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Yeah we've done that for clients due to limited budget but we're working on the idea that I mentioned earlier on our site, which is currently undergoing a redesign, to see how Google reacts. The tricky part is content and avoiding duplicate information but we're setting it up so that the services page contains average but informative content. However each local services page is where we are putting the exceptional content and information with local testimonials and case studies which should make them unique. I haven't seen anyone take this approach so we're hopeful that it will yield positive results. I was curious if you had any experience with it and I really appreciate your feedback on this topic. Thank you!!

Hi Miriam,

Great information that we follow as well. The big question I have, related to this topic, is whether or not it's wise to create an optimized service page for each service in each city. Here is what I mean by that:

Let's say we have a customer that has a physical location in two cities and they provide the same services to each city. Does it make sense to have a "generic" page for each service AND have a more optimized service page for each city with unique content? In this case the structure would like something like this:

/services/generic-service1
/services/generic-service2
/city-a/optimized-local-service1
/city-a/optimized-local-service2
/city-b/optimized-local-service1
/city-b/optimized-local-service2

In your experience is that the best approach or do you recommend a different method? Thanks!

A couple options come to mind: either create those pages and build them similar to when they had the plugin (assuming it was a plugin) or 301 those 404 links to the new pages. When doing the 301s I suggest you create a spreadsheet that outlines all of the 404 to 301 mappings and show that to the client so that they are aware of the issue(s), which can help explain why their traffic is taking a hit. I hope that helps!

Doesn't really matter what moz shows it matters what Google does. Google typically looks at http and https as separate sites. Same with www and non-www. As he mentioned above pick one and build authority around it. Since HTTPS is now a ranking signal I would stick with that one.

Google created a monster when they moved Google Places to Google+ whatever-it's-called-today. It truly went from (not so) bad to worse. Besides the SEO trick that John Cross mentioned above, Google+ is a confusing mess. This is the first I heard about Google+ going the way of Internet Explorer, but if it's true, what are they replacing it with?

Since nobody has responded I'll share what we are currently doing with only two locations and multiple services. It's number 3 on your list. The caveat here is that we're still implementing this so the final results are not in. Here is what we're doing:

1. Make sure you have a Google+ business page for each physical location to make sure that Google knows you're "local" and you can pop-up on their location snippet (hopefully!).
2. On the contact us page or locations page (not sure what you have), we list each location with the physical/mailing address, phone number and a link that says "Directions" that navigates to the "city-office" page (or however you want to name it... atlanta-office for example).
3. On the city-office page we have a nice write-up about this city and the office. We also include a google map of the location, full address, phone numbers, email, and the associated Google+ profile link for that specific location. Now here is the magic: Below that we have a list that has a heading of "Local [city] Services" that has list of of each service that links to an optimized page for that city and service. For your client the heading might be "Local Atlanta Dental Services" for example. You want each service listed to have the appropriate keywords/phrases in the anchor text.
4. Create each services page per location and optimize it like a pro. WARNING: this method will run the risk of duplicate content when you start having multiple cities with similar pages. It is therefore imperative that you make sure that each page contains unique content. The "Atlanta Teeth Whitening" page, although identical in nature with the "L.A. Teeth Whitening" page, must have content unique to their respective cities. This is where the opportunity presents itself to create 10x content for each city (https://moz.com/blog/why-good-unique-content-needs-to-die-whiteboard-friday)

I suggest you start with one major city at a time, measure results, make any necessary adjustments and move on to the next city. The key here is that the content is unique for each service in each city. Sure, they can follow the same format, however make sure you put in the time to make each services page somewhat unique to that city. It may seem like a bit of a gray line that we're walking but, in my opinion, it's logical for expansion. Again the big risk is duplicate content but that can be avoided if done correctly.

Hopefully this helps! I would love to see others chime in on this and give feedback as I'm sure we're not the only ones in the world with this problem.

Cheers!

Hi Moz Community,

I have been conducting some link auditing and started comparing the Moz Spam Analysis tool with the links provided in Google WMT. It appears that the Moz Spam Analysis tools shows an aggregate of links that Moz may or may not consider spam, however when you download and look at Google's "Links to Your Site" list it provides every link iteration known to man that's pointing to the target website - without providing any hints as to whether or not a link may be considered spam by Google.

The biggest concern I have here is that Google is picking up a lot of links, which I consider spam, that do not appear in the Moz Spam Analysis results. I guess the question(s) I have are:

• Does it make sense to compare these two data sets?
• Has anyone else tried this comparison and how did you use the information to make positive changes?
• Any recommendations when it comes to determining if an external link is spam/hurting/helping a website?

Thank you!

Yeah Microsoft, for some reason, likes to make things a little more complex than it needs to be. Here are a couple of links I found that might help:

http://www.iis.net/configreference/system.webserver/httpredirect

http://forums.iis.net/t/1190228.aspx?Specific+url+301+redirection

Agreed. Re-issuing is a pain in the ass. Although I agree that HTTPS is a good thing, I do think that it's overkill for a lot of smaller sites and sites that only provide non-sensitive information to the public. Google is using it as a "lightweight" indicator right now but chances are they'll put more weight into it over time. Perhaps SSL will be a growth industry with Google putting its weight behind it.

Pay particular attention to load speed. HTTPS encrypts everything and sends it to the client browser where it is then decrypted. If certain pages are loading much slower or if you are using the same images/resources on multiple pages you will want to look at caching various resources.

As Highland mentioned, you'll want to make sure the code is using relative URLs and not hard coded "http" URLs because that will not only impact load time but it may give the visitor an undesirable experience if the site is all messed up. If you are on linux make sure that your .htaccess file does a 301 from http requests to https for obvious reasons.

I hope that helps!

A couple options come to mind: either create those pages and build them similar to when they had the plugin (assuming it was a plugin) or 301 those 404 links to the new pages. When doing the 301s I suggest you create a spreadsheet that outlines all of the 404 to 301 mappings and show that to the client so that they are aware of the issue(s), which can help explain why their traffic is taking a hit. I hope that helps!

Doesn't really matter what moz shows it matters what Google does. Google typically looks at http and https as separate sites. Same with www and non-www. As he mentioned above pick one and build authority around it. Since HTTPS is now a ranking signal I would stick with that one.

Yeah Microsoft, for some reason, likes to make things a little more complex than it needs to be. Here are a couple of links I found that might help:

http://www.iis.net/configreference/system.webserver/httpredirect

http://forums.iis.net/t/1190228.aspx?Specific+url+301+redirection