They do. The Yoast plugin has a lot of great features, but sometimes struggles with finding keywords in content if it isn't regular text. No need to worry on this front.
Best posts made by WilliamKammer
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RE: Does Google read bullet point lists are text? WordPress SEO by Yoast says different...
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RE: To 301 or not to 301?
Sorry, Google treats them as different URLs: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/to-slash-or-not-to-slash.html
Play it safe and redirect. You probably don't need to do hundreds of individual redirects though. Try using Regex in the .htaccess file to solve your issue. Might end up being 2 lines of code in a rewrite rule.
You could also implement rel=canonical tags as an alternative.
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RE: Hidden H1 Tags
Yes, the way it's usually set up, screen readers for people with disabilities can still read the hidden H1s, so you won't have that card to play against them.
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RE: Why doesn't Google show my site in the results when searching for my exact URL ?
How old is the website? It's possible it hasn't been indexed yet. If the site is more than a couple months old, then that isn't the issue. For some reason Google isn't indexing your website.
When you say "exact" URL when you search, are you including the ".com" in there? Your URL without the ".com" will pull up other website that rank better than yours. IF that's not the case, there are several other potential causes, including robots tags on the pages, duplicate or thin content, a robots.txt file, etc. If you haven't yet, add your site to Google Webmasters and see if you can gain any insights there.
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RE: How do I test images in WP migration without Changing URLs?
It sounds like the URLs being used in the code aren't dynamic. There are two different ways to embed an image (and it's URL) on a page with html:
You can use a dynamic URL, where the domain will be whichever domain the page is on, like notice how there is no domain in front of the URL path, this means the domain will change depending on which website the code is on.
The other way, and the way it sounds like is being used on your site is This makes the URL definite, since all of it is defined. If you see that your images were put in with URLs like these, you'll need to make them dynamic to accomplish what you want to.
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RE: Can someone interpret this entry in my htaccess file into english so that I can understand?
It looks like the rule is attempting to rewrite www.legacytravel.com and legacytravel.com to legacytravel.com/carrollton-travel-agent, but it's not working. This is likely due to the piece on line 3 before the final URL (unless the person was attempting something else I'm not familiar with). Others issues could be the rewrite engine not being turned on, the .htaccess file being in the wrong place, or some other issue, like server settings.
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RE: "Via this intermediate Link" how do I stop the madness?
History is showing us that canonical tags are very powerful, and do pass pagerank. Canonical tags and 301 redirects pass roughly the same authority, so even if your physical links are nofollow, those canonical tags are still being interpreted by bots as a link-like entity.
So, by cananocalizing your old domain to your new one, you effectively moved all those links to your new domain, just like they would have with a 301.
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RE: Keywords with no search volume
Then you'll need to go off the data you have. The keyword planner is still a good tool to use, it just can't be 100% trusted. You can also play with the Google auto-suggest (waterfall) that pops up as you type things in. The suggestions are based on search volume.
There are also keyword research tools out there that can help. SEMRush, SpyFu, etc.
Also look at competitor sites that already sell the product. See what they are targeting in their title tags and H1s.
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RE: How do I test images in WP migration without Changing URLs?
If the images are coded into the website using "http://example.com/image.jpg" instead of "/image.jpg" then the images will always pull from example.com, instead if your test site.
If they were coded with "/image.jpg" then the code would pull from example.com when the page was there, and example.yoursite.com when you moved it over for testing.
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RE: Can someone interpret this entry in my htaccess file into english so that I can understand?
Alright... just give me a day or two since you don't have me on retainer
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RE: Pleasing the Google Gods & Not DeIndexing my site.
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Consider a warning a pleasant courtesy from Google. They by no means do this on a consistent basis.
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You can usually get back in, but the effort it takes to recover from being deindexed is demanding and probably not worth it for you naughty "dark dark grey" hat folk.
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I agree with Irving: I've never encountered a friendly warning from Google before they destroyed all the things.
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RE: Paid Directory Links
You'll never get a straight answer from Google, but here's what I've witnessed:
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Paid directory links CAN be beneficial if they are human-moderated and/or reputable. Something like BOTW has been a good historical example. There are also niche-specific reputable paid directories.
