Welcome to the Q&A Forum

PatrickDelehanty

Hi Oliver

Take a look at the following articles from Moz:
Getting hreflang Right: Examples and Insights for International SEO

You can add a title to your hreflang attribute:
title="CNN Mexico" type="text/html"/>

I would also note that your tags don't have a " />" at the end of it - add that. Also, switch href="" and hreflang="" in your attributes - if anything for best practices.

If for some reason these don't fix your meta description as well, I would check and make sure that your Australian site has a different meta description in place.

Here are a couple of more resources for you:
Hreflang Tag Best Practices (Moz)
Using the Correct Hreflang Tag: A New Generator Tool (Moz)

Let me know if these help! Good luck!

PatrickDelehanty

Hi Cole

Thanks for posting these. My opinion - it's the same content on all of these pages...

https://example.com/website-designer-alexandria-la/
https://example.com/website-designer-baton-rouge-la/
https://example.com/website-designer-lake-charles-la/
https://example.com/website-designer-new-orleans-la/

So while you may do service in these areas, you're better off finding local listings and opportunities to promote your business in those areas. Maybe find Chamber of Commerce opportunities or something along those lines. You're also look specifically at Lousiana, so I would focus more at the level and mention throughout the site (without overdoing it) that you service particular areas if that's the case. If it's the whole state, there's no real need to do that.

Those are my suggestions. These pages don't provide any value and can be considered spammy and overoptimizing. You're better off looking at citation and listing opportunities and focusing at the state level rather than building out pages for cities. Does that all make sense?

Take a look at these:
Local Learning Center (Moz)
Local SEO (Moz)
Moz Academy (Moz - focus on Local section)
On-Page Factors (Moz)
Best Practices for URLs (Moz)

Let me know if you have any more questions or comments. Good luck!

Edited: Links changed at request of OP.

PatrickDelehanty

Hi there

Here's how I would approach it: become active in the groups that you are looking into. Get involved in the discussions, answer questions, provide real value to those that you are interacting. Build up a rapport with the other members of that group.

In time, ask the moderators / owners of that group if it's okay to share your company's page on the group board and ask members to follow. Incentivize them to follow your company - what value will they get out of following? What do you offer as a company that no one else offers? Make them WANT to follow you.

Now, the reason I say to ask a moderator or owner of a group, is because a lot of times groups aren't meant for pitching your company. So you're better off asking the moderator their rules on the subject and why you want to share. That will be much more appreciated than blasting a page with your company's links.

Beyond that, when you share company content in a group, try sharing the company's FB post in the group. You should be able to do this by clicking "Share" on your company's FB post, selecting to post as yourself, and be able to share in a group from the dropdown where it says "Share on your own timeline". But again, make sure it's valuable, and not just strictly to get likes. Ultimately, yes, you are trying to get likes and users, but it has to be relevant and natural. Not desperate.

Hope this helps! Let me know if this helps! Good luck!
Patrick

PatrickDelehanty

Hi Jonathan

Not really. Some say it shortens load times because it shortens code on the page, but that's minimal. I am looking at it from the standpoint of if you ever change your domain or URL structure, you don't have to go through the tedious task of manually changing internal links.

Does that make sense?

PatrickDelehanty

Hi there

Honestly, you don't have to update these. Google said it's not worth it. If your migration and redirects from http to https are set up properly, you should be all good.

Hope this helps, let me know if it doesn't, good luck!
Patrick

PatrickDelehanty

Hi there

You can try these tools from Google and Yandex to help see if your code is correct. Keep in mind that sometimes different itemprops are children of other itemprops. It can get confusing, but these tools will help guide you.

Hope these help! Good luck!

