Ranking locally without local keywords in title?
-
I have a website that targets national keywords. I would like to be able to rank locally for these keywords as well without having the city in the title. What is the best strategy for this?
-
Yes that will help for sure. The best way to do it is make a separate contact us page that when you make the new Google+ for business listing that you add that instead of the main root domain. For example yourcompanyname.com/denver-creative-services and that will rank quicker. I personally have done that myself a few times.
-
To have virtual offices is not against their terms and extremely effective.
-
Exactly. It was kind of a sad day when Google booted all the SEOs/designers out of the local index. But there is still organic. And I guess they were getting spammed like mad.
-
Yes I know that web design companies and SEO's aren't part of Google Local Search but if you do a search for Denver web design you will see companies optimized for this term. I guess that blogging and link building is the way to go.
-
Yes I know that web design companies and SEO's aren't part of Google Local Search but if you do a search for Denver web design you will see companies optimized for this term. I guess that blogging and link building is the way to go.
-
Hi Again Will,
People are often afraid that adding local factors to their website might somehow decrease their national/international rank. I have yet to hear of a case of this actually happening. So, if you'd like to get some more visibility in your area, you can embed some local hooks in the site (address in footer, on contact page) and write some copy about your services in those cities.
Now, that being said, Google removed web design companies and SEO companies from their Local index in January of 2010. See:
http://www.searchengineguide.com/miriam-ellis/google-shoves-their-liaisons-off-maps.php
So, typically they will not show local rankings for website design firms, again pointing to organic as the way to go for you. Write/Blog about your projects for local clientele and chances are, you can make a dent in the SERPs.
-
I do have a physical business location and it is in the metro are of the term I am trying to rank for. I am 20 minutes at most from the cities center point. I was just looking for a good way to rank without localizing my whole website. I do graphic design and web design but I have clients all over and I don't want to limit myself to just the city where my office is located.
I also have a places page and my business in Dexknows, Yelp, and other directories
-
Good to know, thank you. I had actually picked up that advice on seomoz 6-7 months ago.
-
Hi Nathan,
I'm not sure from your post whether this is something you used to do in the past or is something you are still paying people to do for you, but in case you've been misled by bad information out there, I wanted to take a second to make you aware of the guidelines which I've linked to in my reply to Will. The practice you are describing is not allowed, and when Google gets wise to things like these, the hammer can come down pretty hard.
I thought it worthwhile to comment on this, because I would not want to see the Places account of any SEOmoz member penalized of banned.
Miriam
-
Hi Will,
Unfortunately, I would not recommend getting a virtual office or setting up a Google Place Page for any city in which you do not have a physical address. This practice is forbidden by Google's Places Quality Guidelines:"Business Location: Use a precise, accurate address to describe your business location.
Do not create a listing or place your pin marker at a location where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations. If you operate from a location but receive mail at a mail box there, please list your physical address in Address Line 1, and put your mail box or suite number in Address Line 2."
http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528
Your desire to rank well in a major city in your state is understandable, but does not meet with Google's guidelines. If ranking in Denver becomes essential for your business, you must rent a real office there - not a virtual office, not a P.O. Box - in order to qualify for inclusion in Places.
Now, if you would like to get a Place Page for your Greenwood address, the criterion you must meet is that you have in-person transactions with clients either at your Greenwood address or at your clients' locations (as in the case of a carpet cleaning company, chimney sweep etc.)
If you do not have in-person transactions with clients, your business is not local, but virtual, and again, not suitable for inclusion in Google Places.
If the latter is the case, then you will need to rely solely on organic SEO to target cities where you would like to gain rankings. Typically, this will not enable you to outrank competitors with physical locations and in-person transactions in said cities, but you may be able to achieve some visibility by a combination of copywriting and linkbuilding.
Hope this set of definitions helps, Will.
Miriam -
I really don't want to add a new location if I don't have one there and I have a Google Place page for my real address now. My address belongs to a metro area of a bigger city and I would like to rank for terms in the bigger city.
-
I know Google Places doesn't allow PO Boxes, and this might be against their terms of use too. I'm asking our local expert to add to this thread with some more information.
