Worried about changing local SEO homepage tactic
-
Our current home page is texty, talking about why choose us and general information on what the service involves. We are currently developing a new web design and content architecture involving moving all the content out of the home page, and making the homepage a beautiful guide to the site, as is the best practice. I think the home page will generally result in a better user experience.
SEO: we currently rank second for "service city" (going to our homepage). Our domain is service-city.co.uk. While the change is going to involve us adding lots of new good-quality pages with new keyword targets, our most important keyword by far is "service city" and the home page would probably still be the most appropriate page for that keyword.
And I'm gravely worried the change will negatively impact this keyword.
I would appreciate your thoughts
-
Hi Ali!
I like Ryan's thinking and also want to emphasize one important point. Just because the new homepage will be beautiful, doesn't mean it can't include any text. There should still be crawlable text on the homepage, meaning you can still talk about your service there. Don't do away with all text.
-
Is there a happy medium that could include both the navigation and architecture you want but also keep a decent portion of the old content? Have you ran any split testing to gauge how well people react with the new design versus the old design? Do you have current conversion rate numbers on "service city" for your site? If this keyword went away 100% how would that affect business?
Modernizing a site usually is a benefit, and it sounds like you have the right mindset in place for considering what you want to do accomplish by doing so, along with what you want to keep in terms of past ranking success. Perhaps take the time to also run a campaign around the redesign to gain a burst of press and links around the changes as well as still providing the same service in the same city that got you to second in the first place. Cheers!
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
-
Accurate Rank Checking for Local SEO
Hi all, I am wondering if anyone out there has cracked the enigma of figuring out how to accurately find local rankings for multi-location businesses. I do understand that "accuracy" should be used loosely given the numerous factors that come into play for local such as distance from searcher and business location being located directly in the city of the search. So I definitely get that nothing will be entirely accurate but the programs I have used and the incognito browser approach just seems so far off. Moz tells me something different than the Google Adword Preview Tool which is different than SEMRush which is different than serps.com and so on. I have done the appending to search strings with near=city as well. I unfortunately do not trust any of them at this point. I would LOVE if my company flew me out to every single city we are in so I could do local searches but that is probably not going to happen 🙂 Any thoughts or recommendations for how I can get the most accurate local rank, even if it is an incredibly manual process? Is there an easy way for me to change my location anymore since Google stripped that option away awhile back? That was the ONLY time I felt I was getting somewhat accurate results. Thanks! -Ben
Local Listings | | Davey_Tree1 -
Removing a duplicate local listing in same city
Hello, I see three locations for a client. Two legitimate which I have ownership of, the third is a duplicate of one of the locations. Ithink it is harming rankings and I want to get rid of it. It is service area business. Things keep changing, but how will I remove it? My client obviously set this up a while ago and it is left with wrong or missing info. When I click on the business under "more listings" on maps there is a chance to "edit it" AND "claim it" but not delete it. When I strart to claim it I go through adding in everything but then I worry I am legitimising the duplicate. How do you get rid of it? Thanks
Local Listings | | AL123al0 -
Increasing positions in local maps
Our team is working with a small law firm and we haven’t had as much luck increasing their local visibility for those key terms that they would like to rank for: Santa Barbara accident attorney/lawyer injury attorney Santa Barbara wrongful death injury lawyers serious injury attorney Santa Barbara We’ve currently got an 87% on Moz Local, 12 5 star reviews on Google+ and are working to raise the bar, however the client is unhappy not being on the top 3 - there are also instances where firms with 0 reviews, non verified G+ pages who rank higher than them. They lost a lot of links when they moved from a large marketing firm specializing in working with attorneys to our firm, which could be a factor. Although we’re gaining ground, they are considering going back as they only want the results - and I don’t blame them. Would appreciate any tips, thoughts, or advice so we can help this client.
Local Listings | | DougHoltOnline0 -
Best Practice When Selling One Location of Company with Multiple Branches - Local Search
I have a client with a small business with 4 different branches. Currently, we have a main landing page for the company, plus distinct landing pages for each branch with maps, territories, distinct phone numbers, etc., for each branch. The company recently sold one of the branches to a competitor as they do not want to service that area anymore. They have asked me what they should do now. Obviously, we are going to remove the location page for that branch, but we also need to transfer the phone number to the other company for use as part of the sale. What tasks should I look into for separating the branch from the rest of the company while still maintaining best practice for the rest of the site/company? Thank you for your help and suggestions.
Local Listings | | Ayres-SEO0 -
Looking for SEO Specialist Contractor!
Polyvore is looking for an SEO Specialist (Contract role)! Click here to apply: https://hire.jobvite.com/j?aj=oZv4Yfwg&s=Moz As an SEO expert, you will help acquire users to Polyvore through organic search. You will also be key to helping engineering team understand SEO best practices. Our ideal service provider is someone who has a deep understanding of SEO in the e-commerce space. Key Responsibilities Audit all Polyvore pages and help the engineering team understand their relative importance to SEO Provide SEO best practices for e-commerce space and help build out automated tools to ensure these best practices Help investigate issues related to SEO including but not limited to changes in organic search traffic Review upcoming designs from SEO perspective & suggest improvements before the changes are implemented What does success look like? Overall increase in organic search traffic to Polyvore A set of automated SEO tools that help catch SEO issues proactively A monitoring plan to catch SEO issues early (i.e. which tools to use, what to track, how to predict potential issues) Click here to apply: https://hire.jobvite.com/j?aj=oZv4Yfwg&s=Moz
Local Listings | | seomoz_polyvore.com0 -
Question about onsite NAP as it relates to Local Search
Hi Gang, State requirements mandate that our law practice (Keller & Keller) properly display their distinct business entities on all advertising materials, including our website. Specifically, our offices are set up in a way that makes Indiana's law office an LLP, New Mexico's an LLC, and Michigan's a PLLC. All 3 offices/states are represented on a single domain, but I want to be careful about mixing the different registration titles (LLP, LLC, PLLC) throughout our site when we commonly refer to ourselves simply as Keller & Keller throughout the main pages and in our content. I worry it may negatively affect our local listings? (One idea is to place a simple 'disclaimer' in the footer throughout our site that identifies the business entities, however, I'm still concerned this too might affect/confuse our local listings?) All thoughts, advice, and theories are welcome! Thanks, everyone! (And to my fellow Yanks, enjoy a safe Memorial Day weekend!) W-
Local Listings | | Wayne760 -
Local Optimisation without Local Pages?
What is the best and latest technique to optimise a website target lots of multiple local areas - I have a site where we want to target 10-15 local areas - at the moment the content mentions the local areas but not all of them as I felt it was going to turn into a list or keyword stuffing.I still see sites creating individual pages for each local area and including the areas in the url - the client wants to try and resist this as they do not want a lot of "bullsh*t" pages - (there exact words). What are the latest techniques or options? What have people tried and been successful with or equally failed with?
Local Listings | | JohnW-UK0