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IrvCo

William's response around geography is a very good idea in my opinion. I think you are asking about a major brand without Geo qualifier needed. What you can do is what we did with our company drumBEAT Marketing. We are +drumBEATMarketingNET because we are the .net domain.

I have wondered about this from time to time myself so I have also forwarded this to our Director of Local as she is on some exclusive Local forums where we might get an answer better than mine. I will post her thoughts here as soon as she responds but likely in 12 hours.

Best,

Christy,

OK fine, knock my title (taken from a truly great movie... A Knight's Tale!!!)

Just kidding. I may try that, thanks.

Best

Robert

PS I hate that so many are able to spend more time on Moz on the weekdays! I get yelled at if I am on Moz.

Chris,

When you qualify with "not that I condone it," I don't understand why you would not? Using the example of AllSpray, there is nothing wrong with using the keyword in the URL. So, AllSpray.com/bug-spray 
If I am doing the page for AllSpray this is my likely URL.

Best

Yiannis,

From reading what you have written, you are likely an accomplished SEO. I think, for this discussion we cannot be laser focused on examples where an EMD works well. We both can also show people EMD sites that do not rank well. My issue is with those who are less experienced that come to Moz; it is easy for them to latch onto something and believe it is an end all in SEO. You and I both know that people have been saying for years EMD's have lost their strength in SEO and, like in my first example, if I can use one I will. But, if I have a site that is producing revenue for a client of $100K per year and 50% profit, I would never suggest they buy a $10K EMD and that will change their outcomes (I really doubt you would either). But, we have to be very clear with others that they have to measure the whole and not get locked into EMD's, link-building, anchor text, Schema, etc. as "the answer."

For you and I, we do the additional research naturally; others get locked into an issue, say "X," and "prove" to themselves that "X" is what caused the improvement and rush out to make other sites have "X." We have to look at these issues when answering questions in my opinion. An example is how many people say: the other site has poor content, spun content, etc. That is their opinion in looking at a competitor. When you and I look at competitive sites, there is nothing emotional in it as the sites are for clients. That allows us to be more detached and more thorough.

Best, thanks for your well thought out answers,

Robert

Alfredo,

You state "experience show me otherwise," and I can appreciate that. Then you state, "A competitor bought the domain, placed new content which was a spun version of their money site and within a week he jumped to number one and stayed there for over 12 months."

From this information you are drawing this conclusion:  If you have an EMD, even one with poor content, EMD's are so powerful the site with poor content will be able to outrank sites with great content, well done structured markup, killer on page SEO. I simply disagree. My disagreement is based on my experience.

Before you can draw a conclusion that having the EMD is what caused the site to rank so well for 12 months, you have to test all the other factors that influence the site's ranking.

If you can share the site that is ranking so well with spun content and the one that isn't, we can likely point out many differences in the sites. You have to look at everything in SEO or it is too easy to jump to the wrong conclusion in my opinion. But, if it is true that EMD does it, simply buy a .company, redirect your site with appropriate 301 rules and let us know 2 weeks from now when it is number one. I have no problem admitting when I am wrong and I am here to learn.

Best,

Robert

EDIT: Let me add: If the domain had been up for 18 months, was down for 4 weeks and went up a week after, it would have had some inherent domain authority that must be factored in.

Thanks - You too. It appears not many liked the question...... oh well.

Alfredo,

I work with a lot of client sites. If a new client came in today (All Spray, Inc.) and they sold bug spray and stated I have four domains and they want to know which they should go with:

BugSpray.info, BugsGetSprayed.com, BugSpray.company, AllSprays.com

Assuming it currently had no site (There is no point in taking a developed site and changing it to an exact match domain name IMO if it is a reasonably good site.), I would say go with BugSpray.info. Why, it is the best choice IMO for EMD out of the two above.

There is a very old saying in Texas, don't get caught up in picking fly s__t out of pepper. EMD is not going to change your overall weight by 1%. Are you really wanting to worry over a 1% factor? Have you looked to see what else the other sites are doing that cause them to have the ranking they have? Look past the obvious and the easy. There is a reason we wear out this quote in SEO: Correlation doesn't equal causation. You are likely looking at several/many EMD's in your space that are ranked and then assuming what you need is an EMD. It is just not a good way to approach SEO.

