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
-
Why isn't there a browser tab title AND meta title?
Personal opinion; as a user, it makes sense for me to want a full 50+ character meta title which displays in a search engine that helps me determine if I want to click that link AND a concise browser tab title that tells me which page and brand I have open. As a search engine, I would (possibly wrongly) suppose that having one more piece user-facing of information would be helpful in understanding a page and that page's relation to the rest of the website. Theoretical example Meta title: A great title for the website I've been dreaming of! | OurBrand Browser tab title: Home | OurBrand
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sb10300 -
Length for ranking, is it keyword dependant ?
Is the time it takes to rank keyword dependant ? in other word does it take more time for a page to rank on a keyword that has 5000 request a month than for a page to rank on a keyword that has 50 requests a month ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics1 -
Local Schema
Hey, Were adding schema to a website and I was wondering how it would be best to tackle a business that has two location. Would it be better to put it on two different pages or on one page using one or two itemscopes. Thanks, Luke.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NoisyLittleMonkey0 -
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 -
What would cause a sudden rise and drop in keyword ranking?
I made one change to my site - creating a good, relevant, title. A few days later, ranking for a keyword jumped pretty well - which is what I was expecting. We were ranked 9th. Then the next ranking report showed a 20 place decline. What would cause this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ocularis0 -
How to Target Keyword Variations?
I have a list of keywords I'm trying to target and they are essentially different variations of each other: Example: blue yankees baseball hat yankees blue baseball hat yankees baseball hat in blue Should I be targeting all these on the same page, or should I be making a new page for each one? Thanks Mozzers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATMOSMarketing560 -
Charity project for local women's shelter - need help: will Google notice if you alter the document title with Javascript after the page loads?
I am doing some pro-bono work with a local shelter for female victims of domestic abuse. I am trying to help visitors to the site cover their tracks by employing a document.title change when the page loads using JavaScript. This shelter receives a lot of traffic from Google. I worry that the Google bots will see this javascript change and somehow penalize this site or modify the title in the SERPs. Has anyone had any experience with this kind of javascript maneuver? All help would be greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jkonowitch0 -
Do keywords for my homepage matter?
Prob the most n00b question of all, but once I understand this I will be able to research on my own from here: If a search engine produces results by the keywords from individual website posts/pages, then how are the keywords I choose for my homepage so important if the general homepage meta-tag keywords are essentially ignored by the search engines? Should I repeat my primary keywords on EVERY post, in addition to the ones that relate to that individual post or am I misunderstanding something fundamental? My new site is http://splatterMUSIC.com and I want to be at the top of the results for anyone wanting to watch music vlogs, album reviews, music lessons, funny music-related videos, new non-major label music videos, and all kinds of other concert footage, etc.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOsolver0