Has anyone found a best practice for ranking a client who has one central office location, but a large, regional service area that they want to rank for?
-
All the most recent local search ranking is based upon physical addresses, but what happens when someone provides services and has staff 100 miles from that central office location, but no physical address to work with?
-
Hi Kevin,
Good thoughts from Kevin Ramirez regarding content development and Richard Horvath regarding ensuring that the content you develop is unique!
The challenge here is that Google is biased toward physical location. Thus, an SAB (service area business) must typically plan to go after local pack rankings for its city of location and organic rankings for its location-less service cities. The type of content you will be developing is typically known as city landing pages. You can read more about this here:
-
I like Kevin's strategy but one thing I would stress is focus on the content being unique. You don't want to get penalized for duplicate content.
Awhile back cologne' company Burburry had their US page flagged for looking too much like the Europe page. So keep that in mind.
-
I've done it by making pages for each specific area. Here's an example. I lived in Baltimore for a while but I wanted to do business in the surrounding counties. So, I made a page for Baltimore County, Eastern Shore, Carroll County and others that I wanted to get listed in.
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
-
COPIED CONTENT IS RANKING Above Orignal
Please check following 2 cases https://www.screencast.com/t/fqOJlrfHuNto https://www.screencast.com/t/G6FCaKlH In above case, why original content outranked? Can someone tell me how to stop this copying process done by another site from my website?
Search Behavior | | Janki990 -
Anyone facing issues with Google Analytics today?
For some reason all pages on our site seem to be taking ages to load as they seem to be getting stuck at the "waiting for google-analytics.com"! Anyone else facing similar issues today?
Search Behavior | | prsntsnh0 -
Does anyone know the percentage of searchers that use wildcards in their queries?
I am trying to figure out the number of searchers that use wildcards (*) in their searches. I cannot find much information about a percentage or even ballpark figure. If there is not information on that, what is the percentage of users that use the 'advanced search' options? I am guessing the numbers would be semi-similar. Thanks!
Search Behavior | | TargetClick0 -
Location specific keywords when your not in the location
Hi, I've been reading lots of great stuff on location optimisation and have picked up some new SEO knowledge on this area. Usually I target UK wide terms but this is a new beast for me. From what I have read if you was going after 'Ironing Services Essex' you would setup google places, include your address across your website and submit to local directories using the same uniformed address. BUT what happens if you live in a town 10 mins outside of Essex, your address doesn't contain Essex or Essex postcode on your website, the Google places pin is outside of the Essex area etc, well hopefully you get the idea. Basically Lets say your company is 10 mins from the area you want to rank for, it's easy for you to get into the location and do business but your address is different to the location you want to target because you live in a village 10 mins outside of the area (city) you want to target.
Search Behavior | | activitysuper0 -
Google Location - Taking Away Our National Reach?
Hey, I was just noticing that we achieve #2 ranking on Google for one of our customers for one of their primary keyword phrases. But then I noticed the traffic analytics were not matching what we should expect from that keyword phrase. Then I noticed, in using "Chrome's Incognito Window", that our location was automatically selected for our main geographical city area. I then went and changed that location from Denver, to San Diego & Also Chicago, just to see what would happen, and I noticed we instantly dropped from #2 to #7 when changing our location. I don't know what my question is, but I guess I feel like that is preventing us from achieving the results we need to sell ecommerce products. Is there any info on this or suggestions anyone has on how to tackle this issue? It feels like Google is pulling the rug out from underneath our feet and trying to spread rankings more to localized areas, rather than offering someone the opportunity to capitalize on good rankings for a national audience. I understand why they would do it, and I don't say I disagree. But it just seems to affect our work as SEO's doesn't it? Since we can't be as effective for customers that have a global audience instead of strictly a localized one. I'm curious to see what people have to say about this issue. Thanks!
Search Behavior | | JerDoggMckoy0 -
Can we rank as a related search query on a competitor's brand keyword?
One of my clients wanted to know whether it's possible for him to rank as one of the related pages on Google for a brand name of a competitor. I honestly don't know whether it's possible so any ideas whether it's possible and if so, ideas on what can be done is greatly welcome. Thank you in advance. 🙂
Search Behavior | | als0070 -
Drastic Fluctuation in Site Rankings
All, Hope you are having a good day! Recently I had a strange issue with one of my site and I am not sure what might have caused it. I am sure this would be a good place to discuss about it and get some feedback from the elite people in the industry. Here is the problem. Last weekend (On sunday noon) my site which was ranking on Page 1 suddenly dropped its ranking for its main keywords to nowhere, I was panicked to see what was happening and by the end of the day it was slowly coming back and by next morning everything was back. Again on Wednesday noon, the same thing happened. However, this time it din't come up by the next morning. Making it worse, all of my keyword rankings went down from good spots to no where and there was a point when I could no longer see my site. I was worried something might have happened this time and was not sure what could the reason be. On Friday afternoon all the ranking came up better than the previous (which is a very good news for me). At the moment, my site is doing very well and I am really happy about it. I did realize that Google was updating their Algorithm, but this behavior is the strangest I have seen over years. Can someone enlighten me on this peculiar behavior. Is there something wrong with my site or is it a common thing that I have never noticed? I have never done anything blackhat for the site. To be honest, all I have done is some low level link building on the site and the site had some advantage of a re-direct from one my previous site which was doing very well in search engines (I changed it to take advantage of the new domain I had). Your opinions/suggestions are a appreciated.
Search Behavior | | frostmill0 -
"If a company has multiple practice areas, are there any advantages to having specialized local listings for each specific practice area?"
Hello Staff of SEOMoz! I just had a question regarding specialized local listings. Are there any advantages to having specialized local listings? (An example would be if we were a medical company, having a listing for family practice, one listing for women's health) If there are advantages, what are those advantages compared to having general medical listings? Thanks!
Search Behavior | | sixspokemedia0