I have an e-commerce site that was optimized for local results. We’ve been receiving traffic from all over the nation so recently we've decided to optimize the site for a more national audience by removing the local business indicators. I have below a list of things that I’ve done, I’m contemplating doing and other various questions. One note I want to make is that we offer installation services – which we would still like to rank locally for.
I have done the following:
- Remove [city] from all of the title tags (except for the installation pages)
- Removed NAP (name, address, ph#) from site wide footer – I’m not sure if I should have done this.
- Inserted NAP at the bottom of the body content of the installation pages
Questions
Right now my installation pages are located in a sub-folder (ex: www.mydomain.com/installation-services). Should I create a sub-domain for installations (ex: city.mydomain.com/installation-services)?
My thoughts are that it would make that sub-domain all about our installation services while keeping our root domain focused on our products and not dilute it with installations. However, this sub-domain will have less juicy juice.
What should I do with our G+ business page? In the back end of the business G+, there are boxes I can check for “my business has service areas where I visit my customers at their location” and “I serve customers at my business address.” If checked, will these make my site less likely to rank Nationally? We DO have a storefront and we DO visit people to do installations, so I would like these to be checked but not if it hurts my national rankings.
There are local “7 pack” results for my main keywords and their installations. So, I would want my root domain to show up locally for “widgets in [city]” and my sub-domain to show up for “widget installation in [city]".
Is it against Google’s TOS to create another G+ business page for the sub-domain? Is this even possible? Do I even need to do this or will Google know that I have a sub-domain all about installation and have my site show up in the local results?
Is there anything in GWT that I need to make sure to have done? I put the geographic target to United States. Is there anything else?
Of course, there is always the option of creating a new domain and optimize it for the installations. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.