Target the homepage?
-
Hi SEOmoz!
I have a potential client who is piloting a web application in a specific geo market, but plans on expanding to 10+ cities in the near future (6-12 months).
He wants to rank for "[initial geo market] + [service]". Should I optimize the homepage for this keyword (which will be relatively easy to rank for), or encourage him to build out a geo-specific template (could take a few months to add this to the application) for this market, and try to rank that so it's scalable?
Thoughts are appreciated.
EDIT: In terms of the business type, this is a web application that helps people organize their travel. It isn't your local traditional restaurant that is trying to compete with others in their area. We would be competing with other nationally recognized travel applications (TripAdvisor, Yahoo Travel, etc), most likely.
-
To Keri's point, I can't provide the business name. Thanks for understanding.
In terms of the business type, this is a web application that helps people organize their travel. It isn't your local traditional restaurant that is trying to compete with others in their area. We would be competing with other nationally recognized travel applications (TripAdvisor, Yahoo Travel, etc), most likely. Should have provided this clarification upfront. My apologies.
-
Hi Tommy, From a purely local perspective, it is very important to understand whether the client has just 1 or 10 physical offices. If only one, then the main thrust of his website will probably need to be slanted most strongly towards his physical location. The hope here would be to gain traction in the Local SERPs, whereas any other cities he wants to target, but in which he has no physical office, will be unlikely to be able to achieve high visibility in the Local SERPs. These office-less locations would need to fight for organic rankings for his other desired local terms. There is some grey area here on my side because I'm not positive whether your client's business model is actually local or not. Is there a legal business name, unique physical street address and unique local area code phone number associated with at least one of his target cities? Or, is his business (and his product) totally virtual? In the latter case, then breaking into the local SERPs at all is going to be next to impossible because of Google's preference for displaying true local businesses for so many geo-related queries. I feel like I've started to answer your question, but details like the ones I've mentioned are what one needs to understand before making a positive decision about how to proceed with a campaign. Please, feel free to give further information if you can about the client's business model, product and physical geography - but you do not need to give names or use real keywords. Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question! Miriam
-
Thumbs up for Keri, it was my mistake to ask for a link.
-
Hi Tommy,
I've asked our associate who specializes in local search to come take a look at this question. She should be able to give you some helpful advice with how to proceed.
We understand that many times you cannot divulge information about your client or their business, especially if they haven't launched yet. Do feel free to tell us if that's the case here.
-
Hi Tommy,
Could we please get a link to the application?
In general (before checking the app. itself) I would go for a sub-folders / each city, then target the specific sub-folder for the specific city. The homepage could be optimized for the service keyword with the initial geo market. But that is only one opinion.
Maybe after a link to the application, we can get more detailed plan.
Hope it helped,
Istvan
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
-
Login Page Outranking Homepage
Hi all, I have a subscription based website with a members login. For our branded terms, this login page is outranking the homepage and we're unsure what, if anything to do about it. One suggestion was to deindex it, but the counter-argument was that we'd be taking away one of our spots on the first page. I feel from a user experience, it would be best to deindex it to try and get the homepage ranked #1 since the login page not optimised towards new visitors. Another suggestion was to just optimise the title and description to make it look a little nicer. I would love to hear your thoughts Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | CupidTeam0 -
Can I add multi location business cities to homepage meta title or desc.?
I have a business with 6 locations (in the same state) but very different cities. We we expanded from one location with the city name in the URL we followed best practices to move to the new domain without the singular city name in the URL. We definitly took a hit on the organic side and I'm trying to figure out best practice for where to add geo info. Currently I have geo info: -In footer
On-Page Optimization | | beehiive
-Contact Page -On local page It's a WP site and each location has it's own page (ie. locations/geolocation_keyword). I know all other locations will take sometime but my concern is the hit we took on the original location that had geo-target URL. I guess really my question is simply can I include city names in homepage meta title and desc.?
and is there anything else I can do to bounce back organically on the original city faster?0 -
Do deep pages issues affect homepage chances of ranking?
Hello community, I have a general question: let's say you have some issues in deep pages, like duplicate pages without a canonical tag, or missing description or missing titles, etc.. Will these issues affect the chances of the homepage ranking if the homepage is optimized (no duplicates, canonical, good keywords volume, alt text, etc.) and has none of the issues present in deep pages within the site? Gracias.
On-Page Optimization | | EduardoRuiz0 -
Can a country level domain perform well in international SEO if all the targeted keywords are related to that country domain?
Hi fellow Mozers, I am doing international SEO on Google US, UK, UAE and Saudi Arabia. All my targeted keywords have my country name in it, for example, export companies in France, best import companies in France and so on. Finally, my website has a country level domain i.e. www.xyz.co.fr _Hence, my questions are: _ 1. Is it good have a country level domain in this case or should I go TLDs? 2. Should my Google Plus page be a local business page or company page from SEO perspective? I have more than 10000 users who have +1 my website. _Thanks in advance. _
On-Page Optimization | | Abhi81870 -
Using a keyword on homepage of a blog
I have a blog and the homepage has the 5 most recent posts. I ran a report card on my homepage for my main keyword. One of the problems is that the keyword only appears 1 time. I don't want to put it in the signature of every post because I found that causing problems with self-cannibalizing. I checked my competitor and they got a check mark for this but I looked at their homepage and I found the keyword NOWHERE! So where is my competitor hiding the keywords and how can I get the keywords on the homepage when the content is constantly changing? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | 2bloggers0 -
It looks like there are several title tags on my homepage. This was done presumably to embed titles for pop up windows. This is causing an error report in DMOZ. Do the engines also veiw this negatively?
My homepage has a normal title tag, but when I look in the code I find the developer also added title tags for pop ups within the homepage code. Is this causing an issue with the search engines?
On-Page Optimization | | Furious-D0 -
Contact Form On Homepage - Best Practices
How important is it to have a contact form on the homepage of a service-based business? I am trying to decide if having a form on front page will increase the number of people filling it out.
On-Page Optimization | | TheSEODR0 -
Optimally, how many times should the key word or phrase you are targeting for a particular page be mentioned or appear on that page?
Our marketing team is debating how many times the key phrase on each of our web store's product pages should include the word/phrase we are trying to be competitive with. Can you advise?
On-Page Optimization | | Glynlyon0