Best, 
Robert

Calico

Are you saying your total impressions per day are 3K and then in a single day it dropped to 1K and never increased again? Remember, it is very hard to look at one metric in a vacuum and draw any conclusion; I would say this is especially true when it is impressions in WMT. DJ123 asked about traffic which is a very good question. Another thing I will suggest since I know you are making changes regularly to the site is always annotate the changes in analytics so that you have benchmarks to check changes against. 
Give us as much additional data as is possible and we will try to assist.

Best

Robert

Mike, 
This is a really interesting question. The assumption is they are wanting a user to access the site securely every time. I cannot think of a reason for this not to be 301. I am assuming it is not from a single error page or other "event." I am guessing that someone within the Moz community will have an answer; it may be that they are doing it incorrectly.

Best

EGOL,

You never cease to impress; I love that action on DonorsChoose.org! Our code camp is 9th to 12th and we have both high school and college interns. We have asked the one school to let us start with the middle school kids so that we help them earlier. Public school is the next task and you are right about the teachers. The ones that are writing a proposal on DonorsChoose are going above and beyond. Rock on!

I read on PCWorld a piece by John Rebeiro (@JohnRebeiro) about Google's employee diversity. In it, Google in the US is 70% male and 61% white. There is more data and it's worth a read. My question for those of you who may employ more than a 2 to 3 people is are you actively engaged in doing anything to change the stars of young women, minorities, lower income children, etc.? Why do I ask? Because early on in my Mozziness I saw someone ask for some help with a site around children and autism. From Rand to every mozzer on Q&A there was an outpouring of help. I was truly moved. I would love to learn from others who are further along in these types of efforts. 
Google does make an effort in that they have RISE awards to assist with those who are working to promote STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) with girls and minorities. These awards are from $10K to $100K to help expand these types of programs.

We have had paid interns for some time now and we get as much or more than we give from that effort (boastful disclosure: Our head of development today was our first intern!) We put on a one week Code Camp (go to our site/code-camp) a few months ago and it was amazing - for me and for our team. But, to see kids eyes open up as they realize they have found something they never even thought they would have an interest in is mind blowing.

We decided we would give a $25 gift card to Best Buy for the student who was most engaged and pushed the most to learn more, etc. That winner had never thought of coding as something SHE would have an interest in and she was an unbelievable sponge. She pushed our dev staff to give her more and more and it was truly fun and rewarding for them. Yes, we had to spend some time and money, but the break from the day to day of a marketing firm for our team truly invigorated them.

I just want to know what others might be doing in the areas of trying get more diversity in the ranks of those who work in our world? It would be great to share ideas and resources. I will tell you that if anyone needs tips, what we learned, etc. I would be more than happy to share all.

Nice explanation William.

Chammi,

My ex and I ran into some 'friends' and she and the lady had at one time been quite good friends. The lady was pregnant when we last saw them and as we walked up to a table where they were seated, my ex says rather exuberantly , "How are you? When is the baby due?" To which, her friend replied, "4 months ago." 
There really is no where to go from there... I just smiled and said, "Hey Jack, how's the golf game these days?"

PS - Chammy, if you can tell that story on here so easily, you are a Mozzer.

Welcome

EGOL

You never cease to impress me with your understanding of not just SEO, but of marketing. Honestly, you are a jewel.

There is a truly great business book "Blue Ocean Strategy," that many who make their living on the Internet should read, and I know some of you have. The Internet provides the greatest ease of entry into a "Blue Ocean" versus any other "marketplace." At the same time the big box retailers and aggregators use the Internet too. If you have a $100K budget you don't stand a lot of chance if you are going to operate in the same arena as Amazon, Lowe's, Sears, etc. You have to be different and most do not understand that different does not mean that you believe your product/service is better or your staff nicer. It means different. It means fishing in waters where no one else has a boat. For hoses, think about the first collapsible hose that was sold; I would have loved to been the marketing agent for that product.

Great comments all.

If you first remove the url, even with the 410, I do not believe you will get any action on the penalty in terms of a reconsideration. Remember, with a reconsideration Google wants to see penance. Removing the issue is not penance, it is easy in their eyes. 
Yes, these actions remove the issue, but I am not sure they will have an affect as far as reconsideration.

