Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thanks for the response but I have some remaining concerns. I know from past experience that the local search ecosystem is different in Canada, with primary influencers (aside from Google) being Yellow Pages and Industry Canada. When I look at the overview page (https://moz.com/local/overview) the verification partners are the same for both Canada and US, and different  (specific) for the UK. Are the same  verification partners being used for both US and CDN or has someone just forgotten to change the graphic?

I'm in Canada and it's been a while since I checked but I just went on the Moz Local page and saw the CDN flag. Does that mean the service is now available for Canada?

Thanks for the response Andrew. Will a "dry cleaning" link from Oregon help your customer?

Thanks for the help. I Cant use Moz Local because Im in Canada.

Hi Mozzers,

In the best situation links for a local business should be relevant and come from a local organization, but this is not always possible. In cases where you have to choose between relevance and proximity which is more important?

A client of mine is in a field that Google (correctly) recognizes as international, and does get traffic and leads for this but they are bound by sales covenants to sell only in regional geographic territories in their country,

Other than PPC is there a strategy I can use to increase regional traffic? As mentioned, Google does not recognize this business as local.

This may be an issue. Because these are extremely technical sites I have never done anything with Google+ but it might be time to revisit that.

Thanks Federico, I think this is pointing in the right direction. Both sites are very technical and as such barely have a social presence. I think it's time for another look at Google +.

If that's the case I'm wondering what the criteria must be, as these aren't spam sites.

Yes, real people.

It's a valid question. I've been a web developer since 1996 with an interest in search long before the term SEO was coined but am not very active on SEO Moz so my profile doesn't present me as being very knowledgeable.

Bear in mind that, as in life, people are participating in this forum for all kinds of reasons.

SEO Moz is a great resource, and as you take advantage of it you will start to form your own opinions. Ask questions when you are stumped, and look for a consensus among helpful answers. That's what I do.

I have a couple of established sites where the Authorship picture has suddenly disappeared and been gone for about a week now. Everything looks OK when I check, and the rich snippet tool displays the pictures when I check using that.

I'm interested to see if anyone else is experiencing a similar issue.

I'm a long time (15 years) web developer, and have drifted into search in the last years. I've seen a lot of things come and go. If this were my project, I'd avoid a custom solution that puts you at the mercy of a developer.

Look for something that's stable,  and popular, with a large developer pool. In my opinion Wordpress is great for point of presence sites, but is not yet there for eCommerce.

Although I am a developer, ff this were my project, I'd go with Drupal and something like Ubercart. You may not get all the customization you want, but you won't wind up beholden to a developer either.

I'm in Canada and it's been a while since I checked but I just went on the Moz Local page and saw the CDN flag. Does that mean the service is now available for Canada?

A client of mine has been approached by a company that sets up one-off private link networks like this:

Main site: http://www.klausparking.com/

Network sites:

http://www.carparkingtechnology.com/
http://www.carparkingsystem.com/
http://www.victoriaparking.net/
http://www.reginaparking.com/
http://www.torontoparking.net/
http://www.multicarparkingsystem.com/
http://www.carparkingsolutions.com/

The company doing this actually promotes this as a patent-pending feature they call "silos". How do I explain the real danger to my client?

Thanks Chad. Interesting that both yourself and Tom are not afraid to promote quality relevant directories.

Hi Mozzers,

I've seen David Mihm's list of data aggregators for local search for the US (infogroup, localeze, acxiom) but I'm in Canada. Does anyone know if someone has sourced this?

I realize that links from low quality directories aren't of much value. Having said that, can doing this kind of linking actually penalize a site?

Does anyone some suggestions for best practices when trying to rank categories using Wordpress?

Unless you filter it,  a category provides a complete list of all posts in that category. I can add a good title and description but am not sure beyond that.

Has anyone tried using a sticky post in the category and putting keyword body text in that?

Lookin' for ideas.

Great. thanks Linda. My big takeaway here is that Yellow Pages and Industry Canada are primary data aggregators in Canada.