies in advance for the long post, I've put an abridged version below also. We have one main keyword and it seems to have disappeared in some locations. The main keyword is "clothing manufacturers" and up until recently we had stability for almost a year. We're based in London, England and we regularly check "clothing manufacturers" to see where we're showing in search, and we usually see between 3rd - 5th. We use AHREFS to track rankings and noticed recently that "clothing manufacturers" had disappeared totally. We asked some people in different areas of the country to check where we were showing in search - one in Somerset, one in Liverpool, one in Beckingham and we used a VPN in Manchester. In all of these areas we aren't ranking for our main keyword at all. In London though we're 5th which is the lower end of normal. We then checked other keywords and it turns out "Clothes manufacturers" is one we're also not ranking for outside of London. However for "clothing manufacturers uk" and "clothes manufacturers uk" we are ranking for in every location we have tried. "Clothing manufacturers uk" is currently the keyword which brings us the most traffic. There are no manual penalties in webmaster tools, but looking at analytics it looks like our impressions for the main keyword have been down over the past 90 days, so we think we have had a problem and not realised for some time. Around a week before we see that our traffic for "clothing manufacturers" dropped, we made some structural changes to the website homepage, where we added LSIs, more H2s, more long tail keywords and more content, taking the copy from around 500 words to around 1100 words. This was in an effort to make the homepage less keyword stuffed and more natural. As a result of this we saw an overall increase in traffic and enquiries, and that's the reason we didn't notice for so long that traffic from "clothing manufacturers" has dropped so badly. Our first thought is that this might be something to do with Schema. Our website was until last week using a schema which included our "postal address" which is our physical office location in London. The schema was implemented in June 2017 and we have noticed that 3 months after implementing the schema, in October, our traffic fell dramatically for our main keyword, "clothing manufacturers". At the same time, our traffic for "clothing manufacturers uk" increased dramatically. Interestingly, the schemas used by our competitors don't include their office addresses and they show up all over the country for "clothing manufacturers" and "clothes manufacturers". One of our competitors is physically within half a mile of us. Have you guys seen a schema limit a company to searches only in one locality before? We have now removed the address from the schema to see if we start ranking all over the country again, like we used to before we implemented it. If this is the problem then it could take 3 months to turn around like it did for us to get in to this situation (Schema implemented June 2017, traffic fell October 2017). We're therefore trying to investigate every possibility to ensure we leave no stone unturned. Do you have any thoughts on the problem and if it could be schema related, or possibly something else? Thank you in advance! TL:DR Keywords "clothing manufacturers" and "clothes manufacturers" no longer ranking around the UK. Still ranking in London where we are based. Still ranking well for "clothing manufacturers uk" and "clothes manufacturers uk". Traffic for "clothing manufacturers" dropped 3 months after implementing schema and one week after making changes to website homepage (increased word count, added long tail keywords, LSIs and H2s). Schema included "postal address" which we notice none of our competitors have. They rank all over the country for "clothing manufacturers". One of our competitors is based within half a mile of us in London. Could having the address in the schema limit us to one locality? Could it be something else entirely?
Local Website Optimization | | rswhtn0 -
Should I mention locations in service-specific landing pages?
I'm writing new landing page copy for a client in the HVAC industry. The client has one office, but its service area includes several cities in a metropolitan area. I'm writing two types of pages: Service-specific landing pages (e.g. "Air Conditioner Repair," "Furnace Inspections") Location-specific pages (e.g. "Dallas Heating & Air Services," "Plano Heating & Air Services") My question is whether I should also include specific locations within the service-specific pages if I'm already doing the location-specific pages as well. For example, would it make sense to do a page on AC repair with title/H1 elements like "Dallas Air Conditioner Repair Service" or "Air Conditioner Repair in Plano and Dallas" in light of the fact that there will already be 10-12 location-specific pages? My preference is to NOT include location-specific stuff in the service landing pages except for maybe a passing reference to something like "...need HVAC services for your Dallas-area home" or similar. It just seems more natural that way. Thoughts?
Local Website Optimization | | Greenery1 -
Using geolocation for dynamic content - what's the best practice for SEO?
Hello We sell a product globally but I want to use different keywords to describe the product based on location. For this example let’s say in USA the product is a "bathrobe" and in Canada it’s a "housecoat" (same product, just different name). What this means… I want to show "bathrobe" content in USA (lots of global searches) and "housecoat" in Canada (less searches). I know I can show the content using a geolocation plugin (also found a caching plugin which will get around the issue of people seeing cached versions), using JavaScript or html5. I want a solution which enables someone in Canada searching for "bathrobe" to be able to find our site through Google search though too. I want to rank for "bathrobe" in BOTH USA and Canada. I have read articles which say Google can read the dynamic content in JavaScript, as well as the geolocation plugin. However the plugins suggest Google crawls the content based on location too. I don’t know about JavaScript. Another option is having two separate pages (one for “bathrobe” and one for “housecoat”) and using geolocation for the main menu (if they find the other page i.e. bathrobe page through a Canadian search, they will still see it though). This may have an SEO impact splitting the traffic though. Any suggestions or recommendations on what to do?? What do other websites do? I’m a bit stuck. Thank you so much! Laura Ps. I don’t think we have enough traffic to add subdomains or subdirectories.