I am certainly open to being wrong. 
Best

Chammy,

The KDS as with PA and DA are "relative" and are arbitrary to those creating the metric. PA and DA were created by Moz and not by Google. A pure example of this (and I swear I am not lying) is we have a client we have worked with that sells... hoes as one of their products. When you search on "hoes" and are not restricted by any geolocator, they rank well for the term against the same types (and many of the same) large big box retailers you see for hose. So, yes you can rank, but you have to be clever: Are you using structured mark-up (Schema) for your product, do you have aggregate review schema or an accepted review site streaming reviews to your site/page? Do you produce unique hose content? Do you have a hose video? Are your pictures ones you created and do you have correct alt text, etc.?
Never believe that DA alone means you cannot beat them; there are tons of Moz members who beat the big boys daily!

I hope this helps.

Robert

Hitesh,

Just so I am clear, you got a partial manual penalty on a single url? While it seems odd to me, most who come to us have partial or full penalties that are affecting their entire sites. My concern with not taking an effort to clean it up, file a disavow.txt file covering any remaining links, and requesting consideration is that it might leave you open for further urls and even affect the new site. This would be assuming you are going to 301 the old url's to the new site. Even without the "bad" url, there is the potential for carryover IMO around the site having been assessed a penalty and never addressed it.

So, if you have the time, clean it up and then file for reconsideration.

Best

So that makes it totally down about 2 hours now. As I responded they are saying "network issues" ...

thanks,

Just saw a tweet re Yelp. They tweeted an hour ago that they were experiencing "network issues" and are working to resolve. It is 13:03 central here and still not up.

I started trying to access for reviews and cannot get them on desktop or with mobile app. On desktop just keep getting a 408 response (timed out). My first attempt was around 11:30 a.m. Central time. Just curious.

SEO 5,

Thanks for chiming in. I am going to blame you for helping me with this, as I had almost forgotten posting it. After reading your response - and it is near impossible to do any tracking on that one source - you did make me realize what I was missing in the assumption.

Though I did not try to shake the cobwebs from my Latin, I think that the question is, can ceteris paribus be applied in this case? In other words - is it reasonable to assume that if you have 10 referrers and searchers from 9 act a given way when presented the same page/info, that searchers referred from the tenth will act that way as well. I think you can IFF (pulling out the old algebra terms on you there; IFF is for "if and only if" the referrers are from the same type of vertical - directories for example.

Let's assume the referrers are only directories like YP, Yelp, citysearch, etc. [I think when you use referrers that are of a different type, _s__ay pinterest, groupon, xyz marketing, other_s, the correlation is much less valid.]

Let's also assume one of five has no call data and where we can track the calls ( assume 4 referrers) for every 1.7 to 1.9 calls we see one contact form filled out.

Can we now construct an equation and draw a reasonable corollary: Where the referrer without the ability to track calls is Echo, and where calls (Z) is the missing data, then,

you can reasonably assume that the number of calls from Echo is between:

1.7(Echo contact forms) = Z and 1.9(Echo contact forms) = Z

So, I have to say to you - Good Answer and Thank You SEO 5!

Best to you and yours,

Robert

Hello David,

As Matt says, it does happen; but it has been quite a while since I saw them pull from DMOZ. I have seen everything else lately: Meta description drawn from content and not making sense when the Meta description on the site has nothing wrong with it. Title Tags that do not resemble the one from the sites, etc. Matt is also correct on the quick fix for blocking DMOZ or Open Directory Project (the odp in noodp). I would suggest if it is particularly disconcerting that you put the Meta tag in and then go into WMT and do a Fetch as Google on that page. While this is not the reason Fetch as Google was put in by Google, it often helps reindex quite quickly.

All the best, and good luck,

Robert

Hello Jane,

You make some really good points here. It is amazing how easy it is to get hung up on one thing or another and miss the real issue. Quality will typically win out every time. I have clients who hire someone to put out a post a day, etc. Focusing on putting out content people want to see or products presented in a way that is not a mirror of everyone else, will always pay dividends. Focusing on business outcomes as opposed to rankings is the other "aha moment"more need to have.

