Best way to optimize a website for local search today?
-
A real estate agent client has had a website for years, which he optimized to position himself as a national real estate expert (to get more TV and media exposure). Now he wants to be found for a more local real estate term, such as Westchester ny real estate.
Should he add a page to his site that's focused on Westchester real estate, or would Google view that as spammy? Should he update older blog posts with relevant, useful content about Westchester? Any best practices and suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
-
Thanks Katarina! Really appreciate your thoughtful response. Jim
-
Hi there,
Yes, definitely! Don't forget to update not just content, but also titles, H1's and other H's - so Google can index them with the local info. Also, make sure you update your contact details and use identical details for all social accounts and directories. You can add a new article that is more location focused and add a map. Don't forget Google My Business - optimise it and make sure you have your website link there.
If you are coming with fresh content, I would recommend researching long-tail keywords or the most frequent search queries via Keyword Planner. Try multiplying keyword lists, i.e. generic terms x location (town, area, state etc.). This should give you a good idea, and I would start there. Publish regularly. All this will work for you!
Hope this helps. Good luck!
Katarina
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
-
Best site structure for us?
Hey guys, I have a somewhat silly question that I probably know the answer to - but would still like to hear your POV's. We're a WP theme making company but we also build other stuff. Context: 1. All demos for themes currently go under domain.com/Theme_A/ The demo is lorem ipsum so is marked noindex nofollow. That being said we get rocking analytics data usually (not sure if it's still valuable for G after the noindex). 2. Currently we need landing pages for themes and we're running them under domain.com/Theme_A/optimized-landing-page-title.php dofollow and indexed ofc. My question is...Would we be better off to include all landing pages under a domain.com/wordpress-themes/ category/tax and then go for the optimized-landing-page-title.php page? Does it make any difference either or? Right now we're not REALLY running them on subdomains (though the structure seems like it), they're just folders. We're thinking that more seo juice would flow through the different pages if we have them all under the same category, rather than basically starting from scratch each time under a new folder. Right? Thanks!!!
On-Page Optimization | | andy.bigbangthemes1 -
Getting different search queries in Google Webmaster
Hi All, I have a website Afrofood.com. In it's Google webmaster search queries i have more than 90 Queries, but not a single query is related with this site. All queries are from different site or subject, they have no any relation with my site. Can any one please tell me how to correct this... Site is Afrofood.com related with African foods, recipes, spices and all that. But showing search queries are: [canada goose](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/top-search-queries?hl=en&siteUrl=http://afrofood.com/&authuser=1#canada goose) [canada goose outlet deutschland](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/top-search-queries?hl=en&siteUrl=http://afrofood.com/&authuser=1#canada goose outlet deutschland) [polizei shop düsseldorf](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/top-search-queries?hl=en&siteUrl=http://afrofood.com/&authuser=1#polizei shop düsseldorf) [canada goose deutschland](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/top-search-queries?hl=en&siteUrl=http://afrofood.com/&authuser=1#canada goose deutschland) [canada goose weste](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/top-search-queries?hl=en&siteUrl=http://afrofood.com/&authuser=1#canada goose weste) [canada goose kaufen](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/top-search-queries?hl=en&siteUrl=http://afrofood.com/&authuser=1#canada goose kaufen) [canada goose hamburg](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/top-search-queries?hl=en&siteUrl=http://afrofood.com/&authuser=1#canada goose hamburg) [canada goose größentabelle](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/top-search-queries?hl=en&siteUrl=http://afrofood.com/&authuser=1#canada goose größentabelle)
On-Page Optimization | | 1akal0 -
Why Is this Website Not Ranking?
HI There - I have been working on this site: http://limohireauckland.co.nz - primarily for our keyword phrase 'limo hire Auckland' - I am running a campaign for this site from the Pro tools and using the pon-page report card this url achieves an A grade for that particular phrase. The client is working on links in the local community etc but we are not appearing in the SERPS at all for most of the phrases we are optimising for. There has recently been a huge redesign on the site (approx 6 weeks ago) and the old content was not great. Am I missing something really glaringly obvious? Or am I being too impatient?
On-Page Optimization | | AllieMc0 -
What is the best way to integrate our blog into our ecommerce website?
