Omitted Results city-queries for the same brand on different subdomains?
-
I've noticed on a few occasions where two subdomains share the same brand and are also attempting to rank for phrases specific to one city - the stronger subdomain tends to send the other subdomain to the "omitted search results" for those city specific queries. The subdomains do tend to have some duplicate content that they share but if the two pages on the different subdomains are unique for the search phrase in question wouldn't Google choose to surface both results?
Or is this a question of domain diversity in the SERPs where the 2 results would just be too similar since they share the same root domain and have topically similar content?
I've seen cases where they can share the first page of results but more often than not it seems that one is sent to the "omitted results".
Any thoughts on strategy in this situation?
- The companies being described end up wanting to rank for the same city because they both serve a portion of the city in case anyone is wondering.
-
Great blog post Miriam, and thank you very much for the response!
-
Hi GSO!
Thanks for the further info on this. So, the typical structure for this would be that you would have 1 unique page per physical location the business operates, backed up by a unique set of citations for each of these physical locations and would then rely on Google to surface the location that is deemed nearest or most relevant to the searcher. If you have multiple physical locations within the same city, this is an ideal opportunity for thinking hyperlocally, and I believe you will find my latest Moz Blog post to be helpful in understanding this type of marketing mindset:
http://moz.com/blog/mastering-serving-the-user-as-centroid
Remember, whether you are structuring this with subdomains or subfolders, the landing page for each physical location needs to be completely unique. There is no good excuse for duplicating content on these pages. My rule of thumb on this is that if you can't devote the energy to making these landing pages really strong and unique, don't make them at all.
Given that one of the reasons Google omits results is to weed out things that are too similar, this is all the more reason for the business in question to overhaul their pages to be sure they are unique. That being said, understanding the user-as-centroid scenario is going to be very important for this business, so that they will be encouraged to promote each location equally and then leave it up to Google to pick the results they feel are either nearest or most relevant to each given user.
-
Hi Miriam,
So the company in question chose a structure where they divide territories by zipcodes and create a new subdomain for every business owner. This structure tends to get them into trouble for larger cities where multiple business owners own territory pieces. The structure is definitely the larger issue but seeing as I have no control over that I'm trying to work with what I have haha.
An example would be= scottsdale.rootdomain.com and a scottsdale-north.rootdomain.com
Both subdomains end up wanting to rank for Scottsdale.
-
Hi GSO,
I'm having a bit of trouble getting my head around why there are different subdomains for the same city and brand. Normally, I see subdomains being used on local sites to differentiate between cities, not for the same city. I feel there's something I'm not quite understanding about your situation. Would be be able to provide a hypothetical example of how these have been divided up and why?
-
The trend towards SERPs displaying distinctly different domains has been a steady one. Maybe if you google something as dominant as "Google" you'll see a few subdomains... maps.google.com, translate.google.com... but in general the power of a subdomain isn't nearly enough to overcome the next competitor / diversity of results.
As far as strategy goes, I wouldn't plan on dominating the SERPs with results 1-5, instead being one or two click attainable from the results within a given search is a better measurement of penetration. For example, if someone searching for your product gets:
- Your page
- An independent, positive review of your product
- Image results featuring your product multiple times
- A competitor
- Another review of your product
- ....
You're doing exceptionally well.
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
-
International SEO: reposting my own posts to different ccTLDs versions of my website
Hello there Moz community! Moz has been super helpful for me and the team, keep up the good work! I have searched online for answers regarding my specific situation, but I haven't found any. I'm asking my fellow Moz users in hopes of an answer. Maybe this thread will help others too. I currently have this domain: https://eco-reusable.com/ I would like to target Ireland and the UK with my keywords so I have just bought eco-reusable**.IE** and eco-reusable**.CO.UK** My questions are: 1. In order to rank as high as possible for Ireland, do I create a new website for eco-reusable.ie using the same pages but changing all the content slightly so it is not duplicate content OR do I point the eco-reusable.ie domain to eco-reusable.com? By having two sites, we will add more hours but we don't mind if that will be of benefit in the longrun for ranking high in Ireland. I have the same question for eco-reusable.co.uk
Local Website Optimization | | Gael_Regnault
If we have to create three websites and make similar content (not duplicate), we will if it will be better for ranking high in ireland for .ie, in the UK for .co.uk and for the rest of the world for .com 2. If we create three websites, can I safely "copy/paste" my blog posts without being punished by Google for duplicate content? If so, how much variation do we have to have for each of the three sites if we are writing blogs that are the same context. Thank you in advance! 🙂0 -
HomePage Stopped Ranking For Brand on Aged Site
I've got an odd issue (that I've never encountered in 27 years in SEO). Our home page stopped ranking for our brand "BlowFish SEO" and is no place to be seen when searching our brand. I do get the knowledge panel on the right-hand side of the page. and our about page now comes up number #1. Technically the on-page SEO is correct This page has ranked for many years for our Brand. If I search blowfish SEO west palm beach I get the home page and all the nice site links. And other various variations of branded search. Our company has lots of mentions across the web and branded backlinks. No manual penalty has been placed on us. Im starting to think some type of negative SEO attack but I can't find it. I do know someone is using my name and brand along with many other companies in cloaked doorway redirected pages to gain SEO leads.. Yeah I know I've complained about it to Google they do nothing about it.. Other things I've checked: No one else seems to be using my brand Home page canonical tag points to itself Title tag contains brand name at the front (rest of site it's at the end) No manual penalty XML sitemap contains home page (and accurate for other pages) To make this even more confusing, if you search the brand name the physical location appears on the right rail with an accurate URL. Ive added an image of the search result when I search BlowFish SEO Please note the top result is PPC the about page is 1st organc Any other ideas that I may be missing? BT8F1fD.png
Local Website Optimization | | BlowFish-SEO0 -
Difficulty Ranking Two Locations in the Same City
We are in the self-storage business and have locations through the Pacific Northwest. As we grow, there are cities where we've added multiple (2-3) locations. But we're discovering that we're having a great deal of difficulty ranking for all of these. For instance, we have two locations in Vancouver, WA. One is West Coast Self-Storage Vancouver, and the other is West Coast Self-Storage Padden Parkway. Both are in Vancouver, WA, but for the most part, only West Coast Self-Storage Vancouver is getting ranked. In fact, on those searches where Vancouver ranks, Padden Parkway doesn't show up anywhere. Not in the top 10 pages anyway. Each location has an outer landing page and an inner details page. On each page, we've placed unique, city-optimized keywords in the URL, Page Title, h1s, content. Of course each location has a separate NAP. Each location also has its own GMB page. Each location has a decent amount of reviews across multiple sites (Google, Yelp, GetFiveStars.) Both locations were previously on their own domain until a year ago when they were redirected to their current URLs. Both of those original domains were close to the same age. With the Padden Parkway location, we've tried to be even more hyper-local, by including the address in the URLs and in the h1 of the outer page. We've also created an h2 that references local neighborhoods around the business. We're also running into this situation in at least one other city, so I'm wondering if this has something to do with our url structure. Other businesses in our space use the URL structure of domain.com/state/city/location. We only go down to the state level. What are we missing?
