Leveraging the authority of a blog to boost pages on a root domain.
-
Hi!
Looking for some link building advice. For some background, I work for a company that has over 100 locations across the US. So we are deeply involved with local SEO. We also do a ton of evergreen/ national SEO as well and the spectrums are widely different for the most part. We also have a very successful blog in our industry. It really is an SEO’s dream. I do not even need to worry about a link strategy for this because it just naturally snatches them up.
I’m trying to find some unique ways to utilize the blog to boost pages on my main root domain, more specifically, at the local level.
It is really hard, besides the standard methods for local link building, to get outside sources to link to our local office pages. These pages are our bread and butter, and the pages we need to be as successful as possible. In every market we are in, we are at a disadvantage because we have one page to establish our local footprint and rank, compared to domains that have their entire site pointed at that local area we are trying to rank in.
I’ve tried linking to local office pages from successful blog posts to attempt to pass link juice to the local pages, but I haven’t seen much in terms of moving the needle doing this. Are there any crafty ideas on how I can shuffle some internal linking around to capitalize on the blog’s authority to make my local pages rank higher in their markets?
Thank you!
-Ben
-
Wishing you luck, Ben, and totally see how scaling can be difficult, particularly if some of the managers are a bit tech-wary. Little by little, more companies are becoming aware of the need for local expertise that can be translated into marketing outreach. If you can get this business on track with that, you'll be doing them a big favor.
-
Thanks Miriam!
The community outreach approach is always on our radar. Because of the nature of each office being in a different area with different managers and different philosophies, this is really hard to scale. There are some managers that still want nothing to do with digital, which shows how old school some of these guys can get. I am going to check out that tool you suggested for sure. If I can present them with everything they need to know, I will have a much better chance of convincing them. Thanks again!
-
Thanks, Sean I will check this out!
-
Great topic, Ben! Thank you for bringing your question here.
Coincidentally, I've been working on a document regarding scenarios like this one. Unfortunately, it's far from ready for publication, but I can share some suggestions with you.
-
Does each location of the business, or at least each region, have something akin to a local community expert? If so, this is the person you need to be in contact with. If not, you'll have to do this research yourself. Find out what the major events of the area are (fairs, expos, conferences, events, concerts, workshops, celebrations). Next, find out what the most cherished and most influential local entities are (schools, organizations, associations, teams).
-
Now that you have this data, determine where the opportunity lies for a specific location of the business to sponsor, host, speak at, attend or otherwise support these happenings and entities. This could run the gamut from supplying the charcoal for the 4th of July BBQ, to sponsoring a little league team, to offering a scholarship at the community college, to hosting a seminar on a topic relevant to your business. Be SURE the landing page for the location showcases this information.
-
In return for participation and philanthropy, request that online recognition links to the desired landing page. If the local news, local bloggers or other community media can be nudged to promote the company's giving/involvement, and they are linking to the homepage instead of the landing page, follow-up and request that the link be edited to go the page that features your own story about what the business is doing (again, be SURE this exists on the city landing page).
-
If all these seems like too much work, given the scale of your client, I recommend you check out ZipSprout's sponsorship tool, which does much of the research for you.
Hope this helps!
-
-
I found this article on KissiMetrics blog to be quite useful as far as internal linking is concerned. Not sure why he dubbed them the "7 commandments", I'm pretty sure it was 7 deadly sins and 10 commandments but... whatever lol:
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/commandments-of-internal-linking/
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
-
What more can be done to get Google to change the landing pages it uses for certain search terms?
For one of my SEO campaigns, Google is using the website's home page as the landing page for the majority of search terms being tracked. The website splits its products by region and so we want specific region pages to rank for search terms related to that region, rather than the home page. We have optimised each regional page to a reasonably high standard and we have ensured that there is a good amount of internal linking and sign-posting to those region pages, however, Google is still using the home page. The only complication is that for the first few months there were canonical tags on these pages to the home page. These were removed around 3 months ago and we've checked that the region pages are indexed properly. Is there anything we are missing? Has anyone had any success in getting Google to change its landing pages?
Local Website Optimization | | ClickHub-Harry0 -
Improve my on-page SEO
Hello, I am a photographer based in the UK, I have recently increased my prices, so SEO has become more important then ever as I need to target additional cities and wedding venues. I am looking for suggestions on ways I can ethically improve my websites on-page SEO and regional landing pages. I am running out of ideas, so any suggestions would be welcome. Do you think search engines will see these regional pages as low quality spammy pages are they not advised! If so how can I target other cities with out paying for PPC. Home page Additional Issues Is the 404 server script any good? I also have an issue, with old deleted wordpress pages, redirecting them even though there are no redirects set up in SEO yoast. I am not sure the server script on the shared hosting for 404 errors is any good, does anyone have any experience with this. For example this page returns the 404 page, however the header status is 200. http://www.robertsail.co.uk/derby-wedding-photographers-2/ If I moved to a dedicated server would this help me out.
