Hey There!

Good topic! First, let me point you to this cool little tool Local SEO Guide just published: http://www.localseoguide.com/the-local-keyword-generator-tool/ It should really help with your keyword organization needs that you've mentioned.

From your post, what I understand is that your business is at a very critical moment in planning its strategy. You are so right: it is really easy to go at this wrong and end up with a redundant, duplicative site that simply doesn't do a good job of serving users. Most local businesses will need to create a strategy something like this for their website:

1. Build great basic pages (home, about, contact, testimonials, etc.)

2. Build a great page for each service the company offers.

3. Build a high quality, unique page for each city in which the business has a physical location. So, if you've got 5 physical locations, that's 5 pages.

4. Then, consider how you wish to cover all of the other cities that you serve. If you serve hundreds of cities, chances are slim that you're going to be able to create amazing content for all of them in the short term. As you've mentioned, you know you're not gunning for local pack rankings for cities in which you lack a physical location, but providing some content about them can definitely help with your organic visibility. So, typically, in this scenario, you'd be considering something along the lines of identifying maybe 10-20 most important cities where you serve but lack a physical location for, and then consider how you can create content that really shines for your work in those cities. For example, an architect physically located in San Antonio, Texas may have designed 3 building in Dallas, Texas. Even though he is not located in Dallas, he could create a wonderful page about the buildings he helped create there. In other words, you can showcase your projects in a given city, including text, photos, testimonials, links to 3rd party reviews, topical tips for that city, etc.

If a business can take this approach to its more important service cities, and then earn a few good links to those pages, they are well on their way to competing for organic visibility. They can then move out from there, perhaps mentioning some of their secondary target cities in blog posts, social media, etc.

Here are some resources I think you'll find very helpful at this critical stage of your planning:

https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages

https://moz.com/blog/local-seo-checklist

https://moz.com/blog/build-content-keyword-map-for-seo-whiteboard-friday

https://moz.com/blog/long-tail-seo-target-low-volume-keywords-whiteboard-friday

https://moz.com/blog/google-may-analyze-evaluate-quality-content-whiteboard-friday

Hope you'll enjoy these!

Hi David,

While I don't have explicit CTR data to share with you, I do believe you will like this eyetracking article:

http://connect.icrossing.co.uk/eye-tracking-experiment-google_7109

In one of the screenshots, you can see the greater heat in the local area of the page, vs. the upper organic results.

Does this help with your query?

Hi Leo,

I second Alan's very well-stated concerns on this. Google has this habit of letting things get by them for months or even years, but it's my opinion that they are quick to spot odd looking activity when they actually take the time to look. I believe what you are considering could look odd.

It's perfectly fine for a business owner to use his Places account to leave reviews of businesses with which he has enjoyed transactions, but I, personally, would steer clear of making some sort of organized, reciprocal effort out of this. In Google's dream world (and Yelp's, etc.) reviews are a spontaneous and voluntary action on the part of the customer. They are not the outcome of an organized deal. That being said, I do understand how critical reviews have become, including their number and quality, to the visible reputation and bottom line of so many businesses and it's truly tempting to team up with other business owners who are grappling with this powerful and still-relatively-new monster to give business a boost in a tough economy. In the long run, though, I think the worry probably wouldn't be worth the potential benefits. At least, it wouldn't for me.

Thanks for asking such a good question.

Hey Egol,

If for Google, yes. For others (read Yelp) this is a weird no-no. Nice to see you here today!

I find that Google's review policies are sort of normal, in that they are similar to the policies of others, but Yelp's are sometimes off in a corner by themselves. For example, here's a line from Yelp's TOS:

Violate our Content Guidelines, for example, by writing a fake or defamatory review, trading reviews with other businesses, or compensating someone or being compensated to write or remove a review;

(emphasis mine)

So, Yelp would explicitly frown on the hypothetical strategy Leo has put forward, whereas, Google is less clear on this. Interesting stuff.

Good thoughts from Roman, for sure, and a good question, Dylan.

Roman is right that formal link analysis will provide the only data-based answer to your query about which link will "do more" for you. But, in general, for local businesses, it is best to build up local relevance with local links. However, if a dental practice had a chance to be featured on the website of the ADA or something like that, then of course, you'd jump at that chance.

