Localized SEO for Restricted Niches
-
Sorry for the hypothetical, it's a sticky subject!
Suppose I work for a company that offers Online Widget Counseling. Due to the fragile nature of Widgets, this service is only legal in one state and must be administered by a registered and regulated Widget Counseling company. Widget counseling is only available online so there is no competition from bricks and mortar stores.
Unfortunately the SERPs are dominated by unscrupulous black market outfits offering Widget Counseling illegally.
If we were to use intensive and strong local signals, could we expect the SERPs to favor our pages for searches "in or about" the state in which we are registered?
Thanks for your help
-SEO Newbie
-
I'm going to take a stab in the relative dark and say this:
1. Building local links and citations should help as it would with any site.
2. It is unlikely that Google will assist you further than that. They appear to penalize broadly illegal sites, but they do not appear to get into the details beyond that. If you feel businesses are illegally offering a service, it seems like that would be more of a legal / regulatory issue than an SEO issue per-say.
-
Hi Benjamin
It's rather a question full of riddles, but as far as I see it the search engine only cares about providing the most relevant pages for the search.
Just because the widget counselling service is only available online doesn't really matter to the search engine. If someone searches for "widget counselling boston" and there's a website run by a company showing that they are based in Boston, then it's more than likely that company's web pages will rank highly. Unless of course, there are many other widget counselling companies in Boston!
I'm not sure that answers your question, but I hope it helps.
Peter
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
-
Does capitalization consistency matter in Local Citations?
In my research I have found multiple citations that were both lowercase and uppercase. Does this inconsistency effect ranking?
Image & Video Optimization | | jonnyholt0 -
Carousel bumped us out of our local ranking
Nearly every post I've seen on Carousel states that "the rankings basically stay the same" but that hasn't been the case for one of my hospitality sites. The site went from being in the top 3 of local listings but when Carousel hit the site got bumped. We have high quality images, reviews, citations...we even added some newer, better photos but aside from that I'm a bit stumped as to what steps to take next. Anyone else get bumped by Carousel or have thoughts on any other factors which I might be missing out on?
Image & Video Optimization | | NetvantageMarketing0 -
Local SEO, hard time ranking a keyword
Hello. Im working with beauty salon client, i do rank them for top services, but there a term that i can't rank for, my page it optimized for this keywords (url,h1,h2) i have this keyword in Google places, as a category, and in description. i have build many citations with this term, BUT still cant rank it. If anyone can help me on that, ill be really appreciated, as i'm still learning this. Thanks You!
Image & Video Optimization | | Davidmez0 -
Youtube vs Vimeo for better SEO
Hi i am starting to make some videos for my company like a tutorials for our products and i have some questions! What low budget service to choose for video hosting to have the best results for seo? I start with youtube because is google friendly but the ads are very big problem for me! Then i had start to thing about Vimeo but I am worried if my videos gone lost from search results! What you thing about it?
Image & Video Optimization | | petrospan0 -
I understand that in addition to video sitemaps, a transcription of a video, if presented properly will help google and may help SEO. I cannot find information on the basics to add transcription properly to a page. Advice or direction appreciated.
Looking for guidance or information on the nuts and bolts of how to use transcriptions with video.
Image & Video Optimization | | hughman0 -
Video SEO - Why are my videos not being indexed?
Hello All, I work on a site that has a lot of videos. The trouble is none of them are ranking. Here is an example of a page with a video on. If you click the play button you will see But none of these videos are being indexed, as you can see here. Is it because these videos are just mp4 files, rather than being embedded players (like SEOmoz use for instance)? Would embedding videos through Viddler / Wistia / Youtube etc help? Or is there some other issue at work here? Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Rich
Image & Video Optimization | | JBGlobalSEO0 -
Local SEO... use 800 # or local, use full-street name or abbreviation?
Couple local SEO questions... Do you feel it’s better to submit a listing with the full type of street rather than an abbreviation? Google Places sometimes disassociates data because of small differences like this. Below is an example: Full Name: 123 Broadway Street
Image & Video Optimization | | qlkasdjfw
Abbreviation: 123 Broadway St. Also, I’m wondering if you feel it’s better to submit a local number versus an 800 number. I've modified many local listings for clients manually with an 800 number, but then there are other data sources for these same businesses that are displaying the local number. I am starting to use UBL/LocalEZE and are wondering what people have seen working best... local number or 800 number. Thanks!0 -
Local Search - New Business - 4 different Erroneous, Unverified Google Places Pages
My client is a new business <1 year old. Google has 4 unverified places pages for this business - all have slight errors in the business name and address. Which one should I claim? Will Google let me change the business name once I verify ownership? How will I get rid of the other listings once I claim and correct one of them? In light of these data errors and/or as a general rule do you recommend the paid submission services for UBL and Localeze (http://getlisted.org/resources/why-listing-services.aspx)? Thanks for the help! Jeff
Image & Video Optimization | | jeffgibson0