-
This is another great idea. Within your blog, have categories or tags for each location that you want to rank for and keep those categories fresh with local content. Then have 'areas we serve' as mentioned on your contact page and link the anchor text to the category pages or location blogs.
-
What if I already have a Google Places page but with a different city. Will they be linked together because I am using the same company name?
-
If you have a contact page on your website that talks about your location you could also mention that you serve the areas of .....I've also added cities/ counties in Google Places in the additional areas.
-
The city that my business is located in is Greenwood Village, CO but I would like to rank in Denver, CO. So I should just add another location to my google places listing?
-
Yes, I agree with the other answers about optimizing your local listings. You may even want to get citations too. One thing that I've done is to create content that is optimized for the cities. You could even add something in the footer that links to that interior (local) page.
-
Do you have a local address? Use this to your advantage by making sure you have local directory listings, Google Places, etc. Make sure you have that address on your website. Target some blogs to the local area with local keywords. You can think about having a local blog, perhaps a local social media presence as well.
-
When I have needed to do this. I usually got a virtual office address in the locations I wanted to rank. I haven't used these guys and am in no way affiliated with them, but here is an example:
http://www.davincivirtual.com/
Then just created Google Places with your new address and optimize for that.
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
-
High Competitive Keyword
I am working on a keyword which has 72 difficulty score, I have tried getting quality links with high DA, also there is no any on page issue, landing page is loading very fast and fixed all site loading issues, the keyword is stuck on 3rd page of Google and shuffling between 20 to 30 but not ranking on 1st page, I need expert opinions on it.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | UmairGadit0 -
Not ranking
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SharonEKG
so our website (www.18brandz.com) has been up for 8 months now and has not been ranking yet, we are indexing, moz crawler SEO issues are regularly fixed and we are down to about 25 non major issues, i started using google lighthouse to optimize and had made changes. we post GOOD quality in house written unique content, we follow an SEO templet of guideline i wrote for titles/meta title tags, structure, site speed has been optimized and as for the moment we rank A OR B with no major issues on all speed checking sites possible (gtmetrix/google speed insights/ webspeed... etc) but nothing. and i cant figure out why we wont rank, our field of digital marketing is a tough one and very competitive , i know, yet not ranking for so long seems odd. our only know fact major disadvantage is the lack of links and no link building strategy. any suggestions? any idea?1 -
Massive local + national disconnect in rankings (local deindexed)
I asked the question originally on webmaster central. I tried RickRoll's solutions (but it doesn't seem to have solved the issue). Problem below: I've been noticing for some time that certain pages of our site (https://www.renthop.com/boston-ma/apartments-for-rent) have been deindexed locally (or very low ranked), but indexed nationally (well ranked). In fact, it seems that the actual page isn't ranking (but the blog https://www.renthop.com/blog is). This huge mismatch between national vs local rankings seem to only happen for Boston & Chicago. Other parts of the country seem unaffected (and the national & local rankings are very similar). A bit of a background (and my personal theory as to what's happening). We use to have subdomains: boston.renthop.com & chicago.renthop.com for the site. These subdomains stopped working, though, as we moved the site to the directory format (https://www.renthop.com/boston-ma/apartments-for-rent). These subdomain URLs were inactive / broken for roughly 4 months. After the 4 months, we did a 301 from the subdomain to the main page (because these subdomains had inbound external links). However, this seems to have caused the directory pages to exhibit the national/local mismatch effect instead of helping. Is there anything I'm doing wrong? I'm not sure if the mismatch is natural, if the pages are getting algo penalized on a local level (I'm negative SEOing myself), or if it's stuck in some weird state because of what happened with bad sub-domain move). Some things I've tried: I've created webmaster console (verified) accounts for both the subdomains. I've asked Google to crawl those links. I've done a 1-1 mapping between individual page on the old site vs the new directory format I've tried both doing a 301, 302 and meta-refresh redirect from the subdomains to the directory pages. I've made sure the robots.txt on the subdomain is working properly I've made sure that the robots.txt on the directory pages are working properly. See below for a screenshot of the mismatch & deindexing in local search results (this is using SERPS - but can be replicated with any location changer). Note the difference between the ranking (and the page) when the search is done nationally vs in the actual location (Boston, MA). I'd really appreciate any help.. I've been tearing my hair out trying to figure this out (as well as experimenting). renthop%2Bboston.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lzhou0 -
