Welcome to the Q&A Forum
Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.
So because my entire site is a marketplace of personal trainers (and only personal trainers) I won't need to create another category
Correct.
URL structure is such an infinitesimally small ranking factor, it's not worth your time trying to change it at this point.
Well, I should have clicked through to the link...sorry. Your page is fine as-is. I had thought there were multiple categories of people/products on those pages. IF/WHEN you add those at a future date, that's when you'll want to build out the /Houston/trainers page with trainers (and no redirect would be required).
I think in the era of mobile, the shorter your URLs are, the better. So I'd go with
rfpt.com/houston/trainers, which it sounds like would also be easier to implement from a development perspective.
Copy Yelp's implementation in terms of site architecture and getting around what Josh is referring to as 'doorway' content above.
That's correct. Every unique clinic that can be reached at a direct-dial phone number should have its own page (or silo) on your website. If they all have their own websites, the intermediate page is not necessary, assuming that you've thought about the SEO implications of splitting your link equity over multiple sites, rather than one singular, authoritative domain (which would be my recommendation).
My guess is you'll see an improvement in rankings moving to a subfolder structure but a possible decrease in the # of results you get on page one (if the subdomains were ranking there previously).
Not entirely sure that's an accurate response. There are plenty of SABs who have not claimed a Google My Business Page and yet are still in the Maps index -- and ranking QUITE well. Here is just one example.
I would try submitting a few locations to each aggregator and see which one has the primary feed in these categories. My guess would be Infogroup or Acxiom in this particular case.
It's going to be a lot of manual work at this point unless/until Google allows for SABs to be included in bulk upload. I'm not so sure I'd even try to tackle GMB yet, but instead focus on aggregator submissions and primary vertically-relevant directories like Thumbtack, AngiesList, Yelp, YP. Those should honestly get you pretty far in terms of rankings (although obviously you won't get the benefit of being able to choose a featured photo, etc.).
Hey there,
Just wanted to clarify on this thread--
The only possible overlap will be on Factual. We (Moz Local) will be locked out of updating Superpages, and you can simply choose not to authenticate Foursquare.
And as long as you are submitting the same info, Factual will only maintain one record for each location.If you DO find that there are duplicates created as part of this process, we'd definitely like to know (davidm@moz.com) because it's not the behavior that should be happening...and in an absolute worst-case scenario, you'll be able to close duplicates directly from he dashboard using our newly-announced feature 
If that content is unique and providing value to searchers, then that's exactly what's working well in the Hummingbird/Pigeon SERPs these days. Many national directories with trusted brands are outranking individual small businesses. Check Yelp, Avvo, TripAdvisor, Thumbtack, Angie's List, etc.
No, I'd strongly recommend a page (or set of pages) about the location that lives on your primary domain. Non-physical locations can only rank organically, and you're much more likely to rank organically using the strength of a parent domain.
Hi Elyk,
You are correct that Google is interpreting "asphalt company" as having Local Intent (e.g., it thinks you are exceedingly likely to hire a locally-based company to repave your driveway), and thus geo-locating that search to your IP address.
So you'll see different rankings than a searcher in Portland, Oregon (like myself) or Chicago or New York.
The rankings in Moz Analytics are currently pulled from "outer space" so we don't localize those queries. I'll get Jon White, the product manager of Moz Analytics, to jump in on this thread and provide a little more color around our plans to add local rankings to M.A., however.
Best,
David
Right now it's only US. We know there's quite a bit of demand in international markets, including the UK, and are currently evaluating our prospects of expanding to some of those markets.
Hey all,
Thanks for all the positive responses.
We designed Moz Local to be the best option out there to get your data consistent and present at the sites that have the biggest impact on your local search presence. And to do so at a price point that would be affordable to everyone.
As Bryan noted, there are other products (including Yext) that have more features than ours does, and we'll certainly be expanding our feature set over time. But if you are looking for an efficient, reliable, affordable location management product, I'm hoping that's us
Best,
David
I am just not sure why you'd focus at all on putting schema on the category pages if you're not going to get the markup benefit in the SERPs?
I don't have any idea about this.
I would just copy the format of a site that consistently gets the markup treatment in the SERPs, i.e. Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc.
Google is unlikely to show schema markup for reviews on category pages. Yelp does not get these snippets on their category pages like this one and yet invariably gets them on individual business profile pages.
Hi Tina,
We are actively working on better support for service-area businesses, like plumbers. Unfortunately our current setup is not perfect when it comes to marking addresses like this as inconsistent. I have sent your issue to our Engineering team & I hope that we'll have a chance to rectify this in the coming weeks.
Best regards,
David Mihm
Director of Local Strategy, Moz
I generally agree with Matt about the two pronged approach. If money is no object, build out a completely dedicated www.cleaningbiznottinghill.co.uk website for Local results, but for organic results, a directory like
cleaningbiz.co.uk/locations/london/nottinghill
is likely to rank better, at least in the current Hummingbird iteration.
