Website Rankings - Provincial Movers

[Web3Marketing87]

Hello Moz Community,

We have been working with a company called Provincial Movers to optimize their website. We are focusing our efforts on building external local & relevant citations, however, I can't help but think there is more we can do internally --> www.provincialmoving.com

The previous provider created a LOT of articles that are not necessarily relevant to the website like this: http://www.provincialmoving.com/blogs/

Do you guys have any suggestions for cleaning up the website so it performs better on Google?

Thanks,

Anton

[JVRudnick]

what Miriam said here - "...what you need to have there is the local number as the primary number; not the toll free one...." IS SO VERY VERY important, eh!

follow that advice!!!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Anton!

It's good that you're working on the website (needs some help design-wise with alignment issues, crowding, etc.) and that you're working on citation development and consistency (always vital to any Local SEO campaign). Some thoughts I'll just reel off here:

• Good you've got the complete NAP in the footer, but what you need to have there is the local number as the primary number; not the toll free one. I see you've got a local number on the Contact page, which is good, but you should really put your local number foremost. While it's true that Google has recently become more tolerant of 800 numbers as primary numbers, other aggregators/directories are not equally tolerant and citation consistency can suffer unless you're making the local number dominant.

• The big list of cities served in the footer could be viewed as a violation of Google's webmaster guidelines that frown upon chunks of geographic terms like this. Putting this in the footer makes it especially risky, in my opinion, as that's always been such a contentious area for spammy stuff, right? Now let's click on these footer links.

• The number one thing that is really jumping out about this site to me is the unloved state of the copy. I don't want to hurt the feelings of anyone who may have worked on this, but to be honest, the content would best be described as generic. It looks to me like someone looked up these cities in Wikipedia, wrote down notes about feet above sea level and population and said, "There, I'm done, thank goodness!". This is not the approach any business owner should take to the content that is representing to their customers just how much they care. If the copy is careless, the business can come off as such, and when you're in an industry charged with safely delivering the priceless valuables of human customers from one location to another, you want content that says:

• We care - we care a ton!

• We are detail-oriented

• We do the best job - we don't just get by.

• We can be trusted

• We built this website to help customers

• We make the maximum effort at all times - not the minimum effort

Go to the about page of the site and really read though the content. Does it convey any of the above to you, in a way that seems genuine, or does it feel a bit like someone slapped it together, hoping to get by with it?

The thing about content like this that really gets me is that I can almost guarantee that the business owner does care. You don't run a successful business like this without tremendous dedication. What is lacking here is the kind of talent that can pick up on what the story is with this business and parlay that into a business story, told on the website, that resonates with customers.

What this business needs most, in my opinion, is a talented listener who knows how to turn what they hear into a high quality story, across the website, the blog, and via social outreach. Hope this is helpful input.