Multiple Locations Google Places (URL's)?
-
I'm managing a restaurant chain with 10 locations. Can they all share the home page url of the corporate site in Google Places or is it better to link each location url separately?
Meaning can I use www.company.com for all locations in Google places for all locations or is it better to go with www.company.com/location.html for each location.
The page authority of the home page is 60 while individual location pages the page authority is in the 20's.
Hope this makes sense.
Thanks
Gary -
Hi Gary,
Ben has provided a good answer. Now, technically, you are perfectly free to link to the homepage from all of the local listings. That is in no way forbidden, but it is a preferred practice in many cases to link to a landing page for each location. Just be sure your location landing pages are strong pages (not duplicates, not with thin content, etc.). The use of landing pages is also a good place to reinforce the NAP (name, address, phone) for each unique location. They will all share the same business name, but will have unique street addresses and phone numbers, and these can be clearly listed on each respective landing page.
Years ago, Eric Enge interviewed Carter Maslan on this topic, and to my mind, Carter's advice about these types of landing pages still stands: http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-carter-maslan-032710.shtml
Scroll down to this part and read from there:
Eric Enge: Let’s say you have more than one location, 100 for example. In your view, is it helpful to have individual pages on the website for all of the locations? Also, is it helpful to have the Google local business center linked to each of those individual pages rather than having 100 locations that point to a single web address?
*Note, this was published in 2010, so some of the terminology is outdated, but the main message about this particular topic is still right on. Hope this helps!
-
It's best to link them to location pages on the domain. In local, domain authority wins over page authority. User experience wins over bot experience. This is the current trend of local and it doesn't appear to be changing. Here is a great article by Nifty Marketing that illustrates a good local landing page.
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
-
A client rebranded a few years ago and doesn't want to be associated with it's old brand name. He wishes not to appear when the old brand is searched in Google, is there something we can do?
The problem is there was redirection between the old branded site and the new one, and now when you type in the name of the old brand, the new one comes up. I have desperately tried to convince this client there is nothing we can do about it, dozens of news articles crop up with the two brands together as this was a hot topic a few years ago, but just in case I missed something I thought I'd ask the community of experts here on Moz. An example for this would be Tyco Healthcare that became covidien in 2007. When you type tyco healthcare, covidien crops up here and there. Any ideas? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Netsociety0 -
Weird behavior with site's rankings
I have a problem with my site's rankings.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mcurius
I rank for higher difficulty (but lower search volume) keywords , but my site gets pushed back for lower difficulty, higher volume keywords, which literally pisses me off. I thought very seriously to start new with a new domain name, cause what ever i do seems that is not working. I will admit that in past (2-3 years ago) i used some of those "seo packages" i had found, but those links which were like no more than 50, are all deleted now, and the domains are disavowed.
The only thing i can think of, is that some how my site got flagged as suspicious or something like that in google. Like 1 month ago, i wrote an article about a topic related with my niche, around a keyword that has difficulty 41%. The search term in 1st page has high authority domains, including a wikipedia page, and i currently rank in the 3rd place. In the other had, i would expect to rank easily for a keyword difficulty of 30-35% but is happening the exact opposite.The pages i try to rank, are not spammy, are checked with moz tools, and also with canirank spam filters. All is good and green. Plus the content of those pages i try to rank have a Content Relevancy Score which varies from 98% to 100%... Your opinion would be very helpful, thank you.0 -
What is the best practice for URLs for E-commerce products in multiple categories?