Local Website Optimization | | misterfla0 -
Seeking advise about my new landing pages for different cites
I have just created 6 new location landing pages for my Dallas insurance agency. Each one is for a different city, but I have a feeling I did it wrong 😞 Because my site is rather large, I put two different lines of insurance on each page. Homeowners insurance and business insurance. Now I'm wondering if I should of done 12 different pages? i.e **1 city + 1 product = 1 page ** Here's one of the new pages: http://thumannagency.com/personal-insurance/frisco-insurance I'm having a guess here, but would it be better if the Navigation was; thumannagency.com/personal-insurance/frisco thumannagency.com/business-insurance/frisco ??? Thank you so much in advance!!
Local Website Optimization | | MissThumann0 -
URL and title strategy for multiple location pages in the same city
Hi, I have a customer which opens additional branches in cities where he had until now only one branch. My question is: Once we open new store pages, what is the best strategy for the local store pages in terms of URL and title?
Local Website Optimization | | OrendaLtd
So far I've seen some different strategies for URL structure:
Some use [URL]/locations/cityname-1/2/3 etc.
while others use [URL]/locations/cityname-zip code/
I've even seen [URL]/locations/street address-cityname (that's what Starbucks do) There are also different strategies for the title of the branch page.
Some use [city name] [state] [zip code] | [Company name]
Other use [Full address] | [Company name]
Or [City name] [US state] [1/2/3] | [Company name]
Or [City name] [District / Neighborhood] [Zip Code] | [Company name] What is the preferred strategy for getting the best results? On the one hand, I wish differentiate the store pages from one another and gain as much local coverage as possible; on the other hand, I wish to create consistency and establish a long term strategy, taking into consideration that many more branches will be opened in the near future.1 -
Query results being indexed and providing no value to real estate website - best course of action?
Hi friends, I have a real estate website that has thousands of these type of query results pages indexed - http://search.myrealestatewebsite.com/l/43453/New_York_City_Rentals?per=100&start=159 What would be the best course of action to ensure those do not get indexed, as most provide no value whatsoever. 1. I'm limited to what I can do in the IDX, but I do believe I can modify the URL parameters for the website in Webmaster tools? Would this be correct? What would my parameter look like? 2. I have a webmaster tools for the website, then also the subdomain, which one would I submit the url parameter, or both?
Local Website Optimization | | JustinMurray0 -
Can PPC harm SEO results, even if it's off-domain?
Here's the scenario. We're doing SEO for a national franchise business. We have over 60 location pages on the same domain, that we control. Another agency is doing PPC for the same business, except they're leading people to un-indexable landing pages off domain. Apparently they're also using location extensions for the businesses that have been set up improperly, at least according to the Account Strategists at Google that we work with. We're having a real issue with these businesses ranking in the multi-point markets (where they have multiple locations in a city). See, the client wants all their location landing pages to rank organically for geolocated service queries in those cities (we'll say the query is "fridge repair"). We're trying to tell them that the PPC is having a negative effect on our SEO efforts, even though there shouldn't be any correlation between the two. I still think the PPC should be focused on their on-domain location landing pages (and so does our Google rep), because it shows consistency of brand, etc. I'm getting a lot of pushback from the client and the other agency, of course. They say it shouldn't matter. Has anyone here run into this? Any ammo to offer up to convince the client that having us work at "cross-purposes" is a bad idea? Thanks so much for any advice!
Local Website Optimization | | Treefrog_SEO0 -
Separate Domains for Different Locations (in Different Cities)
We are in the process of building a new website for a client with locations in Tucson and Phoenix. Currently, they have one website that encompasses all locations, however, we are going to build them location specific websites (as many of the services are different between locations). Now my question is, as far as SEO goes, which one of these options would be the best? Option 1: Have separate domain names for each location. For example, StevesPetTucson.com and StevesPetPhoenix.com. _Pros: Easy to target specific, local keywords. Better looking domains. _ _Cons: Splits backlinks between two domains. _ Option 2: Setup StevesPet.com/Phoenix and StevesPet.com/Tucson. Pros: Keeps all backlinks pointing to one root domain. Note: We are going to use seperate WordPress installs for both websites, regardless of how we setup the domains. As we will be using different templates, menus and so on, we found this to be the best option. Thanks for any advice!
Local Website Optimization | | McFaddenGavender1