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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.
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
Interesting... just tried to add a flooring contractor, but there is no relevant category available. The list of categories seems to be very limited, at least at this point. Specifically, service area businesses don't seem to be included yet.
It has been my experience that the distance between a business location and the search location depends on the amount of competition for that product/service. If there were 10 competitors in the zip code where someone is searching, you are not likely to see results in the top 3 from outside of that area. But if there aren't many options in or near that zip code, you'll see results from further away.
Another factor that seems to influence where results are displayed is the location of people who review the listing. If a listing has many reviews from a given town, it seems that Google is more likely to display that listing to others in that town. And, since you have reviews on both of your listings, but your competitors do not seem to have any, your ranking is being bumped up as a result. Good job on the reviews!
Hope this helps,
Ira
Interesting, I was not aware of that... but unless the info on that page is out of date, the ability to send email notifications on new reviews is not included yet, and that is critical to my clients. Definitely getting better though!
Overall, it is nice that we are getting more legitimate options for assisting with all phases of the directory listing and review process.
Thanks (as always) Miriam.
Those are helpful, and I'm going to be testing Synup soon. I'll report back here when I have an opinion.
One big reason I'm looking into them is that they combine review monitoring, which I currently pay another company for, with the listings service. The lack of ability to monitor reviews is why Moz Local isn't a very good fit for my needs.
Thanks Miriam. I'd seen that thread, was hoping for something more recent. Seems like they are going beyond what Moz Local offers, but I'm definitely concerned with the lack of any recent reviews or reports on their value.
Thanks. The other option I'm considering is signing them up with Yext or Synup, which in theory would get us access. Any thoughts on either of those?
I'm working on a listings project for a client that has a well established business. Overall we are in great shape, but we've hit a snag with the YP (yellowpages.com) listing. We are not able to access or claim the listing to update it. Customer service claims to have no way to allow us access without the original email address that some former employee must have used to set up the listing. They are telling us the only option is to mark the listing as closed, and start fresh. This would lose us some reviews, although those are pretty old and were imported from Citysearch, so it would not be a huge loss.
Has anyone else ran into a similar issue with YP when trying to manually manage their listing? Any suggestions to overcome this problem?
Hi Dave,
Just wondering if by any chance you gave Synup a chance are are still using it. Seems their model has changed a bit since your post from 2 years ago, and on paper it looks great, but I have not been able to get any feedback from people using them.
Ira
They are now promoting themselves as an alternative to Yext. In theory it sounds good, as it includes listings management that publish updates within 72 hours, along with review monitoring and notifications. I'm wondering if they live up to their pitch.
I don't think the best hosting has to be the most expensive, so going by what you can afford isn't the best guideline.
If your site is performing well, you have no security concerns, and the hosting company is responsive to support requests, then I'm not sure why you'd need to look for anything else. If you feel you are having trouble ranking well, attracting visits to the site, or converting those visits to customers/members/subscribers (or whatever conversion is appropriate for your business model) then you might want to consider the benefits of a hosting upgrade.
Is there a specific issue you are trying to solve?
My first thought was that starting over goes against AdWords policy, but in trying to verify that I can't find anything on google.com indicating that this is the policy. This article does say it is against policy, http://www.ppchero.com/ultimate-guide-to-adwords-quality-score/, but I can't find any other reference to this policy on Google or otherwise.
This thread has some slightly dated but still relevant info on the topic - https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Advanced-Features/Implications-of-Starting-Over/td-p/70062#.
Given that current site performance is weighted more heavily that past performance, if you've already got the account performing well, you might want to keep it and just clean things up by deleting the old messy campaigns. But if you still have a mess and poor performance, starting over may be warranted.
In theory, the listings changes you are suggesting should all work. But, Google My Business does not always work they way they say they are supposed to, especially when significant changes like this are made.
In some cases, we've made a change of a name or address for a business, and after the correct info was in place for a few days or weeks, it reverted back to the old info. One way to help avoid this is to make sure that you update all the business listings, not just Google. If Google sees the change you made being made across all directories, they are much less likely to revert anything.
As long as the listing is verified before you make any changes, you should not run into issues there. And assuming you'll be listing this business on your website, and updating all listings to point to your website, your site will benefit.
You probably need to wait another day or 2 to have the articles indexed. New posts might show up sooner than your archived content that had the old tag.
Unfortunately, I can't help with the A rel / XFN question. Good luck!
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 thought is that the individual pages could have a noindex tag, while the main blog page does not. If that is not the issue (and it would seem unlikely, but you never know) can you share your site with us? That would make it a lot easier to dig deeper.
