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I'm back about a month later to report that it finally appears to have worked. Google is now pulling up my metatitle for a variety of queries.

Now I want to get Google to show local landing pages in the SERPS instead of the home page so that the location shows in the title and appears to be more relevant. Always a challenge.  I know the standard tactics, but specific ideas are welcome. Building a silo of local pages around estate planning is hard as the topic is not really local.

Nuances welcome.

I tend to think you're right about the title. That most likely does look like a page title to Google and then you have identical titles on all pages! I replaced it with an image. We were already in the process of putting the first lines on the local pages into h1 tags, so that's done as well. It will be hard to know which one does the trick, but as long as it works I'm happy. This is standard routine SEO that needed to be done anyway.

For all queries that return the home page, Google is not showing my meta title. Instead it replaced it with the official business name which of course makes it harder to rank for key terms since they don't exist now in the meta title. You can see this is you search on "mt view estate planning attorney". The site in question is dureelaw.com and the title showing is "The Law Office of Daniel L. DuRee." View the source and you'll see my meta title. Why is Google substituting it?

Thanks everyone. Since 301 redirects are out of the question, what I've done is found all the directories that really shouldn't be on this site at all and noindexed them. None of those pages are good for rank for anything so it doesn't matter. The client is instructing their 'customers' to get their sites off the doubleknot site and onto their own domains. Once those are moved over there will still be lots of links pointing to doubleknot and fixing them will be a nightmare because there are just too many, but I'm going to see if they can do a sitewide edit and add rel="nofollow" to each link pointing to doubleknot's irrelevent directories and also see if we can do a mass search and replace to point the links to the right domain when necessary. If there is not a pattern, that will no be possible and someone will have to do it by hand. With noindex and nofollow working for us, that might be enough

My client is a team of IT and computer science experts, and they've been advised of the problem. They're looking into ways to put their degrees to work to clean the data.

@Richard, to answer your question, their rank is terrible. That's why they called me. Their website is also not at all optimized so I'm restructuring the architecture and asking them to provide new copy. Then I'll do the standard on-site optimization. It could be that might be enough to turn things around. And then it's linkbuilding time. Time will tell. Thanks again!

I just found out my client can NOT use 301 redirects, something to do with the way their software is setup. I don't get it, but let's assume that is true.

If you do a Google query on site:www.doubleknot.com/event you'll find 64K pages, most of which are no longer in the doubleknot site and have been migrated over to the scout's own url. For example www.doubleknot.com/event/1638783 is in google's index but when you click on it, it goes to http://www.narragansettbsa.org/event/1638783. It is not using a 301 redirect to do that.

Many of those transferred scout pages retain backlinks pointing to the original page on the doubleknot.com website. So not only are those backlinks irrelevant, they would be broken except for the fact they are being redirected.

I gave them the task of cleaning those up, but now here's another question since a 301 redirect doesn't seem to be an option. I have no idea why those doubleknot.com/event pages are still in the index. Must have something to do with the fact they can't use 301s.  So let's assume they need to stay. I'm considering asking him to noindex the /event/ directory and a few others that have the same problem. Is this a smart move? I'm thinking it will clear out ten of thousands of girl scout and boy scout pages that might be clouding the waters here. If we do that though, we're still left with thousands of boy scout backlinks  pointing to old pages on their root domain unless they somehow manage to clean those all up too.

Thoughts?

Count me in too. I provide content marketing strategy for clients for both SEO and conversion optimization.

My client has thousands of clients for whom they provided websites that used to reside in a subdirectory of their own domain. They moved them to their own domains but there are tens of thousands of backlinks on those sites pointing back to the original domain. Those backlinks are completely irrelevant and are probably hurting them by sending the wrong signals to Google on what this site really is about.

My question is will the 301 redirect be enough to cleanse the relationship between my client and all their clients' sites or should I ask the client to clean up all those backlinks on their clients' sites and remove their domain from the target urls? That's a huge job, obviously.

Thanks, Alan. You confirmed what I thought. Huge problem for them to clean this up, but I don't see anyway around it.

