Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
One Business-Multiple Services
-
Hello Everyone,
I was looking for some strategies for doing SEO on a site that offers multiple services.
Here is the example:
There is one company with ONE physical address.
They perform the following services:
- Pest Control
- Mold Remediation
- Home Inspections
- Waterproofing
They also handle these services in several surronding cities.
They want to maintain one website for branding purposes.
Obviously I will create individual pages on their site for each service but was wondering how diffiuclut it will be to rank one website for these various services.
Thank you!
-
Hello Bill,
Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. The NAP is really the key, more so than the website. For the business to be able to treat each specialty as distinct, it would need to become 4 distinct companies, each with a unique legal business name, legit physical street address and local area code phone number. This scenario would enable the owner to have a unique Google Place Page for each of the businesses, instead of just one Place Page for all of his specialties (as well as having unique listings in all of the other local business indexes). As things currently are, he is permitted to have only the one listing per index.
This is the case for most businesses like that of your client and by building out his content on his website, you are doing pretty much what you can do for his organic campaign (plus linkbuilding, social media, video etc., of course).
The tough thing about clients like this one, is that they typically not only offer a menu of very varied services, but they also tend to serve in a number of surrounding cities. So an SEO/Local SEO campaign typically looks something like this:
1. Get the client listed in the major local indexes.
2. Campaign for reviews in a variety of sources.
3. Get citations for his Google Place Page
4. Build out a body of service-related content on the website.
5. Build out a body of geographic content on his website.
6. Build links every which way
7. Engage in additional forms of marketing that will be most effective at reaching the client's audience (email, video, social media, blogging, etc.)
Now, in entering into all of this work, the client must be informed up front that his chances of ranking above the fold of Google's results are mostly going to revolve around his services in his city of location, in that he may achieve grey pinned local results for these 'service + geo' terms. He may not be able to expect top rankings for all 4 services. In any service city where he isn't physically located, the client should be made to understand that he is most likely to have to rely solely on the organic rankings below the local results, as Google will be viewing his competitors with physical locations in those cities as most relevant.
Clients like these are more complicated than, for example, a dentist with an office in Denver. But, that being said, there are substantial benefits to engaging in the work. Even lower rankings for terms can lead to trickles of monthly traffic and if these convert to phone calls and bookings, it has all been worth it.
Good luck!
-
Yes but then its hard to get the quality links for each, you can do your local directories for each, but the quality links is a bit harder.
-
Thanks Alan. I can understand why they want to do this from a branding standpoint but it will be harder to rank for individual terms.
In most cases I would think multiple websites would be called for here. A website for each area of service.
-
It is hard to rank for multiple servies, but even harder for multi locations, but you seem to be doing the write thing, make a page for each target.
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 domain - Multiple servers
Can I have the root domain pointing to one server and other URLs on the domain pointing to another server without redirecting, domain masking or HTML masking? Dealing with an old site that is a mess. I want to avoid migrating the old website to the new environment. I want to work on a page by page and section by section basis, and whatever gets ready to go live I will release on the new server while keeping all other pages untouched and live on the old server. What are your recommendations?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Joseph-Green-SEO0 -
Ecommerce: A product in multiple categories with a canonical to create a ‘cluster’ in one primary category Vs. a single listing at root level with dynamic breadcrumb.
