Ranking locally without local keywords in title?
-
I have a website that targets national keywords. I would like to be able to rank locally for these keywords as well without having the city in the title. What is the best strategy for this?
-
Yes that will help for sure. The best way to do it is make a separate contact us page that when you make the new Google+ for business listing that you add that instead of the main root domain. For example yourcompanyname.com/denver-creative-services and that will rank quicker. I personally have done that myself a few times.
-
To have virtual offices is not against their terms and extremely effective.
-
Exactly. It was kind of a sad day when Google booted all the SEOs/designers out of the local index. But there is still organic. And I guess they were getting spammed like mad.
-
Yes I know that web design companies and SEO's aren't part of Google Local Search but if you do a search for Denver web design you will see companies optimized for this term. I guess that blogging and link building is the way to go.
-
Yes I know that web design companies and SEO's aren't part of Google Local Search but if you do a search for Denver web design you will see companies optimized for this term. I guess that blogging and link building is the way to go.
-
Hi Again Will,
People are often afraid that adding local factors to their website might somehow decrease their national/international rank. I have yet to hear of a case of this actually happening. So, if you'd like to get some more visibility in your area, you can embed some local hooks in the site (address in footer, on contact page) and write some copy about your services in those cities.
Now, that being said, Google removed web design companies and SEO companies from their Local index in January of 2010. See:
http://www.searchengineguide.com/miriam-ellis/google-shoves-their-liaisons-off-maps.php
So, typically they will not show local rankings for website design firms, again pointing to organic as the way to go for you. Write/Blog about your projects for local clientele and chances are, you can make a dent in the SERPs.
-
I do have a physical business location and it is in the metro are of the term I am trying to rank for. I am 20 minutes at most from the cities center point. I was just looking for a good way to rank without localizing my whole website. I do graphic design and web design but I have clients all over and I don't want to limit myself to just the city where my office is located.
I also have a places page and my business in Dexknows, Yelp, and other directories
-
Good to know, thank you. I had actually picked up that advice on seomoz 6-7 months ago.
-
Hi Nathan,
I'm not sure from your post whether this is something you used to do in the past or is something you are still paying people to do for you, but in case you've been misled by bad information out there, I wanted to take a second to make you aware of the guidelines which I've linked to in my reply to Will. The practice you are describing is not allowed, and when Google gets wise to things like these, the hammer can come down pretty hard.
I thought it worthwhile to comment on this, because I would not want to see the Places account of any SEOmoz member penalized of banned.
Miriam
-
Hi Will,
Unfortunately, I would not recommend getting a virtual office or setting up a Google Place Page for any city in which you do not have a physical address. This practice is forbidden by Google's Places Quality Guidelines:"Business Location: Use a precise, accurate address to describe your business location.
Do not create a listing or place your pin marker at a location where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations. If you operate from a location but receive mail at a mail box there, please list your physical address in Address Line 1, and put your mail box or suite number in Address Line 2."
http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528
Your desire to rank well in a major city in your state is understandable, but does not meet with Google's guidelines. If ranking in Denver becomes essential for your business, you must rent a real office there - not a virtual office, not a P.O. Box - in order to qualify for inclusion in Places.
Now, if you would like to get a Place Page for your Greenwood address, the criterion you must meet is that you have in-person transactions with clients either at your Greenwood address or at your clients' locations (as in the case of a carpet cleaning company, chimney sweep etc.)
If you do not have in-person transactions with clients, your business is not local, but virtual, and again, not suitable for inclusion in Google Places.
If the latter is the case, then you will need to rely solely on organic SEO to target cities where you would like to gain rankings. Typically, this will not enable you to outrank competitors with physical locations and in-person transactions in said cities, but you may be able to achieve some visibility by a combination of copywriting and linkbuilding.
Hope this set of definitions helps, Will.
Miriam -
I really don't want to add a new location if I don't have one there and I have a Google Place page for my real address now. My address belongs to a metro area of a bigger city and I would like to rank for terms in the bigger city.
-
I know Google Places doesn't allow PO Boxes, and this might be against their terms of use too. I'm asking our local expert to add to this thread with some more information.
-
This is another great idea. Within your blog, have categories or tags for each location that you want to rank for and keep those categories fresh with local content. Then have 'areas we serve' as mentioned on your contact page and link the anchor text to the category pages or location blogs.
-
What if I already have a Google Places page but with a different city. Will they be linked together because I am using the same company name?
-
If you have a contact page on your website that talks about your location you could also mention that you serve the areas of .....I've also added cities/ counties in Google Places in the additional areas.
-
The city that my business is located in is Greenwood Village, CO but I would like to rank in Denver, CO. So I should just add another location to my google places listing?
-
Yes, I agree with the other answers about optimizing your local listings. You may even want to get citations too. One thing that I've done is to create content that is optimized for the cities. You could even add something in the footer that links to that interior (local) page.
