Which internal page approach is better? Couponsite/Kohls OR Couponsite/Houston/Kohls
-
Google will use the user's location for a restaurant search but it doesn't look to me like it uses it for a national company like Kohls. Is there a way to determine that?
Assume I have no physical local presence in Houston for answering the question.
Assume also that the coupon I list is a national one that applies everywhere. It seems to me that a facebook post that uses the first one as a link is better because more people live outside of Houston than inside and will see it as relevant, AND I may list it for more than one city. But, for specificity perhaps it makes sense to have the second one as it may be more likely to show up in a Google search result by someone in Houston..
Your thoughts please?
Thanks.
-
Kane,
Thanks for the response. I agree that few will type that in but I wonder if the user's location matters--That is: since Google knows where people are located why wouldn't Google try to match up their location with the webpage content?. For restaurants, it appears to matter to Google--when I put in a national restaurant like Bob Evans one of the results is all-menus.com/state/myneabylocaltown. Why not for a retail store like a Kohls that also has a physical location? .OTOH a coupon site isn't a store with a local presence--it's just a site that can exist anywhere. Still, logically it seems to me that if my content is geared toward a physical location (ie the coupon is good locally), then Google would/should check for whether a user search has a potential location-connection, and prioritize that in the results---like it appears to do with the allmenus.com site.
This issue has caused me a lot of grief lately as I want to have the location breakdown but fear it won't be rewarded, yet logically IMO it should be. Kane if you or anyone else has further insight please do share.
-
I doubt users will be searching by "houston kohls coupon" for coupons. Most Kohl's have the same coupons, so it makes sense to just search "kohls coupon".
With that in mind, I'd probably stick with the top level page and not do cities.
-
Hi Marc,
Thanks. My target will be people in every major city. However, I can set it up to have one page for Kohls, or a page for each city for Kohls. I am wondering if Google ALWAYS takes the user's location into account, which is obvious with restaurants, but not with national stores. If they don't and they rely ONLY on the keywords, then I understand that if the user enters "Houston" it would help to have a Houston/Kohls page, but my guess is that very few users actually include their own city when searching for a national store..dunno..nor do I know how to find out..
Thanks for the caution on duplicate content. I would have a title and some content in a hover 'info' box that would tie it to the city. Hopefully that would be enough.
Thanks again--please provide any more thoughts. I've put 5 years into developing a site for mobile coupons --local and national--and now that I'm about to launch I've come to realize that it HAS to succeed organically for me to succeed, and so 'structure' of pages is something I'm really concerned about.
-
well this depends on the question whom you want to target???
Do you want to spread/offer this coupon nationwide or just for interested people in Houston?
If you use this local "parameter" then your site CAN be more relevant if the visitor can be located in this area or if he/she uses the word "Houston" in his query... of course your site should be optimized for this relevant keyword!
by the way: if you just decide to offer this coupon in different locations you should do more than just change the city within your content otherwise it
s DC or at least partial DC and that won
t do you any good.
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
-
Proper SEO structure for Franchise/ Franchisee websites
Hi Neighbors, Franchise website design and development can be difficult, there’s no doubt about it. I had to find the right balance between a unique and unified brand identity, and a localized experience that accurately reflects the individual franchisees and their efforts. Due to the many benefits, I have structured the to read _domain.com/location _ domain.com = TLD /location = subfolder (location page) I have also built a customized CMS (e.g. Drupal) and have given each location access to manage their location page (subfolder). To accommodate local SEO optimization, franchisees have complete control in terms of optimizing their location page (subfolder). Title tags, meta description, Alt tags, etc... Will any local optimization performed in the subfolder (location page) be stiffened because it was not done in the TLD but in the subfolder ?
Local Website Optimization | | Jeffvertus1 -
Which URL and rel=canonical structure to use for location based product inventory pages?