Sorry for the slow response Christy. We never could pinpoint the problem. Since everything looked good, I asked her to give it time. Took about 6 months after the website launch, but she's back on the first page in position 2 and 3 for "LDS poems." She just kept doing everything right - writing poems and posting  in her channels. She also continues to post on Blogspot on the same day she posts on her main site. I advised her not too but it apparently doesn't matter. Google is not showing her blogpspot site in the SERPs. I added the publisher and author tags on this site and connected that to her G+ account, so maybe that helped at the time.

This client sells event management software and puts all their clients on different subdomains of their main domain. Looking in SEO tools like OSE, when I run a backlink analysis, it pulls up all the backlinks to the subdomains as well as those for the main domain. In webmaster tools when I look at queries, impressions and clicks, they get at least 30 times more traffic and impressions on keywords found in their subdomains and very few on their own.

In other words, all these tools are providing a collective analysis of main domain and all subdomains. All the backlinks and keywords recorded for those subdomains are not at all relevent to the keywords they want to rank for. For example, their software supports Boy Scouts, so keywords they rank for according to WT include merit badge, scout camp, etc., but of course, that's on the subdomain. As a result, if you were to take a snapshot of their online presence as these tools do, you would think they were a boy scout website and not a software developer if you include the subdomain, along with its PR, backlinks, keywords, etc.

So the question I have is, does Google connect all these subdomains with the main domain and then water down the main site with irrelevant keywords, content and backlinks? Or does Google see all those subdomains as completely separate and we don't need to worry or move their clients off their subdomain? I'm worried about Google assigning a "boy scout" relevancy to them. Am I wrong?  What would you do?

Mark said: "People looking through the SERPs are searching to rent an RV, while traffic from facebook is coming from RV owners who see a blog post about RVs that interests them."

Let's finish that thought.

Traffic coming from Facebook are RV owners who see a blog post about RVs. But they land on a site that rents RVs so they don't need anything. Is that true? Don't RV rental businesses also sell RVs? And don't they sell equipment? You've brought them in on a topic of interest (RVs), now you can acquaint them with your store. You already know they are your target market. That's a good thing. Your job now is to make sure your presentation is inviting. Assume they are owners (or renters). Can you put an offer on that page, perhaps a download of the best RV spots in your state, or maybe a link to a blog post that lists "10 things no RV should be without" for the owners and those happen to be the things you sell.

We're doing a lot of blogging now for an attorney client, and traffic has nearly doubled as a result. Like you, I see traffic come and go, but that is normal for blogs given the reasons mentioned in other comments here. But I'm also seeing that a percentage of those coming from Facebook are repeat visitors and that some of those visitors go to the home page, then the about page, then our main service page. That's exactly what I want. And because I'm boosting those posts in my client's local area, I'm happy because those might be his clients one day. We're building brand awareness so that when the time comes that any one of those or any one of their friends need an attorney, hopefully they'll know who to call or refer. I like to think we're priming the pump.

I think it's hard for anyone to answer without more information. My thought would be that from your subject line it appears you put a lot of weight on backlinks getting you to rank. But what kind of backlinks are they and how do they compare to the competition? If your blog post ranks and that page doesn't, maybe the backlinks you have are sending mixed signals and weakening rather than strengthening your page. And maybe your blog post is better quality content. Without more information it's hard to say.

I see that page ranking for both "student loan forgiveness" and "loan forgiveness." So it looks like you accomplished your goal but may have in the process gotten the wrong page to rank now for "loan forgiveness." Can you give us an update? What did you do? Of did Google change its mind?

Perhaps this page is cannibalizing off of the one you want: http://www.marquess-dental.co.uk/tooth-whitening-marquess-dental/ They share essential the same title tag.

also in looking at your competition, they have a very strong architecture. Search on site:www.thecosmeticdentistry.co.uk "teeth whitening" and you can see all the pages in that "directory."

This is a tough one  because you don't even have the word whitening on your home page! It's as if Google is saying, I know you're relevant but I don't know what page to show so I'll just show the home page instead. Makes no sense, but most of these home page cannibalizations make no sense either. Sure hope someone can crack this nut.