Hello all! I have always worked successfully with SEO on E-commerce sites, however we are currently revamping an older site for a client and so I thought I'd turn to the community to ask what the best practices that you guys are experiencing for url structures at the moment. Obviously we do not wish to create duplicate content and so the big question is, what would you guys do for the very best structure for URLs on an E-commerce site that has products in multiple categories? Let's imagine we are selling toy cars. I have a sports car for sale, so naturally it can go in the sports cars category and it could also go in to the convertibles category too. What is the best way you have found recently that works and increases rankings, but does not create duplicate content? Thanks in advance! 🙂 Kind Regards, JDM
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Hatfish0 -
Google's Structured Data Testing Tool? No Data
I'm stumped as to why some of the pages on my website return no data from Google's Structured Data Testing Tool while other pages work fine and return the appropriate data. My home page http://www.parkseo.net returns no data while many inner pages do. http://www.parkseo.net Returns No Data http://www.parkseo.net/citation-submission.html Does Return Data. I have racked my brains out trying to figure out why some pages return data and others don't. Any help on this issue would be greatly appricated. Cheers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YMD
Gary Downey0 -
Why is google automatically showing my competitor's result even when customer types in our brand name on the query?
This is little weird. We run a website specific to mobile phones called as 91mobiles.com. The site has gained lot of user interest and trust in the last 2 years [pre-dominantly indian users]. Lot of our users type mobile phone model and 91mobiles as the query. Example "Sony Xperia P 91mobiles". Google is showing gsmarena.com results on top and then shows our own results below! What's annoying is the fact that google also bolds the term gsmarena [denoting that it's a synonym]. Any idea why this is happening? We are very sure that we are not doing anything wrong..We have worked really hard for the last 2 years to reach where we are..and it's kind of hard to see gsmarena siphoning away our traffic for no reason at all [even when customer types in 91mobiles a part of the query to quality it]...Can some experts here demystify this? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gaadi0 -
Understanding Google's keyword tool...
When I type in Google a keyword like : boot camp I get results that show Bootcamp (one word) traffic in the tens of thousands. I see many words combined. Does this mean that tens of thousands of people every month are misspelling that keyword? How should I interpret this in terms of anchor texting? I would hate to deliberately misspell it on my website just to get traffic. For those interested, my website is: http://ultimatebasictraining.com/admin/ (currently revaming my http://ultimatebasictraining.com website)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StreetwiseReports0 -
Questions regarding Google's "improved url handling parameters"
Google recently posted about improving url handling parameters http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/07/improved-handling-of-urls-with.html I have a couple questions: Is it better to canonicalize urls or use parameter handling? Will Google inform us if it finds a parameter issue? Or, should we have a prepare a list of parameters that should be addressed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Google sees redirect when there isn't any?
I've posted a question previously regarding the very strange changes in our search positions here http://www.seomoz.org/q/different-pages-ranking-for-search-terms-often-irrelevant New strange thing I've noticed - and very disturbing thing - seems like Google has somehow glued two pages together. Or, in other words, looks like Google sees a 301 redirect from one page to another. This, actually, happened to several pages, I'll illustrate it with our Flash templates page. URL: http://www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | templatemonster
Has been #3 for 'Flash templates' in Google. Reasons why it looks like redirect:
Reason #1
Now this http://www.templatemonster.com/logo-templates.php page is ranking instead of http://www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php
Also, http://www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php is not in the index.
That what would typically happen if you had 301 from Flash templates to logo templates page. Reason #2
If you search for cache:http://www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php Google will give the cahced version of http://www.templatemonster.com/logo-templates.php!!!
If you search for info:www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php you again get info on http://www.templatemonster.com/logo-templates.php instead! Reason #3
In Google Webmaster Tools when I look for the external links to http://www.templatemonster.com/logo-templates.php I see all the links from different sites, which actually point to http://www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php listed as "Via this intermediate link: http://www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php" As I understand Google makes this "via intermediate link" when there's a redirect? That way, currently Google thinks that all the external links we have for Flash templates are actually pointing to Logo templates? The point is we NEVER had any kind of redirect from http://www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php to http://www.templatemonster.com/logo-templates.php I've seen several similar situations on Google Help forums but they were never resolved. So, I wonder if anybody can explain how that could have happened, and what can be done to solve that problem?0