Best way to optimize a website for local search today?
-
A real estate agent client has had a website for years, which he optimized to position himself as a national real estate expert (to get more TV and media exposure). Now he wants to be found for a more local real estate term, such as Westchester ny real estate.
Should he add a page to his site that's focused on Westchester real estate, or would Google view that as spammy? Should he update older blog posts with relevant, useful content about Westchester? Any best practices and suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
-
Thanks Katarina! Really appreciate your thoughtful response. Jim
-
Hi there,
Yes, definitely! Don't forget to update not just content, but also titles, H1's and other H's - so Google can index them with the local info. Also, make sure you update your contact details and use identical details for all social accounts and directories. You can add a new article that is more location focused and add a map. Don't forget Google My Business - optimise it and make sure you have your website link there.
If you are coming with fresh content, I would recommend researching long-tail keywords or the most frequent search queries via Keyword Planner. Try multiplying keyword lists, i.e. generic terms x location (town, area, state etc.). This should give you a good idea, and I would start there. Publish regularly. All this will work for you!
Hope this helps. Good luck!
Katarina
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
-
What is the best way to rank for variations of your business name?
Our business name is APVelocity. We are ranking when it is typed APVelocity, however we are finding many people are typing it AP Velocity. When it is typed with a space, we are not ranking. What is the best way to ensure we show up either way?
On-Page Optimization | | mbrowntci2 -
Display URL changed for Organic Regional Searches?
Hey. We currently have a US version of the site (/us) which is displaying in US Google Search. However the /us domain is also showing for our co.uk Google searches. Is there a way I can ensure the /us is only displayed for US searches? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | LoveCrafts0 -
SEO Optimization for Sales Page
Hi, I am new to eCommerce. Traditionally I have run a couple of semi-successful websites relying largely on Adsense revenue and affiliate income. So I have a bit of experience with on page and off page SEO. This time around I am creating a membership site and also sell eBooks as bundles that non members can buy. My question is, should I SEO optimize the sales page for my eBook or use another content page that links to the sales page. For example, if I am selling an ebook on Dog Training and targeting the main KW "Dog Training Tips", should my sales page be optimized for "Dog Training Tips"? The reason I ask is because typically Sales pages do not provide a lot of useful information but are more geared around selling the product. The other option would be to create a helpful information page targeted for "Dog Training Tips" and lead users to my sales page through contextual links, banners, popups (I hate popups), etc. This would be the approach for the other LSI keywords anyways. Any thought would be appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | dwautism0 -
Is minor duplicate content on my website okay?
I know duplicate content across multiple websites is not a good thing, however I've always wondered about minor duplicate content on your own website. I know its good practice to have unique content on each page but what about the little stuff. For example on our website certain related pages share the same content in a right sidebar. Such as links to pdf leaflets, or "you can read our blog etc" . Is there a minimum number of repeated words required before its flagged as duplicate content? Another example is a customer gave two testimonials for two of our employees - the testimonials were identical other than the employee names - if these were posted on separate pages is it a problem for the site as a whole or for both those individual pages? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Brabian0 -
Page Rank Lost After Website Transfer
Hello, I recently transferred a website from Ruby on Rails to Wordpress in order to help with the site's responsiveness. I kept all of the URLs the exact same, but when I transferred it only the homepage and one other page kept their page ranks, all of the others have lost theirs completely. Almost every page on the site was at least a PR 2, and now their not ranked, and not ranking in the top of search engines like they were before. I am not quite sure what might have caused this, like I said, I kept the URLs all the exact same and its strange that 2 pages were not effected. I crawled the site with Screaming From and all of the pages that lost their page rank have a status as "Moved Permanently". They are the exact same URL, but they are listed without www. in front, could this have something to do with it? The website is www.goenergylink.com, and you will see that the homepage and "Residential" page still have their page rank, but none of the others do. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated! Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | mcmckenna10 -
On Page Optimization not updating after SSL change
Last week we changed our URLs to be only HTTPS (they were a mixture of both for a couple of weeks). We did this by adding a 301 redirect from HTTP to HTTPS. However, the On Page Optimization is now showing the same URL/Keyword twice for a few of our pages. One has a grade A, one has a grade B. The grade B complains about "Rel Canonical" not matching, but the other doesn't. This is pretty confusing - should it not have crawled the pages and noticed the 301 redirects and combined the entries or removed the HTTP ones?
On-Page Optimization | | RitchieF19800 -
Should I be afraid to launch new website?
I have been redesigning my website in the last 2 months. I'm almost ready to finally launch it. Now I wonder how it will effect my rankings. I have taken a few measures to avoid problems such as: I kept the page names as they are. I kept the structure of the website Optimized the structure of my pages which should benefit my SEO rather then harm it. Yet, if I would experience a drop in rankings, could I regain my rankings by switching to the previous website?
On-Page Optimization | | wellnesswooz0 -
On-page: Over optimized images?
Hello guys. I have a small question about an on-page optimization for images. What I have: good title tag / good url structure good content (NOT keyword shuffled, its real content, for real people) images / gallery uploaded to folder named same as article name. For example: Great tips for bloggers [article name], great-tips-for-bloggers [folder name]. So my question is: Will Google harm me for this "too good" paths to images, article related image filenames, with mask like [gtips-img01], and if all images have titles / alt tags? Thank you guys.
On-Page Optimization | | infoo130