PatrickDelehanty

Hi Justin

This is a great question. This is going to take a little bit of leg work on your end. Here are the steps I would take:

Create the blog on your site
Do some research
What information is missing in your industry?
What are users actively searching for?
Where are they currently participating in conversation?
What language do they use in search and those discussions?
How do they digest their content?
Here's a quick resource on content gap analysis from Edge Multimedia
Take advantage of great tools like Open Site Explorer and SEMRush to get a handle on your competition and what's working / not working for them
Build out content on the site based on your research
Mind your obvious onsite SEO fundamentals (titles / meta descriptions / schema / content length and language / etc.)
Lay your site architecture out in an easy to use / understand fashion
Repurpose content through video / images / guides / e-books / how-tos / etc
Take advantage of internal site search functionality
What are users searching for on your site?
Distribute that content through social platforms / industry blogs / email marketing
Participate in the discussions that are happening in your industry
Social
You could take advantage of features like Twitter's Advanced Search and start fielding questions
News sites
Industry forums
Q&As

What I am getting at here is to start building a foundation and engaging your audience. Really start diving in on getting your name and website out there. Start building content that is information based about your industry that users will actually have a use for and keep coming back for more.

From there, you can entice writers by showcasing stats about your site, your community presence, what it is that differentiates YOU from your competitors (you did the research, you have great content in different types, you provide people with answers and they value you for it), and why becoming a contributor to their site will ultimately heighten their own presence.

I would also look into some contributor opportunities for yourself to get your name out there as well as your site. If you start engaging people in different areas by contributing, they are going to be interested in who you are and what you have to offer. Also, start engaging the contributors you are interested in (in a natural, friendly way of course - do NOT ask them for anything in your first interaction). What do they write about? Do they have the same passions you do? Comment on their articles, shoot them an email to say hi, etc...Don't be shy!

Hopefully this helps. Again, this is going to take some time, but take the steps listed above and you will find yourself in a position to approach those writers about joining in on contributing to your website. Good luck!

PatrickDelehanty

Hi there!

Just follow the steps in this FAQ from Facebook. That should get you where you need to go!

Hope this helps - if not, let me know! Good luck!
Patrick

PatrickDelehanty

Hi Justin

From the sounds of things, you have no where to go but up, honestly.

You've listed the following:

More valuable content (FANTASTIC!)
Updating title and meta tags (FANTASTIC!)
Yes, they do matter
Title tags are one of your most important (if not, THE most important) onsite SEO ranking factors
Meta descriptions, while not a ranking factor, are a great "first pitch" to searchers and can increase CTR - use them

Are these 3 top level domains going to be all the same content? Or are they going to be their own standalone sites? I would be extremely mindful in that situation as you could run into a major duplicate content issue. Mind your canonical tags as well as (possibly) "original-source" meta tags if necessary.

Hope this helps you, let me know if you have any questions, but it sounds like you are making some good moves here. Good luck!!!

PatrickDelehanty

Hi again,

I misread your question - I see you followed the 10x better aspect, but I am still confused as to the 5 to 10k words per blog post. Are you saying that more words equal better content? That's not necessarily true - if something can be said in 300 words, say it in 300. If something needs 1,000, say it in 1,000.

There's no ideal length to content so long as it is written in a natural and organic fashion, not stuffing keywords and queries into the mix for the sake of doing so. Don't over optimize and write for the user - search engines can tell if you are trying to over optimize.

Let me know - would love to help! Sorry for my confusion!

PatrickDelehanty

Hi there

Emmett - do not noindex. Use a canonical tag on these tagged pages - you can learn more here.

You can also categorize parameters in Google Webmaster Tools.

Hope this helps a bit!

PatrickDelehanty

Hi there

I agree, the best way to get "mentions" is to create content that engages your audience. I actually answered a question similar to this recently, I suggest you check it out as it contains a lot of great resources and ideas.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

PatrickDelehanty

Hi there

If you're still seeing Canada rankings and you haven't switched off the targeting, I wouldn't worry too much about it. You won't hurt anything by turning it off, but if nothing has changed and you're still seeing your old site's rankings in Canada, I wouldn't worry too much about it. You can always experiment and see what happens turning off the targeting; track carefully and keep an eye on rankings. If something goes wrong (which I highly doubt it will), switch it back. Either way, you should be fine!

Hope this helps! Good luck!

