Omitted Results city-queries for the same brand on different subdomains?
-
I've noticed on a few occasions where two subdomains share the same brand and are also attempting to rank for phrases specific to one city - the stronger subdomain tends to send the other subdomain to the "omitted search results" for those city specific queries. The subdomains do tend to have some duplicate content that they share but if the two pages on the different subdomains are unique for the search phrase in question wouldn't Google choose to surface both results?
Or is this a question of domain diversity in the SERPs where the 2 results would just be too similar since they share the same root domain and have topically similar content?
I've seen cases where they can share the first page of results but more often than not it seems that one is sent to the "omitted results".
Any thoughts on strategy in this situation?
- The companies being described end up wanting to rank for the same city because they both serve a portion of the city in case anyone is wondering.
-
Great blog post Miriam, and thank you very much for the response!
-
Hi GSO!
Thanks for the further info on this. So, the typical structure for this would be that you would have 1 unique page per physical location the business operates, backed up by a unique set of citations for each of these physical locations and would then rely on Google to surface the location that is deemed nearest or most relevant to the searcher. If you have multiple physical locations within the same city, this is an ideal opportunity for thinking hyperlocally, and I believe you will find my latest Moz Blog post to be helpful in understanding this type of marketing mindset:
http://moz.com/blog/mastering-serving-the-user-as-centroid
Remember, whether you are structuring this with subdomains or subfolders, the landing page for each physical location needs to be completely unique. There is no good excuse for duplicating content on these pages. My rule of thumb on this is that if you can't devote the energy to making these landing pages really strong and unique, don't make them at all.
Given that one of the reasons Google omits results is to weed out things that are too similar, this is all the more reason for the business in question to overhaul their pages to be sure they are unique. That being said, understanding the user-as-centroid scenario is going to be very important for this business, so that they will be encouraged to promote each location equally and then leave it up to Google to pick the results they feel are either nearest or most relevant to each given user.
-
Hi Miriam,
So the company in question chose a structure where they divide territories by zipcodes and create a new subdomain for every business owner. This structure tends to get them into trouble for larger cities where multiple business owners own territory pieces. The structure is definitely the larger issue but seeing as I have no control over that I'm trying to work with what I have haha.
An example would be= scottsdale.rootdomain.com and a scottsdale-north.rootdomain.com
Both subdomains end up wanting to rank for Scottsdale.
-
Hi GSO,
I'm having a bit of trouble getting my head around why there are different subdomains for the same city and brand. Normally, I see subdomains being used on local sites to differentiate between cities, not for the same city. I feel there's something I'm not quite understanding about your situation. Would be be able to provide a hypothetical example of how these have been divided up and why?
-
The trend towards SERPs displaying distinctly different domains has been a steady one. Maybe if you google something as dominant as "Google" you'll see a few subdomains... maps.google.com, translate.google.com... but in general the power of a subdomain isn't nearly enough to overcome the next competitor / diversity of results.
As far as strategy goes, I wouldn't plan on dominating the SERPs with results 1-5, instead being one or two click attainable from the results within a given search is a better measurement of penetration. For example, if someone searching for your product gets:
- Your page
- An independent, positive review of your product
- Image results featuring your product multiple times
- A competitor
- Another review of your product
- ....
You're doing exceptionally well.
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
-
Getting the Proper CCTLDs & Subdomains to Rank in the Proper Countries
We seem to be having a really difficult time getting Google to do what we want in regards to getting proper domains indexed in the proper countries. In regards to English language, we tend to see a tremendous amount of crossover between .com, .in, and .co.uk. And yes international targeting is put in place. For example, both our .com and co.uk websites are in english and when someone enters a search query for one of our particular products, the .com website shows up to users in the UK. The countries with the hardest time are as follows and typically find them competing primarily with .com, but others can interlope as well. **All primarily in English: ** Canada UK India Australia Any ideas on how we can get this aligned correctly to where we can get the proper CCTLD to show up in the correct country instead of the .com?
Local Website Optimization | | GregLB0 -
Home Page Not Ranking for Brand
I've got an odd issue (that I've never encountered in 12+ years in SEO). A client's home page isn't ranking for their brand term. It's a medical spa in Las Vegas, so physical location that takes online appointments. We have an online booking system (which isn't a good one) that originally had a booking page replacing our home page. My thought is that Google associated that page as our home page because it was a stronger domain and the booking page is most used. That tool didn't allow the booking page to be noindexed (I know, crazy)- so I changed the name inside the booking tool away from the brand name as to not have both the site and the booking site optimized for the brand. Other things I've checked: The home page is indexed Home page canonical tag points to itself Title tag contains brand name at front (rest of site it's at the end) Robots.txt is accurate (allows home page) XML sitemap contains home page (and accurate for other pages) To make this even more confusing, if you search the brand name the physical location appears on the right rail with accurate URL. Any other ideas that I may be missing?