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Be INSANELY CAREFUL. If you're skeptical about a specific directory site, don't do it. It should be a well-known brand in the niche, for example, Martindale-Hubbell for Law.
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Think of it more as citation building than link building. There is SEO-value, but don't rely on directory link juice.
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If you're careful, rely on the directory site's authority and reputation, and do a little research, you should have no issue having some paid directory links in your link profile with no penalties.
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RE: Order and multiple match when 301 redirect ?
Apache reads the .htaccess from top to bottom, so it's good to keep that in mind.
If I had to guess, I'd say you have more 301s than just those in your .htaccess. A rule above that is likely conflicting with that specific redirect.
If you have a rule redirecting everything from that subdirectory without the French URL parameter, and it's before the rule in question, then this rule will never catch anything.
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RE: Fake Links indexing in google
That's pretty strange. There isn't another web person there who might have cleaned things up without telling you? Or maybe your server company?
I don't see how these URLs could be indexed if they never existed, so at some point, someone created those pages and they were around long enough to get indexed. Are there any weird spikes in crawl rates or search queries since the launch of the subdomain?
I've seen this kind of hack before. The hacker just drops some folders full of HTML files into the roots. That's why all those links have a two characters sub directory. That was the folder the HTML files were in before someone likely just saw those folders in the root and deleted them. Maybe they didn't realize what they were doing and thought they were just doing the house cleaning?
Doing a "site:mshowells.com/ci/" or "site:mshowells.com/sp/" can show you what I'm talking about.
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RE: Pagerank and sitemap question :)
The number of sitemaps you have is not a big concern, as long as you have the ones the need and they include the pages you want indexed. You might be barking up the wrong tree here. There are a lot of reasons why a competitor might outrank you, but competitive analysis of a sitemap is not high up on that list of things to check. Be concerned with our own sitemap and make sure all of the pages you want to be in there are in there. It's more than likely that he is beating you for another reason.
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RE: How Useful is this website for Linkbuilding
The directory appears to be in good standing with Google. Decent PR, lots of indexed pages, etc. You're safe creating a profile here, and if you're noticing competitors use it who are performing better than you in this space, it seems like it's something that's worth spending some time on.
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RE: Site was moved, but still exists on the old server and is being outranked for it's own name
First things first: before you start working on optimizing the new site, I would work on resolving the issue with the old partner, since this is an issue that can continue to haunt you for a long time if you don't.
The old partner needs to 301 redirect all pages in your client's subdirectory to the new site. Offer to send him the steps needed to do this. If he refuses, let him know that he does not own the data from your client's side of the old website, and you will therefor be forced to send DMCA takedown requests to the server company and to him for straight-up copyright infringement. Once he cooperates and puts in the proper 301s, you will have much less to worry about.
Unless, for some reason, the old partner does own the data, in which case, you shouldn't be using it on the new site.
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RE: Domain change recommendations
Make sure the 301s you put in place are functioning properly. Did you 301 all pages from the old site to the new one? Did you redirect them at a page-level or just grab all the old URLs and redirect them all to the new root domain?
Also, look at analytics and GMT for the old and the new domain. Do the increases on the new domain correspond with the drops from the old domain? Maybe there some spots on the old domain that are still there and need to be redirected? The data in these spots should help you determine if something is out of whack.
How long ago was the domain change? This kind of drop can be expected for a couple weeks, but too much longer than that, and something else may be wrong.
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RE: Do Exact Match Domains Still Have Value?
EMDs still carry weight, more than they should IMO.
LondonFootball.com and FootballLondon.com are two different EMDs, just similar.
Is it worth paying two months of your SEO budget? Depends on the EMD and the SEO you were going to hire. Also make sure to do a lot of research on the EMD to see what it's history is. It is indexed? Does it have an acceptable backlink profile? Was it used for anything shady in the past?
There are very few domains I would drop thousands on, and even fewer that I would purchase strictly for SEO gain.
