Can I move into multiple towns through building a stronger listing?

[Laustin1878]

I had a chance to take a quick look at a map and noticed that Milford, which is where the FB and Bing coordinates point is south of North borough and well south of westborough. I'm wondering if the social signal from FB is triangulating the location in some way that is allowing the north borough location to rank for west borough. I'm guessing west borough isn't a very competitive city?

That's all I have to add for now. No need to thank me. That is what this community is about, helping others. I'd love to see if we can debunk something here.

 

[Former Member]

Haven't had the time to continue with this today.

On another quick note.. I changed my landing page titles according to your suggestions and a couple have been bumped up into the #1 spot

A jump of 2-3 spots!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Awesome! Glad the suggestion helped!

 

[Blake Denman]

Haven't had the time to continue with this today.

On another quick note.. I changed my landing page titles according to your suggestions and a couple have been bumped up into the #1 spot

A jump of 2-3 spots!

That's awesome. I just read a post on the 1st that talked about title length being measured in pixels, not characters. You can read more about that here: Measure Title Tag Length in Pixels, Not Characters, for SEO

Google's Webmaster Support has also written extensively on page titles. Here's a link: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624?hl=en

Specifically they suggest "branding" the page title. A fair amount of SEO's, myself included, use the format of keyword | business name for title tags. In the Google Webmaster link above, they recommend using business name: USP/concise statement about page.

I have tested both and have found that results vary, usually by either a rank increase or decrease of 1-2.

Hope that helps.

 

[Laustin1878]

Thanks for sharing that article. I also read that or one similar that mentioned pixels. I thought Cutts did a video on this before but it could be dated.

The moral is, don't force feed keywords into your titles. Write titles that will explain the page to the reader and focus less on search engines. The new search algorithm can understand user intent a bit better now. Google wants to remove as many elements of "spam" tactics as possible. I still use keywords but have been shifting to more question-like titles vs strictly keyword focused. Same goes for the content. Besides, Google won't be buying your service or product, the end user will.

 

[Blake Denman]

I still use keywords but have been shifting to more question-like titles vs strictly keyword focused. Same goes for the content. Besides, Google won't be buying your service or product, the end user will.

Exactly. Shift thinking from writing for SEO to writing for the user. This applies to title tags, meta descriptions, content, and site design.

It's unfortunate that a lot of spam gets through algo's, but they are a rare and dying breed.

 

[Former Member]

Linda, the "hopkinton plumber" three pack we originally were discussing has changed to a full 7 pack.. and for some reason were still not chosen?

Not sure if this answers any questions you had or if it points to any problems I have on the google+ end..

 

[Linda Buquet]

Not sure but it looks like 'she' thinks the centroid for that KW is not in the area you are located in.

​

 

[Former Member]

You're right. Seems to be focused on Framingham. We are letter H though so perhaps some citation clean up will help.

 

[Linda Buquet]

I also think that spammy title tag mistake maybe hurt you and it can take several weeks to get re-indexed after changing your site.

Google recently said: "On a typical website, it can take several weeks for Googlebot to crawl and process enough pages to reflect layout changes on the site."

 

[Laustin1878]

Just remember, allow some time for your changes to get picked up. Just because Google visits your site and gets the updates you've made doesn't mean that the index is updated immediately. Making too many changes will still leave you scratching your head at the end of this.

Make a change to your site, jot down a note indicating what you've changed. If it worked, try to identify other areas you could apply such changes to on your site. Not remedied, try a new change. Just keep notes so you know what works, what doesn't, etc.

Linda, how did you identify the centroid?

 

[Former Member]

Just remember, allow some time for your changes to get picked up. Just because Google visits your site and gets the updates you've made doesn't mean that the index is updated immediately. Making too many changes will still leave you scratching your head at the end of this.

Make a change to your site, jot down a note indicating what you've changed. If it worked, try to identify other areas you could apply such changes to on your site. Not remedied, try a new change. Just keep notes so you know what works, what doesn't, etc.

Linda, how did you identify the centroid?

Thanks. Will do! Great advice.

I'm curious about the centroid too. If Google was a human, she wouldn't select Framingham as the centroid for Hopkinton.. as a local resident myself it confuses me but then again Google confuses me often ha

 

[Linda Buquet]

I'm curious about the centroid too. If Google was a human, she wouldn't select Framingham as the centroid for Hopkinton.. as a local resident myself it confuses me but then again Google confuses me often ha

Linda, how did you identify the centroid?

Luke, just visually based on the cluster of results on the main search page's map.

The the big map screen shot on the previous page.

Ross, I'm not sure about your area and why.

Ross your area is very odd and unique in that there are a lot of really small towns clustered so you can do a search and see 4 towns in the pack so it's more scattered and confusing.

See this post Luke and the screen shots - then it's much clearer:

Google+ Local Centroid - NOT City Center! Affects Ranking!

 

[Laustin1878]

Thank you for the reference Linda. I distinctly remember that post and was surprised at those findings. I wasn't sure if you conducted the search that Ross initially posted or did something different.

Ross, have you made any more headway with this?

 

[Former Member]

Not much yet, I'm not a full time SEO professional so getting some time can be tough, I love doing this stuff but I'm almost ready to hand the reigns over to someone full time. I plan on digging deeper myself though this weekend and updating.

 

[Laustin1878]

If it were easy, everyone would be doing it It's what most people love about SEO. The challenges, differences between businesses and objectives, etc. It can certainly get overwhelming and even more so when you are not sure what the heck you are looking at.

I'm sure as long as you keep firing away questions and findings in here, the community can help you get to the bottom of it.

 

[Former Member]

Just noticed we're now the G spot for Hopkinton. The only change I can see is that one bad review was removed (competitor spam) and our rating increased slightly. Not sure if this played a role, it must have been something else...

Edit*** and just like that we're gone and back to the H position. Very odd. Perhaps it's doing a little dance well see where it settles.

 

[Former Member]

Was there some sort shift very recently with local? We actually just jumped to the A position (we were not even in the 7 pack yesterday).

Or perhaps just a centroid change? Hmm just thought I'd make a note.

 

[Former Member]

This is for "Hopkinton plumber"