Subdomains, Local Search and SEO Performance

Question. Hello Jason, I purchased 2 copies of the SEO Fitness Workbook 2016 and just ordered 2 copies of the Social Media Marketing Workbook.

We’re making strides with our SEO for our child care center whose website is   ~ We just started with 3 Google Adwords Express campaigns. We have very few links to our site. I was told to look into magicsubmitter.com to help this issue any thoughts on this service?

Given our URL doesn’t reflect child care and our competitors have childcare in their domains or subdomains. Most of the searches are for child care and day care, so I was looking to build subdomains. I would use a helping word “~” (80% of our clients come from) along with our services and naming our landing page as well. An example would be any thoughts on doing this?

We used Godaddy “GetFound” and it hurt us, so we are taking ownership of all our profiles. Even our GMB page were I responded to all our 28 reviews and recently was suspended until I get a postcard to again verify our page.

Looking forward to being listed organically #1 in ~

Answer –

Thank you for the question. There are quite a few issues, here, so let’s look at each in turn –

• Using “article spinning” services. Services like the one you indicate are what are called “article spinners.” This is a discredited, dangerous tactic – and I do NOT recommend this. Google rolled out the so-called Panda update and it is a direct attack against this type of low quality content, and bad inbound links (along with the so-called Penguin update). DO NOT USE ARTICLE SPINNING SERVICES! They will hurt you in the long run, even if you get a short term boost.
• Subdomains vs. Directories. Generally speaking a subdomain such as tulsa.bestdaycareservice.com vs. bestdaycareservice.com/tulsa (a subdirectory), the LATTER is preferred. So use subdirectories, as all the link juice, etc., will flow to your “domain” itself.
• URL structure.  Google is not that sensitive to URL’s and keywords in URL’s; Bing is VERY sensitive to this, but has only about 10 – 20% of Google’s traffic. So, YES, put keywords in your URLs – it can’t hurt, and it does help, but remember Google is MORE interested in things like content and links.
• AdWords Express.  This is Googles “lite” product. Here’s the scoop – it does not give you a lot of control, and it tends to run you on the Display Network or GDN. The GDN is a mess, and full of bad stuff… so it will waste your money. I would highly recommend you “graduate” to a full AdWords account, where you will get better control.  DO NOT RUN ON THE GDN – it is a waste of money 99% of the time, and should be used ONLY by experts.  Long story, just trust me on that one, and don’t listen to the Google AdWords reps, who are paid to SELL ADS.

Those are the responses to your questions. Now, in a nutshell you have a LOCAL business, and so the big factors you can push to help your company are:

• On Page SEO. Make sure you know your target keywords (e.g., daycare center, child care, etc., AND your target city / cities).  Create strong, well-written content that contains these keywords AND cross-links to each other on the keyword themes (“link sculpting”).
• Blog, blog, blog – a blog will really help you.  Stay with it and keep at it.
• Links – find directories in your town and/or industry. Buy or get into HIGH QUALITY directories.  Inventory EASY link targets.  Do everything you can “within reason” to get inbound links.  Don’t do any crazy schemes… just work on the basics here.  But just getting ten or twenty inbound QUALITY links will really, really help.
• Reviews, reviews, reviews. Getting HAPPY customers to review you on Google is the #1 off page factor.  THIS IS HUGE!  Do everything you can, again within reason, to motivate HAPPY customers to write reviews on Google.  #2 is Yelp, as Yelp feeds into Bing.

So there you go.  Hope this helps.