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RE: Removing bad/poor quality links from the site
The amount of time you need to wait varies widely depending on a lot of things. Google's John Muller said in a recent hangout that the disavowed links aren't all removed from the site at once. It's staggered based on when the links are recrawled and reindexed by the bots. This means you may not see a big jump after a few weeks or months, but instead gradually see improvement over time. Here is the hangout: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxqkqGyCaI4
As to the new bad links you've found, you can continue to update your disavow file with new bad links you find, there's no need to constantly submit reconsideration requests.
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RE: Site was moved, but still exists on the old server and is being outranked for it's own name
Then send a DMCA to the server company. The server company doesn't care that he's a lawyer, and I bet your client and send a very well written one.
Besides that, you're strategy moving forward seems pretty sound.
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RE: Recommendation for SEO plugin for Wordpress
The Yoast SEO plugin is a good one to go with. Your title tags are changing in the code, so it's not the plugin.
Sometimes (and more often in recent months), Google will rearrange or rewrite a title for their search results. The most common way I see them do it is: "Brand Name: Title Content." You can only attempt to change this with the title tag, but Google still might alter it depending on the query searched to find the site.
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RE: How Additional Characters and Numbers in URL affect SEO
When in doubt, the answer is almost always the same as the answer to, "What is best for the user?"
Users can't make sense of all those parameters, and bots aren't likely to either. A site like Amazon.com or Canon.com can get away with it, because they have so many other factors going for them. Also, some systems create these parameters automatically, and can't easily be optimized.
So, to answer your question: It's best not to have those parameters. Users like it without them, and it makes it easier for people to link to you, since URLs are more memorable. On the other side of that, it's not the end of the world if you can't do this in an easy manner and your time might be better spent elsewhere.
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RE: Renaming web pages vs new web site
It sounds like it's time to get aggressive with your hosting company. Tell them they botched it. Tell them it's effecting your business. Also ask them how they attempted it in the first place. If you don't know what they did, you can't fix it efficiently. Discovering what they did without their help could possibly take a lot of digging and technical knowledge, but it's possible.
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RE: Htaccess rewrite rule (very specific)
This should work out just fine. If you want to confirm that it is effective, you can backup the old htaccess, upload the new one, go to one of the previously 302'd pages and see if it 301s now. You can check this using the network tab in Chrome's developer tools.
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RE: Recommendation for SEO plugin for Wordpress
The focus keyword is just a little tool to help you in the backend. You can focus on more than one keyword if you'd like, just check each keyword individually in the tool if you want to use it.
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RE: New feature in seo results with icon?
Keep in mind, if you want to use this character, a lot of people may not see it in the SERPs, and it could just make your site look glitchy like the attached image.
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RE: Renaming web pages vs new web site
Hello,
There is some good news and bad news here:
The bad news news? That old site, cheaptubesinc.com is not 301'd. Notice how to URL doesn't direct to the new one when you type it in. You have two identical sites going on due to a botched 301. In order to help with that, more information on how you attempted the redirect is needed..
The good news? It is probably an relatively simple fix. Once you fix that 301, things may settle in.
Hope this helps.
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RE: Google Analytics Goals - Different Domain
Do you need to track through the checkout process on the second site, or do you just want to know how many people are clicking "checkout" on the first site?
If you want to know the number or people who are getting to the checkout site from a specific link, you can use onClick and javascript to fire virtual pageviews to analytics.
If you need to track throughout the checkout process on the second site, you would need access to that site. If you had that, you could track the path of conversion back to the referrer (the first site).
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RE: Switching from .co to com?
I've never tried it, but I don't think that would avoid the temporary dip.
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RE: Renaming web pages vs new web site
Thanks for posting the follow up. I'm really glad I could help.
I hear bluehost is okay. I've tried a lot of hosting companies over the years, and the majority have that arrogant attitude. Charging $60 per 301 is insane though. If you decide to move your site, I recommend having a professional do it, or it could go very wrong.
Happy to see your ranks recover
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RE: Links From Public Info
Not unless they are copying material that could warrant a DMCA takedown notice. Otherwise, just disavow and note in the report that the webmaster was mean.
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RE: Duplicate Content... Really?
This is one of the things Panda was trying to discourage (creating pages strictly for SEO value as opposed to user value that have thin content).