Here is a good blog post on FB b2b targeting. Not sure about company size, but the other options as well as employer name and job title are options for sure. You can even hypertarget ads exclusively to people who work for a specific company, or if you know enough about an individual, target ads at a single person.
For testing, I would try a budget of around $250 each on FB and LI, and around $500 on AdWords. Then, simply compare you average cost per lead on each. And if possible, follow the leads through to evaluate quality as well as quantity of leads.
Hope this helps!
Ira
It seems like this is an issue with BLC, I don't think it will actually cause you any issues. This post suggests adding LinkedIn to the BLC exclusion list to address the issue. The only problem there is you can't actually depend on BLC to check those links. Based on a review of various reports of similar issues, this problem is not limited to BLC, but any attempt to check too much/too fast on LinkedIn.
Hi Alan,
Ads on LinkedIn can certainly be focused on lead generation rather than branding, it all comes down to the focus of the ad. If you are using the ads to promote valuable resources (lead magnets), then LinkedIn can certainly be a good choice.
That said, you can actually use Facebook ads to do very similar demographic targeting, and these generally have lower costs and higher volume than LinkedIn. So, I'd definitely make sure to consider FB in your mix of possibilities.
The exact best approach will depend on variables such as the things that make you unique, and separate you from your competition; the things your competition is currently doing; and who your ideal clients are. After considering these variables, I'd work on creating a lead magnet, and then testing out ads on the various platforms.
Ira
Thanks for the response. The competitor is using a service called Reviewability. On their policy page, they say that "The review may optionally then be posted to the subscriber's website." at the discretion of the subscriber. So they can post all the good reviews, and hide the others. http://reviewability.com/review-policy/
Given that policy, do you have any further thoughts on the matter?
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?
All of those factors are important. You should be determining the focus keyword for each page on the site, and then make sure that your url, page title, headlines, along with your meta description, alt tags, image names, and overall page content are working together to optimize the page for the chosen focus.
Sorry for the late response on this. First, I would make sure you consider Miriam's point below. If this really is simply one of many services offered at certain clinics, then it is not appropriate to have a separate listing. Instead, you'd be limited to mentioning the service in the description of the existing listing, and if relevant, adding a category to that listing.
But, if this is legitimately a separate office within a larger clinic, and has hours and/or staff that are different from the rest of the clinic, it could cross over into being its own entity.
If that is the case, or for future reference, it generally is possibly to use something like a "suite 1a". The key thing there is to make sure that the local post office will deliver to that address variation. Also, it is reasonable to use that technique for a very limited number of extra addresses, in situations where there is legitimately a different business at the same address... but I would not abuse the technique by trying to simply use one address as a mailing address for dozens of businesses.
OK, so based on that situation, I don't think Provider listings are the way to go.
But, you might consider just getting a regular listing, if the situation at the clinics allow for you to get a unique mailing address. If there is a suite number, or other way to get a unique address not used for any other listing, and this suite is inside the office/clinic where patients would go, then you could create a listing for the brand using that address.
As long as you pair that with a unique and local phone number, and as long as the patients are being sent to the correct spot, this approach should allow you to get the local listings. Of course, this would be dependent on the university or other organization being able to provide you (and allowing you to use) that unique mailing address.
Make sense?
In general, you should consider whether a link is valuable for the people visiting the other site. If so, then it is worth adding. If not, and it is simply a link exchange for the sole purpose of attempting to improve SEO, then you should not bother.
Hi Andrew,
As someone who works with many medical practices, we've found that even though Google allows for the practitioner listings, they can be more trouble than they are worth. We use them in some cases, but not by default. In your case, I'm a bit confused as to who the actual provider would be, and how that would relate to your service. Are there specific providers who only use your medical testing system? Or can you give an example of who these providers would be?
As for the linking strategy, this seems smart. Overstock's issue was that they were compensating people as part of large program for providing links. In your case, you are talking about placing a limited number of links that are accurate and relevant. As a legitimate partner, it seems perfectly reasonable that you'd have a mention and link attesting to your relationship.
Hope that helps. If you can provide more detail on your ideas for the provider pages, there may be a creative way to use those in addition to a link.
Ira
(Edited to clean up my typos. 
Hi Peter,
You'll want to make sure that your branch/location pages have a combination of the following:
Then, on your Category pages, you'll want to make sure you have clear info about your locations. If you only have a handful of locations, you can probably include the full citation (name/address/phone) info for all of them in a footer or sidebar. If you have many locations, you'll want to make sure the location finder is a key part of all the category pages.
