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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.

Interesting. I did change the pictures — good quality head shots on cropped white background. After this they (briefly) reappeared, and then disappeared again.

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.

That's pretty much what I thought. After being steady for a couple of years, traffic from organic search has started to fluctuate within the last month or so from day to day and I wondered if we were being penalized.

My client is a manufacturers representative for highly technical controls. The manufacturers do not sell their products directly, relying on manufacturers reps to sell and service them. Most but not all of them publish their specs on their sites, usually in PDF only.

As a service to our customers and with permission of the manufacturers we publish the manufacturers specs on our site for our customers in HTML with images and downloadable PDF's — this constitutes our catalogue. The pages are lengthy and technical, and are pretty much the opposite of thin content.

The URLS for these (technical) queries rank well,  so Google doesn't seem to mind. Does this constitute duplicate content and can we be penalized for it?

Hi Mozzers,

A client paid to publish a white paper, thinking that the link to the web site is beneficial. The link does redirect back to the web site, but is in a format that I've never seen:

http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001YdyyLrzOQJxM87SJZkJYVbQKSdCmFpwqg1fuX3yqVqpGboUjdSaHv9IdW5HsQpgmvwOrg5N4T3DNHYV8e1UVe_YCua_XQCFykoSJvu1HzDyb-3x-aFcPU-ER-vwWxq4-

Does this link have any value?

My Google author picture, which had been in place for a couple of years, disappeared from all SERP results recently. I checked, and rel=author attribution is valid on every post, as is the link to to the Google + authorship page (which contains a link back to the web site).

When I test URL's in the structured data testing tool the picture appears.

I'm out of troubleshooting ideas. Any suggestions welcome.

Thanks Miriam. I understand that all of this is dependant on the amount of competition, domain authority, and  links to specific pages, as it is with any page. The is and does stuff I think falls under the category of including as many variations of the related phrase as possible, which I also try to do with any page.

Since the service categories I'm using are chosen from pre-sets in the new dashboard, these are what Google thinks my client is.

If the other categories are closely linked and are also services they offer and are highly relevant, what would I risk in adding them? We're only taking about 5 additional categories and pages. Isn't this simply a common sense way to inform Google about the complete range of services the customer offers?

Hi Miriam,

All my questions are about local pack results. I'm quite familiar with organic.

1. Yes, local pack, not organic. Ranking well for primary keyword, which is also a Google pre-set category in new dashboard.

2. Yes, they want local pack results for other keywords.

3. Exist in pre-set categories in the new dashboard

4. Yes, they exist for Google's pre-set categories, but don't have really equivalents from places where I can build citations.

If I build out the services category pages on site to match Google pre-set categories, will this be enough to cause them to appear in local pack results?

Hi Mozzers,

My client is prominent in local search for their primary activity,  but I would also like them to appear for other service categories they offer. Assuming I add these other service categories  in +Local and build corresponding service pages on the site, will this be enough to cause them to appear for these other services?

The additional pre set service categories offered in +Local don't  match those offered in local citations, so I can't really support these that way.

Hi Miriam,

I think budget issues are always a consideration. I'm with you: if the owner doesn't get that this is a long term effort to increase their business, then I tell them I can't help them.

I tell them that my job is to increase their business and that I need a commitment of time and money to do so. I generally try to get them to commit for a one year period and a budget large enough to actually accomplish something.

These kinds of customers are harder to find, but, once I do, because I have the time and money to get a result, they tend to become more or less permanent customers.

My biggest challenge is explaining what I'm going to do and how this will result in more business.

Hi Miriam,

Great answer.  I especially like your differentiation on "is" and "does" and agree 100% about the importance of mapping content to research and trying to cover as many bases as you can.

I've long been involved with national campaigns, but this is my first local job. I knew the categories would be crucial, but wasn't sure about the best approach.  With your roadmap, I know exactly what to do.

You should consider a  post on this issue. This is a crucial issue for local, and I bet a lot of people aren't getting this.

How do you deal with customer resistance to expanded/ongoing content?

Hi Miriam,

That's exactly what I'm asking: should I build out my website service pages as per the custom categories available in Places or per preset categories available in + Local?