Consolidating and building out a single page is the way to go. Google will still crawl the product numbers, and they will be on a much stronger page. Even if they're not in the URL and title, a more valuable page nearly always wins out.
Not only that, you're playing with fire right now. If you haven't been hit by Panda yet, your odds are much higher with the numerous little pages.
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RE: Simple on-site SEO - bet practice for keywords in content
Matt is correct. Keyword density is no longer a thing that helps positively with ranks, in my opinion. It can hurt you if it is overused though.
If you're worried about content being naturally over-stuffed, that's a valid concern. If your client is in the pizza industry, how do you not use the word "pizza" all the time? The answer is: creatively. It'll be different with every industry, like with pizza, focus on toppings, dough, cheese, sauce, etc. to dilute the density.
Don't force it in, make it look natural, keep it in the H1, title, URL, and other best practices, but try to mention it only when required in the content to reduce mentions. Anything above one mention in the body isn't required, but sometimes quality of content requires it to be mentioned more.
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RE: Google Places for Business was removed after 6 months
When you go to your Places for Business page, click to edit details, then at the bottom of the page there is a "Get help with this listing" link, which will allow you to tell Google to call you. You'll get a Google Local rep on the phone who can tell you exactly what's going on and possibly reverify it on the spot.
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RE: Massive URL Migration with thousands of 301
Assuming not all of your pages hold incredible value and don't get visited a lot, I don't think you'd need to do it in phases. You can save yourself some time by throwing in some regex to grab large chunks of URLs at a time and redirect them that way.
Your more valuable pages should be one-to-one redirected as to not confuse users and to retain the most juice to the right place, but for less important pages, grab a bunch at a time.
One way to do this is:
redirectmatch 301 ^/sub/directory/(.*)$ http://site.com/newdirectory
This would grab all pages under site.com/new/directory/ANYTHING to site.com/newdirectory/.
Hope that helps.
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RE: URL SEO: Better directory structure vs. exact keyword phrase
The difference in the ranking strength of those two URLs is negligible. Your decision should probably be made by deciding whether or not you're going to build out those directories and have the content to do so.
Having /properties/new-york/rental suggests you having multiple properties in New York, some of which are rentals. If a visitor went to /properties/new-york, would they see a page with multiple New York properties, some for sale and some for rent? If the visitor just went to /properties, would there be multiple regions for people to browse through?
If you have the content and ability to do that, then build it out with the subdirectories. If you don't, then focus on that single page with the keyword as the slug.
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RE: Duplicate Content From Citations?
You'll notice some citation sites specifically request unique content for the descriptions. This is most likely so they don't encounter duplicate content, but it's a good practice. I know it's a hassle, but unique descriptions enable you to tailor content to the specific citation site, and you can surround your links (even if most are no-followed) with different contextual words they may be picked up on.
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RE: Massive URL Migration with thousands of 301
Webmaster's Tools has been pretty good to me regarding telling me about 404s I may have missed after a migration, but using the tactic I described really limits missed URLs, assuming you have a good grasp on the subdirectories of your site.
Phasing is an option, but say, in the case of a redesign or domain migration, I like to do it all at once. That way Google isn't trying to index the website on two different URL structures or domains. Doing it in one shot makes it clear to Google what has happened, since everything is now moved, instead of just a fraction at a time. I'm sure this is a point of debate, and not necessarily the definitive way to do it.
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RE: Question about robots.txt
Consider deleting all of this:
Disallow: /&limit
Disallow: /?limit
Disallow: /&sort
Disallow: /?sort
Disallow: /?route=checkout/
Disallow: /?route=account/
Disallow: /?route=product/search
Disallow: /?route=affiliate/
Disallow: /?marca
Disallow: /&manufacturer
Disallow: /?manufacturer
Disallow: /?filter
Disallow: /&filter
Disallow: /?order
Disallow: /&order
Disallow: /?price
Disallow: /&price
Disallow: /?filter_tag
Disallow: /&filter_tag
Disallow: /?mode
Disallow: /&mode
Disallow: /?cat
Disallow: /&cat
Disallow: /?product_id
Disallow: /&product_id
Disallow: /?route=affiliate/
Disallow: /*?keywordThose rules are telling Google not to crawl domain.com/EVERYTHING(then the URL parameter). This could be where the issue stems from. If you're worried about URLs with these things ranking, consider implementing canonical tags instead to point to the proper pages
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RE: Is this a NAP inconsistency or is it fine?