PatrickDelehanty

Hi there

I would say that most of this list still stands. A couple of things I would point out:

Anchor text - Try and steer clear of exact match anchor text. It can trip spam filters if you have too much of that going on in your backlink profile. Try to make more use of branded anchor text. You can read more here.

nofollow links - Don't disregard links because they are nofollow. They can be valuable and important, especially if that link is relevant to your business and helps expands your visibility to your audience. There's a great article here about nofollow.

PageRank - Google doesn't update this metric anymore. You can read more here. There are metrics elsewhere via OSE and more below that I list that you can find just as useful.

All in all - the best way to define a bad link is to use your own intuition and common sense:

Does this link help my website?
Is this link relevant to my website?
Would I trust this site (that's linking to me) if I landed on it?
Is the website or content in which I am being linked from topically relevant to my website?
If you check metrics - does anything about the metrics (domain authority, page authority, Majestic, SEMRush traffic/ranking data, etc) make me feel uneasy?

Truthfully though, if you're asking that many questions about a link and still going, it's probably not a good link. A good link, in my opinion, is one when you see it, you just know that's a link that you want and that you can greatly benefit from with no hidden or false intentions. No need for tools - unless it's citation building like Moz Local or Whitespark. Those can be helpful!

This list from Rand is still helpful though and interesting. Hope this helps! Good luck!

PatrickDelehanty

Hi there

I wouldn't be too concerned with this as sometimes it could just be a mistake. You have links to your social profiles, but I do not see an email address.

I am interested to see what others say here. Hope this helps!

PatrickDelehanty

Hi Emmett

For each product, do URLs look something like this when it comes to tags...
www.example.com/products/blue-lowrise-skinny-jeans
www.example.com/collections/frontpage/blue-lowrise-skinny-jeans
www.example.com/clothing/womens/blue-lowrise-skinny-jeans

If that's the case, you will want to put a canonical tag on these pages for the page you want to appear in search and rank. The reason you are doing so is because you have three different URLs for the same product. You want search engines to know this is not duplicate content.

Does this make sense? Or am I not following along correctly? Let me know, as I would love to get you where you need to be! Thanks!

PatrickDelehanty

Hi there

We use both presentations (which we call a "capabilities deck" to showcase our services / products / awesomeness) and then a proposal if our sales process / capabilities decks impress them enough to want a proposal.

One thing I like to do with capabilities decks is to limit the amount of text or visuals to keep conversations open and allow for more discussion about what issues the clients are facing, why they want our services, and what their business goals ultimately are. We have found that these discussions are important to have before sending over a proposal because a lot of times potential clients may request services that are not applicable or relevant to their actual needs, and it saves everyone a lot of headaches down the road. It also helps us understand better what we can / can't do, which we take into consideration when developing our proposals.

Hope this makes sense! Good luck!
P

PatrickDelehanty

Hi Eva

Check out hreflang attributes. This should help you out! Here's another resource from Search Engine Watch.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments! Good luck!

PatrickDelehanty

Hi Justin

I am not entirely sure I am following, but are you worried about your staff appearing on multiple categories? From what I can, that's not an issue - you have unique content to the page and service. The list of psychics shouldn't be an issue.

I would check your canonical tag situation, though. I noticed the site doesn't have any, just a heads up.

Also, your non www. URLs don't work - here is an example.

Let me know if I am understanding!

PatrickDelehanty

Hi there

Simply put - get content on your mobile site or make your site responsive. There's no hope in ranking if there is nothing there.

Resources:
Mobile Optimization (Moz)
Succeeding With Mobile Content (SEJ)
Mobile SEO (Moz)
How to Create a Mobilte-First Content Marketing Strategy (CMI)
5 Ways to Publish Content on Mobile and Grow Your Brand (CMI)

Hope this helps! Good luck!

PatrickDelehanty

Hi Emmett

Could you shoot me a private message and let me take a look? I think I am following what you're saying, but without a real life example, I don't know how much help I can be. I still stand by canonicalizing your main product pages, in my example...

www.example.com/products/blue-lowrise-skinny-jeans

...for the other two pages...

www.example.com/collections/frontpage/blue-lowrise-skinny-jeans
www.example.com/clothing/womens/blue-lowrise-skinny-jeans

So, these two pages above would have...

