Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

Your browser does not seem to support JavaScript. As a result, your viewing experience will be diminished, and you have been placed in read-only mode.

Please download a browser that supports JavaScript, or enable it if it's disabled (i.e. NoScript).

403 to filter markets???

Local SEO

420

Avature.Marketing last edited by

Hello!

I was running an exercise to investigate the market around the main keyword "Retail recruitment" just for the US.

Looking for key competitors, I've found one of them blocking traffic from any other sources but USA. When you try to access that site from any other country it returns a 403 error code. I think the only reason for doing this is to avoid big companies globally based to actually find them or study them in order to compete.

The URL I'm talking about is http://www.c2recruitment.com/... What do you think? Would be another reason to do so?

I also wonder if they are doing that just to avoid undesired traffic in general as it's a kind of market with high amount of impressions but low CTR.

Third theory is that there's some SEO black-magic-for-local-seo-trick I'm missing. Any thoughts?
1 Reply Last reply
Reply Quote 0

Got a burning SEO question?

Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.

Start my free trial

Browse Questions

View

From

Sorted by

With category

Explore more categories

Related Questions

Google for Jobs, Dublin, Ireland market

Hi Moz fans, I face an issue with Google for Jobs, Dublin, Ireland market.
My client, a local job agency lose rank, his posts appear mediated by other big job companies who have high DA, over 60, client has less than 30 DA.
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance. Mª Verónica
Local SEO | | Mª Verónica B.

1
Free Local Search Marketing Tools You're Using These Days?

Hello to our wonderful community here! I'm updating an old list of free tools to use in a local search marketing campaign. The original list was created before there were quite so many paid tools in our industry, and it definitely needs an update! I'd like to ask, are there free tools you find yourself using these days in marketing local businesses? These could be related to any aspect of your campaigns. I'd love it if you'd share your favorites with me, especially if they are things you feel others might not be aware of but which are working really well for you! Thanks for any suggestions you can provide.
Local SEO | | MiriamEllis

1
Going from a national to local marketing strategy

I started my graphic design business (imageco.com) after the dot com industry collapsed in 2001 and there were virtually no jobs to be found, I focused mainly on logo design and ultimately figured out a way to drive quite a lot of traffic to my site by the means of creating directories for printers in every major city in the US. It worked exceedingly well for many years but eventually I had a lot of copycats use this technique and ultimately it pissed off quite a few designers around the country and I was reported one to many times to Google and was forced to make some changes. So I dropped the directories and redesigned my site and stuffed as many place names in the site as I could so I wouldn’t lose all my traffic, it worked for a while but ultimately my site has drifted further down in the serps and with the advent of Google Local my traffic pretty much disappeared. Furthermore with the surge in crowdsourcing businesses like 99designs the value people placed on my logo design services dropped to a point where there just wasn’t much reason to go after a national market anyway. I’m not proud of how I built my business but I don’t make any excuses for it, I had a mortgage and a family to feed so I did what I needed to do. I’m now at the point where I’ve decided my best option is to move away from logo design and redefine my business as more of a visual identity/graphic design company and go after the local market. I live in the Seattle area, Bellevue to be specific and the economy is such that I know there is a ton of local opportunity that I'm missing out on and I want to focus my marketing efforts here. My question is what is the best way for me to do this? I focused mainly on logo design for nearly 20 years and my keywords are built around logo design for which I still hit fairly well on but I need to expand my offerings and want to redirect my efforts at turning up on local searches for other terms like graphic design, web design, print design, etc. I don’t necessarily want to instantly drop all of the landing pages I created for logo design because that is still where the majority of my business comes from but I’m fairly certain that these landing pages have me Pigeonholed as just a logo designer. Do I need to delete everything and start completely from scratch or is there a less extreme approach to making this kind of transition? And once I do make these changes what might be the time frame for turning up better locally? I’m in the process of redesigning the site, updating my portfolio and writing all new content and could really use the advice of this community. Thank you!
Local SEO | | Imageco

