Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

Your browser does not seem to support JavaScript. As a result, your viewing experience will be diminished, and you have been placed in read-only mode.

Please download a browser that supports JavaScript, or enable it if it's disabled (i.e. NoScript).

Map Files for Branches and SEO

Local Website Optimization

467

PeteC12 last edited by

Dear All,

We have an xml and image site map but we currently don't have a separate GEO Site Map / map files for our branches.

I am wondering if such a thing exists and if so , if this something that we should be doing to help our branches rank locally on google maps etc. We have google local listings for our branches and we already do schema.org for our branches.

Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

thanks

Peter
1 Reply Last reply
Reply Quote 0
RyanPurkey last edited by

Google's Geo Sitemaps were retired in 2012, in XML format, but there's still KML support in Google Maps: https://developers.google.com/kml/documentation/mapsSupport

Here's a post discussing that as well: http://www.searchoptions.com.au/how-to-submit-kml-files-in-location-sitemap-for-your-local-business/
1 Reply Last reply
Reply Quote 1

Got a burning SEO question?

Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.

Start my free trial

Browse Questions

View

From

Sorted by

With category

Explore more categories

Related Questions

Local Site Linking to Corporate Site In Main Menu - Bad for SEO?

Hi, We have 'local' websites for different countries (UK, DE, FR, AP, US etc.) and a corporate website, the local websites are going to be linking back to the corporate website in the main menu (think about us, terms and conditions kind of pages). Any local products will have their own pages on the local website but global products will be linked back to the corporate website. We will be placing an indication the user will be going to another website next to those menu links that go to the corporate website. Is there any drawback to this for SEO? Should we use nofollow in the menu structure of regional websites for these links? Thanks for your help.
Local Website Optimization | | UNIT4

0
Local SEO: thoughts on driving users to a homepage or to a local landing page?

I work with a client who is about to launch a local landing page for one of their locations. They're worried that the new local landing page will cannibalize some of the keyword rankings for the homepage. Any advice on how to have a local presence but still drive people to the more valuable homepage?
Local Website Optimization | | jrridley

0
SEO and Main Navigation Best Practices

I've read a number of articles on SEO and main navigation for websites. I'd like to get a solid answer/recommendation to help solve this one. This is the situation. We're helping a local business that offers pest control and property maintenance services. Under each of these, there area a number of services available, eg, cockroach control, termite inspections or lawn mowing services, rubbish removal and so on. Is it best to have a main nav containing the top keywords for the services - Pest Control | Property Maintenance, with a drop down to the services under each. Or, a simple approach - Our Services > drop down to each - Pest Control > Termite Inspections, etc. My concern here is that they have quite a lot of services, so the nav could be way too long. Really appreciate any assistance here. Many thanks.
Local Website Optimization | | RichardRColeman