Local Website Optimization | | karmadigital0 -
Subdomain vs. Separate Domain for SEO & Google AdWords
We have a client who carries 4 product lines from different manufacturers under a singular domain name (www.companyname.com), and last fall, one of their manufacturers indicated that they needed to move to separate out one of those product lines from the rest, so we redesigned and relaunched as two separate sites - www.companyname.com and www.companynameseparateproduct.com (a newly-purchased domain). Since that time, their manufacturer has reneged their requirement to separate the product lines, but the client has been running both sites separately since they launched at the beginning of December 2016. Since that time, they have cannibalized their content strategy (effective February 2017) and hacked apart their PPC budget from both sites (effective April 2017), and are upset that their organic and paid traffic has correspondingly dropped from the original domain, and that the new domain hasn't continued to grow at the rate they would like it to (we did warn them, and they made the decision to move forward with the changes anyway). This past week, they decided to hire an in-house marketing manager, who is insisting that we move the newer domain (www.companynameseparateproduct.com) to become a subdomain on their original site (separateproduct.companyname.com). Our team has argued that making this change back 6 months into the life of the new site will hurt their SEO (especially if we have to 301 redirect all of the old content back again, without any new content regularly being added), which was corroborated with this article. We'd also have to kill the separate AdWords account and quality score associated with the ads in that account to move them back. We're currently looking for any extra insight or literature that we might be able to find that helps explain this to the client better - even if it is a little technical. (We're also open to finding out if this method of thinking is incorrect if things have changed!)
Local Website Optimization | | mkbeesto0 -
Query results being indexed and providing no value to real estate website - best course of action?
Hi friends, I have a real estate website that has thousands of these type of query results pages indexed - http://search.myrealestatewebsite.com/l/43453/New_York_City_Rentals?per=100&start=159 What would be the best course of action to ensure those do not get indexed, as most provide no value whatsoever. 1. I'm limited to what I can do in the IDX, but I do believe I can modify the URL parameters for the website in Webmaster tools? Would this be correct? What would my parameter look like? 2. I have a webmaster tools for the website, then also the subdomain, which one would I submit the url parameter, or both?
Local Website Optimization | | JustinMurray0 -
International SEO - How to rank similar keys for differents countries
Hello MOZ friends.
Local Website Optimization | | NachoRetta
I work in an digital marketing agency in Argentina and since we have a lot of traffic from other Spanish-speaking countries like Mexico and Spain, we want to rank specific keywords for these countries.
We were thinking of putting new versions of the homepage in subfolders, for example /es/ for Spain, /mx/ to Mexico, etc. In these new subfolders we would place a very similar version of the homepage with a few minor modifications to work specific keywords in each country. For example, in Spain it is more searched "marketing online", and "marketing digital" is more used in Mexico and Argentina.
I have understood that to implement this we would be to place a label hrflang on the homepage directing visitors and crawlers to the correct version of each country. Is it ok?
Another concern is, whether they are very similar pages, Google does not take it as duplicate content ..
I read this:
https://moz.com/blog/the-international-seo-checklist
And i am not completely sure about using subfolders for each country, but i dont know how to position diferents keywords for diferent countries.
Regards,
Juan Ignacio Retta0 -
SEO and Redirecting Site to a Different Firm's Domain while Maintaining Current Domain's Rankings
I am a plaintiffs' attorney with a website that ranks well for my major practice areas. I am considering taking a position with a new firm. As part of the discussion, the new firm would allow me to keep my current site so long as it redirects to my bio page on their firm's site. My goal is to keep my current site ranking well and continuously work on SEO efforts, in case I leave the new firm and want to rely on my current site in the future. My questions are: Is there a way to redirect my site every time it shows up in the listings (I have 1000+ indexed pages) without sacrificing its current rankings b/c of bounce rate issues, etc and 2) If I continue to add pages and work on SEO for my site while it redirects to another, will those efforts be worthwhile due to the redirect? I want to keep trying to build my site even though it redirects to a page on a different domain.
Local Website Optimization | | crpoll0 -
Is it worth it having different cities in your footer, each with a separate page?
I have been looking at the website of local web design companies and every single one in my area has a footer with links to a separate page for that local city. This seems like a bad idea to me, but everyone in the local pack has it. Does it work?
Local Website Optimization | | EcommerceSite0 -
Bing ranking a weak local branch office site of our 200-unit franchise higher than the brand page - throughout the USA!?
We have a brand with a major website at ourbrand.com. I'm using stand-ins for the actual brandname. The brand is a unique term, has 200 local offices with sites at ourbrand.com/locations/locationname, and is structured with best practices, and has a well built sitemap.xml. The link profile is diverse and solid. There are very few crawl errors and no warnings in Google Webmaster central. Each location has schema.org markup that has been checked with markup validation tools. No matter what tool you use, and how you look at it t's obvious this is the brand site. DA 51/100, PA 59/100. A rouge franchisee has broken their agreement and made their own site in a city on a different domain name, ourbrandseattle.com. The site is clearly optimized for that city, and has a weak inbound link profile. DA 18/100, PA 21/100. The link profile has low diversity and generally weak. They have no social media activity. They have not linked to ourbrand.com <- my leading theory. **The problem is that this rogue site is OUT RANKING the brand site all over the USA on Bing. **Even where it makes no sense at all. We are using whitespark.ca to check our ranking remotely in other cities and try to remove the effects of local personalization. What should we do? What have I missed?
Local Website Optimization | | scottclark0