How can we geo-target our website optimization for cities besides our physical location?
-
We have a client that is a solar energy installation & leasing company in Austin, TX that wants to target the Houston and Dallas markets. We can do a Place Page for their physical offices in Austin and San Antonio to drive traffic for those cities. But we’re not sure the best way to help them rank for Houston and Dallas, where they don't have a physical address. We’re considering a separate landing page for each city, optimized for the geo-term. Will that help them to rank in the 7Pack in Houston and Dallas, if there’s no Place Page? Will it help them rank in the organic listings for that region? Can you offer any other suggestions for how to help them rank in 2 cities where they don’t have physical offices?
-
"Do not create listings at locations where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations. Listings submitted with P.O. Box addresses will be removed."
http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?answer=107528
Yes.. I believe you recalled that correctly.
-
It could be possible to rank in the 7 pack with an address outside of the target city, but it's very very difficult to do. You would need the local signals like local landing pages, and you would need a very non competitive term. I believe you would have better luck getting a small office in the Houston or Dallas and manning it with some staff.
Outside the 7 pack you can easily rank for cities that you are not located in by traditional SEO methods. Creating a landing page for the GEO area and then creating local links and anchor text links will get you to the front page.
-
Thanks for the info about UPS stores. I didn't know they offered this service.
-
good point on the PO Box. UPS store offers address with suite numbers as opposed to PO boxes, but as I said it isn't necessarily "Best practices"
-
If I recall correctly, Google Places only accepts physical addresses, not PO boxes.
If you wanted to move in that direction, then a virtual office would be the preferred method. You can have a physical address, mail forwarding, and even a local phone number with an answering service if desired. Prices usually range from around $100 - $150 depending on your needs and location.
You can achieve the desired result with a strong landing page and links with proper anchor text from the target area. I would only go to the extreme of using a virtual office if there was a lot of money involved and there was an urgent need to improve your rank after you are already on the 1st page of SERP.
-
Landing pages are always effective - especially for localized geo marketing. If you want to do a physical address, you could always do a PO box or a UPS store box that will provide an "Address" location. I am not sure if that is necessarily "ethical" but if you are offering the products in those cities, I don't think you'll encounter too much grief. I wouldnt add the PO box or UPS Store address to google places, but you could create a landing page that would have a little more content on it.
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
-
Subfolder or Geo URLs?
Hi Guys, Context: I am working with a plumbing companies that have a corporate side and a franchise side. We got 2 franchises on board. The corporate is not working with us though. Some of these franchises don't even have a website. Because they are local plumbers(franchises) covering generally at least 2 cities, local SEO will be the primary tactic to pursue. So before getting into that, I have to purchase domain names that are already not taken(different from corporate), therefore slightly different from corporate name but not completely to keep the advantage of the brand name. My first problem: should I include a geo kw rich URL or not? To me I personally believe that creating a domain name without geo can be better in the sense that I will be able to create different subfolders for all the different locations that each franchises covers. Also, I am not sure also if google likes those geo urls? If you guys would recommend Geo kw rich urls, wouldn't be a good idea to get multiple domains that would link at each other for each of the locations they cover or would it be a bad idea? in long term SEO Who wins the battle? www.example.com/cityname www.examplecityname.com Thanks Mozzers!
Image & Video Optimization | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Do on-page video transcripts dilute keyword targeting?
We're considering putting video transcripts in collapsable div tags or using jquery on our actual video page. Videos range from 3 minutes to 12 minutes. For some of the longer videos, is there a chance that having the transcript on-page will dilute the value of our targeted keywords? Or is it the opposite? We just want to make sure we're properly optimizing for SEO/search visibility and not over-optimizing for the sake of it.
Image & Video Optimization | | scherkin10 -
For Local SEO on a business with many locations, should the city be included in the business name?
