Geo.placename and geo.region different from physical location
-
Hello -
I am considering adding geotags to landing pages for services offered. The problem I have is that the physical location of the business, registered on Google places, is different from where these services are performed. The company is a lawn care provider that services several small cities and is based out of our residence. I plan on creating landing pages for each of these cities so I am hoping to use these tags to indicate to the world that this location is my desired audience.
Example, the business is in a town called New Market, MN population small so that is my location on Google places. 99.9% of the business we do is done in neighboring cities of Northfield, Lakeville and Eagan.
Is is it an acceptable practice to put geotags on landing pages for those cities or would this be considered dirty pool? On the eagan-lawn-care page place a geotag for Eagan and a different one on the Lakeville page?
Gracias!
Derrick
-
Hi Derrick,
I hear you on that, but Google's total guidelines for Local businesses (http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528) are very cursory...some might say intentionally so. Google is not motivated to explain word for word how to achieve high rankings in their system, so while the basic mantra of creating content for users and not search engines is their public message, the truth of the matter is that a great deal of what Local SEOs and SEOs do is experimental and is very much about the bots and not people.
When something is found to work, the idea gets spread around and becomes an accepted best practice that aids ranking efforts, until Google changes their rules (think Penguin, Panda, and the never-ending changes of policy in Local). Schema and other types of markup are relatively new, so everyone is pretty much experimenting with this. What you would be doing would fall in line with that, if you choose to test your strategy idea. Who knows, you might discover something no one else has noticed! You're not alone in wishing the guidelines were totally clear about every scenario, but one might say that it's not in Google's best interests to operate that way, right?
-
Thanks Miriam -
I wish there were clear cut guidelines for this so I didn't have to guinea pig it.
Derrick
-
Hi Derrick,
Thank you for clarifying. While I don't think this would hurt you if you're just adding it to the city landing pages, I doubt that it would have much, if any, ability to influence your organic rankings in places where your business isn't physically located. I would imagine that links would be a much more influential element in regards to your city landing pages than this markup would. Personally, I wouldn't implement this for my own clients because, after all, their content is stemming from their physical locale, just like their services are, but I'm not predicting that this would put you at risk for a penalty or anything, so if your want to experiment, go ahead. Maybe try adding it to one of your city landing pages and not another and see if you can discern that it has made any difference for better or worse?
Good luck!
-
Sorry, I am referring to schema.
-
Hi Derrick,
Can you define, specifically, what you mean by geotags. Are you talking about Schema, rich snippets, geotagged images, something else? Please describe.
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
-
Siri Suggested Website Showing Instead of Homepage in UK Region How?
Hi All, When I search for my brand name in safari browser either in ipad, iphone or desktop it is showing "siri suggested website and showing reviewcentre.com site of my brand first instead of my homepage. 2) My site is for UK and it is happening in UK region only 3) I am aware of this so please dont suggest this - https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/apps-siri-suggestions-ios-11/ it is happening for 1st time user also. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Arnold30 -
How to keep NAP if my company has two locations?
Hello, I am a bit puzzled since the company I'm working with has recently opened a new location. The company's first location is listed in all local directories. Could you please advise me what to do to make 2 locations visible and not to mess up with keeping same NAP all over the web? Most directories do not simply have the option to add another location. I had to open a brand new Google Business page for the second location (while using the same name brand). I suppose I am getting into trouble with this?
Technical SEO | | kirupa0 -
How could you make a URL/Breadcrumb structure appear different in Google than when you click into site?
I'm seeing a competitor be able to make their URL/Breadcrumb stucture appear different in Google than on the site. Google shows a 3-4 category silo for the page but once clicked the page is off root. How could you do this?
Technical SEO | | TicketCity0 -
How important is using hreflang if u have plenty of other geo signals ?
HI How important is it to use the hreflang attributes and supporting sitemaps (and do you need both) ? Since if sites are being set up on country specific tlds (but on top of WP multisite network.domain.com environment) and geotargeted in GWT, as well as country meta tags and local schema etc etc that should send enough signals shouldnt it 🙂 ? Implementation of hreflang seems like an absolute technical nightmare All Best Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Difference between SEOMOZ and Webmaster Tools information
Hello, There is an issue that confuses me and I thought perhaps you will be able to help me shed some light on it. I have a website which shows 2,549 crawled pages on SEOMOZ and 24,542 pages on webmaster tools! Obviously there is some technical issue with the site, but my question is: why the vast difference between what the SEOMOZ crawl report and webmaster tools report show? Thanks! Guy Cizner
Technical SEO | | ciznerguy0 -
Different links to to the same page
Hi, Based on the user's actions we post activity into users Facebook timeline. And each activity has link back to our particular page on our website. For example if original page was: www.Domain.com from Facebook timeline it would be like this: www.Domain.com?Ffb_action_ids=101508953168 Do you think this will have a negative effect on our page rankings as we will eded up having a lot of different URL's to the same page? www.Domain.com?Ffb_action_ids=101508953168 www.Domain.com?Ffb_action_ids=456788765609 etc.. Thank you, Karen Bdoyan
Technical SEO | | showme0 -
Will same language different region (US/UK) geotargeting via subdirectory (& GWT) cause dupe content or other issues ?
If a UK hosted site on a .com, needs to target US now too but for keywords that are spelt differently in US is creating duplicate version of uk hosted .com site and putting it on a subdirectory .com/us/ and geotargeting via webmaster tools (to usa) ok ? I take it in this scenario no dupe content issues (or other issues) so long as is geotargeted via GWT ? Or are there ? Comments from anyone with experience doing similar (same language, different region geo-targeting dupe content with kw spelling being only difference, via a subdirectory or other route) much appreciated ? Many Thanks 🙂
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Difference between URL Rewrites and 301 Redirects for Rankings
What is the difference between URL rewriting and 301 redirects? Specifically if my home page is rewriting the www. version and the /index.html version rather than 301 redirecting them is this equivalent? Does it still pass the link juice on those alternate variations the same way a 301 redirect will?
Technical SEO | | rcarll0