...in their . But again, if you could pass me a link or URL, I can see what's going on and be of more assistance!

Hope this will help you a bit better! Thanks so much!

PatrickDelehanty

Hey Rand

Didn't even see you posted this! Thanks for the insights, this was all great stuff, man! Sending it to our office now for a quick digest.

Thanks again,
P

PatrickDelehanty

Hi Justin

I honestly do not know - I am not a web developer and can't speak to your question here. I am just going based on this looks a little odd to me and different than the best practices format.

Sorry I can't be of more help to this particular question!

PatrickDelehanty

Hi Justin

When it comes to canonical tags, it's a best practice. I just like to apply them so that each page "owns" the content on that page in the eyes of the search engine. Especially when some content is on more than page, like a portion of your staff's profiles - I would definitely put a canonical tag on the psychic's profile pages since some of their bios appear on other pages.

The reason I brought up the non www. URL is because if for some reason someone links to the non www. version of your site or a page on your site, it's going to return a 404 error like you are seeing. You'll notice that if you goto http://www.zenory.com/profile/psychic-ginny it automatically redirects to where it is supposed to go. This is just to cover your bases in case there is a linking error somewhere.

Since your site is using "www." - I would use that version. You'll see under Set Your Preferred Domain in Google Webmaster Tools that they recommend staying consistent in your preferred domain and how your site is set up.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions or comments! Good luck!

PatrickDelehanty

Hey there

You're going to get a lot of self promotion potentially here from members.

I recommend looking at Moz's recommended list here: http://moz.com/community/recommended

PatrickDelehanty

Hi there

If these files are no longer relevant and have no where to go on the new site - make sure these files and pages have a custom 404.

Here are some suggestions on what to put on your custom 404.

You can also list these pages in your robots.txt file.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you need anything else - good luck!

PatrickDelehanty

Hey Roberto

This is a great point about the barriers to entry for startups and new businesses. I also really like your points about most funding vs most value, that's definitely a huge consideration here and I think one that a lot of people haven't really considered (myself included) about the repercussions of this repeal.

You did great with your points - there is no right or wrong, just wanted the community insights and get the discussion going! Thanks for your thoughtful response!
P

PatrickDelehanty

Hi Justin

Tom raises a lot of great points here - if you are doing well for the areas you are targeting, let the good times roll and keep doing what you're doing, you're in a great position! Keep it up!

Did you take advantage of the country targeting for each site and hreflang tags / language tags that were mentioned in previous Q+As of yours?

Congrats on your hardwork so far! Good luck!

PatrickDelehanty

Hi Aman

I would consider this a good problem to have actually - you're doing a good job of topic association in Google's mind and have multiple pages that cater to a specific query or keyword - good job on you and your team! Take a look at this Whiteboard Friday on topics, as well as this fantastic post from Kate Morris.

I would start looking at your website as a funnel and taking a look at your calls to action and internal links depending on the content for those pages that are ranking. Based on the content of that page, what's the logical next step for your users and potential customers? Where in the funnel does this particular page fall?

You can see why a. it's a good thing that multiple pages rank and b. why it's important that there is a logical next step.

I wrote some thoughts about your site and content being structured like a funnel so that users can find the next logical step.

So, again, while two different pages appear, there are opportunities based on the content to keep users moving. This isn't a bad thing - the fact two pages are appearing means that your site is valuable to different queries for Google. Take it as a compliment!

Let me know if you have any questions or comments - good luck!

PatrickDelehanty

Hi Jennifer

Take a look at the questions and answers here as this has been discussed and referenced a resource I would have posted.

http://moz.com/community/q/804-https-ssl-error

If crawlers see issues with your servers and protocol, that could potentially be a negative checkmark against your site in the SERPS. I would discuss with your web dev and SEO team how to properly implement changes to fix these issues.

Hope this helps! Good luck.

PatrickDelehanty

Hi David

Have you considered A/B testing? I am assuming here that you are going to be testing design or layout changes and want to see how users take on these changes.

If so, have you considered trying:
Google Experiments
VWO
Optimizely You can test layouts without having to do redirects via a Javascript snippet that is put on the page in the code.