Say you are listed with both Google places and Google Local. Places still allows custom categories, while Local limits you to preset categories. Which is the better strategy: to build service pages following custom services available in Places, or build out service pages following the (allowed) preset categories in Local.

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

Just what I was looking for. Thanks Lynn.

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?

Hi Mozzers,

I have a both an 800 number and a local number for a local business client, with both featured on the site. Which number should I feature on the Google places, Google+ and local citations — the local number, the 800 number, or both?

Any help appreciated.

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!

Hi Mozzers,

Is it possible to do YouTube-specific keyword research? I have a client who sells wine making franchises and wants to produce a video for prospective franchisees.

I doubt people are looking for this on YouTube and want some data to support my case so I can push the project in a more meaningful direction.

Hi Mozzers,

I've been mainly B2B focused, and am used to estimating the amount of work necessary to best competition for organic results, but now I have a local client.

I need a method to estimate the amount of work necessary to get listed in the one-box for my chosen queries.

Can someone point me in the right direction? Any help appreciated.

Hi Mozzers,

I've had some successful national and international campaigns but this will be my first attempt at local. The client is a landscape designer, services several cities within a 50 mile radius and has a rural address which is not located in any of the cities serviced.

What's my best strategy for ranking in the desired cities considering the client's address is not located in any of them?

Can I ask for one further bit of advice? My client covers several smaller cities within a fairly tight 100 mile range. How would you handle regional location?

Thanks Miriam.

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

Thanks Tom, great tips. I've never stopped using directories but have become much more selective. If it's a quality directory that's relevant to my subject, I'll use it. I agree with you completely that you get referring traffic as a bonus.

I've been reading about the enhanced value of local citations. In your experience is there truth to this?

Also, the client covers several cities within about a 100 mile radius. Do you have any dos and don'ts for multiple city strategies?

Hi Mozzers,

I've enjoyed success for customers with national campaigns but until now have never taken on a local campaign.

My method has been to find out what prospective customers were looking for and create content around this, then engage customers through various inbound channels. This, combined with a strong value proposition and strong calls to action has been successful.

What if anything should I change for a local campaign? I'd be interested in hearing from some people that have successfully conducted local campaigns.

As always, any help is greatly appreciated.

...ask Gravity — why didn't I think of that? Good advice, thank you both.

Hi Mozzers,

Gravity Forms for Wordpress provides an unsurpassed user experience. The form submits and the form response replaces it  without having to reload or redirect to another page.

The problem is that without a redirect there's no way to track this event in Google Analytics.

I'm interested in hearing from anyone who tried to track and ajax event in Google Analytics.

Sounds great Rand, but until then, to show clients  progress, I'm going to have to use one of those barebones list-of-links indices.

Even though GWT's Links to your site is about a month behind I am finding that it reports new links faster than either OSE or Majestic.

Has anybody found anything more current than GWT?

Any chance of sharing some of your other sources?

I get that OSE is trying to be discriminating and discount spammy non-relevant directory links but most of my links are good quality and highly relevant.

Vikas, I have high quality links from the government of Canada which have never appeared in the OSE index.

I have a client site that's been up since March. GWT reports over 60 linking domains, most of which are relevant and high quality, yet OSE has never shown more than eight

anyone else have similar experience?

Hi Mozzers,

Is it worth the trouble spending the time to get a link from Wikipedia considering they're nofollow?

Hi Mozzers,

My client has a major competitor that dominates several industry head terms. A check of their link profile reveals that they have 50 low DA domains that are identical to the main site, the only difference being that they all link to the main domain for these terms.

They're not even attempting to disguise the network but it works. Can anyone tell me why?

See:  www.omega.com/vhpc/

Thanks for the advice. This was quite a while ago. I wound up going with domain/product-category/product

Works very well - every product I add gets indexed.

Hi Mozzers, I need a judgement. I've been approached by a deck building company whose business is local. They do have an existing web site, but almost no content or indexed content. Their visibility online is very close to zero.

They are also a seasonal business, with people getting interested in decks from April through June by which time they would be expecting a result. There is one very large competitor and many smaller ones.

This gives me 6 months, starting from very close to scratch.

Would you take it on?

Discussion and debate welcome.