Optimizing dog walking site for search phrase "dog walkers nyc"
-
Background: We have a dog walking company that serves NYC. According to our AdWords campaign, most leads come from the search phrase: "dog walkers nyc."
Question: If the goal is to get as much organic traffic as possible for the search phrase "dog walkers nyc," should we just optimize our http://barkbud.com/ domain for the search phrase "dog walkers nyc," OR should we also have a page like http://barkbud.com/dog-walkers-nyc/ optimized for the same phrase?
Thanks!
-
Personally I wouldn't optimize both pages for a single keyword. As Matt says, that is a good way to look spammy. That being said, you probably want to build out your site with other options for potential clients since a single page targeting dog walkers in NYC will not do much to help your overall traffic. It will work well as a lead-generation page, however, so as I said earlier, you probably want to work on converting those folks who come to your website rather than focusing on generating enormous amounts of traffic.
Also, to underline Matt's point, don't use exact match keyword targeting since that will look unnatural. I would personally look for relevant keywords that people are searching for - a great method for this can be found in this article:
Use this method to develop pages that follow user intent when they are looking for dog walking services and generate some pages with respect to those questions. You will improve your website's UX and increase your overall conversion potential.
Best of luck moving forward!
-
Thanks Matt!
-
It's extremely unlikely that you'd rank two pages for one term, so I personally wouldn't recommend optimizing two pages for the same keyword. I also suggest you be very careful about optimizing for an exact match keyword like that, as it could make your copy sound stilted and unnatural ("We're the best dog walkers NYC around!"). If it's very clear that your service is dog walking and that your located in NYC—perhaps use schema markup to establish the location, and make sure to have a presence on the relevant directories—I'd think you'd be fine.
Plus, since BarkBud only offers dog walking, and only in NYC, a page like barkbud.com/dog-walkers-nyc/ is redundant at best, and spammy at worst.
-
Thanks for the response Rob! We are only selling one service, dog walking. I don't see this changing for some time. Also, we are only serving NYC. Given this, do you think we should optimize barkbud.com AND barkbud.com/dog-walkers-nyc/ for the search phrase "dog walkers nyc?"
-
Hi,
For maximizing your traffic, there are a couple of questions you need to ask before optimizing your domain/page for your chosen keyword(s):
- Do you offer additional services?
If you are simply walking dogs, then optimizing your website for these specific search terms is in your best interest. If you are trying to develop new services, or provide information/additional value to potential clients, you may have to use a different tactic.
If you are only providing the single service, you can optimize your home page for the keywords and be done with it. If you are trying to provide additional services/information, it is best if you create multiple pages with each page targeting specific keywords.
- Is organic traffic really your biggest seller?
Organic traffic (presumably new sessions) is a way to go, although it may not provide you with the greatest value when compared to direct traffic. I would suggest setting up goals and conversions for each of your keywords in GA and determining which traffic source provides you with the highest conversion rates. Determine whether repeat visitors or new visitors are the ones generating leads.
You may discover that you are focused on the wrong kind of traffic for your services. If you are set on gathering organic traffic, however, you should definitely have a separate optimized page in your sales funnel for relevant keywords.
- Are you over-stuffing your keywords?
Remember not to keyword stuff your website or provide unnatural links for your profile. This will have an adverse effect on your ranking potential. Perhaps try generating multiple pages which cover topics relevant to your keywords. For example, instead of just targeting "dog walkers nyc", try branching out to "benefits of dog walkers" or "4 things to ask a dog walker" - create a blog that answers questions you expect your customers to have, and create value for them that way.
This way, you are not depending on the quantity of traffic, but on the quality of your lead generation process. You may not need more traffic, you may merely need to optimize your conversion process.
Hope this adds some helpful insight.
Let me know if you have further questions,
Rob
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
-
SEO Company wants to rebuild site
Hello Community, I am a designer and web developer and I mostly work with squarespace. Squarespace has SEO best practices built into the platform, as well as developer modes for inserting custom code when necessary. I recently built a beautiful website for a Hail Repair Company and referred them to several companies to help them with SEO and paid search. Several of these companies have told this client that in order to do any kind of SEO, they'll need to completely rebuild the site. I've seen some of the sites these companies have built, and they are tacky, over crowded and hard to use. My client is now thinking they need to have their site rebuilt. Is there any merit to this idea? Or are these companies just using the knowledge gap to swindle people into buying more services? The current site is : https://www.denverautohailspecialists.com/ Any advice would be appreciated.