I see you on page 2 so at least you're moving up.

Here's what I would suggest. Take out clothes drying rack out of your meta title and save that for the other page. That shouldn't be there anyway. You sell "laundry equipment that is handsome and strong," and your home page supports that with wringer washers, clotheslines, clothespins, etc., and not just drying racks.

Also it appears to me that you are focusing on drying racks on your home page. Your reviews are about drying racks and you say "We are very proud of our laundry drying rack and other products." Why not just say "we are proud of our laundry equipment." If you're afraid of losing the rank you have, I wouldn't. You are on page 2 behind Target, Bed, Bath and Beyond, Amazon, etc., etc. What do you have to lose? At least test it. You can always put it back.

BTW: There is a typo in one of your reviews: "clothes frying rack." I'm not sure as it stands it's a good review.

I see this all the time with home pages cannibalizing subpages and have my own discussion going at http://moz.com/community/q/home-page-cannibal. The solution to yours seems a little more obvious than mine. Let's hope!

I was wondering if others had the same problem I have. It appears Google loves that home page too much and I'm having a difficult time getting it to rank the page I really want. And that happens if a keyword I want to rank for only appears on the home page one time with a keyword density of .1%. Take vanillaqueen.com for example. The home page ranks on the first page for "bulk vanilla beans" and not http://vanillaqueen.com/shop/category/vanilla-beans/ or http://vanillaqueen.com/five-reasons-why-buying-bulk-vanilla-makes-good-sense/

And I'll add another one that I recently took on. This is a personal injury attorney in a large city so there is a ton of competition who have been doing SEO for a very long time. (Fortunately he also does business and civil litigation law to keep the business going). Last month, according to webmaster tools, he got a couple of clicks (hey, it's something!) on "personal injury attorney [his city]" on page 2 in the SERPS, but it was his home page. http://bit.ly/1Gvumlm

**In this case I don't mind people landing on the home page, but does the fact that another page that is much better optimized for those keywords indicate a penalty on that page? And is his rank lower because the better page is not ranking and Google has to find the next best thing in the home page? **

Has anyone else experienced that and what have you done to get Google to not go home?

P.S. The law site is a huge challenge because of the competition. Any help you pros out there can offer to get this underdog out of hiding will be much appreciated. We're starting a smart, strategic content marketing plan now that I'm very excited about.

Awesome. Thanks!

Every small business client has the same thing. 5 impressions for keywords, row after row, every single month. Why exactly 5 and why month after month the same thing? I see this in every local business I work in - and for very important phrases! It's gotten to the point that I think those are fake and I just look at the impressions that have numbers great than 5. Obviously I have to get their impressions up, but what am I to believe about these?

Run an OSE report on www.schoolmatters.com/ca/san-diego/personal-injury-lawyer/. OSE redirects to brandingwithseo.com. Why? And if you go to brandingwithseo.com in your browser, it redirects to seocompany.org. Why is OSE redirecting? It appears the links that come up are a combination of links for the seo company and for schoolmatters.com.

Follow up here on how to edit White Pages. I emailed them. There response was:

Option 1:

Add all your listings with Yext: http://www.yext.com/pl/whitepages/index.html

With a Yext Powerlisting your business info will be added on WhitePages and other Yext partners such as Yelp, CitySearch, Yahoo!, MapQuest and Superpages.

Yext features:

• Enhanced photos 
• videos & special offers 
• insights into how many people view or click on your listing
• self-service implementation.

Option 2:

Contact InfoGroup

So there you go. Go through the data aggregators. Moz/Local tool is good for this.

Thanks everyone. All great advice and exactly what I'm doing and have planned. So the advice I hear here is, be patient, and tell them they need to be too!

I'm curious what you all think about this page:
http://www.beverlys.com/fabric.html The word fabric is there 71 times. I know "density" isn't supposed to matter, but over optimization does. Could that be construed as such even though there is a valid reason for those to be there?

Their top 3 competitors' fabric pages are different: 
http://www.joann.com/fabric/ 48 times
https://www.fabric.com/ 29 times
http://www.hancockfabrics.com/ 30 times

Beverlys.com used to rank on the first page for "fabric."