I am working on an automotive retailer site that displays local car inventory in nearby dealerships based on location. Within the site, a zip code is required to search, and the car inventory is displayed in a typical product list that can be filtered and sorted by the searcher to fit the searchers needs. We would like to structure these product inventory list pages that are based on location to give the best chance at ranking, if not now, further down the road when we have built up more authority to compete with the big dogs in SERP like AutoTrader.com, TrueCar.com, etc. These higher authority sites are able to rank their location based car inventory pages on the first page consistently across all makes and models. For example, searching the term "new nissan rogue" in the Los Angeles, CA area returns a few location based inventory pages on page 1. The sites in the industry that are able to rank their inventory pages will display a relatively clean looking URL with no redirect that still displays the local inventory like this in the SERP:
Local Website Optimization | | tdastru
https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-sale/New+Cars/Nissan/Rogue
but almost always use a rel=canonical tag within the page to a page with a location parameter attached to the end of the URL like this one:
https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-sale/New+Cars/Nissan/Rogue/Los+Angeles+CA-90001"/>
I'm having a hard time figuring out why sites like this example have their URLs and pages structured this way. What would be the best practice for structuring the URL and rel=canonical tags to be able to rank for and display location based inventory pages for cars near the searcher?0 -
Page Title Local SEO - 2 places
Hello guys, I am from azores are 9 islands in portugal. I live in São Jorge is one island. My question is. If one person seach by Azores Canyoning or São Jorge Canyoning. Because Azores is one region and São Jorge is one island inside Azores. And i want have this two exact keywords in title page. Canyoning is a service. Azores Canyoning - São Jorge Canyoning | Brand Name what is best way to write this title? Or is not good?
Local Website Optimization | | Flaske0 -
One locations page, or multiple pages?
Hi, I represent a franchisor who does all marketing- including local seo- for our franchisees. I've read a lot about local SEO and understand the basics, but have some remaining questions. 1- If our typical territories are quite large and encompass more than one major city, should we create multiple location pages for the same franchise owner? I believe the answer should be yes from an SEO stand point, but the problem is that most of our franchisees naturally just have one business address (their home). Since PO boxes and virtual offices aren't the way to go, what's the best course of action? And when I say major cities, I'm really talking about major cities (and not just small towns/boroughs). Can they just use a friend's/relative's address? 2- There's a lot of info out there about "locations pages," but it's not really clear whether or not you should really just have ONE page for each location, or several pages with different content? For instance, it looks like a lot of businesses are creating just one, "home-page" looking landing page for their individual locations, with everything from services to testimonials on just that one page. Is this preferred over creating several different local pages for that one location? The latter is what we currently do. From the user stand-point, it looks like each franchise location has it's own "mini website" on our main website. For instance, a landing page optimized for the local business name, a local services page, a project/photo gallery page, local review page, etc. It seems like a lot less work just building one landing page for each location, but is the payoff the same? I'm torn between the two strategies- is it really worth the extra work (in terms of traffic + local ranking) to build out the individual pages for the one location? Thanks Moz Community!
Local Website Optimization | | kimberleymeloserpa0 -
Question about landing pages
I currently have a service based website with landing pages for surrounding towns. For example the keywords targeting and url for the town are "service+town+state". I recently noticed that I am not showing up at all for "service+zip" even though I have the zips included in all the landing pages. I was told if I made more landing pages dedicated to zip I would risk killing the rank on other landing pages. Would it be advisable to make another totally different website that focuses on just the "service+zip" landing pages. The name of the page would be the same the company obviously but the phone numbers and content would be different along with domain url. Any advice or suggestions are welcome. Thanks.
Local Website Optimization | | Spartan221 -
Search Result Discrepancy: Keyword "Dresses" shows international sites in the search results of Google.co.in.