0
How can my categories rank for my different branches? Tidied site up but now local rankings are worse

Dear Mozzers , I am wondering if someone could please help with some advice and assistance on the following for our Tool hire site: Basically I like to know how we can rank for our categories for our different branch locations ?. We have a branch finder page and separate branch pages but I do not know if I should have an internal link from all our branch pages to all my different categories or not or is google clever enough to know that I have x locations and x categories and I should rank all the categories in all the locations. I think my site structure is fairly straightforward and on the face of it similar to what others do who have multiple branches . For example I enclose a link to 2 of our categories - carpet cleaner hire category and a floor sander hire category carpet cleaner category - http://goo.gl/cMyS4i floor sander category - http://goo.gl/4ipUyA Heres a link to our Branch Finder - http://goo.gl/UyTQdK Heres a link to one of our Branches for example - Bristol Branch - http://goo.gl/9TXHTK And heres our link to our google plus Bristol page - google plus bristol branch page - https://goo.gl/h0IwAK . We have link from our bristol page going to the bristol google plus page and visa versa. Currently within our internal linking structure there is No direct link on the branch pages to the categories ?. Is this something we need to do or not necessary ?. - If we do it , then it may mess up or confuse the page as I someone need to get all the category links on the branch pages ? We have lots of good unique content , lots of citations for our branches and categories etc but we just don't seem to rank at all well for any of our categories in local search. For example if somene was to search for - Carpet cleaner hire "City Name " or Floor sander hire "City Name" (City name being where our branches are). We dont rank very well for most of our cities. Even without putting the city name in we dont rank to well in local search. We used to have individual pages for our categories in each of the cities we have branches with unique content on all and these did rank quite well in a few cities but never top 3 in most and we got rid of these last month (start of Oct) as I was told that google may see this as quite spammy or doorway pages if I have a carpet cleaner hire Bristol page or a floor sander hire Bristol page etc ?.. All my location landing pages now just 301 back to the appropriate category. I am wondering if getting rid of these landing pages was a good idea as by tidying things up , I've seemed to have lost my local rankings for my cities. Can someone please advise if what I did was right and what else I should look at doing ?> Could it be an internal linking issue I need to sort ? Any assistance much appreciated.
thanks
Pete
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC12

0
Recommended blogs and sites about local seo

HI.
Can you please tell me some great blogs/sites to read daily about local seo? I'm really wanting to beef up my knowledge in this area to assist local businesses. Corn
Local Website Optimization | | corn2015

1
How to approach SEO for a national umbrella site that has multiple chapters in different locations that are different URLS

We are currently working with a client who has one national site - let's call it CompanyName.net, and multiple, independent chapter sites listed under different URLs that are structured, for example, as CompanyNamechicago.org, and sometimes specific to neighborhoods, as in CompanyNamechicago.org/lakeview.org. The national site is .net, while all others are .orgs. These are not subdomains or subfolders, as far as we can tell. You can use a search function on the .net site to find a location near you and click to that specific local site. They are looking for help optimizing and increasing traffic to certain landing pages on the .net site...but similar landing pages also exist on a local level, which appear to be competing with the national site. (Example: there is a landing page on the national .net umbrella site for a "dog safety" campaign they are doing, but also that campaign has led to a landing page created independently on the local CompanyNameChicago.org website, which seems to get higher ranking due to a user looking for this info while located in Chicago. We are wondering if our hands are tied here since they appear to be competing for traffic with all their localized sites, or if there are best practices to handle a situation like this. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | timfrick

0
Does the Location of my Server effect my SEO?

Does the geographic Location of my Server effect my SEO? HELP US! We are arguing for 3 weeks already. My partner has mentioned multiple times in the past that "since 2013 google does not require your server to be in the country you are targeting for seo"
And that actually all they care about is if its a good and fast server - not where its physically located in the world. I am a strong believer that the geographic location of your server directly effects your SEO ranking... lets say if you want to target www.google.ru for your seo, best you have a server located in Russia for hosting your website.. WHO IS RIGHT? Choose the winner and base the facts.
If anybody has the correct answer and information to base it on it will help us alot - and maybe even spare some unnecessary violent between us two! we found some articles across the web, sadly they are all dated back to 2012.... Thanks in Advance for all the help guys!
Local Website Optimization | | DanielBernhardt

0
Do more page links work against a Google SEO ranking when there is only 1 url that other sites will link to?

Say I have a coupon site in a major city and assume there are 20 main locations regions (suburb cities) in that city. Assume that all external links to my site will be to only the home page. www.site.com Assume also that my website business has no physical location. Which scenario is better? 1. One home page that serves up dynamic results based on the user cookie location, but mentions all 20 locations in the content. Google indexes 1 page only, and all external links are to it. 2. One home page that redirects to the user region (one of 20 pages), and therefore will have 20 pages--one for each region that is optimized for that region. Google indexes 20 pages and there will be internal links to the other 19 pages, BUT all external links are still only to the main home page. Thanks.
Local Website Optimization | | couponguy

0