I'm trying to get the date of their demise, but don't have it yet so I can't pinpoint what Google update might have killed them but I can guess. In doing a backlink analysis, there were hundreds of poor quality, toxic sites pointing to them. We have carefully gone through them all and submitted a disavow request. They are now on page 9 from nowhere to be found a week ago. But, of course, that's not good enough.

They are on page 2 for "fabric online" and "quilt fabric." So Google doesn't completely hate them. But doesn't love them enough even for those terms.

Any suggestions? They are rebuilding the site to use a different ecommerce platform with new content and new structure.  They will also be incorporating the blog within the site and I've advised them on many other ways to attract traffic and backlinks. That's coming. But for now, any suggestions and help will be much appreciated. Something has got to be holding them back for that one gem of a keyword.

Also, I would like to know what experiences others have had with the disavow request form. Does Google absolutely hold you to making every attempt you can at getting those links removed? ANd how does it know? No one responds so it seems to be such a waste of time. And many now actually charge to remove your links.

Thoughts?

Thanks everyone!

Hi Ruben,

If the one is showing and it's perfectly relevant and has equally good information, then I wouldn't worry about it. But maybe you think you'll get higher rank for that location if that page ranks, and that may be true. So how do you do that?

First step I'd try is clean up the copy. In my opinion, it's overly optimized with that EXACT phrase occuring 9 times in a small amount of copy. It's unnatural. You wouldn't speak that way, so why write that way, and why would you want your readers to even see that page then? I think Google shares that sentiment. So write for consumer first, Google second.

So what do you write?  I've had success rewriting and reusing the main landing page copy, whether that be the home page, or in your case, the generic personal injury attorney landing page for pages like this. You have to consider that anyone landing on this page, assuming you get it to rank, don't have the benefit of landing on the home page and may never see your personal injury page, so you need enough good information here to get them to call. But you don't want duplicate content, so you have to make it different enough. That can be difficult, I know. How many times can you write basically the same thing?

The other option is to provide completely different content and then force them to go elsewhere in search of information about your services. I know that's contrary to logic. It's better to convert them on the spot, but if you can't because your site will have too much duplicate content, or you worry about people landing on this page and it sounding too much like another page they just came from, then make this page very different. But do understand this may be their landing page from the search engine, so be sure to have enough information at the top that tells them they are in the right place and you have what they need. Then fill the rest of the page with geo-specific information that gives you an opportunity to weave your local keywords in. You have an office there. Put your address (with schema code), phone number and map.  Perhaps you also include city-specific information that your Tampa target market might find valuable and relevant, perhaps even ways your attorneys are involved in that community or cases they've fought and won in the community.

Finally something I've had success with is thinning out content that seems to be cannibalizing other pages. In your case, you could remove the word Tampa from the page that is currently ranking and link to "Locations" instead. From there link to your city pages. Be careful though. That could have a negative effect. At least you have some rank for that page. You don't want to lose it all, but it could be something to try. But do get that Tampa page in order first. That may be all you need.

My 2 cents for what it's forth. Do let us know how it goes!

Did you notice the precipitous drop in backlinks in March?

I'm still trying to get data from her so I can get a timeline, but I bet that's it. Looks to me like some site might have taken her out of a blogroll with so many pages suddenly disappearing, but the domains also went down and continue to fall.

Thanks, Marie.

Hi Marie,

I share your concern over blogspot. She says she's been doing it for years and never had a problem, but you and I know the only thing constant about Google is change and what worked yesterday may not today. I'm trying to get her to no-index that site, but she is reluctant, so I'm looking at other things as well. To address your comment about similarity in the sites, there is very much that. Many pages are identical.

Most of her backlinks also come from the blogspot site. The answer may be in the backlinks alone. As we saw what happened with MyBlogGuest, she could be guilty by association. So looking at all the backlinks is a something we need to do as well. I didn't find that mention you did but found others. How did you get that one?

