Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I am not entirely pleased with my website's name and have been willing to change it for years. I feel it is not brand-able.

But since its an old domain name and overall figures of DA, PR, Moz score etc. are very good, I have been wary of changing the name and doing a 301 permanent re-direct from the existing name to the new one.

Please suggest me if I should go for it. If yes, what are the best practices to go about it.

Hi Miriam.

I agree with  your gut feeling. What is wrong is wrong and one should not play games falsify facts and present them as true.... not at least with Google. They are smarter than everybody of us out here.

I'll stick with the following tactic:

• Find a person or a partner in these countries who is ready to genuinely partner with me... or at least is willing to take calls, talk to leads and direct them to me. A local listing will be created for this/these guy/guys when we have genuine NAPs.

• Focus on organically promoting my website for these locations without local listings.

Thanks for your help everybody.

KS__

Will it be fine if I add my friends' residential addresses in multiple cities across Country A in Google Places and buy toll free numbers for each of these addresses/cities? So all locations will have different NAP.

Sitting in Country A I want to see how much traffic a particular keyword receives in Country B. Whats the best way to do it?

Also, will the search results differ if I am analyzing the above sitting in Country A viz-a-viz Country B. In other words, will the IP of the country I am making the search from play a role in the results?

Thanks Miriam.

Here are my answers:

1. Are we talking about other countries ... or maybe other counties? I want to be sure I'm understanding if the business is national or international.

Other countries, not counties.

2. Are you meeting face-to-face with customers in the various cities and countries? Can you describe this in as much detail as possible?

No personal contact. I have international numbers listed on the website, so they just give me a call (I use VOIP and Magic Jack) or fill up the form. The conversation begins there.

Hope that answers you.

Thanks for all the help John.

Awesome links Patrick. Thanks.

Thanks Miriam. Waiting eagerly.

Ok. www.mywebsite.com/chicago is better or www.chicago.mywebsite.com? The only negative with the latter is that all pages (FAQ, How it works etc.) within the sub-domain website will have to be re-done with fresh new content while in the first option there's only one page for the location while other pages like FAQ etc stay the same for the root website as well location specific pages.

What say?

Great help Miriam.

Since it has been a couple of since you typed this answer, does it still hold true and 2015? I posted a similar query on http://moz.com/community/q/how-to-rank-for-a-location-country-without-having-a-physical-address-in-that-location-country#reply_297693. Will be great if you could help me out there.

So if I want the website to rate well in Chicago, California and New York, the pages that I should create will be www.mywebsite.com/chicago, www.mywebsite.com/california and www.mywebsite.com/new-york. Is that right?

And when I'm done with that, I have to build location specific links like ' <keyword>in Chicago', ' <keyword>California' etc.?</keyword></keyword>

How do I go about it if my physical address (office) is in Country A but I want to rank my website in Country B, C and D (without having an office or physical address in the countries B, C and D)?

I am aware of people setting up virtual offices in other countries/cities and adding them to Google Places/Maps with toll free phone numbers, but I don't wish to do any of that. I know Google will catch up with this one day or the other and punish me hard for trying to play games with it.

Is there a way rank a website in another country without actually having a physical location there? If yes, please guide me how to go about it.

Thanks Miriam. You are as good as it can get!

I just came across your post on http://www.seomoz.org/q/local-websites-for-raking-in-google-places and that was very helpful indeed too.

Thanks for all the help. I'll get back to you if I need further help.

Hi Miriam. I read a lot of resources on Local SEO and found your above description to be very comprehensive and includes almost all details. So I'll stop running elsewhere and stick to you for further queries

1. Should I give a lot of weightage to Directory and Classified submissions for  Local SEO?

2. IF yes, I read that it is important to make submissions in area specific Directory and Classified sites? Is that true? If yes, how can I find area specific Directory and Classified sites?

3. Should I follow this up with Organic SEO?

4. This question is very important. What are LOCAL SEO RESULTS? Does it mean results that will be presented when somebody in Calgary, Canada search for  "palliative care"

or

Does it mean the results that Google will display when somebody searches for "palliative care calgary" from anywhere across the globe?

I am new to Google Local and just bagged a project. Can somebody guide me how to go about it.

Is Google Local all about listing the business in Directory and Classified sites with complete address and profile?

Any help will be highly appreciated.

Thanks for the awesome write up Miriam. I will bring all your suggestions into action later today/tomorrow and get back to you if I have more queries. I am sure you will help:)

Thanks for the help.

So the updated keywords should be:

palliative care calgary
home health care calgary
home care calgary
respite care calgary
senior care calgary

Is that right?

Can you suggest me how to go about 'local business listing'? I have never tried that earlier. Any good resource that you can direct me to which can help me do it?

I am doing SEO for a client in Canada.

A few of his keywords are:

palliative care
home health care
home care
respite care
senior care

He wants to attract vistors only from Calgary specifically, not Canada wide.