Local Website Optimization | | Roboto19701 -
How does duplicate content work when creating location specific pages?
In a bid to improve the visibility of my site on the Google SERP's, I am creating landing pages that were initially going to be used in some online advertising. I then thought it might be a good idea to improve the content on the pages so that they would perform better in localised searches. So I have a landing page designed specifically to promote what my business can do, and funnel the user in to requesting a quote from us. The main keyword phrase I am using is "website design london", and I will be creating a few more such as "website design birmingham", "website design leeds". The only thing that I've changed at the moment across all these pages is the location name, I haven't touched any of the USP's or the testimonial that I use. However, in both cases "website design XXX" doesn't show up in any of the USP's or testimonial. So my question is that when I have these pages built, and they're indexed, will I be penalised for this tactic?
Local Website Optimization | | mickburkesnr0 -
Location Pages and Duplicate Content and Doorway Pages, Oh My!
Google has this page on location pages. It's very useful but it doesn't say anything about handling the duplicate content a location page might have. Seeing as the loctions may have very similar services. Lets say they have example.com/location/boston, example.com/location/chicago, or maybe boston.example.com or chicago.example.com etc. They are landing pages for each location, housing that locations contact information as well as serving as a landing page for that location. Showing the same services/products as every other location. This information may also live on the main domains homepage or services page as well. My initial reaction agrees with this article: http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide - but I'm really asking what does Google expect? Does this location pages guide from Google tell us we don't really have to make sure each of those location pages are unique? Sometimes creating "unique" location pages feels like you're creating **doorway pages - **"Multiple pages on your site with similar content designed to rank for specific queries like city or state names". In a nutshell, Google's Guidelines seem to have a conflict on this topic: Location Pages: "Have each location's or branch's information accessible on separate webpages"
Local Website Optimization | | eyeflow
Doorway Pages: "Multiple pages on your site with similar content designed to rank for specific queries like city or state names"
Duplicate Content: "If you have many pages that are similar, consider expanding each page or consolidating the pages into one." Now you could avoid making it a doorway page or a duplicate content page if you just put the location information on a page. Each page would then have a unique address, phone number, email, contact name, etc. But then the page would technically be in violation of this page: Thin Pages: "One of the most important steps in improving your site's ranking in Google search results is to ensure that it contains plenty of rich information that includes relevant keywords, used appropriately, that indicate the subject matter of your content." ...starting to feel like I'm in a Google Guidelines Paradox! Do you think this guide from Google means that duplicate content on these pages is acceptable as long as you use that markup? Or do you have another opinion?0 -
Targeting different cities for my service - Geo landing pages
I am breaking my head trying to figure out the best way around this... so we have an hvac company located in nyc. We want to also target all the different boroughs. We have a bunch of different major keywords hvac repair + location hvac service + location along with keywords such as air conditioning repair + location, heating service + location , and so on..... Should each borough + keyword have its own page? Or should we just have one page called brooklyn and in that page target all the different keywords like hvac, air conditining, and heating ? Also does it matter how we have it laid out? Domaim/hvac-repair-brooklyn or should I add domain/service-area/hvac. ..... Some of my competitors have the same content written on each borough page just moved around a little with different city names, how are they ranking so well? Isn't that duplicate? Would love to hear from some people with success in this local area. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | interstate0 -
SEO Value in Switching to ".NYC" Domain?
Recently " .NYC" domains have become available for purchase to New York City based businesses. I own and operate a New York City commercial real estate firm, nyc-officespace-leader.com. New domain would be www.metro-manhattan.nyc Our existing domain has been in use for seven years.would there be an SEO benefit to transferring our site to .NYC domain? Or would a new domain kill our domain rank? Thanks, Alan
Local Website Optimization | | Kingalan10 -
Recommendations on implementing regional home pages
My site is a directory that serves several regions. Each region has it's own "home page" with specific content for that visitor about their region. Right now we use Google location recognition after you visit the home page to redirect you to your regional home page. I am in the process of reviewing the best way to implement our home page for SEO purposes. Any advice or recommendations on how to present home pages that are location specific would be greatly appreciated. Thank you Steve
Local Website Optimization | | steve_linn0