Local Website Optimization | | arzawacki2 -
"spammy structred data" search console message
Hey gang, I want to first say thank you to anybody that tries to help me with this. I'm not quite sure where to start. So first I get the message in search console for my locksmith website that it looks like I have some spammy structured data. I remembered that for one landing page I did have the stars short code on it and it was displaying the stars. Well, I went and looked and they were indeed no longer showing. So I simply deleted the shortcode, but I wanted to do a thorough check of my landing pages, one by one. Now I have project supremacy on my wordpress site, which I stand by, it's a solid product and I have been able to make my per page schema look really good, zero errors. So I went through each page that had errors on it and fixed them and sent it all back into google for 'reconsideration'. BUT today (sorry this is getting long) I look in my search console and I see that ALL of my blog posts have errors on them. Something wrong with the hentry. As I test one of the posts in structured data tester tool I see 4 errors and 4 warnings. I don't have the author displaying which is not true and some other things. But I have never ever tried to schema any of my blog posts and there is ZERO site wide schema, I already checked. Where is this bad schema living, and could that be the reason for the spammy stuff? Thank you crew!!! mwDd8
Local Website Optimization | | Meier0 -
Does multiple sites that relate to one company hurt seo
I know this has been asked and answered but my situation is a little different. I am a local electrical contractor. I specialize in a service and not a product. Competition is high in the local market due to the other electrical contractors that have well seasoned sites with very good DA/PA. Although new to the web I am not new to the trade. Throughout years almost back to the AOL dialup days I have been collecting domain names for this particular purpose. Now I want to put them to good use. Being an electrical contractor, there are many different facets of work and services we provide. My primary site is empireelec.com A second site I threw online overnight with minimal content is jacksonvillelightingrepair.com. Although it is a fresh site, there is minimal content and I have put almost zero effort in to it. It appears to be ranking for keywords a lot quicker. That leads me to believe I should utilize my other domain jacksonvillefloridaelectrician.com and target just the keyword Jacksonville Florida Electrician. It leads me to believe I should use jacksonvillebeachelectrician.com for targeting electricians in jacksonville beach. And again with jacksonvilleelectricianservice.com I can provide a unique phone number for each site. Am I going about this all wrong? Everything I read says no,no,no but I feel my situation is a little more unique.
Local Website Optimization | | empireelec1 -
I have 5 sites each targeting a different service my company offers, should I consolidate to one site or merge to one?
I run a photo booth company and have a site for each service I offer. Are smaller sites that are SEO for each service stronger than just having pages for each service on one mother site?thanks,
Local Website Optimization | | hashtagltd0 -
Listing bundle info on site and on local SEO page.
We just finished a new telecom site, and like all telecom sites (think AT&T, Verizon, Suddenlink, etc.), we allow people to put their location in and find internet and phone service packages (what we call bundles) unique to their area. This page also has contact information for the local sales team and some unique content. However, we're about to start putting up smaller, satellite pages for our local SEO initiative. Of course, these pages will have unique content as well, but it will have some of the same content as what's on the individual bundle page, such as package offerings, NAP, etc. Currently this is the URL structure for the bundles: domain.com/bundles/town-name/ This is what I'm planning for the local SEO pages: domain.com/location/town-name-state/ All local FB pages, Google listings, etc. will like to these location pages, rather than the bundle pages. Is this okay or should I consolidate them into one?
Local Website Optimization | | AMATechTel0 -
Can a Find Us Link suffice as the NAP in footer of site?
I understand the need for NAP in the website for citation sourcing / local ranking purposes, etc. Is it possible to use a linking anchor text such as "Find Us" that can link to the Contact Page of the site that does list the street address? Or should it link to the google places listing? The client basically wants to "hide" the NAP, but keep the power of the local listing. Can this be done? Any suggestions? Or an example of website that does this successfully?
Local Website Optimization | | cschwartzel1 -
How to target an established .co.uk site/blog to audiences in other English speaking countries - UAE, Singapore for example?
Excuse for the novice questions, but looking for help! 🙂 I have an established .co.uk website/blog for which I have established a good solid following in the UK over a good number of years. That said I have recently relocated to Dubai and so I am looking to target my English blog content to English speakers here and Singapore? While the language setting of my site is "en" is there anyway that I can change this to "en-ae" and "en-sg" for example to build a following in these markets? Or is my .co.uk TLD an issue that is going to hold me back from building following in these locations? I ask as I have just read the hreflang announcement from Google, but noticed in my Webmaster Tools that I get the following message: "Your site has no hreflang tags". Thanks in advance!
Local Website Optimization | | twofourseven0 -
Single sites per location as well as group site. Should we get rid of single sites & only keep group site.
Currently we have several single sites for each of our dealership locations as well as an automotive group site linking to each location(dealership) website. Currently there is no landing page for each location on the group site. To save money we were looking into beefing up our group site and getting rid of our individual location sites. 301 redirecting them to location landing pages on the group site website. Each site has about the same authority including the group site. Each dealership location resides in the same province(state) but some locations are a 7hour drive apart so not all within the same vicinity. I want to ensure we continue to rank well in each location. I won't be able to include all geographic locations in the title tag on the homepage of the group site due to the character restrictions. What would you recommend? Keeping the individual websites per dealership location OR focusing solely on a group website. I need to ensure we continue to rank well in each city where each dealership resides. Thanks for any recommendations! It's greatly appreciated. Thanks for everyone's thoughts & opinions.
Local Website Optimization | | DCochrane1