Keep up the great work at Moz, Best,

Most are aware when doing work on Local citation sources, if a phone number is to be used as a tracking number and it is not the main number used for the business in Local, it should be an image without alt text identifying the number. With a major citation source like Yellow Pages, we choose to use the regular business number which, of course, creates an attribution problem. If the same number is used in organic and Local, where did the traffic come from: YP? organic listings? Local? G+?

With one client, we use a sophisticated proprietary call tracking mechanism that is the property of the franchisor. We also utilize GA and WMT. My question is: Is there a way to draw a reasonable corollary to other (non-call) conversions from overall traffic?

If we know that for referring sites using an image number that those sites generate as many calls as they do contact forms filled out can we draw a reasonable corollary that other sites would be similar? On my example I have included, Angies list shows 2 visits and one form submitted. The next referrer shows 7 visits and 2 forms submitted. If each of these referrers are using image numbers and we know we got one call from Angies and 2 calls from the other, can we draw a reasonable assumption of: YP had 5 forms submitted, they would have had close to 5 calls additionally?

So, if forms to calls for A is equal, and forms to calls for B is equal, can we assume that for a third or fourth referrer, calls to forms would be near equal with rare exceptions?

If not, is there a way you are aware of to statistically draw an inference from this situation?

Obviously, the big unknown is do people from one referrer have a significantly different motivation, etc. than those from another? One thing we know with this client is there is no affiliate traffic referring so there is little likelihood one or two referrers are distorting the numbers.

I realize this takes some thinking, but I would appreciate a couple of you who did better than me at statistics and modeling to throw your thoughts in here.

Thanks a ton,

Robert

rKeWl72

Taysir

I think the Google Maps API is the best way to go for your site. Not that Google can't or won't read from a Bing map, its just an opinion based on Google being 70% plus of search. Assuming you have done the rest of Local correctly, this is not difficult to use and is of benefit. I also think the fact you are geolocating the business with a maps API is a plus for you.

Best,

Robert

Edit Note: There is a business API and a regular API for maps. I would suggest the regular as it is free to use and the features are fairly strong. If you have a larger business, more searchers, etc. take a look at the Maps Business API.

Urkeman,

There is no concrete answer for "Why?" Please understand you are not the only one who has ever asked this question. The answers are many, but first I suggest you take a step back and understand that what you or I think is "the most useful content" is very subjective. You may not be doing anything outwardly wrong, "malpractice," but still not doing the best in terms of the algorithm and what result it has calculated based on your site.

Is your content regularly changed up? Is your content relevant to whatever group you are trying to reach? Is your on page SEO great? Are your links high quality even if you have more than the other guy? Is your content DEEP, in other words, more than just a rehash of all the other info on the web.

I decided some time back to look at what the sites ranked ahead of me are doing better as opposed to bothering myself with, "Why are they in that position?"

SEO is something that is done over time and requires a semblance of patience. Take your time, look at any possible changes that improve your site in the eyes of Google, Bing, etc. And if you are relentless, you will move up.

Best,

Robert

John

First, you can file a DMCA complaint with Google from Google support. I would suggest you need to be very sure this was your original content. I would also check it with Copyscape, etc. If it is yours, and you are a dealer of their paints, I would first contact them. Typically, you would contact the webmaster after doing a whois lookup. In your case I would assume you have contacts at the company. 
The words of Patrick Swayze in his rules to bouncers ring true here, "Above all, be nice!" If you start out with, hey did you guys realize, or I did not realize you appreciated my marketing efforts so much, would you like to work together?, it is better than ringing someone up and calling them a thief.

If you copyrighted your piece that would be great. If not, did you set up authorship in Google? That is another clear timeline. Also, you should be careful to check their site in Archive.org for any similar content before yours. 
Again, no matter what, be nice. If, it turns out they had content similar to yours before yours was written and you approached nicely, they are less likely to tell you to take yours down.

Hope this helps.

Cole,

We received all of our reports to my knowledge. The easy contact is support@Moz.com.

they will help you out.

I agree. No follow if you are going to do it. I will also tell you that we get calls re specific sites we have built, and we do not use footer links. Do I think I could have missed a call because I did not, I would guess it is very likely.