0
Community Discussion: Are You Practicing Awareness Of Your Own Marketing Questions?

Good Afternoon Moz Friends! This week, one of my favorite bloggers in the Local SEO industry wrote a post to celebrate his 5 year blogging anniversary. Phil Rozek has brought an incredible level of knowledge to the industry and one of the things I've most admired about his writing is the consistency with which he tackles common, important problems everyone involved is facing. The tip from Phil's anniversary post that I'd like to discuss with you all this this one, about practicing awareness of the obstacles you encounter in your daily work, for the purpose of investigation and possible public sharing of the solutions you discover: "Jot down every idea you have, every question you ask yourself that stumps you, and every question someone asks you that stumps you. Those are yourraw materials. You probably won’t write on all of them, but you’ll want the ability to cherry-pick." As a Moz staffer and a marketer, I can testify to the fact that my brain exists in a whirl of possibilities, questions and a never-ending search for relevant solutions. Never a day goes by in which I don't say to myself, at least once,"I wonder why that's like that? Why doesn't this work? How do I do that? What is that? Why don't I get that?" or something similar about a new product, new technology, Google issue, customer issue, industry issue or what have you. What I've learned is that if I have a question about something that I can't instantly resolve, chances are, I'm not the only one who has that question. If you're a blogger, a copywriter, an email marketer, a social marketer, if you can solve a common problem, you have just discovered something to share. _But,_if you're not practicing mindfulness, little questions that arise in the course of an 8 hour day can come and go. They can simply get lost. This is why I value Phil's common sense suggestion of jotting each mental query down as it arises. A spreadsheet seems like a great idea for this task. Just think of how many talking/sharing points you could accumulate in a month ... and how that could translate into blog posts, newsletters, tweets, etc. Now, I'd like to ask if you've come up with a method for capturing your own thought process when questions arise so that you don't lose track of what might be some of your best queries and ideas. If you have tips to share, the community could really benefit! Thanks!
Local SEO | | MiriamEllis

4
Digital Marketers Take on Traditional Advertising (Billboards, Radio, TV, etc.)

So I have some questions (probably more of a discussion really) about how to do traditional advertising in 2015. I started working with a local company that has done very well for themselves throughout the years but has lacked in the digital marketing space. Today we are doing a lot better digitally and I have been put in a position that will also affect how we do traditional...which I've never really done before (I'm a digital marketer so why would I?). Here's my question (or discussion item): If we have always done radio jingles (include Pandora here too), cheesy commercials, and traditional billboards and they seem to have done well through the years should we keep doing those? I have 2 issues here as a digital marketer: I have virtually no data on people that see or hear our advertisements because there isn't an Analytics platform for the real world. This means that I can't stay with them, better their experience, or nurture them along the way with my advertising. My thinking here is that I want to get them to my website then -- Please correct me if I'm wrong or if there are other ways of thinking for this out there that make sense. I want to test test test these jingles, commercials, and billboards but I'm unsure how to. How can you tell what's working and what's not? Also, are there others out there doing things like this that can at least show me that jingles work (or do not work)? My impression is that they work because people remember the cheesy jingles and such but also that they don't work because everyone's take on them is "they are so annoying!" -- Again, please shed some light here and correct me if I'm wrong in my thinking. My final note here and MAIN purpose for posting here is because I want to change the way things are done with traditional. It all seems to be the same thing over and over, and I want to get creative with this and push the limits. This is why I have turned to the Moz community, because I think we have those types of minds here.
Local SEO | | HashtagJeff

1
How to market web design and SEO company locally

Hello, I'm looking for easy (yah right, correct?) ways to market locally my web solutions company. I do web design, E-commerce web design, and I start informational and E-commerce companies for people starting at $1000/month - only new companies, later I'll do a little more E-commerce stuff. Looking for inexpensive, fairly easy ways to market locally. Thanks!
Local SEO | | BobGW

0
How to market locally for a national brand?

I just got a new client that offers travel information for cities throughout the US and Canada. They have a specific page set up for most locations. I want to promote each page for that community, but the task is very daunting, as you could imagine. It's almost like having a separate client in each city. I've optimized the title tags, meta descriptions, content and so forth, but that's not enough. Engaging in a backlinking and social media strategy for each location is insane - I wouldn't have enough time in the day. Looking for off page promotional ideas that can be scaled nationally. Does anyone have a similar situation with a national brand, or any ideas you'd like to share?
Local SEO | | Masbro

1
Niche Keyword Opportunities in Canada when US Market Dominates

Hey, I have an interesting question. I am the owner of a Canadian E-Commerce site, and I have been brainstorming ways to find opportunities and niches for Canadian online shoppers in an industry that is dominated by American E-commerce sites. I looked around at another Canadian e-commerce site, and I wanted to get some advice on whether this strategy is sound. Here is an example. Well.ca is a large e-commerce site in Canada. They take a competitive product like a "KONG Goodie Bone" (a dog toy) and include local and intent terms in their title. For example "Buy KONG Goodie Bone from Canada at Well.ca - Free Shipping". If a Canadian shopper searches for "Kong Goodie Bone", they are going to find results for amazon.com, ebay.com, the Kong company website, Petco (which is not in Canada) etc. I would imagine that Canadian shoppers would start to add terms such as Canada, Buy, or online to try to find Canadian sellers. If that is the case, then Well.ca ranks. I guess my question is, if the dominant search terms in my industry are polluted with irrelevant or American companies (even in Canada), is this form of localization a good idea? The terms don't seem to be searched much according to any keyword research tool I've used, but I know that I add "canada" to my search terms in order to find Canadian results? I will also note that our website recently launched, we are using 100% original product page content, we are using videos, and we are really putting a lot of energy into quality content. I am just wondering if patience is the name of the game when you are dealing with sites with incredible domain authority, or if we are better off trying to find niche opportunities. Thoughts?
Local SEO | | evan89

0