There are also off-site things you can do. If your reviews, social media mentions, and backlinks mention specific services while linking to a specific location, that will help that branch rank for those categories.
Hope this helps,
Ira
I was thinking about this some more after I posted last night. If your site is organized into sections with subpages, then you don't have to create a filter for every one. For example, if you exclude pages containing http://mysite.com/services/, then you would get rid of not only that page, but http://mysite.com/services/service1, http://mysite.com/services/service2, etc.
(And if your site is not organized in that fashion, you might want to look into adjusting it, as such a structure would likely help your SEO.)
One idea, which would only work if you don't have an overwhelming number of pages, would be to make a series of Exclude Filters in the pages report. (https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1034832?hl=en) You could then save the set of filters with the "Add to dashboard" feature (http://www.blastam.com/blog/index.php/2010/09/google-analytics-tips-save-filtered-reports).
Hope that helps,
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
Thanks Keri. How often do you you update things? Given that my company manages dozens of GA accounts, this can get pretty time consuming.
Is there any real benefit to filtering the traffic out vs. just using segments to keep it out of reports? With segments, all that is needed is to keep a custom segment updated that can be shared across all GA accounts, so I'm thinking that would be a lot more efficient.
I've been thinking about ways to deal with referral spam in Google Analytics. From what I can tell, most if not all of this is coming from outside the U.S. I'd love any insight into the following questions related to this issue:
For U.S. based local businesses, I'm wondering if we should just block all traffic from outside of the U.S. -would there be negative SEO factors if we use this approach?
Would it be better to just create GA segments to filter out this traffic, rather than actually blocking it?
Has anyone found success in using filters or segments in this way?
Is anyone seeing referral spam from within the U.S.?
Edit: I just came across this suggestion, that setting 2 filters (for invalid hostname and screen resolution) can solve most of the issue. Any insight on this alternative vs. my ideas above?? https://www.distilled.net/resources/quick-fix-for-referral-spam-in-google-analytics/
I've gotten this question from a few clients. There seems to be a correlation in some cases between paying to advertise on Yelp, and the volume of reviews received. Of course, correlation does not necessarily equal causation. And I can attest to the fact that other clients who have at times advertised on Yelp did not even see a correlation.
Has anyone else seen this correlation? And if so, can you speak to the possible causation or lack thereof?
Hi Oriol,
If I understand correctly, you are asking if there is an SEO advantage to your Microsite if you link that site to your parent site's social profiles.
If you have content on your social profiles related to the microsite, and therefore those profiles will be useful and of interest to your microsite visitors, then the links are valuable. I'm not sure if there is a specific SEO value to the microsite, but if you provide value to your visitors, that is going to be a positive.
Are you adding content of interest to the microsite visitors, and/or linking back to the microsite, from your social media profiles? That is where you are have more potential to get value for the site, if you can send engaged and interested visitors to the site from your social media presence.
Make sense? Feel free to clarify if my assumptions are off.
Ira
In researching the issue of referral spam, there is no shortage if info, both on MOZ and beyond. But, neither the Google Analytics Blog or Help Forums seem to mention the issue at all. I'd think it is something that they would want to get rid of, yet it seems like they don't even acknowledge that it exists.
Anyone have insights into this? Am I missing something, or is Google strangely silent on an issue that is becoming more and more annoying for anyone trying to use GA data?
This is the best guide to adding to Wikidata that I could find - http://undead-seo.blogspot.com/2014/03/create-wikidata-topic.html. I actually came here to Moz hoping I'd find something beyond that, but this seems to be the only thread on the Moz Q&A that even mentions the word "wikidata".
I'd seen those 2 links, good info there. I'm kind of surprised by the lack of data about this issue. I suppose that could mean either that almost no one is actually using the feature, OR that it has not caused any issues or helped anyone out that much.
Based on the answer I received to my other question on the top (link in original post), and some specific requests/needs of clients, I'll be experimenting with it. Hopefully some others will join this conversation.
Has anyone had such a bad experience with using descriptors that you've gotten rid of them?
Thanks for clarifying things. The fact that Google is not an actual partner, despite the fact that you use them as an option validate listings, seems to be the key here. We'll try it the way you suggest, manually changing after validation (in the few situations where the client insists, or there are valid reasons for adding the level of detail).
I'm looking for any insight from those who have used the Descriptor feature on your Places listings. Has it helped in any way? Caused issues?
My issues with this feature are described in this question I posted the other day. But I haven't tried using the feature yet, and I'm hoping to learn from some of you who have.