If not, a 302 could potentially hurt your page's search engine visibility. The redirected page will still retain its PageRank, MozRank, Page Authority and Traffic Value – and the detour page will not accumulate any (source); thus, you won't rank until you bring that page back (and even then, it's not promised). That being said, if you do use a 302 redirect, be EXTREMELY careful and have a backup plan. Don't use this redirect extensively. It should also be noted that 302 redirects that are in place for a certain amount of time WILL be treated as 301s by Bing. If you are testing out page elements, remember you have options above. Here is more information on redirects.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions or comments! Good luck!

PatrickDelehanty

Hey EGOL

The cable and internet comparison is actually a great way of looking at this. I'm going to borrow this for our office download as well. The potential back and forth on pricing from the consumer / publisher perspective is what I'm concerned about. Put the professional aspect of this being my job aside, the idea that people who can't afford access to even the most basic need content or information is something that I find absolutely heartbreaking should this repeal stick.

Oooh, I definitely have opinions on Ajit's videos, but that's a conversation for another time and platform.

Thanks as always for your response!
P

PatrickDelehanty

Hi there

Would you mind sharing your URLs with the group? It would help us take a look at your code and get a better understanding of your HREF lang tags!

Thanks so much!

PatrickDelehanty

Hi there

Make sure your homepage is in your sitemap, that all links that point to your homepage are not "nofollow"ed, and make sure that there is a brand logo that points to your homepage on every page of your site.

Do not use any exact match keywords on internal links for your homepage - "Home" or a logo are perfectly fine. You also don't want to link up your hierarchy often.

Take a look at these resources:
Internal Links (Moz)
Information Architecture for SEO - Whiteboard Friday (Moz)
Robots.txt and Meta Robots (Moz)
How to Have a Successful Local SEO Campaign in 2015 (Moz)
How to Perform the Ultimate Local SEO Audit (Moz)

I would also check to make sure that all of your social platforms are linking correctly, that you URL structures are consistent, and that your site is configured / redirecting URLs properly. Also, make sure your internal links are correct and consistent and that your www. or non www. redirects properly to your configuration (whether you chose www. or non www.).

Hope this all helps! Good luck!

PatrickDelehanty

Hi there

Do you have an example URL we can check? Did you only do this on the homepage and no other internal pages?

Also, did you set up your redirects properly? Check out this resource from Google.

I would read that through that and make sure your code lines up correctly.

Let me know - would love to help! Good luck!

PatrickDelehanty

Hey again!

I see now - thanks for clearing that up.

Depending on your organic traffic to those /tag/widget-a pages and user engagement from search on those pages (which I highly doubt you have much), I would leave them as they are, but "noindex,follow" them. Reason being, those tags can help users if they are looking for something specific, rather than being redirected to the cornerstone page, and having to look through the articles listed to find what they want. This can create a confusing user experience. Keep it easy for them.

The reason you should "noindex,follow" them, they aren't useful to search engines but you still want the equity moving through the site to follow links on those pages so that equity can continue to move.

Either way, I doubt search engines are giving weight to those tag pages as opposed to your cornerstone page.

Hopefully this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions or comments!

PatrickDelehanty

Hi Rosemary

Yes! You should be just fine. According to Google:

If your business moves from one location to another and keeps the same business name, Google will generally move the reviews to the new location. There are some exceptions for businesses heavily tied to their locations, like hotels, golf courses or scenic attractions.

You can read more at Moving Reviews Across Google+ Pages.

If you have any other questions let me know! Good luck!

PatrickDelehanty

Hi there

I agree with Kevin here. Relevance is key when it comes to your users (and search engines). You could take it a step further and redirect job URLs on board B to the related job URLs on board A, that way users go directly where they need to go should they have clicked a link from a third party or another site. It might take a minute to do, but the payoff is a better user experience and organic equity being transferred correctly. Here's a tutorial on how to do a redirect map.

Hope this helps! Good luck!
P

PatrickDelehanty

Great stuff Calin!!!

PatrickDelehanty

Hi there

I agree with your noindex move. You can also block them in your robots.txt.

