Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Local SEO for National Brands
-
Hi all,
When it comes to local SEO in 2015, I appreciate that having a physical location in the town/city you wish to rank is a major factor. However, if you're a national brand is it still possible to rank for local searches when you're based in one location?
The reason I ask is that, although our service is national, the nature of what we offer means that it is not inconceivable that people would search for a local variation of our top keywords. Other than the standard things - location in the content, the H1/H2s, title tag, meta description, url etc. - is there anything national businesses can do to help?
Thanks in advance.
John
-
Hi Caleb!
That's a good question. It's very important for me to state here that Moz Local is not a ranking tool. We do not guarantee rankings in any way. Likely, you already know this, but just wanted to be sure this was clear. Whether using a tool or working manually, citations are built for 2 main reasons:
-
To build up the 'trust' it is perceived that Google places in widely available, correct business NAP+W.
-
To help customers locate your business on a variety of platforms.
#1 is believed to help you with your Google local pack rankings and #2 is believed to directly market to customers on platforms they frequently use (like Yelp or Facebook). Citations are not widely recognized as a means for improving organic or national rankings.
So, in your case, as you don't really see customers between normal business hours, citation building may not be the most important investment for your business. On the other hand, if you have a B2B relationship and your business associates are coming to your office between normal business hours, citation building could help them find you in the local packs of results. Additionally, citations are normally listed in the organic results below the main result for a branded search, so, it could be postulated that this could help B2B customers feel more secure about how established your business is. But, it would not like help you rank better for your software keywords.
*However, there is one grey area related to this that deserves mention. The majority of citations include a link to the business website. So, in a sense, citation building is a form of link building. It would be possible, then, to parlay that out into thinking that earning citations means you've earned some new links for the business, right? And links do influence organic rank, right? But, it's my gut feeling that, because the links contain in citations are not merit-based (in other words, you're not actually earning them based on something great you've done) they probably do not have a ton of value in the current, more sophisticated Google environment. Could they help at all? My guess is that they might be of minimal help, but that you would likely benefit more organically from other efforts.
Hope this helps!
-
-
Great discussion, folks. I'd like to add a question, if I may. First, some background.
I'm the Marketing Manager for a software company who has a physical location, and occasionally clients come to visit, but no one just drops in. I'm interested in national rankings, not local. I cannot think of many (if any) examples where someone would search for our products and services in our city (i.e. guided selling tool in Richmond, VA).
Here's the question. Would submitting my company to a service like Moz Local help our national rankings? In other words, is there enough of a ranking boost from having our NAP and business categories correct across the web to warrant the fee and work, or does it not make a difference if I'm not interested in ranking for location-specific searches?
Thanks, all!
-
Thanks everyone - some very useful feedback here and certainly food for thought.
We've got some locality-centric data we can draw on so we should be able to get some unique content for each area together. There are also some links pointing to the home page from businesses located in certain cities/towns - could changing these links to the relevant local landing pages negatively effect our national rankings?
John
-
Hey John,
You're receiving good input from the community. I'll just summarize a couple of points here:
-
Without physical locations, no, you cannot rank in the local packs of results.
-
This leaves you with trying to rank organically via a combination of website content and optimization (see the landing pages article Patrick linked to) and trying to shore that up with things like link earning, social media, video marketing, etc. The main pitfall to be aware of in this practice is that many companies end up building a large number of thin, duplicate content pages for their service cities. This should be avoided. The main goal of this practice is to gain some organic visibility for local searches in the absence of being able to gain local pack rankings.
Hope this helps!
-
-
Hi there
I would check out Moz's post Local Landing Pages: A Guide To Great Implementation In Every Situation, particularly in the section National company desiring a local presence.
I would also take a look at Google's Service area maps resource.
Hope this all helps! Good luck!
-
Adding to this I found this https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors The comments by Nick Neels speaks directly to your question methinks.
-
I am sure you will receive more informed answers however I am facing a similar situation. I do know that local SEO greatly affects national rankings and recommend you optimize all local listings using a service like MOZ local (there are others too.) I track our rankings nationally and in a variety of markets where we compete or wish to compete.
I also recommend doing keyword research to determine your product is being searched locally (where to buy "your product" in washington dc) It may not be a large volume of searches but they could be very targeted meaning high value prospects. And the branding you get from it won't hurt either. And chances are those phrases will have a low difficulty as well.
I hope that helps and also gets more responses for you.
