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As long as all the pages have real value (and it sounds like you have that covered) I think it makes sense to have an index of all webinars, AND to link a webinar to a blog post or other piece of content if it expands on the ideas in that post or page. Depending on the goals and path of the user, both options should provide value.
Ya, no new listings just for the virtual service... but you should make sure you are taking full advantage of all listings for current locations. I looked at the Multicare site at your urgent care location pages, and those could definitely be optimized better. I also did a few test searches, and from what I've seen you rank very well in cities where you are located. So based on this quick checkup, there is nothing urgent, but still some room for improvement. I don't want to hijack this thread too much, but let me know if you'd like to discuss how your local listings could be better tied into your website, along with other SEO ideas for those locations.
Hi Jeremy,
Interesting question. My company has been working with urgent care clinics going all the way back to 1999, and over the last 5 years or so we have developed a fair amount of experience with telemedicine. In many cases, we have an individual clinic that already has business listings, and we are just adding on a new service. But I've also worked with a national telemed company that had ties to some local practices who had listings, but they themselves did not as they didn't have a base of operations in each state/city.
In addition , I've worked with some smaller practices that are in between these extremes. These are primarily virtual clinics, but not 100%. They may see some patients in person (more of a concierge model mixed in with the urgent care), or they may just have a home base from which they network, and get a big chunk of their clients from one community where they live. In these cases, there is enough of a local tie to justify a local listing. Also, these are generally newer startups.
So in general, if you are dealing with a business that has a system with docs who are licensed in multiple states, and don't have some real presence in the localities, then listings are not appropriate. But if the doctor has a legitimate tie to and base in a particular community, then a local listing makes sense.
If you have more details about your specific situation, I may be able to give you some additional ideas.
Ira
Interesting, must be a new thing Google is doing, showing the thumbnail instead of the website and directions icons. When I try the same 2 searches, I get the thumbnail view for both. I also am seeing that style for all the other local searches I'm doing. Maybe you caught those 2 searches while the changes were being rolled out? I'm curious if you are still seeing the icons on any searches.
As for optimization issues, this makes it more important than ever to claim your Google Business listing and to optimize it with good photos.
Hi Drew,
This article has the best info on the facebook.com/referral question that I've seen - https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Articles/facebook-com-referral-on-Google-Analytics/ba-p/539366.
As for the discrepancy you are seeing between FB and GA, I've seen similar issues at times - hoping someone else will have some insight into that one!
Ira
I was doing some research today and came across a business that has 5 reviews, all 5 stars. For some reason, their average is showing as 4.8, instead of a perfect 5.
Looking at some other businesses, I see one with 4 5-stars, 1 4-star, and 1 1-star. 25/6 = 4.1666666. That would round to 4.2, but Google lists them as 4.3.
Is Google just bad at math, or are they using some other factor in calculating these averages?
Ah, wasn't even thinking about the fact that you need to provide an address either way, but it definitely seems they are only looking for physical places that people are likely to visit. There is a prominent link to claim the business, but of course that only matter is you are the actual business owner or representative. So as an agency, we have our normal options (which in our case luckily includes Google's GYBO program).
In the case of my flooring contractor, he is still just a prospect, so I thought this might be a great first step. It is pretty rare that I find any established business that is in no way listed in Google Business, but here is the whole list of categories in that can take advantage of this new option:
So, 20 that are actually business categories, focused on food, healthcare, and retail, along with 5 different ways of identifying a living residence rather than business. It will be interesting to learn how effective this method of adding info to Google becomes, and whether they expand it to new categories.
Just to clarify, they actually do have a physical address. So it wasn't that I was trying to add them as a SAB without a physical address, just that the categories are very limited. Other than the 10 or 20 listed in the dropdown, it appears you can't choose any other categories for now.
Hi,
Can you provide a list of some of the long tail phrases you think you should rank better for? By helping you with a few specific examples, we can likely help you better understand what you should be doing across the board.
Ira
Normally the theme name would be listed in the main CSS file on the site, which in this case appears to be http://www.zoompondy.com/wp-content/themes/zpondy/style.css, but it seems to be missing (not sure how they got away with that one). Based on the amount of custom code in the style.css, I'd guess this is a custom theme rather than a child theme.
In case this helps, they used what appears to be almost the same theme on this related site http://www.zoomsydney.com/, but that one doesn't give us any more details about a possible parent theme.
Hi Jeremy,
Interesting question. My company has been working with urgent care clinics going all the way back to 1999, and over the last 5 years or so we have developed a fair amount of experience with telemedicine. In many cases, we have an individual clinic that already has business listings, and we are just adding on a new service. But I've also worked with a national telemed company that had ties to some local practices who had listings, but they themselves did not as they didn't have a base of operations in each state/city.