I wouldn't worry too much about the "nofollow" addition. If there are links on the page, you're not going to hurt them since you already noindexed the page they live on. I would, however, remove any reference to those pages in your content, navigation, or internal linking. This could potentially create a bad user experience.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions or comments! Good luck!

PatrickDelehanty

Hi John

I would take a look at your backlink profile in Majestic and take note of your metrics there. I would also take a look at this resource to see if you need to remove links at all or if you have any issues after you research your backlinks. I would also check and see if any drops line up with algorithms or SERP updates.

I would also check your Google Webmaster Tools to see if there were any issues that have popped up, like a potential manual action.

Also, ask yourself about your partners backlinks:

Does this link help my website?
Is this link relevant to my website?
Would I trust this site (that's linking to me) if I landed on it?
Is the website or content in which I am being linked from topically relevant to my website?
If you check metrics - does anything about the metrics (domain authority, page authority,Majestic, SEMRush traffic/ranking data, etc) make me feel uneasy?

If the link isn't relevant or doesn't help your site, it's better that you lose it. But if for some reason the site isn't sending traffic the way it used to, and it is a relevant partner, I would put their backlink profile through the ringer in Majestic and also check their metrics via SEMRush.

Hope this helps! Best of luck!

PatrickDelehanty

Hi there

I would suggest first finding what exact business name your client wants to use. I would then go through cleaning up unnecessary business listings, updating relevant business listings, and creating business listings that are relevant to the service area as well as the industry itself.

From there, I would make sure that contact information is properly listed on the websites with Schema markup so that crawlers can verify your information. Take a look at these resources as well:

How to Perform the Ultimate Local SEO Audit (Moz)
Local SEO: How To Rank Your Local Business (SEL)
The 2015 Local Search Ranking Factors (Moz)

All of those should help get you get on the right track!

Hope this helps! Good luck!

PatrickDelehanty

Hi Shailendra

What you are are seeing is marketers utilizing positive engagement - associating their brand with helpful and useful in the minds of prospects. What that means is by having content open and available to the public, they do the following:

Search engines can index this content
Makes it easier to find said content
Makes it easier for users to find organization
Having content available produces positive engagement (check out this Whiteboard Friday)
More users to site
Repeat visits
More pages viewed per session
This gives users time to form an opinion about your organization / services
Prospects do lots of research before giving over information - that's just a fact
Since not you are not pushing every visitor to convert...
This means those that do become leads are more likely to convert
Gives sales more opportunities to focus on those leads and nuture with more focus
Eliminates chasing prospects and users that were just "browsing"

One way to look at form or form-free content is like this: Awareness, evaluation, and purchase.

Awarneness - Purely educational and not promotional. These types of content can usually be open and free to public.
Evaluation - More specific to your product / services, data sheets, demos, case studies, etc. This information tends to be form driven.
Purchase - These are even more specific - free trials, demos, consultations, estimates, etc. This information definitely is behind a form.

You can ask yourself questions (source) about the content to help you judge if the content should be behind a login or not:

Does this content address product implementation?
Does this content answer a question we usually get while engaging prospects?
Does this content answer a question we get often from current customers?
Will the lead benefit from having a direct conversation about this?
Have you earned the right to contact this lead about your products?
Does A/B testing show a stronger conversion rate requesting lead info now?

Look at your site as a series of macro conversions and a macro conversions. Your contact and registrations are still conversions because they are handing over information to you. Another way you can look at conversions are phone calls (you can use services like Website Call Conversions or Marchex) or particular page views (although this tends to be inflated and so on). You can also use services like Wistia to capture leads in videos or lead users to product pages.

More often than not, these companies that provide free content are doing so in the hopes that the leads they do get are farther down the line so less work is involved and prospects are more likely to convert.

Another couple of great resources for you to level out your marketing efforts is The Customer Journey to Online Purchase from Think with Google, as well as The Content Marketing Funnel: Using Different Types of Content of Single Grain.

Let me know if this all makes sense or if you need more help. Good luck!!

PatrickDelehanty

^ This is a great practice.

PatrickDelehanty

Hi there

Do you update your sitemap, correct all internal links, and upload said sitemap to your Webmaster Tools?