What you don't want to do is focus on getting backlinks from something that really doesn't relate to the geo-industry. So, for example, a dentist in Chicago doesn't really have a sensible relationship to a directory of dental providers in San Diego ... even if you could somehow get a link there, it wouldn't be very relevant.

But, in general, build up highly relevant local links, and if the chance comes up to be featured on an authoritative industry site, go for that, too.

Sounds like a good plan, Ed!

Hi Mª Verónica,

Just want to be sure I'm fully understanding the query. Your client is a job center in Dublin, and is being outranked by competitors with a higher DA. Is that right?

If I've understood correctly, and you're convinced that it's the DA-related metrics that are causing these competitors to outrank your client, then the answer would be to improve your client's DA-related metrics, too. Is there something specific you were thinking about and wanted particular advice on about improving your client's DA?

Thank you for the further details  Mª Verónica.

It is always so hard when Google moves in on a territory where we were formerly doing well. Think of how, ten years ago, individual hotels had a chance of ranking their websites fairly well with a little work. Now, Google's hotel product + all of the other hotel rental mega sites out there are about all that ranks for queries like "hotel San Francisco".

It sounds to me like what you are witnessing with the client in Dublin is the encroachment of Google into this space, and you are right to realize you can't really beat this. Based on this, and without being able to investigate your actual client, I have a couple of things to suggest:

1. There's an old saying: If you can't beat them, join them.

The client needs to become a master at posting to Google Jobs. They need to dive deep into learning how to ensure that their jobs are the ones coming up in the Google Jobs interface. I am not familiar enough with this topic to give expert advice, but here is a start: https://jobs.google.com/about/. And, if this data is being pulled from third parties like Monster or ZipRecruiter (see https://support.google.com/hire/answer/7326138?hl=en) the client needs to master inclusion on those sites.

The thing to remember is that hotels are still getting leads. It's just that less of them are likely coming from the website. They are coming through Google now. Your client may simply need to realize that their website is no longer going to be their top source of leads. Leads may have to come from other sources, now. It's a strategic shift the client likely needs to confront.

2. This does not mean the client should give up on their website. I would suggest that you conduct an audit for the client in which you take their job category searches (both their top ones and their longer tail ones) and identify all the sites outranking them for those searches. Then analyze those sites to see:

• Which ones the client can be listed on

• Which ones aren't job listing sites but might link to your client via a list, a guest article, a sponsorship or other unstructured citation opportunity.

I would consider the old concept of Barnacle SEO (https://moz.com/blog/barnacle-seo-whiteboard-friday) to see where it can get the client.

3. Finally, after taking care of everything you can do online for the client, I would advise them to evaluate their offline opportunities. If your client has a physical office in Dublin, what are the offline connections they need to make with job seekers in Dublin? What events can they sponsor, attend, speak at? Where do they need to advertise (billboards, newspapers, local radio, local TV?). What can they do on their physical premises to bring employers and job seekers into the building? Host events? Offer additional trainings and services? What would bring people in the door for a face-to-face interaction?

Google cannot replicate face-to-face communication. If your client can master the personal touch, offline, then they will be doing something Google can't rob them of, as you've said.

I hope these suggestions are of some help with creating a strategy for the client. Good luck!

Its my pleasure! I think you are evaluating this scenario correctly.

And a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you, too! Thank you so much for being part of the Moz community.

Hi William,

Agree with your summary, but do want to stress that there generally isn't a good enough reason to be running two sites and that Google finding your complete or partial NAP on more than one site is definitely BAD!

Good morning! And very good question. Definitely do add a list of your relevant services (not just a list of keywords) to the services section of your Google Business Profile. However, doing so is unlikely to impact your rank much, or that of your competitor. To find out why your competitor is smoking you, I would recommend you do a full competitive audit. Let me give you a link here with instructions of how you can do so:
https://moz.com/local-seo-guide/assessing-demand-analyzing-markets

Go to the section of this page near the bottom, entitled: Finally, assess the strengths of the top competitors in each market

Follow the instructions in that section, using the free spreadsheet it contains, for comparing your business to a competitor. This should help you identify factors which are likely to be giving them higher visibility. Hope this helps!