In addition , I've worked with some smaller practices that are in between these extremes. These are primarily virtual clinics, but not 100%. They may see some patients in person (more of a concierge model mixed in with the urgent care), or they may just have a home base from which they network, and get a big chunk of their clients from one community where they live. In these cases, there is enough of a local tie to justify a local listing. Also, these are generally newer startups.
So in general, if you are dealing with a business that has a system with docs who are licensed in multiple states, and don't have some real presence in the localities, then listings are not appropriate. But if the doctor has a legitimate tie to and base in a particular community, then a local listing makes sense.
If you have more details about your specific situation, I may be able to give you some additional ideas.
Ira
Hi Bob,
I have developed a few niches, and maybe the ways I found those will give you some ideas.
Back in the late 90s, I worked on a few medical practice websites. Based on that experience, I began to develop a niche building websites and doing online marketing (including but not limited to SEO) for medical practices. We have worked with many medical specialties, but along the way we began working with many urgent care practices, and thus developed an even stronger program for this specialty. We can do a great job for just about any type of practice; for urgent care, we can do even more. We are now looking into replicating this deeper focus with other medical specialties.
So, the lesson here is to examine your own current client base, and look for industries where you can replicate what you are already doing. Or if you don't yet have a client base, focus on your past work experience. Based on the options you come up with, I'd consider things like the level of competition for others focusing on that niche, and how much you like working with that type of business.
Of course, one thing about medical practices is that they are local businesses. We generally don't take on 2 clients in the same market, because then we'd just be competing against ourselves. That said, still have an a huge number of prospects when you consider all of the medical practices out there.
And this leads me to the 2nd niche that we have. By working with medical practices, we learned how to do local. I would occasionally get clients in other industries, and began to realize that local marketing techniques are pretty similar for many industries. So, our 2nd niche is local marketing. On that side of the business, we have a strong focus on our home city of Portland, OR. In addition, since we are already doing local marketing in dozens of other cities around the country, we are learning to target other businesses in the cities where we already have clients.
In general, I think there is a big need for more people to specialize in local SEO.
Hope this helps you find your direction!
Ira
Agreed, this will often work. We'll usually check with the post office or delivery person directly to make sure there will be no issues.
You seem to have 2 meta robots lines, the first is set to index (line 60), but the second is set to noindex (line 85). (from view-source:http://www.sierratradingpost.com/blog/climbing/choose-right-rock-climbing-shoes/)
One of my clients has a competitor who has a fairly poor reputation based on reviews on Google and Yelp. But, this competitor allows people to review them on their own website, and their "4.8" rating based on 250+ "reviews" show up in search engine results. I assume they are using schema markup to encourage that. My question is whether there is anything we can do to report this to Google, or otherwise make sure the general public is not fooled by these reviews?
In general, the closer a word is the the start of the title tag, the more weight it will have for SEO.
Beyond that, I think the "Blue Linen Chesterfield Sofa, Duck Egg" format reads better, so I'd go with that approach.
Hope this helps,
Ira
Hi Drew,
This article has the best info on the facebook.com/referral question that I've seen - https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Articles/facebook-com-referral-on-Google-Analytics/ba-p/539366.
As for the discrepancy you are seeing between FB and GA, I've seen similar issues at times - hoping someone else will have some insight into that one!
Ira
Normally the theme name would be listed in the main CSS file on the site, which in this case appears to be http://www.zoompondy.com/wp-content/themes/zpondy/style.css, but it seems to be missing (not sure how they got away with that one). Based on the amount of custom code in the style.css, I'd guess this is a custom theme rather than a child theme.
In case this helps, they used what appears to be almost the same theme on this related site http://www.zoomsydney.com/, but that one doesn't give us any more details about a possible parent theme.
I was doing some research today and came across a business that has 5 reviews, all 5 stars. For some reason, their average is showing as 4.8, instead of a perfect 5.
Looking at some other businesses, I see one with 4 5-stars, 1 4-star, and 1 1-star. 25/6 = 4.1666666. That would round to 4.2, but Google lists them as 4.3.
Is Google just bad at math, or are they using some other factor in calculating these averages?
I would absolutely create individual landing pages for each location. This should be part of your foundation, and will best allow you to promote the brick and mortar locations, both on the site and via directories.
As for the 2nd part of your question, I think you are asking if you should then use the homepage title tag to go after general keywords that could lead to ecommerce sales? If so, my gut says that you should leave the homepage as is, and create new subpages for non-local long tail words. That said, all pages of the site should include info about all 3 cities, so you are not looking at an either/or situation.