Local Website Optimization | | LauraFalls0 -
Internationalization: 2 Websites in English for different location?
Hi guys, My customer is already well established in France. They have a good Domain Authority and a lot of Inbound Links. They're doing very well in France. They're now looking at entering the US market, however, their trademark is already registered within the US. They therefore decided to go with a new name. Basically: They open an english-only website for the US presence They add English as a language on their French website for their European presence They'll therefore have two domains: aaa.com: US Presence bbb.com: European Presence; 2 languages: French & English My main reaction was that: since the content on aaa.com and bbb.com/english/ will be the same, they'll necessarily have Duplicate Content issue. How would you look at this? What would be the best alternative for them? Thank you
Local Website Optimization | | PierreLechelle0 -
What's with Google? All metrics in my favor, yet local competitors win.
In regards to local search with the most relevant keyword, I can't seem to get ahead of the competition. I've been going through a number of analytics reports, and in analyzing our trophy keyword (which is also the most relevant, to our service and site) our domain has consistently been better with a number of factors. There is not a moz report that I can find that doesn't present us as the winner. Of course I know MOZ analytics and google analytics are different, but I'm certain that we have them beat with both. When all metrics seem to be in our favor, why might other competitors continue to have better success? We should be dominating this niche industry. Instead, I see a company using blackhat seo, another with just a facebook page only, and several others that just don't manage their site or ever add unique, helpful content. What does it take to get ahead? I'm pretty certain I've been doing everything right, and doing everything better than our local competitors. I think google just has a very imperfect algorythm, and the answer is "a tremendous amount of patience" until they manage to get things right.
Local Website Optimization | | osaka730 -
How Google's Doorway Pages Update Affects Local SEO
Hey Awesome Local Folks! I thought I'd take a proactive stance and start a thread on the new doorway pages update from Google, as I feel there will be questions coming up about this here in the forum: Here's the update announcement: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/03/an-update-on-doorway-pages.html And here's the part that will make local business owners and Local SEOs take a second glance at this: Here are questions to ask of pages that could be seen as doorway pages: Do the pages duplicate useful aggregations of items (locations, products, etc.) that already exist on the site for the purpose of capturing more search traffic? I think this will naturally lead to questions about the practice of creating local/city landing pages. At this point, my prediction is that this will come down to high quality vs. crummy quality pages of this type. In fact, after chatting briefly with Andrew Shotland, I'm leaning a bit toward seeing the above language as being strongly geared toward directory type sites and large franchises. I recommend reading Andrew's post about his take on this, as I think he's on the right track: http://www.localseoguide.com/googles-about-to-close-your-local-doorway-pages/ So, I'm feeling at this point that if you've made the right efforts to develop unique, high quality local landing pages, you should be good unless you are an accidental casualty of an over-zealous update. We'll see! If anyone has thoughts to contribute on this thread, I hope they will, and if lots of questions start coming up about this here in the community, feel free to link back to this thread in helping your fellow community members 🙂 Thanks, all!
Local Website Optimization | | MiriamEllis9 -
Does building multiple websites hurt you seo wise? Good or bad strategy?
HI,rategy. So I spoke to a local Colorado seo company and they suggested to find whatever keywords is the most searched under my GWT's and put .com behind it and build other sites for other keywords. I was curious about this type of strategy. Does this work? This seo guy said I could just get a DBA bank account and such for each domain name etc. I am not wanting to mislead anyone, but I am curious if for the sake of promoting other services, if creating other websites with partial and EMD's are worthwhile? Another issue I worry about is if I put my companies phone number, then next thing you know there is 3 or 4 sites that use that same phone number. To me this does not build trust with Google. But being I am learning, maybe this is a common strategy, or doomed from the start. Just curious what you think. Would you build other sites to try and rank for other services? Or keep one sites and maximize it? Thank you for your thoughts. I just do not want to pay $3000 per site if it will hurt not help.
Local Website Optimization | | Berner0 -
Local Rank riddle
Here is a very odd scenario which to me makes very little sense. How can a site rank on Page #1 of Google for let's say "Boston party planner" yet on Page#2 for "party planner Boston"?? Would love some insight on this one. thanks, Chris
Local Website Optimization | | Sundance_Kidd0