The Googler said it didn't matter as long as it was consistent, but I think Vadim has some good points below.
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RE: What is better? No canonical or two canonicals to different pages?
When Google sees more than one canonical reference on a page, they will more than likely ignore all canonical hints that page has. Keep that in mind when you make your decision. If the canonical tags are working on most pages, but not on that one specific page with ?m=0, you might want to keep them implemented. If the issue is larger than that and you're seeing it effect your site in a negative way, remove them and see how Google responds.
Here's a link to canonical information I refer to: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/04/5-common-mistakes-with-relcanonical.html
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RE: Google is showing product rating of 1-star in search results when average rating is 3.7 - 4 stars
It looks like there's a glitch in the markup on the REI website (or whichever 3rd party review software REI uses). Only one of the reviews on the website is being read and put into the snippet on Google. It looks like it might have been the first review given: a 1-star review by "dan hiker" from 4 years ago. Like the markup isn't being automated on each review after that one.
This looks like an issue on REI's side, and not an error with Google.
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RE: Is a Competitor Claiming My Clients Yahoo Local Profiles?
Are you in control of the Yahoo listings? If so, you would've been notified when such drastic changes took places on them. If you didn't claim them, then it is possible someone else did and changed the information. The listings places are getting better about verification methods, but it's still possible for competitors to claim unverified listings.
I would suggest creating a Yahoo Small Business account, and then contacting Yahoo about the situation. They should either give you ownership, change the URL, or delete the listing and have you create a new one. If Yahoo is being too slow, create a new listing in the meantime, and once you get in contact with Yahoo they should be able to merge the two listings.
Yahoo is the slowest of the three in getting back to you (in my experience), so don't be afraid to get a little aggressive if it starts taking a while. Contact them through multiple channels, flag the listing, etc.
I have seen competitors take over listings in the real estate market before, and the insurance industry would seem like another clear target, since the business/agent structure can be similar.
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RE: Why isn't the Google change of address tool working for me?
Webmasters doesn't yet support change of address for HTTPS. They're working on it. Yes, it's insane that this wasn't handled before the HTTPS ranking factor announcement.
Here's an article for more information: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-change-address-https-issue-18971.html
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RE: Whats wrong with meta title? In SERP it looks different.
Matt Cutts covered this a couple months ago. Depending on the query you used, Google reserves the right to change the title based on what they believe would be better for users. Is it actually better for users? We may never know, but that's how things are right now. I linked the Cutts video below:
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RE: Why does it take so long for citations to get listed?
From what I've heard when I talk to these citation places, there are two different kinds.
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A company that collection citations and then hands them off to large databases that are controlled by others, and then those people will distribute the citations through there affiliates. This is the much longer, much cheaper, kind of citation company. Moz Local does this.
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A company that has it's own direct relationships with the citation sites, and doesn't use third-party databases or companies as a middle-man. This is more expensive (10x or so), but faster. Yext falls into this category.
So, you are correct. There is nothing you can do to speed it up, the citations are most likely in the hands of those large databases who are distributing to affiliates.
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RE: Are there any legitimate ways to do press releases?
I still find PRWeb safe to use and haven't experience any noticeable penalties.
Press releases are still safe to use, just not as link-building technique. You can still utilize them to get newsworthy information about the company out to the public. Distributing it on your website, some online place like PRWeb, and also sending it manually to larger publications that your information is relevant to can be very valuable.
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RE: Can we have 2 websites with same business name and same business address?
Thanks for the tip, Miriam.
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RE: Show Address or Not, this is the question
In my experience, yes. I'm currently doing some further testing on it, but initial results and experience say Google absolutely prefers the address be shown, which is counter intuitive and frustrating, I know.
Also remember that this is only one little factor in a massive scope for local listings, there may be other areas to focus on as a better use of time that would make this point moot.