For a franchised business with ~50 locations spread across the US, should the city be included in the business name when building citations? Fictional example: We have a staffing franchise called 'Hamilton Staffing'. They have 50 locations in the US. They are all called 'Hamilton Staffing'. We need to finalize the correct NAP information so we are consistent in building citations. For the name, should we just use 'Hamilton Staffing' for all of them? Or should we use 'Hamilton Staffing - Chicago' and the like for other locations? It looks like InfoUSA and Axciom are just using 'Hamilton Staffing', whereas Google is using 'Hamilton Staffing Chicago' and the like. Thoughts on this?
Image & Video Optimization | | brianspatterson0 -
To have a location (that is really not a location)
So here is the problem that I am facing. The physical location of our business is located in a suburb of a large metro area market (which consists of 3 different cities). Our company services all of the cities located in the metropolitan area market. I have seen over the past year with Google+ and Google places that Google gives preference to businesses in local search based on their location (specifically to businesses that are located near the center of the city). My suspicions were confirmed by the following: http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml In the past we went out and played the game where we purchased UPS boxes in our service cities so that we can compete in Google local search local (recommendation from a SEO company that we were using at the time). I did not really want to do that, but at the time it seemed as though we had no other option with how Google was ranking businesses in those markets. Now Google has caught on to this strategy and has killed those local listings. It is frustrating that Google assumes that a listing should have higher rank based largely on physical location. We never had the intent of violating Google policy, but what are we to do? Not trying to play victim but it is true. My question is how can we rank extremely well in local search for the different cities of the metro area considering that we are physically located in a suburb? Has anyone else successfully overcame this obstacle? Any ideas on how we can rank well in Google+/Google Places in these cities? Frustrated Business Owner.
Image & Video Optimization | | dshelton0 -
Target inside pages for specific country
Hi! How are you? I'm having the following problem: I have a client that has a big multilingual website, in spanish, portugese and english. The server is in Brazil, but he wants to migrate it to USA. I think that this will affect my SERPs in Brazil, and Brazil is the most important country where we need to be first in SERPs. I'd like to, somehow, tell Google that http://website.com/pt is for Brazil and http://website.com/es is for Argentina, so I can avoid the problem that I'll have when the migration is completed and I lose my brazilian IP. Do you have any tips on what should I do? Thanks! Best wishes, Ariel
Image & Video Optimization | | arielbortz0 -
Setting Up Localized City Pages and Duplicate Content issues
We are setting up landing pages on our site that will cater to specific cities, in an effort to be more relevant to the users in those cities and also capture more localized traffic. These regional pages will each have a unique paragraph at the top, but below that is a sentence or two about each product line that would be difficult to rewrite with quality more than 10 - 15 times. Would the paragraph at the top of the page be enough unique content (about 4-5 sentences)? Obviously the duplicate content wouldn't be to my advantage, but is it really necessary to rewrite the other sentences about the product lines? What's the most efficient method to complete this project in a whitehat fashion?
Image & Video Optimization | | InetAll0 -
Does the location of a citation on a page have any relivance?
We have been working on local SEO quite a lot for our small business, trying to understand why we are consistantly outranked by our competators. I understand there are many factors at play here. I realize that DA & PA, Places page optimization, and on page optimization also play a role, but for the purpose of this question i would like to focus on just one factor: citations. From your experiance with local SEO do you find that a citation that is located closer to the top of the page holds more weight than a citation buried further down a page? Here is an example:
Image & Video Optimization | | adriandg
http://www.yellowpages.ca/search/si/1/Storage-Self+Service/Toronto+ON/ in this case the people paying for the priority positions on that page are right at the top of the page, rather than buried 5 pages into the results. in fact they are right at the top of each page of the results, so over and over again they are above the free listings. I have heard that google considers the value of a link based on its position on the page. So would it be safe to assume that google also considers the value of a citation based on its position on the page? Thank you for your time,
Storwell0 -
Targeting Local Search Terms
I normally advise clients never to optimise around keywords with very low or even zero recorded Google search volumes. However, if the core keyword has decent volumes but the organisation is serviing specific towns/cities/locations would you consider it valid to optimise for : core keyword + focused location (even if this has zero search volumes). The Google Places results are obviously highly relevant but depending on the core keyword you sometimes get the 3-box places at the top but sometimes in the middle of the natural results.
Image & Video Optimization | | bjalc20110