What should I do to optimize his website only for Calgary region? Should I add the word 'Calgary' to all his keywords?

okay so since a Canadian host will help in SEOing the website for the Canadian market, you suggest it makes sense to go for a Canadian host rather than a US host where the .com site sits.

Cool. Definitely  makes sense. Thanks for the suggestion.

Both the sites (.com and .ca) will have entirely different content. Only the portfolio will remain same, but they are already nofollow links.

Thus except the name and design everything else will be quite different in both the websites.

Even then you suggest not to host them on the same IPs?

My website is www.eyeforweb.com and we are going to launch www.eyeforweb.ca soon. Should we do so on the same server (same IP address) or choose a different one so that Google doesn't notice same IP address for two sites?

I want to understand what are Wiki Contextual Links and how are they helpful for SEO.  I hear google likes them. Is that true?

Thanks for all the help Anton and Tommy. We were able to resolve the issues with help from both of you.

wow the link you gave is the exact problem we are facing. Thanks a tonne. I will get back to  you when the issue is resolved, or even if it is not.

My client Steven Prigge in US too see the same issue

When I search for 'STEVEN PRIGGE' in google, the first two search results are for the website www.StevenPrigge.com and www.StevenPrigge.com/aboug/bio/ respecitively.

When I click on either of them, I get directed to a website  http://monkeyball.osa.pl/?said=3333g&q=

We developed this website www.stevenprigge.com

When you search for STEVEN PRIGGE in google, the first listing you get is for  www.stevenprigge.com, but when you click on it it takes you to some other website.

Can somebody tell me why is this happening?

thanks for the great explanation Alan.

I hope I am able to convince my client

gocha.

So the more specific you are, the more likely are you to get results with site links.

yeah?

If you search for CISCO on your GOogle, you will get an elaborate listing like that. I tested it and it happens.

How does that work?

So you mean this is beyond our control?

Google, through IP or whatever way recognizes if we are watching our own website or some other. If we are watching our own website that it gives results like these.

Yeah?

Sorry I have added the image now.

Please see the attached image.

My question : How can I have such results showing for my own website? I mean what should I do to make this happen?

3ZQfr.jpg

Thanks Keri. I will do so right now.

I have been actively looking at the option of guest blog. Can you help me with where to start? I need help with finding blogs that allow guest blogs, or how to approach them etc

Are they really important?

Many preach they are, and there are tonnes of services out there who give you thousands of forum profile links in no time.

I strictly believe in genuine links built the hard way, and definitely don't want to get into anything which is black hat.

Please suggest if building several Forum Profile Links is an appropriate way of building links?

Thanks for the response Ryan and Keri.

I am new to the world of SEO so didn't know this is considered to be black hat. When I entered this industry, I made a promise to myself to follow only and only white hat practices. Thanks for giving me an insight here.

Are forum / web 2.0 profile links creation a part of Black Hat or using softwares to create them is considered to be black hat.

Please help me out here and I'll do as you suggest.

Can somebody suggest me good softwares for :

1. Forum profile Creation

2. Web 2.0 profile creation

Thanks,

KS__

Thanks for the awesome comments Cyrus.

So what you suggest is going slow and develop solid, long term and genuine links by commenting to blog posts in the same niche, good quality PR submissions. good quality Article submissions and making relevant form posts?

Would you like to add something to the above list?

Thanks Herald.

Please reply to my query regarding Profile Links and Web2.0 Links later down on this page.

What about Profile Links and Web2.0 Links. They say its good to create 100+ profile links every month with appropriate keywords (while SEOing a website). Some say Profile links are better than Form Links or Blog Comments.

If I use services to create them, most of the links turn out to be on not-so-good Websites. But they say at the end of the day its about Backlinks.

My question is: Isn't Google smart enough to detect such practices?

In other word: Do profile links really help?

Hmmm useful tips. Thanks.

How about submitting those pages (URLs) to Linklecious or Pingomatic so they are crawled by Google?

Would that help?

Yup we always do make sure they are DO FOLLOW classified or directory sites.

Thanks for the help. So basically we should continue with them right?

Are directory submissions and Classified Submissions still a good way to create backlinks?

Or they are obsolete methods and should be discontinued?

Does using a service like linklicious.me help? Is it recommended?

Please teach me the 'automatization' thing too. I'll be obliged :))

Ok So what I do is... whenever I create a backlink, I should submit the URL to a RSS website like http://www.5z5.com/Suggest-A-Feed/ . Yeah?

Thanks

I want to understand 'in detail' how (2) is done. i.e.  Submit your RSS feeds to a RSS Directory, that they save your feed and put a link for you

Can you please help me learn the technique?

HI Andrew.

I have two more open queries on http://www.seomoz.org/q/rss-feeds#post-68299 and http://www.seomoz.org/q/linklicious-and-crawl-rates. Please help me out there

Thanks,

KS__