Best,

The sources are too numerous to list. You can find tons of posts on Moz though. Of note is we are handling the link cleanup on a rather large client and I decided to try out removeem. Based on weighing all we have seen so far with the software, I like it. Like with any there have been a glitch or two but their support has been very excellent.

But, as I am talking with a team member she says, "Our link to our client shows up as Toxic." So, I am like "Get outta here!?" Sure enough we were. Note about software: You have to look at what they are utilizing to call something toxic or not. In this case it had more to do with the anchor text that had been used in linking to this client. So, not all that are toxic are and not all that are clean are clean. That is where you have to be somewhat nuanced in your approach. I suggest that if it looks like a paid directory (Other than dmoz or Yahoo) or if it is one that is just a perpetual listing of firms with no real content or context, I would remove it. If it is comment spam on posts, etc. Those are the types of things that stand out readily.

Best,

Tim

I like your question because it is presented so honestly. Yes, many web design firms and SEO firms link to themselves from client sites. My parents would say, "If Johnny jumps off a bridge are you going to jump off the same bridge?" Of course I would say, Yes! But, the thing with footer links is they were so abused they no longer carry any weight for you. To some, that would mean, oh, put them somewhere else. To me, and this is my opinion, it is not a practice I want to engage in. I have links to some of our clients from our site(s), but I do not link back to our firm from client sites.

You are a good SEO firm and are trying to do things correctly. Keep it up and don't worry about how many links you have to your site. (I realize some will call that sacrilege) If you stay at it the links will come. Post good info re SEO, web dev, etc. and links will come. I have never ceased to be amazed by the links we get to some of the oddest things we have posted. We actually posted a pic with several screen types showing responsive design sometime a year or two ago that has gotten tons of links. Go figure as there are lot of pics like that on the web.

That is one man's opinion, I'm sure there will be others.

Best to you,

Robert

When you consider a canonical as similar to a 301, you could have any number of canonical links on a site.

Brett

I snapped a minute after I sent this that you are underutilizing data markup / Schema. You are using postal address without utilizing local business and you don't have a phone number in it. Also, I would definitely use aggregate review markup, etc. for you. If not on the home page, you should be using authorship as well. If I were to change one thing it would be that first. With authorship and review schema you have a chance to standout on whatever serp you are on. 
Best,

Brett,

I took a quick look at the site and have to say I don't see anything on the top that is major. Personally, I like to utilize title tags with the business name in them and to follow the convention of Manchester Movers | 24 hour service | Moving Everywhere - so the business name is the last thing in the Title Tag. What I am trying to target most is at the first part of the title tag.

As to you v. your competitor, this is always a tough one. I suggest you look for what they are doing correctly and ask yourself if you are also doing that. With moving companies in the states, Local is everything. If you have not nailed Local as a moving company it will be hard to rank in a city here. I did not look at that for your site.

Now as to a universal WP canonical issue, I do not know what it is. We handle over 100 WP sites and I am fully unaware of any canonical problem we have ever had. While I do not touch every site even semi regularly, if there is an issue I am the first one made aware of it. I know there are several Mozzers who are Uber WP nerds (I say that as a form of admiration) and hopefully one or two will answer your query better.

I did not run a link profile, etc. but you could always try something like Link Detox to see where you stand. You could run Screaming Frog to check that all pages are giving correct response codes, etc. Ultimately, your home page would have a hard time ranking in a major city in the US from a DA/PA point of view with all the directories and then several older companies with good SEO there. You could get Local really right and have a good shot at showing there. I am not studied enough to speak to the Manchester market.

Here is the good news and I do not often say this: I really like the look and feel of the site. While I did not test it for UI/UX, I liked the colors, the airy feel, the way it is inviting around a subject that is stressful. Excellent job IMO. Here is a hint that we keep front of mind: Does your meta description answer the query?

Hope this gives comfort of a sort.

Robert

Alex,

I love this kind of question probably because it's the kind that gets in my head and I cannot get rid of. In the scheme of things SEO it is likely small, but it's the small rock in the shoe.

My opinion is more around your use of a compressed image even though it links to the larger image, probably means you are ok on load time and indexing. Part of my thinking has to do with many real estate sites that have huge volumes of photo images. Most of them have the ability to load the larger image and some of them (especially on sites where higher end RE companies are using high quality photographers) get fairly large. I know for a fact these sites are not being hurt on any appreciable level.