Try that method if you haven't already. Otherwise, I would hold off on changing your domain often. 3 seems like a lot!

Hope this helps! Good luck!

PatrickDelehanty

^ I agree with Martijn here. Great point.

PatrickDelehanty

HI there

No, there is no evidence that responding to reviews will help you rank better in search. Don't look at responding to reviews as an opportunity to rank higher in search (because it won't happen) - look at it as an opportunity to directly engage someone who had an experience with your product or service; whether good or bad. It will speak volumes about your brand if users see that you are actively engaging and responding to users.

That, ultimately, is more valuable in the eyes of users, not rankings. Remember - you're trying to please users, not search engines. Please users, and search engines will catch up.

Shameless plug - I wrote a post awhile back on customer engagement and why it matters that dives a bit deeper and gives some examples

Hope this helps! Let me know if it doesn't! Good luck!
Patrick

PatrickDelehanty

Hi there

There are a few things you should be doing at the moment:

Review, update, and create consistency in citations / local listings
Create strong content that actually solves problems or provides information
Look into paid search opportunities and sponsoring industry events
Engage your audience on a more personal level (social media is a great way!)

Doing these things will help keep you at the top of mind from both a local and industry standpoint, while also ensuring that you as a medium sized business take advantage of your ability to engage your audience at a more intimate level than a larger business can. What you're doing is creating a unique selling proposition without selling your audience - you create accessibility, something that audiences want in a brand.

Beyond that, what I would also do is the following:

Conduct a solid SEO audit on your site to tie up potential loose ends
Conduct a backlink audit on both your website and your competitors - what links do they have that you find valuable? What's their strategy in getting them? How can you obtain similar links? Are there links you should remove?
Conduct a content audit of both your website and your competitors - what content do they have that their audience finds valuable? How can you create more engaging content?
Review the marketing tactics they are using that you may not be incorporating into your marketing campaigns

The goal here isn't to copy your competitors, but rather look for opportunities they are taking advantage of that you aren't, or finding patterns in their marketing that you could build upon or make better. Your business is unique and valuable in it's own right, your goal is to find opportunities that allow you to market these areas in a much more brighter light.

Let me know if you have any questions, there is a lot here, but your goal is to build your brand not just through SEO, but multiple digital marketing channels where your audience is. Hope this helps!

Good luck,
Patrick

PatrickDelehanty

Hi Justin

Yep! I use ScreamingFrog, here's how I do it:

Goto your /sitemap.xml
Select all + copy
Paste into Excel column A
Select column A
Turn "Wrap Text" off
Delete rows 1 through 5
Select column A again
"Find and Replace" the following:
<lastmod></lastmod>
<changefreq></changefreq>
daily
Whatever the date is
Priority numbers, usually 0.5 to 1.0
"Replace With" nothing, no spaces, nothing
You'll hit "Replace All" after every text string you put in, one at a time
With Column A still select, hit F5
Click "Special"
Click "Blank" and "Ok"
Right click in the spreadsheet
Select "Delete" and "Shift Rows Up"

Walla! You have your list. Now copy this list, and open ScreamingFrog. Click "Mode" up top and click "List". Click "Upload List" and click "Paste". Paste your URLs in there and hit Start.

Your sitemap will be crawled.

Here are URLs that returned 301 redirects:

https://www.zenory.com/blog/chat-psychic-readings/
https://www.zenory.com/blog/online-psychic-readings-private/
https://www.zenory.com/blog/live-psychic-readings/
https://www.zenory.com/blog/online-psychic-readings/

Here are URLs that returned 503 Service Unavailable codes twice, but 200s now:

I would check on that when you can. Check in Webmaster Tools if any issues have arrived there as well.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

PatrickDelehanty

Hi there

Are these ratings on the website? If not, you can look into tags. Here is more information on the Schema.org site.

You may also want to look into Google+ Business pages, verifying that page, and linking it to your website.

From there, you can see snippets appear in your SERPs. I would also look into Moz Local to help you get on listings that assist in these reviews.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions or comments, or if I am missing the point of the question. Good luck!

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