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
-
Local SEO Over Optimization
We are targeting a bunch of services for our local business that works in and around their location. I'm concerned about over optimization and need some guidance on whether these points should be resolved. The company is based in a city and works mostly in the city but also in the surrounding areas. Currently, the site has 6 services pages (accessible via main nav) targeting the same location i.e. “Made Up Service London”, “Imaginary Service London” (with URLs and H1 tags etc. in place containing this location). However this is soon going to become 9 services pages, I am concerned that the repetition of this one location is starting to look spammy, especially as its where the company is based. Initially, I also wanted pages targeting the same services in other nearby areas. For example “Made Up Service Surrey”, “Imaginary Service Essex”. This has not happened as the info available has been too sporadic. I was going to add links to relevant case studies into these pages to beef up the content and add interest. To that end, we came up with case studies, but after a while, I noticed that these are also largely focused on the primary location. So out of 32 case studies, we have 19 focused on the primary location again with URL’s and H1 tags etc containing the location keyword. So in total, we have 25 pages optimized for the location (soon to be 28 and more if further case studies are added). My initial feeling was that the inclusion of pages targeting services in other locations would legitimize what we have done with the main pages. But obviously we have not got these pages in place and I question whether we ever will. What is my best course of action moving forward?
Local Website Optimization | | GrouchyKids1 -
I want to rank a national home page for a local keyword phrase
Hello - We are a nationally available brand based in Denver, CO. Our home page currently ranks #8 (used to be 5) for "real estate photography in Denver" -- I want to improve this ranking, but our home page is generalized and not geared toward Denver, CO but to all of our markets. I'm trying to troubleshoot this and have a few ideas.... I would love advice on the best route, or a different route altogether: Create a Denver-specific page -- _will that page compete with my home page that is already ranked in the top ten? _ Add the keyword phrase in the image alt attribute Add keyword phrase into the content - need to make sure that viewers realize we are national I already updated the meta description to say "real estate photography in Denver and beyond"
Local Website Optimization | | virtuance_photography1 -
How to Do Local Keyword Research
I am familiar with how to do regular keyword research, finding opportunity based on competition, search volume, etc. For local search, do I go to all the trouble of finding hidden gems or just pick higher volume terms that have local intent. For instance: A search for "physical therapy" is a high volume term that Google thinks has local intent. If i pick a low volume national term, that has 11-50 avg searches per month, I have lower chances...and even less chance that someone is searching locally. What say ye? Nails
Local Website Optimization | | matt.nails0 -
Multi location silo seo technique
A physical therapy company has 8 locations in one city and 4 locations in another with plans to expand. I've seen two methods to approach this. The first I feel is sloppy and that is the individual url for each location that points to from the location pages on the main domain. The second is to use the silo technique incorporated with metro scale addition. You have the main domain with the number of silos (individual stores) and each silo has its own content (what they do at each store is pretty much the same). My question is should the focus of each silo, besides making sure there is no duplicate copy, to increase their own hyperlocal outreach? Focus on social, reviews, content curated for the specific location. How would you attack this problem?
Local Website Optimization | | Ohmichael1 -
Can I block blexhn30.webmeup.com. Or does it have anything to do with my Moz Local
I am getting alot of hits from blexhn30.webmeup.com. My web host says it could be a web service. Is this part of moz local activity? Otherwise I want to block it. Have you seen this before??
Local Website Optimization | | stephenfishman0 -
Which is the best, ".xx" or ".com.xx" in general and for SEO?
Hi, I'm working for a digital marketing agency and have traffic from different countries. We are planning to make different websites for each country. What is the best SEO practice to choose the domain between ".xx" or ".com.xx" from Spain, Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Peru?
Local Website Optimization | | NachoRetta
I think that the ccTLD is better always, for example ".es" better than ".com.es"0 -
SEO: .com vs .org vs .travel Domain
Hi there, I am new to MOZ Q&A and first of all I appreciate all the folks here that share their expertise and make everyone understand 'the WWW' a bit better. My question: I have been developing a 'travel guide' site for a city in the U.S. and now its time to choose the right domain name. I put a strong focus on SEO in terms of coding, site performance as well as content and to round things up I'd like to register the _best _domain name in terms of SEO. Let's suppose the city is Atlanta. I have found the following domain names that are available and I was wondering whether you guys could give me some inside on which domain name would perform best. discoveratlanta.org
Local Website Optimization | | kinimod
atlantaguide.org
atlanta.travel
atlantamag.com Looking at the Google Adwords Keyword tool the term that reaches the highest search queries is obviously "Atlanta" itself. Sites that are already ranking high are atlanta.com and atlanta.gov. So basically I am wondering whether I should aim for a new TLD like atlanta.travel or rather go with a .org domain. I had a look around and it seems that .org domains generally work well for city guides (at least a lot of such sites use .org domains). However, I have also seen a major US city that uses .travel and ranks first. On the other hand in New York, nycgo.com ranks well. Is it safe to assume that from the domain names I mentioned it really doesn't matter which one I use since it wouldn't significantly affect my ranking (good or bad)? Or would you still choose one above the other? What do you generally thing about .travel domain names (especially since they are far more expensive then the rest)? I really appreciate your response to my question! Best,
kinimod0 -
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