Hi All, What would be the reason that Google shows international websites in the first page results while there are huge local players available. Eg: Dresses - Keyword that shows results with almost all the results from International websites whereas the local big players in the same category are not shown. This is not the case for other keywords like Women dresses, Clothing, Shoes etc., Is it a bug or any particular reasons? Thanks,
Local Website Optimization | | Myntra0 -
Stuck on Page 4...is this diagnosis on the right track?
My website's (http://bartlettpairphotography.com) SERP rank is #45 for my targeted keyword: Philadelphia wedding photographers. My site is several years old, with 31-Domain Authority and 42-Page Authority. I've been stuck in SERP 40's for about a year now (I used to be top 5) and I have been pulling my hair out trying everything to no avail. I have an inkling that some configuration is seriously wrong, and would be very very appreciative is someone could point me in the right direction! I'm evidently not an expert at this, but here are my high level thoughts, though I could be totally off base here: Homepage problems (ranking 45 for highest priority keyword: Philadelphia wedding photographers): The #5 rank has a flash website, homepage = 33-DA/44-PA (slightly better than me). This makes me wonder if my problem is off-page? I have recently been submitting my photography work to many relevant wedding blogs so I think I will get some nice relevant backlinks in the coming weeks/months. The #11 rank has the same wordpress theme as me (ProPhotoBlogs), and homepage = 26-DA, 35-PA (somewhat worse than me) and similar homepage content etc...this makes me think I have an on-page problem? As you can see, my targeted keyword starts off with a geographic location. Geographically, our location is ~1 hour outside of the location, so ranking on Google maps etc. is very competitive (hundreds of competitors that are closer). Therefore, I'm mostly focused on non-local ranking. Both of the competitors I mentioned are ranking non-locally and both are 1 hour outside Philadelphia. With that said, would it still benefit me to add local content to my homepage (insert google maps, address, hours etc.)? NON-homepage problems (ranking ~30 for longer tail keywords, i.e. specific wedding venues) My blog page (http://bartlettpairphotography.com/blog) is ="noindex,follow." My reasoning for the "noindex" is because I'm showing FULL posts rather than excerpts (because I want my brides to flip through ~5 weddings rather than only clicking on 1). My thinking was that the FOLLOW aspect would pass along the link juice, while avoiding a duplicate content penalty by noindexing? I don't think this problem affects my higher priority homepage problem, but still wanted to point it out. We have ~100 published posts, but honestly I only care about ranking for ~30 of them. What should I do with the ~70 that I don't care about? Are they sucking up link juice that would be better elsewhere? Or should I just leave it because it's more content? Other than that, I'm really lost as to how I can improve my site. I gave the above examples to show that I am trying, but ultimately I feel like I'm looking in the wrong areas. With my SERP in the mid 40s, I feel like many things are broken that I am not able to figure out. I would be so very grateful if someone could help diagnose my issues!
Local Website Optimization | | bartlettpairphoto0 -
How Best to do implement a Branch Locator for a Website with invididual location category pages
Hi All, We have an ecommerce Website with multiple locations for our stores and we currently display separate location specific pages for the different categories and sub categories. This has helped us previously to rank well for local search in each of the areas we have a store but over the last few months since humingbird, our local rankings on some things have dip a little . We want to implement a branch locator of some description to improve the user experience. From looking at other websites with branch locators, they tend to a separate button/page with which you can search for a branch etc. However, they don't have location specific pages. My query is should I do it so if a user comes in on a specific category location page and follows it through to product page , then to have a tab on the product page displaying the local branch from which he can come in. My thinking here is that , is that it would help confirm my local citations and help improve local rankings. Or Should the local branch be displayed on the local category pages instead or as well ?. If a user comes in from the homepage or not on a specific location page, then the branch locator will allow them to search for a specific branch. Should I also put in a branch locator as a separate page or can It be in more places. I don't want to damage anything which may have an effect on rankings due to citations and NAP on the location specific pages. Any advice or good examples to look at would be greatly appreciated thanks Sarah.
Local Website Optimization | | SarahCollins1