Local SEO Question: Domain Wide Vs Specific Page
-
Hey Moz Community,
Question about Local SEO authority and how it applies to a domain vs. landing page. Let me elaborate...
Company is launching a new local out reach sales channel and merging it with our inbound sales channel under one brand. The plan thus far is to create a targeted landing page for local customers/leads.
I have been tasked with creating the written content and making sure we are optimized as much as possible for this landing page to show up for our city. Funny enough for a lot of relevant terms we are already in the top 10 with little optimization (Also due to low competition for most of these terms) Two questions:
1. Should the whole site be optimized for local - appropriate schema markup, G+ business local set up, contact page with correct address formatting, building citations/local links etc.? To accompany our targeted page?
2. Will taking a local first initiative hurt reaching our non-local target market? If so will a very targeted landing page for local customers do the trick minus rest of local optimizations ?
I guess what the question really boils down to is will optimizing for local hurt our broader inbound search reach/ranks in the long run? I want to be sure we are competitive to our broader audience and local audience on the same site with trying to get into sub-domains or considering re branding what is essentially the same department but for local purposes.
Responses and sharing previous experience would be greatly appreciated
-
Thanks for the Wisdom David! This really helped out ! I totally agree on EMD's - that said I don't believe I could swing this one on management and the developers. A lot branding already tied to the domain that would make this into more of a total re-brand project vs. just a merger.
Thanks again!
-
Hi Dylan,
Would you be able to explain your business model in a bit more detail? Is the business primarily local, with face-to-face transactions with customers in a given city, or is the business primarily virtual/non-local. The better you can paint a picture of what the business model looks like, the more tailored answers I believe you'll receive from the community here
-
1. Should the whole site be optimized for local - appropriate schema markup, G+ business local set up, contact page with correct address formatting, building citations/local links etc.? To accompany our targeted page?
If you are going to target that area specifically, then yes. If you still want to maintain a focus on national or boader match keywords, then no I would not modify the whole site.
2. Will taking a local first initiative hurt reaching our non-local target market? If so will a very targeted landing page for local customers do the trick minus rest of local optimizations?
You have to remember what the landing page's purpose is. You are trying to rank for one or a few things in a very specific area. One challenge I forsee in just having the landing page is that you are going to be up against companies that focus their whole effort to that one given area.
Depending upon what your long term goals are would determine how you move forward. To answer your question, yes it could hurt you on your national focus if you change your entire site to focus on that one given area.
Another aspect to look at is PPC and AdRank. Since you will have a local page that is highly targeted, your ad score will most likely go up for that ad if you choose to go the paid route. More on that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBmPtduElkM. If you are going to run some ads, the landing page could work well for you, and not be that expensive.
So what are your options? Well, IMO the landing page may accomplish what you are trying to do if there isnt a lot of competition for the phrase and target area. If you have competition whose main goal in life is to rank for that one area and phrase then I do not see the landing page carrying enough weight to make a difference.
If there is strong competition for that area, you may want to investigate a exact match domain, and place your content on that site. Many people discount the value of EMDs simply because they do not understand the value and their purpose. True, an EMD will not be easy to get to rank for a lot of keywords, but that is not their purpose. An EMD is to target one specific area and keyword. Will one page be enough? Probably not, but by setting up 5-10 pages on an EMD could get you ranking very high if the content and site are put together well. You could also link to your local site from your main national focus domain, and help them both out since they are relevant to one another.
By having the other domain, you dont risk sabotaging your main sites traffic by changing to a local focus. This will also allow you the freedom to create local profiles (citation sites, Google+ personal and business, etc) for your new domain. I know it sounds like a lot of extra work, but I dont think that having the subpage on your main site will be enough unless the competition is weak, or you have a lot of ways to promote the new page through marketing.
-
Hi Dylan,
This is from my own experience:
1. If your local is a priority, then you have to do this
2. It won't, really. Since (I presume) that your company is primarily a local-first company, then you can just create other landing pages that can target those that are non-local. You can actually create a more targeted copy like that and promote it in more targeted channels.
It can also work the other way around but I'm just looking at your advantages by optimizing for local, especially with the new update.
Bottom line, check their priority and optimize for that first.
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
-
Is getting views to an infographic through Imgur beneficial to SEO?