Hope that helps. I realize it is not definitive.

Best

I can't as due to a couple of relationships it would out the client. The client is large enough that these people would know their (our client's) marketing firm which is my company. I even thought about having an employee handle it, but the purchase is too important to the client for it to fall through if we can get close. 
Thanks,

Thanks Andy,

I had done a bit of searching and had decided Escrow.com was best for the transfer of money and domain. I am looking for something a bit more than a "platform" which is what I think Sedo is. I need that interpersonal touch as I am trying to abide by rules the client has established (she wants to be hidden in the purchase so as not to drive up the price). My fear is that even if a platform promises that, I need the humans behind it to promise as well.

Thanks,

Robert

I am looking for a service that handles clients who want to purchase domains that are owned and in use and someone wants to purchase them incognito. Does anyone know of (preferably have experience with) a service that will handle this type of domain purchase activity. An example would be if I knew of moz.com but wanted to buy it because I had invented a Moz machine that was worth zillions. I only want the .com and I do not want the owner to know who is purchasing. 
Thanks for any assist you can provide.

Robert

Peter,

First and foremost, when you responded to Mike Roberts, you used caps when you thanked him A LOT! for telling you about Googles spam reporting. Then, when you responded to EGOL (Whose avatar/screenname has always been in caps), you use caps again, except it comes off as yelling. (Full disclosure, I respect EGOL very much.)
I am not the smartest SEO professional on this forum, but IMO their site does not violate every rule in the book. It may violate some, I do not know. I was responding honestly in an effort to assist you.

I looked at their backlink profile and, while it appears to have a very high link velocity and many of the links appear to be from similar sites in that industry, I do not know that those things alone will meet Google's criteria for actionable link spam. Again, I do not know. I am not screaming that you are wrong; I am stating that I have not given it the required study in order to pass a professional judgement. I thank EGOL for his comments, and I also hope you can realize that what I wrote to you originally had no judgement in it. I have been involved in Internet marketing since 1998/1999 when my first spend on AOL was monthly for banners at a reasonably high cost for the time. I was simply trying to convey to you that my experience has taught me not to waste my time on trying to figure out what someone is doing wrong and why they are getting away with it. The reason is that I can have only one result from it - _I become a victim. _

By focusing on what a competitor is doing right, I begin to learn ways to beat that competitor and others.

I have made a choice in life that I will never be a "pigeon" (I am older and this may not be common in today's lexicon so, for anyone, it means that I will go down swinging before I will resign myself to being a victim to anything.)

By virtue of living a while, I have learned that railing against those who have a better lot in life than I do is a waste of time. Taking action that changes my lot in life brings me peace.

Forever learning, so if I offended you with my original comments or if EGOL offended you with his response to my comments, please accept my apology for the both of us.

Robert

Peter,

Your question is not answerable. You say how are they beating you, but you don't give your domain for a comparison. I will tell you that IMO, the worst thing we can do is to look at a site that is beating us, focus on what they are doing wrong in our eyes, and wonder about it. I suggest you ask, what are they doing better than you? It will give you a lot more mileage in addressing what may be keeping you behind.

Also, take a look at their link profile as opposed to just some of the domains. I am impressed they have gained the authority, etc. they have in right at a year. If you use a tool like Majestic, or ahrefs, you may see their links a bit differently. (I agree they do have some that are not best, but they have some good ones as well.)

I hope this helps, but I know it is probably not what you wanted to hear.

Robert

Hi Marie, 
Thanks for the input. I always hate trying to short answer something like this...cause I know someone's going to fill it in. You make good points. I still think given he has around 6500, if half of those are sitewide, it isn't to his benefit. What do you think? (I know you do a lot with penalty removal.)  He has gotten a partial penalty.

Best to you,

Robert

Probably the easiest way to assist you is to first say: this type of linking is not a good part of a healthy link profile. Yes, they must go.

It appears someone has spent a lot of time using comment spam as a linking tool. That is going to blog posts, placing a comment that has a link in it and doing that several thousand times:        The anchor text on the top three of these is piano sheet music and chords lessons, your domain name in two iterations_, and piano lessons. _That exact anchor text occurs in about one half of over 6000 links.