I need to add in here for the benefit of other small business owners, be careful who you hire for SEO. She bought SEO services from a very well respected web host thinking that with their good reputation, she'd get great service and great results. She got great price and great expense.

Trying to get data and dates from her now. She was not using Analytics but some other tracker software. I'll share when I get it.

Thanks for your input! - Kat

This client has a brand new site: http://www.susannoyesandersonpoems.com

Her previous site was really bad for SEO, yet at one time she actually ranked on the first page for "LDS poems." She came to me because she lost rank. I checked things out and found some shoddy SEO work by a very popular Wordpress webhoste that I will leave unnamed. If you do a backlink analysis you can see the articles and backlinks they created. But there are so few, so I'm not sure if that was it, or it just was because of the fact that her site was so poorly optimized and Google made a change, and down she fell.

Here's the only page she had on the LDS poems topic in her old site: https://web.archive.org/web/20130820161529/http://susannoyesandersonpoems.com/category/lds-poetry/ Even the links in the nav were bad as they were all images. And that ranked in position 2 I think she said.

Even with her new site, she continues to decline. In fact she is nowhere to be found for main keywords making me think there is a penalty.

To try and build rank for categories, I'm allowing google to index the category landing pages and had her write category descriptions that included keywords. We are also listing the categories on the left and linking to those category pages.   Maybe those pages are watered down by the poem excerpts?? Here's an example of a page we want to rank: http://susannoyesandersonpoems.com/category/lds-poetry/

Any help from the peanut gallery?

Just tried to correct a phone number in a listing in White Pages. Their link to edit goes to a Yext signup and there is no other way to edit the listing at all. If you click on Feedback you'll see an outdated how-to which no longer applies. So apparently, White Pages has gone to the dark side too. I'm really not happy with this Yext takeover because it appears to be trying to force small business owners into an expensive plan they don't need. (It will cost my client 2 x $499 to correct their 2 listings.) I sent Whitepages an email and asked them to either update the listings or take them down. Not sure what will come of it. And I hope Google is reading this because if consistency in NAP is as important as everyone says it is, then I want Google to know that consistency has just gotten that much harder and very expensive.

Kathy

Kurt,

Acxiom provides data to Local.com. You can see it in the fineprint at the bottom. And since local.com apparently does not let you update any of their listings directly unless you go through Yext, then my recommendation is get your information correct at Acxiom and hope the data will flow through. As for Hot Frog, I was actually able to claim that one and didn't have a problem at all.

So happy that Moz here came out with their own local search listing tool.  I recommend checking that out.

Kathy

I love Keri's response. Traffic isn't everything, just like rank isn't. My recommendation would be not to think about whether or not you're targeting the right keywords, but whether you're targeting customers. What can you put on your website to attract them? Hint: it's not keywords. Keep focused on giving them what they want. The traffic will happen naturally. And so will the keywords if you keep your focus in the right place.

Unfortunately, Taysir, it's not best practice but it works and a lot are doing it much to the chagrin of business owners who play by the rules and the SEOs who support them. As others stated here, organic SEO on local pages is what's needed. Perhaps if you post what kind of business it is, others here may give suggestions on how to optimize those.

Do people really search for red Boston Bruins hats? Or do they search for Boston Bruins hats? Frankly, as a consumer, I'd find it annoying to have to sort through that many more pages if you implemented A. But since color may be important, I'd make it a filter as AWC suggests. I'm not familiar with Shopify, so don't know if it's built in. If not, I'd build it. I'd address your last usability concern the same way - i.e., customize your software.

Personally, I don't think you need a lot on site. After you have the topic covered on your site, I'd look for opportunities off site. Since improper handling can result in injury, look for guest blog opportunities on physical therapist and chiropractor sites, sites that target businesses that actually handle material, employee benefit insurance and brokerage sites, even sites that have pages on relocation like city, realtor, and professional organizer sites. I'd also create an infographic demonstrating how to safely handle material and draw attention to it by notifying the same sites. Then create a series of videos and put them in Youtube.

Usually when we discuss duplicate content, we're addressing the topic of penalties or non-indexing. In  this case, we're discussing ranking high with duplicate content.