-
Do you have a local address? Use this to your advantage by making sure you have local directory listings, Google Places, etc. Make sure you have that address on your website. Target some blogs to the local area with local keywords. You can think about having a local blog, perhaps a local social media presence as well.
-
When I have needed to do this. I usually got a virtual office address in the locations I wanted to rank. I haven't used these guys and am in no way affiliated with them, but here is an example:
http://www.davincivirtual.com/
Then just created Google Places with your new address and optimize for that.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Title tag: Long tail words or keyword dilution?
Hi all, I am a newbie to SEO. Lately, I have been struggling to optimize my title tag. Ones say that we should have long tail words in title tags because long tail words improve click through rate and generate quality leads. On the other hand, ones say that putting other words in the title tag will dilute the main keyword that my page ranks for. Do keywords really dilute each other in the title tags? I am really confused. Let me give this an example: Web Design Services | Company Name Web Design Services with Conversion Focused | Company Name Which one would you prefer and why? Thank you. 😄 Best, Raymond
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Raymondlee0 -
I am lost at where to go. My optimization rating is 95% + and rankings are on pages 4+. I would like to know what I should do to increase my rankings.
My site is Glare-Guard.com. My Domain Authority has not moved from 17 in a long time. i have done everything to optimize the different pages. I have 90%+ ratings for the various pages, yet I am still not even close to the first page for many of the keywords I am looking to rank for. Do you have any tips or ideas? Should I try to rewrite my content and add more information? I am just at a loss for where I should go to get the right traffic to my site. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bigskyinc0 -
Highly Related, But Not Ranking
Hi Everyone! I'm doing a bit of research on a domain and I've come across something really odd. Doing a search for "asset based lending software" (not with the quotes), www.case.net doesn't show up anywhere in the first 100 results. However, at the bottom of the results in the "Searches related to asset based lending software" section, it lists "computer software enterprises inc" as the 2nd item (the company associated with www.case.net). Any ideas here? NdsoeNn.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | QueTech0 -
Can't understand our Ranking; DA, PA and On Page all better than Competiton; Ranking no where
Our rankings are up and down but our domain is clean, DA and PA good
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlexSTUDIO18
and there is really in depth content which is all original. We are at a bit of a loss; The site is
http://www.fightstorepro.com I can use the phrase "Boxing Gloves" as an example
http://www.fightstorepro.com/gear/gloves/boxing-gloves.html PA 26 , DA29
Good original content; Video content, On page grade A
Not ranking in top 50 places?? The competitor in Pos4 is not matching our placing Anyone shed any light on this?0 -
Keyword Frequent On and Drop Off
Hi, I was wondering if anyone could help me. I am currently doing SEO for a client’s site, over the past few weeks the keywords have gradually gone up steadily. One of the keywords however continues to jump on and off rankings. For a few days it will jump up to 23<sup>rd</sup> in Google Rankings, but then it will completely drop of the radar, not even in the top 200 anymore. I’ve gone through the site to check if there is anything wrong and stuck to guidelines offered here on SEO Moz but I’m stumped to figure it out. The Keyword has a page that helps target it, there is no stuffing, all I can think is if there are bad back-links coming in to us that Google that continues to push down the rankings. Can anyone help shed some light on the situation for me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kal-SEO0 -
Changing meta title dynamically e.g. with number of reviews in title. Is this a problem?
I would like to put the number of reviews in the meta title of a product page. I noticed that tripadvisor for example does the same. However I read in some places that people encountered problems with frequent title tag changes. Did you ever encounter problems by just changing numbers in title tag?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
Do you think it is really a problem if just the number of the reviews changes? what about putting number of reviews in the meta description instead?0 -
My PR 4 website won't rank for keywords that have very weak competition
I bought a real 1Yr old PR4 domain and used it to make a blog that would rank easily for new trending keywords (Ex: product launch keywords). I used Yoast SEO and made sure I did all the on-page recommendations it gave me and had linklicious ping the post and a couple high PR backlinks that I gave the page, but it won't even rank page 10 let alone index. My domain is indexed and the home page links to my post. I know a average amount of SEO but I hate doing it because stuff like this frustrates me. Can someone help me? Do I need to get certain backlinks? Is there a way to get my site and post to index faster? BTW the keywords i'm trying to rank for have websites that are brand spanking new some of them are blogspot websites. Most of them don't have a single backlink to them.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jamal41930 -
Rankings for keyword variations dropped over weekend?
One of our clients has seen significant decreases over the weekend for a number of keyword variations. There have been no significant site changes, no crawl errors reported and our competitors don't seem to have been affected. The decrease has coincided with the launch of a display campaign, but surely this is just coincidental? Any thoughts would be appreciated...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zealmedia0