Keywords Dropping Out
Hi In March I've seen a lot of keywords go from being ranked, to dropping out completely. We usually get under 1000 drop in and out each month, but 2,500 dropped out this month. Some are not focus keywords I'd be concerned about, but then some are.... I am trying to work out why and could use some help. We haven't changed anything on the pages & here are some examples: http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/dollies-load-movers-door-skates - previously ranked for 'Dollies' position 6 now unranked http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/sack-trucks - ranked position 11 for 'Folding Sack Truck' now unranked http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/portable-workbenches-trestles - ranked position 7 for portable workbenches now unranked. These pages do still rank for other keywords, so aren't out of Google completely. I'm just trying to identify if we have any other issues Thank you 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
How to rank same page for multiple related keywords
We need some of our pages to rank for multiple related keywords. But we cannot optimise one page for multiple keywords which might end up ranking for none of them; at the same time we cannot optimise it for one keyword as we ignore other keywords. I think creating multiple landing pages for very related keywords will confuse users and search engines as well. How to handle this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
WordPress posts Title field inserts title into blog posts like a headline but doesn't ad H1 tag how to change?
I have a Wordpress website which is just using the Default theme, when I post in the blog, whatever I put in the "Title" field at the top of the editor is automatically is placed within the body of the blog post, like a headline, but it doesn't include any H1 tags that I can see. If I add my own headline within in the blog editor, it still inserts the Title like a headline. I am using the Yoast SEO Plugin and also write the meta title there, should I just leave the Wordpress title field blank so it doesn't insert into the blog post? Or is that inserted Title being recognized as an H1 even though I don't see h1 tags anywhere? Hope this isn't too confusing.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO4leagalPA1 -
Ranking drop for a particular page on a particular keyword
Take a look at centerforhealthysex.com/sex-addiction. For months we were ranking in the top 3 spots with this URL for "sex addiction los angeles", even reaching #1 for a while. Late last year we redesigned and developed the site to clean up the code and redirects. We also cleaned up the internal linking structure. For years we had been ranking on "sex addiction los angeles" for the home page ... bumping around the top 5 spots, but we wanted organic traffic to go to /sex-addiction. In the Fall, we saw overall site traffic rise steadily. We made few changes to the site and none to this page or links flowing back to the page once we had achieved strong ranking -- we didn't want to mess with a good thing. Then November 27th we started losing ranking on this term and a couple others. The good news is that we gained ranking on some high volume traffic terms so overall organic traffic is reasonably strong, BUT we're not ranking on the terms where we want to rank. Centerforhealthysex.com/sex-addiction is now nowhere to be found on the target search term despite fairly strong page rank. I tried redoing and resubmitting the site map, cleaning out some potentially duplicative content but to no avail. I see no issues, errors or warnings in Webmaster Tools. We have a few medium priority fixer-uppers in SEO Moz, but we've taken care of the majority of the big stuff. What am I not seeing? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joshuakrafchin0 -
Using exact keyword domains for local SEO
The website is for the attorney that serves several nearby cities. The main page is optimized for the biggest central city. I have several options how to go after the smaller surrounding cities: 1. Create optimized pages inside the main domain 2. Get more or less exact keyword domains for each city e.g. for the city ABC get yourABClawyer.com and then a) use 1 page websites that use the same template as main website and link all the menu items to the main website b)use 1 page website with a link "for more information go to our main website" c) point exact keyword domains to the optimized pages within the main domain. Which option would be the best in terms of SEO and user experience? Would people freak out if they click on the menu item and go to a different domain website even though it uses the same template (option 2a) Would I get more bounces with option 2b in your opinion? Would option 2c have any positive SEO effect? Should I not even bother with exact keyword domain and go with option 1?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SirMax1