Hi David,
At this point our local rankings product is still a few months out; we will be releasing multiple local products in Q1 of next year. That's about all I can say publicly right now, but please stay tuned!
Hi Bob,
When you claimed the client's Google Places listing on their behalf, did you
?
Bob, what a strange situation. Are you SURE that your client hasn't given permission to ZocDoc to create this page on their behalf? If not, sure seems pretty sleazy on their part.
As far as a tactical fix, I'd recommend that your client (and their friends, and you, and your friends) click the Report a Problem link on the lower righthand side of this page:
https://plus.google.com/104280204877579676759/about
and let Google know that the URL for this listing should be stonebridgedental.com. With enough of those reports, Google should make the edit, although that may or may not solve the problem of having duplicate listings in this instance 
Ron, this is exactly how I'd set up the site:
"I believe we should create a mini web site starting at the location page that has specific content and navigation related to each location. That the content should focus on the specifics of that area and what would serve that clientele the best. We should add to each branch location based on the key words and competition in that area. "
I'd surface blog articles tagged with each location in their corresponding sections here, but wouldn't worry so much about the structure of the blog per se.
Hey AJ,
I am forwarding this along to our engineering department. We'll take a look on Monday & let you know about the 'unable to contact' errors.
As far as Moz in particular, we're not really a brick-and-mortar company, so Local Listings are not (and shouldn't be) a priority for our marketing department. Having said that, my associate Miriam Ellis is working on a guide to claiming listings for our Portland office as we speak, to practice what we preach :). That should be out later this summer.
Thanks for commenting!
David Mihm
Director of Local Search Strategy, Moz
Generally, my opinion for most small businesses is that ad networks like CityGrid are not the highest-and-best use of their advertising dollars. However, if it's a new business, or one that has a lot of listing consistency issues, CityGrid can be worth an investment to try to clean up this information quickly.
Without knowing more specifics about this case, my generic advice would be to stick to Facebook ads or exact-match long-tail Google Adwords.
Cvissi,
Couple things:
#1 If this is one client with 250 locations, then it's a best practice to create a places@client-domain.com email address and then use the Bulk Upload feature from within Google Places for Business.
#2 If it is actually 250 individual clients with 1 location each, you should create a unique account along the lines of places@client-domain.com for each one of those locations.
You should never use an agency email address to claim client locations.
Does that make sense?
Hi Andrew and Christopher,
Thanks for contributing to this thread. I've just returned from vacation to Miriam's email in my inbox. We're definitely looking to bring more local reporting features to our customers over the next few months & appreciate you voicing this request, as it helps us prioritize features internally.
Thanks again for being a part of our community!
Hi Echo,
You're in a very competitive space, so I would say I'd focus more on getting quality unstructured citations. One or two from colleges and universities or government organizations could indeed tip the balance in your case. Have you thought about giving free rides from O'Hare and Midway to incoming guest speakers at various seminars / colloquia @ Univ of Chicago, Northwestern, etc, just as an example?
Taking a quick look (assuming this is you) -- I'd suggest trying a couple things first, though:
set your service radius much tighter (something like 30 miles)
get more reviews on TripAdvisor, WeddingWire, AngiesList, and Yelp. These seem to be the most prominent review portals in your space.
Hope that's helpful.
Hi Nick,
Do the clients already have an existing phone number? Is it well-indexed by Google? If it is not well-indexed, the client should first establish a permanent phone number and that number should be well-indexed before going ahead with this service.
In general, dynamic javascript insertion works fine, as long as the existing phone number remains on the page in HTML somewhere, preferably in close proximity to business name and address (the footer is a good place for this).
Make sure they are NOT sending tracking numbers anywhere outside of this client's website. Period. No matter what they tell you about how their system is implemented.
As Greg said, as long as they are Noindexing the page or robots.txt 'ing it out of the crawl index, you should be just fine.
It's still more than a bit lame that they might be able to take credit for content and layout that you did, though.
In the US, Localeze, Infogroup, and Acxiom are the "big three" data providers.
I tend to agree with BeardoCo, in general it's not worth paying for an upgrade. There are two notable exceptions:
#1 if the site in question is very heavily trafficked in your industry and provides real eyeballs as part of their premium listing package. An example might be a TripAdvisor ad for a hotel or B&B -- especially one that's brand-new and hasn't had time to accumulate enough reviews to reach critical mass in TA's internal algorithm.
#2 Sometimes it may be worth paying for an enhanced listing on one of the major data aggregators like Localeze -- in order to include your URL and social information in the results that they syndicate to secondary and tertiary sites. Additionally, paying for an Enhanced listing on the "back end" like this means that if there aren't any advertisers in your category on the sites that Localeze is syndicating to, your listing is likely to rank pretty well in the "organic" listings of that site.