Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Kevin,

I agree with Patrick that you're at Google's mercy.  The one correlation that we have noticed is that sites appearing in the answer box are typically in the first 5 SERP results for the question you are answering.  If your site isn't in the top 5 yet, I'd work on some internal & external link building to get it there.

Good luck! 
Adam

Before you get into the GA stuff, focus on fixing the core site architecture.  Use htaccess rules to force your website to only render a single version of your http, https, www, non-www versions.  You can either pick a favorite, or do a google search for the website name and see which version Google prioritizes and go with that.  Of course https is always recommended over just http.

Now that your site has a preferred version that the server forces it to, modify your existing Google Analytics profile to match just that version.  This way you can keep all your GA history.

Search console is a bit weird in that it may ask you to verify both the www and non-www versions of the website, which is recommended since subdomains can be different sites.  You can then set the preferred version in Search Console.

Hope that helps!

Adam
https://odd.dog

Hi Stacy,

I feel your pain here as it feels ridiculous to create a ton of pages to target services + locations.  What is the point of creating:

Construction CPA + Location 1
Construction CPA + Location 2
Construction CPA + Location 3
Construction Accountant + Location 1
Construction Accountant + Location 2
etc.

Unfortunately we typically see that content is king here, so creating all of these page combinations will help your rankings based on today's google algorithms.  I struggle with this as it often feels a bit spammy, but it works for now.  Site architecture is important to keep it all organized.

The future is heading toward properly implemented Schema where you could indicate your Services, your Locations and then indicate which Services each location offers.

Of course the BEST thing to do is to have physical locations in each city you want to optimize for as these keywords typically display localized content.  Do your Local SEO campaigns on each location and get those reviews up!

Hope that is of some help.

Adam Broetje
Odd Dog Media

Thanks! Yeah site was set up not that long ago, but is a great example of why IT Departments should never be trusted to build websites.

I'm just trying to figure out what's even possible on the current platform.