OK – bear with me on this… I am working on some pretty large ecommerce websites (50,000 + products) where it is appropriate for some individual products to be placed within multiple categories / sub-categories. For example, a Red Polo T-shirt could be placed within: Men’s > T-shirts >
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AbsoluteDesign
Men’s > T-shirts > Red T-shirts
Men’s > T-shirts > Polo T-shirts
Men’s > Sale > T-shirts
Etc. We’re getting great organic results for our general T-shirt page (for example) by clustering creative content within its structure – Top 10 tips on wearing a t-shirt (obviously not, but you get the idea). My instinct tells me to replicate this with products too. So, of all the location mentioned above, make sure all polo shirts (no matter what colour) have a canonical set within Men’s > T-shirts > Polo T-shirts. The presumption is that this will help build the authority of the Polo T-shirts page – this obviously presumes “Polo Shirts” get more search volume than “Red T-shirts”. My presumption why this is the best option is because it is very difficult to manage, particularly with a large inventory. And, from experience, taking the time and being meticulous when it comes to SEO is the only way to achieve success. From an administration point of view, it is a lot easier to have all product URLs at the root level and develop a dynamic breadcrumb trail – so all roads can lead to that one instance of the product. There's No need for canonicals; no need for ecommerce managers to remember which primary category to assign product types to; keeping everything at root level also means there no reason to worry about redirects if product move from sub-category to sub-category etc. What do you think is the best approach? Do 1000s of canonicals and redirect look ‘messy’ to a search engine overtime? Any thoughts and insights greatly received.0 -
How does having multiple pages on similar topics affect SEO?
Hey everyone, On our site we have multiple pages that have similar content. As an example, we have a section on Cars (in general) and then specific pages for Used Cars, European Cars, Remodeled Cars etc. Much of the content is similar on these page and the only difference is some content and the additional term in the URL (for example car.com/remodeled-cars and /european-cars). In the past few months, we've noticed a dip in our organic ranking and started doing research. Also, we noticed that Google, in SERPs, shows the general page (cars.com/cars) and not the specific page (/european-cars), even if the specific page has more content. Can having multiple pages with similar content hurt SEO? If so, what is the best way to remedy this? We can consolidate some of the pages and make the difference between them a little clearer, but does it make that much of a difference for rankings? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JonathonOhayon0 -
Multiple 301 redirects for a HTTPS URL. Good or bad?
I'm working on an ecommerce website that has a few snags and issues with it's coding. They're using https, and when you access the website through domain.com, theres a 301 redirect to http://www.domain.com and then this, in turn, redirected to https://www.domain.com. Would this have a deterimental effect or is that considered the best way to do it. Have the website redirect to http and then all http access is redirected to the https URL? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasondexter0 -
Redirecting one site to another for link juice
I have two sites with same theme - buying cars. I am going remove one of the sites from being crawled permenantly (ie junkthecars.com) and point domian via 301, to another similar theme site (sellthecars.com). The purpose is to simply pass the SEO link juice from one site to the other as we retire junkthecars.com.... Is a forwarding of the domain OK and the best way for the search engines to increase the rank of sellthecars.com (we hate to wast the link work done on Junkthecars.com)? What dangers should I look for that could hurt sellthecars.com if we do the redirect at a simple TLD?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bestone0 -
How do I get 2 column Google sitelinks instead of one line sitelinks?
Currently, if you search for my site's brand name on Google, we are the top result. However, rather than having 2 columns of sitelinks, there is just one line of 4 sitelinks. When you search for the site's domain (sitename.com), you get the full 2 columns of sitelinks. Are there any strategies for getting the 2 columns on more than just the domain name search? At the very least, I'd like to get 2 columns to appear when you do a brand name search, but it'd be great to get 2 columns of sitelinks for our top search queries as well. Thanks for the advice...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BostonWright0 -
Multiple Domain names pointing at one website
Hello, A collegue has asked if we can buy multiple domain names which contain keywords and point them at our website. Is this good practise or will it be seen as spam? Will these domains actually get ranked? I'm sure I'm not the first person to raise this but can't seem to find any questions and answers about this. Thanks Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | markc-1971830 -
Multiple sites linking back with pornographic anchor text
I discovered a while ago that we had quite a number of links pointing back to one of our customer's websites. The anchor text of these links contain porn that is extremely bad. These links are originating from forums that seems to link between themselves and then throw my customers web address in there at the same time. Any thoughts on this? I'm seriously worried that this may negatively affect the site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GeorgeMaven0