I'm considering posting infographics to Imgur in addition to hosting them on my site in an effort to leverage Reddit a bit more this year. My concern is that, if all goes well, we'll get a ton of views through Reddit to Imgur, maybe a couple clickthroughs to the site, and links to (probably) the Imgur page. I don't see that Imgur gives your profile a followed link, so how would any of this help SEO. I assume it would, because respected guys like John Dougherty espouse the benefits of Reddit, but I can't see how and I need to justify the effort to my department head.
Image & Video Optimization | | MattHolden1 -
Questions about optimization for Google Images
Hello all, I've got a few quick questions about optimization for Google Image search. Would be great if someone could help me out with these. Is it possible to track and seperate visitors that reach my website through the images presented in the SERP's? Should we avoid changing high ranking pictures on important keywords? If we need to change the pictures what would the best strategy be? Replace the original filename and alt tag of the picture? Keep the orignal pictures but change the location of the pictures to a new post on our website? Thanks in advance!
Image & Video Optimization | | buiserik0 -
What is the SEO value of images of geographic areas (states, counties, cities) on a page?
We want to put images for specific geographic locations on some new pages we are building and I am wondering if: A) What the SEO value of adding these images would be? B) Suggested Sources for the images. Right now we are looking at using panoramio, but would love some MOZ community advice! Thank you for your help MOZ Community!
Image & Video Optimization | | AlyssaN0 -
.png vs .jpg - Which ranks better or does it matter?
Hi Moz community, I am working on a SEO project (ecommerce) and most of the images on the website are .png and I notice they do not rank but yet the .jpg do. Do you recommend I change all the .png to .jpg? They all have alt text and keyword filenames (no spam 🙂 Here is the website www.moldear.com.ar. Notice the swimming pool coping tiles are .png and the swimming pool images are .jpg. I cannot get the coping images to rank for some reason Thanks Carla
Image & Video Optimization | | Carla_Dawson0 -
What are you most concerned about or interested in for Local Search?
Hi All, I'm speaking to a local SEO meetup at the end of this month. If you were attending (hypothetically), what would you be most interested in hearing about for local search? The audience is a mix of SEO professionals, web developers, internet marketers, and business owners. I suspect that there will be a number of people who understand the foundations of SEO, though not all of them will be practiced at implementing it. I believe the number of people who get really indepth with Local is quite small. At the moment, I'm thinking about covering things such as: The local search universe in general--which data sources are doing what these days, where it's heading. Google Local+ recent changes Migration to Local+, data cleanup, merging (or not merging!), and other Local+ nuances Current ranking factors, and where I think they're going. I'd love to hear, and greatly appreciate, any ideas you might have. Cheers, Bede
Image & Video Optimization | | BedeFahey0 -
What to do if your categories are missing from Google Places/Plus page?
A client's Google Places/Plus page used to show four or five categories. Now, Google only shows one category. When I go inside their edit page, all of the categories are still listed. Is this a temporary occurrence? Does anyone have a similar experience or advice on this?None of the competitors seem to have the same issue. Ever since the Google plus integration, it's been impossible to see any changes updated.
Image & Video Optimization | | micasalucasa0 -
Local query doesnt trigger local maps listings?
Hi guys, Ive been doing local seo for quite some time and had great results from both organic listings and local maps listings (and a merged listings). However ive noticed time and time again that local maps listings dont appear in serps on all local searches, even the most popular local search terms. Take the phrase "marketing company glasgow" local phrase,local intent but no maps results. But if you click on maps on the laft hand side, theres clearly tons of mpas results. Any ideas why google dont display local businesses on certain local intent phrases? Is there any way around this? Even with good on page seo, and good rankings organically, it would be great to get the maps listing on page 1 too. Thanks Robert
Image & Video Optimization | | glasgowseoguy0 -
Switching to a domain name with keywords in it, is it possible to make this happen smoothly?
Hello, We have been working on the SEO of our site for almost a year now, and we are still not really seeing the success we would like to see. I notice often we get outranked by other sites that have lower PA/DA/citations/reviews etc than us, and the only explaination i can find is that they are getting a boost for a Partial Keyword Match in the domain name. Right now our domain name is: http://www.storwell.com And we are considering switching to http://www.storwellselfstorage.com and of course 301 redirecting all the individual pages from the old domain to the new domain's pages. How much would we risk loosing out in this transition? Can we safely transfer domains, or do we risk loosing the majority of our PA & DA because the backlinks will point at redirects instead of the actual location? Has anyone successfully managed to transfer domains and keep their DA & PA?
Image & Video Optimization | | adriandg0