I've seen lots of dental, chiropractor and veterinarian sites built by companies that give them cookie cutter sites with the same copy. And they all rank #1 or #2.

Here are two companies that do that:
http://www.rampsites.com/rampsites/home_standard.asp?sectionid=4
http://mysocialpractice.com/about/

The later uses external blogs to provide inbound links to their clients' site, but not all services do that, in fact, this is the first time I've seen them with external blogs. Usually the blog with duplicate copy is ON SITE and the sites still rank #1.

Query "Why Your Smile Prefers Water Over Soft Drinks" to see duplicate content on external blogs.

Or "Remember the Mad Hatter from the childhood classic, Alice in Wonderland? Back then, the process of making hats involved using mercury compounds. Overexposure could produce symptoms referred to as being" for duplicate content on chiropractor sites that rank high.

I've seen well optimized sites rank under them even though their sites have just as much quality content and it's all original with more engagement and inbound links.

It appears to me that Google is turning a blind eye on duplicate content. Maybe because these are local businesses with local clientele it doesn't care that a chiropractor in NY has the same content as one in CA, just as the visitor doesn't care because the visitor in CA isn't look at a chiropractor's site in NY generally.

So maybe geo-targeting the site has something to do with it. As a test, I should take the same copy and put it on a non-geo-targeted site and see if it will get indexed.

I asked another Local SEO expert if she has run across this, probably the best in my opinion. She has and she finds it difficult to rank above them as well. It's almost as if Google is favoring those sites.

So the question is, should all dentists, chiropractors and veterinarians give it up to these services? I shudder to think that, but, hey it's working and it's a whole lot less work - and maybe expense - for them.

Times these are a changing guys. Google just rolled out some new Google+ Page (which is where all Google Place Pages are going) updates. Apparently you can have up to 10 categories now, but none will be custom. This, however, is in the new Google+ Page dashboard. Your existing Google Place pages will be rolled into that soon and then your categories will probably need to be updated. I don't think Google said what they're going to do with your preexisting custom categories, but I wouldn't be surprised if they just disappeared. That's their way of getting rid of all those spammy categories.

I'm actually thinking along the lines of deletion too. Like Jesse said, why not? She has a few followers over there, but she should be directing them to her site anyway. Maybe we should put up a "closed and meet us over there" sign.

Just discovered my client has been copying all her blog posts over to her wordpress.com blog account. So she has duplicate content to what is on her site. She has roughly 700 posts on her main site but doesn't look like that many on the wordpress site.

There are no inbound links coming off the wordpress site that I could find.

Here's an example:

http://thevanillaqueen.wordpress.com/2013/01/30/is-canola-oil-a-healthy-choice/

http://vanilla.com/is-canola-oil-a-healthy-choice/

What are you recommendations for what should be done?

Thanks!

Thanks guys. I should probably clarify. I do know what to do on the site itself. And I have several ideas on what to do to build inbound links( in which social will play a large part) as I realize that is their only hope of ranking. I plan to target universities that have social good programs to try and get on their radar as one example. I'll also be looking for guest blogging opportunities on related sites. And we'll also be doing Facebook campaigns. The whole site is social and is built around the concept of social good sharing. So as we get users, the buzz will happen because the system invites it. But I'm looking for ways to get Google to notice even without that happening yet.

Clearly, given that there is no content to speak of, inbound links and social shares, tweets and the likes are critical. But, given the competition and the lack of content, this is a very difficult task. Love to hear any creative ideas to do so if you have them.

We've been recommending more content, but they won't listen. So I plan to share your comments here in the form of an audit report and in the hopes of getting them to comply. If anyone has any good supporting data to prove the data, I'd love to see that as well. Thanks for backing me on the need for more content! Keep those recommendations coming! Thanks.

Wondering what you all would recommend for SEO on this site:

www.gudville.com

Most of their content is behind a login. Basically there are 5 pages open to Google and to anyone without that login, and they are not open to doing it differently at this time. Once in, there will be a lot of sharing with Facebook friends that will include invitations to join them in their causes.

Love to hear all your recommendations.

Kathy