Is it possible for a web site to get 'Pigeon Holed' geographically?
-
I have a site that sells widgets. It's called widgets.com. I want to sell widgets locally in 10 different geographic areas so my url structure/kw goal is as follows:
URL KW I Hope to Rank For
widgets.com 'Widgets'
widgets.com/houston/ 'Houston Widgets'
widgets.com/dallas/ 'Dallas Widgets'So I've optimized my site accordingly where my home page has no Geo optimization and my 'city pages' are all geo optimized, complete with hcard brick and mortar addresses that are all legit offices that sell our widgets.
My problem, is that despite all that, my home page (which again, is not geo-optimized) is now ranking for 'Dallas Widgets'. This is messing up my strategy and very frustrating because the home page does not have any information Dallas residents will find helpful about widgets.
So my question is, am I better off just owning this 'Dallas' label is forcing on my site and just optimize the home page for dallas and keep the rest of the 9 cities in their directories? Does anyone have any experience with getting pigeonholed geographically speaking?
-
Thanks Colin - very good feedback. I was leaning that direction but you're advice pushed me over the edge. I agree, I think all the 'off site signals' are what's got my non geo home page ranking for Dallas.
-
I've actually seen this happen quite a bit. I work with a lot of service area businesses who take this same strategy.
I think the pigeon-holing comes into play because of the off-site signals (maybe a bunch of listings with a Dallas address and link to your homepage?) ...I don't think hcard, schema, etc. do much to keep it from happening.
So what I wind up doing most of the time is optimizing the home-page for their primary high-traffic city, or headquarters. Unless they're actually trying to rank nationally and it seems possible, it's the way to go. I've seen huge advantages doing it this way - especially if you have the off-site signals to go with it (which I would guess you do).
So if you had "Dallas, TX Widgets" somewhere in your home-page title, you may wind up ranking well for just "widgets" when searched in the Dallas area.
In my opinion, optimize that homepage for Dallas, then watch and see. To me, Google already kind of preferring that page is a good sign.
-
You're getting off just putting your entire business into a single domain. Unless you have the time to test an experiment running 10 different domains it's better just to build one big quality website. With 10 domans you need to build backlinks to 10 different sites. It's hard enough building one up.
To rank geographically, I would continue optimizing the front page for straight "widgets", let Google pick up whatever they wanted, and develop backlinks to your sub widget pages.
Quick question. Are you using the same widget product in multiple locations. For instance:
widgets.com/houston/car-app-widget/widgets.com/dallas/car-app-widget/ (where this is the same widget)
Each directory should have unique widgets. Using the same content will get you in trouble (duplicate content).
-
It's challenging to say. If you have the time to develop an SEO experiment for something like that, you should totally do it!
Create a web page like dallasSOMETHINGwidgets.com, create a basic site, tie it to your brick-and-mortar, and create something like SOMETHINGSOMETHINGwidgets.com which has the same content, but not tied to your brick-and-mortar, and see how they compare in rankings.
That's the best way to know!
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
-
One keyword optimization for the whole site
Hello Folks at MOZ, I am new here and I am glad there's this section of the site where newbies can get help for SEO. I have a specific keyword which needs to rank as well as possible, and all other keywords, well they are automatically in the description text alt tags and in couple of page titles. So my keyword which I would need to rank as high as possible is "24k gold iphone 6" and it has quite lot's of searches per month, and my site is now one second page of google results. My question is: I don't care much about other keywords right now, so would it make sense to make on one or two pages which sell the 24k gold iphone of my website the title, the page url, headers, alt tags, image names, to be exactly "24k gold iphone 6" and /24k-gold-iphone-6.html etc. without any other text. I believe there is a difference in having exact same page title name etc as the keyword, without any additional text is good for ranking? Also I guess there is limit on how much this naming of files, titles etc can be used before google might give a penalty for it... so I guess I have to be careful. Many thanks for anybody who takes time to respond.
Image & Video Optimization | | bidilover0 -
How do I increase my client's Google Local listings?
Hi Guys, I have a hypothetical question for you. Let's say I live in a town that has two pizza places and in the maps section of a Google SERP the other place outranks my client when I type in "Pizza Place Smalltown NY." What would be a list of things that I could do to make "Pizza Place Smalltown, NY" rank better in that portion? Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | oomdomarketing0 -
What is the SEO value of images of geographic areas (states, counties, cities) on a page?
We want to put images for specific geographic locations on some new pages we are building and I am wondering if: A) What the SEO value of adding these images would be? B) Suggested Sources for the images. Right now we are looking at using panoramio, but would love some MOZ community advice! Thank you for your help MOZ Community!
Image & Video Optimization | | AlyssaN0 -
How businesses get local citations without submitting them?
How do some businesses get listed in directories like YellowBook, SuperPages, MerchantCircle, etc. without submitting their information. For example, my dad's company listed themselves in YellowPages and Google Places years ago, but also show up in the ones listed above without having submitted the information to them or having paid anyone else to do it...
Image & Video Optimization | | ChaseCameron0 -
Why Google doesn't want to show our images?
Our website http://www.fiberscope.net has a good positions in search for the most of important keywords, but for some reason store's images are not visible in search results. All images have ALT attributes but represented in Google Images very poor. Any ideas and suggestions regarding this issue?
Image & Video Optimization | | Meditinc.com0 -
Google+ Local/Places isn't displaying my suite #. Should I leave it out of NAP on other directories, too?
HI All, For some reason Google is not displaying the suite # for a client of mine in Google+ / Places. I've entered the suite # in the back-end of Google+ / Places and it shows there when I log in, but the public version of the listing omits it. So the question is, should the NAP in other directories omit it as well? Google knows it exists, but is choosing not to publish it... Thanks! Zack
Image & Video Optimization | | HammerandHand0 -
Can you get in trouble/get results by sub-dividing one physical address into suites for local search?
We have a client in our area that offers a multitude of home services -- plumbing, HVAC repair, landscaping, etc. -- out of one physical location. It makes it difficult for them to rank highly for all of their services in local search since many of the competitors that rank highly only offer one of the services that they do. They have come to me asking if they could create a Google place page for each service by making imaginary suites for their main address. So, for example, plumbing would be located at 100 Main Street, Suite A; and HVAC repair would be located at 100 Main St., Suite B; etc.? Seems like this is either a great idea or could get you into some Google trouble. Has anyone experienced anything similar? Thanks
Image & Video Optimization | | monkeeboy0 -
Using 1 main site for many branch office locations
I have 1 main site with many many city/state pages within the site. I would like to use this site as the 'website' on the google local places pages for all my branch office locations, however I am worried that if my domain authority isn't high enough for the site, google will think I am spamming 'google places'. Are there any best practices I can follow to do this? Ideally I would like my blended search to show www.site.com/boston not as www.site.com
Image & Video Optimization | | ilyaelbert0