Hi all, We run an eCommerce website at www.oursite.com plus a blog (including news / articles / reviews / how-to guides etc.) at blog.oursite.com (those aren't really our site URLs, BTW ;-). For SEO reasons previously discussed on here, and for ease of use for our customers / browsers, we now want to integrate the two more closely. This will mean: Our blog will move to www.oursite.com/blog We will try to feature the blog content in places where it is relevant to customers (so e.g. news and blog posts about shoes would appear on our shoes category page, a review of some Adidas XL1000 shoes would appear on the Adidas XL1000 shoes product page) The blog is currently run on a wordpress.com site, so we'll need a new CMS (or wordpress.org) to get more control of the data. My issues are that, although it's good from a users point of view, having blog articles appear in lots of different places on the site might cause issues with duplicate content from a search engine's point of view. Has anyone got any pointers on how to integrate the two in a way that will make most use of the good original content coming out of our blog, while not "watering it down" by spreading it around too much? Can anyone point to examples of shops that do this well? Is there any software (other than Wordpress) that people would recommend using? As always, any help greatly appreciated! Alex
On-Page Optimization | | reddogmusic0 -
After optimization results got worse!
Hi, After optimised every single landing pages of the website with keywords and building links made the results worse! Now website is ranking 3rd from 2nd! What would be the reason for that? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | WTGEvents0 -
Site Architecture: How do I best Optimize for Similar Keywords?
Hello Moz Community! I'm really struggling trying to decide on an improved site architecture. I run an online proofreading & editing website. This leaves us targeting many different niche keywords. For example: blog editing/proofreading, essay editing/proofreading, book editing/proofreading, resume... you get the point. I feel like editing & proofreading are similar enough to target on the same page(s). However, the issue is that I'm also having to deal with what I'm calling derivative keywords. For example, when I try to optimize for 'essay editing/proofreading', I also have to think about: paper editing, paper editor, paper correction, edit my paper, etc. I would have no problem optimizing the page for 'essay editing' in the title, H1, etc. and then targeting these words as secondary keywords within the body text, etc., however, I keep thinking 'a large slice of a small pie is better than a small slice of a big one.' You see, the keyword 'essay correction' has only about one-third the monthly searches as 'essay editing', but it is 50% less competitive. The same is loosely true for the rest of the 'derivative' keywords. I'd have no problem building specific pages for these derivative keyword groups, however, I'm very concerned how this would effect my site from a user experience perspective. I don't want to have a master "services" page with links to book editing, resume editing, essay editing, etc. and then also show paper editing, essay correction, etc. To me, this would be confusing... "What's the difference between essay editing and paper editing?". Any guidance is much appreciated. This has got my head spinning! Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | TBiz0 -
Two points of view on optimizing our search pages. What should we go with?
So we're in the process of going back and forth with our designer about optimizing our search results, which also doubles as a landing page for visitors searching with keywords like "Meeting Rooms Seattle" and "Seattle Meeting Spaces" We're on the front page in the SERPs, but still have a way to go. This is our current page: http://www.evenues.com/Meeting-Spaces/Seattle/Washington And this is something we've proposed for our designer to work with: http://imgur.com/JU1zg There search page text and links in the top left corner were to be placed for onsite SEO purposes ie we have no real text/content on the page for relevancy. We're currently in the process of writing the copy for each city on the search pages. Our designer made this argument: After giving it some thought I came to the conclusion that we may want to take a step back, and focus on the overall goal of this exercise. From what I have gathered, you would like to generate more click-throus and improve SEO, right? In my opinion, adding all of the provided copy and the link farm to the search results page would not necessarily help that. In fact, I think it would actually push the actual results way down. The content you provided me is more suited for a landing page, not a search results page (that is taking into consideration that you want similar content for other locations). Redfin has done a ton of great SEO work on their site. Using them as an example, if you go to Redfin.com, you will find tiny links in the footer that say "home for sale in seattle" etc. If you click on those, it puts you on a page like this: http://www.redfin.com/cities/1/seattle?src=homepage and then from there you can click to a neighborhood page like this: http://www.redfin.com/city/1387/WA/Bellevue. I would recommend that we create a set of location pages with the content the client is asking for, that are specifically optimized for SEO, and provide links in the footer of the site to get to those pages. Then the links on the new landing pages would land the user on the search results page. By keeping two different pages for two different purposes separate would help keep content more organized and help user find specific info they are looking for. As a quick fix we could put one line of text under the H1 text on search results as well, maybe with a strong tag. By doing that we will be able to keep the page looking clean and easy to navigate through. Anyways, that's just my two cents. Any ideas/input on this?
On-Page Optimization | | eVenuesSEO0