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Hey Colin,

Thanks for your reply, glad to know I'm not totally alone on this. The client has been pretty frustrated with Dex in general. Dex set up all of their PPC ads to link to these extraneous domains instead of the one actually owned by my client, who wasn't even aware of those extra sites until she found one by accident.

Dex and other similar websites seem desperate, saying pretty much anything to retain clients.

Thanks!

Tyler

Hello Moz-ers!

Have a question for the community that I'd like some feedback on, here is the situation

• My client owns a local business, which has a website that we built for them last year.
• Rankings and traffic have been great, and they're doing well in a competitive market.
• This client also works with Dex Media, who manages some of the marketing for this business.
• In this effort Dex has purchased a few variations of the branded domain names, and has placed landing pages at these URL's with basic information, phone number, etc. Seems like a standard page for one of these sites.
• These sites have different phone numbers, used for tracking leads from those particular pages.

To me, these seem totally unnecessary and also as though it could be something pulling visitors away from the main website, which details all of their services, etc. It also seems like it could pretty easily confuse or frustrate potential visitors with the 4 similar domain names, each with different numbers of the same business.

I told the client that I thought this might be the case, and at the very least they should ask Dex about acquiring ownership of those extra domains containing their brand in addition to seeing if they would be able to just redirect those URLs to the main domain.

They responded by saying that Google doesn't care about any of this, citing this article:

https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/2643759?hl=en#

To me, that support link appears to not address the issue at hand, as it focuses mainly on proxy URL's being used giving the example of proxy.example.com

Can anyone weigh in here with an opinion? Is there any reason to think that these extra domains would not have a potential negative impact on client traffic/rank for the main domain?

Thanks!

Tyler

Thanks for getting back to me Peter. I think that my question didn't come out clear, sorry! I've attached an image of the issue I'm seeing.

Basically, SEOMoz gives one ranking, then tells me another when I hover over the local dot. I didn't mean there was a discrepancy between what SEOMoz gives, and what  I find when running queries.

Maybe the picture will better demonstrate. Sorry, I removed the names because this is for a client.

Thanks again,

Tyler

Si4oO5m

Hello Moz-world!

I recently set up a new campaign, and the crawl is still in the process of wrapping up (been 4 days). When I look at my rankings it tells me "not in the top 50" then when I scroll over, it shows me that my client is ranking in position 3, in the instance of one keyword.

Anyone know why there is a discrepancy between what the report shows, and what it shows when you mouse over the rankings?

Thanks!

Tyler

I said the same thing! I couldn't figure out why it wasn't the default either. We've had the blog up since before I worked for my current company, and so there were a bunch of duplicate pages I'm trying to fix now... frustrating!

Best of luck,

Tyler

Hey!

I was just looking into this same issue for myself, and I figured I'd share the URL from Yoast that ended up answering most of my questions. It's in section 3, gives you some solutions to the duplicate page issue.

Hope this helps,

Tyler

Hi Greg,

Thank you for taking the time to help me out! I'm encouraging more clients to integrate blogs with the websites that we build for them, but the tricky part is getting the client to provide content.

In some instances my company will write and manage these postings (we work in specific niches so we have solid content writers), but this is at an extra cost to the clients. Most of my clients see themselves as too busy to write a blog post, but I'm trying to emphasize the importance.

The guest blog posting is a great idea too, as I'm thinking that getting content for a guest blog post would actually be easier than having them run their own blog.

Local citations are pretty big for the niche we're working in, so this may be where I'm directing most of my energy.

Thanks for the helping out a local SEO greenhorn, I'm always working to get better at this

Oops, accidentally duplicated my response!

Hi All,

Looking for some help with where to begin link building for local small businesses. If the website is leading to a lawyer, doctor, or any type of professional service, I'm at a loss on where to start.

I've tried looking into local directories, and I also know that if one of the clients has a reason for being linked in an online news article, those links should be pursued. Additionally, I've gone and helped to claim all local listings, and submitted to DMOZ and a few other directories.

So if the website is just leading to a business that isn't running any events or specials worth writing about, what is the best way to acquire links?

Thank you!

Tyler

Hi Dana,

Thanks for the reply! You are correct in that I'm not directly employed by these clients. I'm guessing our best option would just be using a similar base, and reworking the content enough as to differentiate.

The difficult part comes when all the locations will offer the same services. We'll just be tasked with coming up with new ways to say the same things. Home/About Us wouldn't be tricky because that makes unique content creation a bit easier.

Thank you for your quick reply!

Hello All!

Newbie here, so I'm working through some of my questions I do have two major question regarding duplicate content:

_Say a medical hospital has 4 locations, and chooses to create 4 separate websites. Each website would have the same design, but different NAP, and contact info, etc. Essentially, we'd be looking at creating their own branded template. _

My question 1.) If the hospitals all offer similar services, with roughly the same nav, does it make sense to have multiple websites? I figure this makes the most sense in terms of optimizing for their differing locations.

2.) If the hospital owns the content on the first site, I'm assuming it is still necessary to change it duplicates for the other properties? Or is it possible to differentiate between the duplication of owned content from other instances of content duplication?

Everyone has been fantastic here so far, looking forward to some feedback!

Perfect! Thank you so much for your input. Trying my best to ensure that I'm learning inline with best practices

Help much appreciated!

Thank you for taking the time to reply. I've actually read a bit of Linda's posting so I really should have checked there also!  Still trying to get a hang of all of this, and wading through conflicting information can sometimes make things difficult.

So you are thinking I shouldn't include the title of the page itself within the title tag?

Hi All,

Still working on my title tag usage for local SEO, and I was hoping for some more feedback.

My question is this:

In Local SEO titles, I'm using location + keyword combinations, unique on each page. However, since each page has a specific title for the client, I figure I should be placing that at the front. My thought here was that this helps with the overall usability to the reader of the website.

Ex. Contact Us page for Pizza shop

Contact Us | Springfield IN Gourmet Pizza | Moe's Italian Pizza

Anyone have thoughts on this one?

Thank you!

Hmm. Yeah, I was planning on diversifying the keywords on each of the pages, using phrases that are getting traffic for a particular area.

There seems to be a lack of well-established "best practices" for local SEO title tags, and this is something I've been trying to nail down for a couple of months. I hear that geo modifiers should go before any keywords, are you suggesting maybe this isn't the best approach?

Contact Us - Springfield IN Dentistry | Springfield Dental Care Experts

Dental Surgery - Springfield IN Dental Surgery | Springfield Dental Care Experts

Thanks!

Hi Everyone!

A bit of a greenhorn SEO here, and I'm trying to learn a bit more about some of the best practices in local SEO. I'm wondering if anyone can help me with the following scenario:

Business: Dental Care & Surgery

Location: Springfield IN

Name: Springfield Dental Care Experts (example)

Website: 18 content pages, pages dedicated to each service

Since there are 18 pages to work with, there are plenty of places for us to mix-up the title tags. However, I am still unclear as to what the best way would be to do this. I understand that the Geo-modifiers should go at the front, and that the brand name is considered optional.

Would tags such as this make sense?

Springfield IN Dentist | Springfield Dental Care Experts

Nearby town

Mountainview IN Dental Care | Springfield Dental Care Experts

Last question:

The website has pages for each of the services offered by the dentist, ex: Dental Cleanings, Consultations, Fillings, Surgery, etc. Should each of the pages be included in the title tag?

Springfield IN Dentist | Springfield Dental Care Experts - Dental Surgery

My concern is that buy adding this, the title tag would be too long.

Thank you for taking the time to read and respond!