It is just obvious that these links did not occur by someone finding your site, saying this is cool I will put it in a post, writing about it and then linking back to your site for attribution.

You need to clean this up immediately. Sorry, wish there was better news.

Robert

John,

This type of "sidebar" link creates a sitewide link typically and that is the problem with it. If it is recent, and you know the blog owner, contact them. But, remember, this link in and of itself is not "bad": it is more about the overall link profile of your site. Are there a lot of these and a lot that are on blog comments, etc.? that is not good. 
Look at your link profile before you worry too much over this.

Robert

Great answer Paul.

Check if you are tracking root domain or sub-domain.

If you are tracking the root domain and stating you want to track all traffic at any subdomain, you do not want the www in the url. 
For example on our site we have dev sites that are subdomains. We do not want them tracked. so we have ours set as www. ourcompany .net

If you want to track anything on the domain, take off the www and I think it will work for you.

Best, 
Robert

Kimberly,

It can, but without which 5XX it is, it is harder to diagnose. (Is it an endless loop, or something else)

I would suggest (based on you trying to redirect what appears to be homepage whether or not the request is for asp or html) this help from Apache.  It is a bit deep, but you appear to want to do it yourself and this is a resource I would suggest.

If you look about a third down the page there is a content box that covers tons of variables.

Best,

Sorry, had to go away a bit. 
The Omskirk is being returned due to proximity. You are near there, you get to see Omskirk. If you went into Google Search settings and made the location London, you would see London showing more.

So, someone in Liverpool, won't be seeing a bunch of Omskirk.

Your question was: How do you handle localised results being returned for a query? You don't. In the eyes of search engines (Google in this case), search results are impacted by the searcher who makes the queries. If you and I are in the same room and we both search on Home delivered coal, we will likely get a somewhat different result (you search on that type term more and click on specific results that modify what you see.) If we both are on non personalized search and in the same room, 99% we will get the same SERP.

So, we probably got off track a bit with the way we all answered. If not, then Miriam's direction is as solid as can be. She knows local back and front. You can either grow slowly or you advertise for a faster result.

The only way YOU will impact Local terms is to use them. Now, DO NOT GO OUT AND CREATE A BUNCH OF LOCAL LISTINGS. Not yelling, really emphasizing. You could have a page for London coal and other larger cities, etc. but take care with duplicate content.

To learn where the traffic is coming from, I would do this. Go into GA, Audience, Visitors Flow and isolate the traffic to city. In my screenshot you will see what I am speaking of. This will show you what city the traffic is coming from. (You need to first click on the UK and View only this segment). Now you see where your city traffic is coming from. That can show you where you can improve or change to meet your business desires.

Let us know if this helps,

Robert

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Rodney,

My first question when you say local is you are speaking of a city or region around a city or a "neighborhood" as we would call it in the States, is that correct? (I am trying to differentiate between local being the UK or Great Britain and you are wanting to go beyond those borders.)

If so, I would suggest a couple of things that could assist you. First, understand that in local (with very rare exception) you will not have a page that is in the 7 pack also show in the organic for that SERP. You need to think about that if Local is important to you. So, you want the Local traffic, but you also want to broaden your market beyond "London" for example. You will need to be sure that you have a page that is "set up to rank for Local" (this is a loose phrase) and one that is more for the organic. For example on a service business you might have a contact page that is resolving in the 7 pack and a services or homepage that resolves in the organic. I have had clients with three organic pages (all different) and a listing in the Local 7 pack (also different from the other three) a couple of times - not by our design; it just happened they had strong pages.

If you look at the landing pages you are seeing traffic to, if you look at visitor flow in analytics, etc. there will be clues as to what is happening. Have you looked at where your traffic is coming from in terms of geography?

LMK if you have other questions,

Best,

Robert

Wilco,

If they crawled that page, the PA should be correct. Based on what I see external of Moz, it is.

Robert

Unfortunately, it is still the same issue. I just made this up: Mess with the NAP, deal with the crap.

There is no way I would do this based on one thing alone: Experience in trying to assist those who have.

Sorry, I wish it was easier,

Robert