So EGOL just gave the best possible response to this I can think of, and I think option #4 is what your default should be, however, you also want to maximize your meta title (which is using about 60-70 characters before trailing it off). So if your post has a short title, it doesn't usually hurt to throw your company name in there to take up more of the title tag real estate.

If you are trying to optimize a service page for a local company, it can make sense to exclude the business name as it will give you more room to include your target keyword or further describe your service (I like to try to include an LSI of the main page KW if possible). Check out https://moz.com/blog/title-tag-hacks-whiteboard-friday for some solid title tag optimization hacks!

In my experience adding "Near Me" is a waste of space in a Title Tag. Google knows where the user is and can identify the intent behind the words "near me" when in a search query, and when it comes to local searches it not needed in the title. I think it would be an interesting test/case study, but I believe it is best to use those 7 characters for something else in your meta title.

Check out this awesome WBF from Cyrus Shepard for some ideas- https://moz.com/blog/title-tag-hacks-whiteboard-friday.

EGOL is correct above, keep in mind there are a ton of other factors and your competition online (those ranking highly currently) are more than likely not standing still in an SEO sense (so it is a moving target usually).

The lower the competition, the "easier" and supposed "less time" it will take to rank on page 1 of Google is a good rule of thumb. It is also incredibly important to do competitive research on those in the top 3 positions on page 1 to see how long their content is, the quality of it, and the number of quality links it has pointing to it.

Agree with Steve above. URL length is a very minimal SEO factor, to attempt to shorten them you could do an analysis of your URLs "silo structure" and see if you can get rid of unnecessary parts of the link.

For example, if you have "xyz.com/services/marketing/seo/local-seo", you can maybe cut "services" and "marketing" (and maybe even "seo" from the structure, so the URL can just be "xyz.com/local-seo", and then 301 the old URL to the new of course.

Check out this article from Search Engine Land for more info on URL Structure for SEO- https://searchengineland.com/infographic-ultimate-guide-seo-friendly-urls-249397

Great answer Alick300! I would also add that the primary keyword and secondary keywords (sometimes referred to as LSI keywords) should all work together to help the search intent of the user. Writing longer, quality content that naturally uses your primary keyword a couple times and a ton of secondary keywords that still relate to your primary is a great way to get a page ranked quicker than normal.

For example if your a handyman that wants to rank for electrician + "your city", it's helpful to talk about electrical repairs, panel installations, electrical service, house wiring, etc. integrating this secondary keywords into your page not only helps your ranking for electrician + "your city", but also electrical repairs + "your city", panel installations + "your city", etc.

Dr. Lee,

The search visibility dropping is likely due to a higher-traffic keyword phrase ranking or two dropping your website off of page 1 of Google. I am not sure what keyword phrases' rankings you are tracking with Moz Pro, but I am assuming it would be directly due to that. There is talk of a Google algorithm update going on as I write this in May 2017, but there are not many details on it yet (and Google Fred may have had an effect as well depending on when you first noticed the rankings drop). I would make sure your website content is up-to-date, and written to be helpful to your potential patients with each page having unique, non-spammy ads or duplicate content on it, and then setup Google Search Console and Google Analytics on your website, if you have not already, as this will have more specific details for you to analyze over time.

As for as the "Links" aspect of SEO, this can be a controversial topic, but generally any website wanting you to pay for a backlink, is probably not worth having a link to your website on (generally speaking). There are a lot of great directories that will help establish your new office more and aid in your NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) Listing consistency, which can help your Google Maps rankings. Think BBB, Yelp, Healthgrades, Angieslist, etc. (Moz Local is a great tool for checking this). Having a monthly blog post on your website with relevant topics and helpful content is also a great way to increase your Search Visibility. Here is also a great guide by Brian Dean on Link Building in 2017- http://backlinko.com/link-building. Hope this helps and best of success!

#2 looks the best in my opinion. I think the pink heart on #3 adds some personality too your logo.

Hi Zach, this is a tough one to give a straight answer or solution to, from what I'm reading it looks like it was more than likely Fred Update related. The spammy backlinks are concerning though as well, in theory those links should just be ignored by Google now, instead of having a negative impact on your rankings, I would check that the website also did not lose any good links in the last couple months as well (ahrefs should show this). Not sure what kind of website this is for, but make sure the product pages and homepage are not too "ad-heavy" or "affilate-heavy" (Amazon etc.) as well, as penalizing these types of websites was part of the Google Fred Update also.

If I were in your shoes, I would use the disavow tool from Google with the really spammy, low quality links, just to be safe (as well as try to regain any good backlinks that have been last the past few months). Also, continue doing your product pages updates and optimizing potential landing pages for the website with unique titles and meta descriptions, remove some ads (if your client's website has them) and then use the Fetch and Render tool in Google Search Console and request re-indexing of the website.

Agree with George, quality over quantity is whats important. With that being said, the more pages you have the more keywords you can potentially target from your website, so while keeping the content quality high, you want to have a decent amount of pages that are each optimized for different keyword phrases that you want to rank for.

I have seen this before and and a good way to help google index the new URL is to use Google Search Console. Once you have verified your website in Search Console (is you haven't already), go to the Fetch and Render section, and then imput the new URL and once it is done Fetching and Rendering, push the Request to index button. This should help Google index the new URL faster.