How to optimize for local search when a business is part of a national franchise.

• We have a client that is a franchisor. Since most of our clients are local service businesses, we've typically used the following format for meta titles: Keyphrase - Location - Business Name. An example would be: Chimney Sweeping & Repair - Nashville TN - Ashbusters Chimney. In this case, however, the franchisor is looking to rank nationwide. Is it worth our time to set up meta titles with a location descriptor?

Answer:

For a multi-location business, you should optimize the corporate home page and general pages for high volume fat head (aka broad) search terms relevant to your market. If you serve a state or region, rather than the entire country, using a meaningful geo-modifier in these titles or meta descriptions (like Texas Hill Country, or Metro DC, or Hudson Valley) can help reduce your bounce rate (i.e., the number of site visitors that click a search link and then leave the website before spending enough time deemed significant by the search engine).

Then, each location should have its own page that is optimized for that location. Nashville Chimney Sweeping & Repair-Ashbusters or Chimney Sweeping & Repair-Nashville Ashbusters would be fine for a page title for the Nashville location.

How to handle a site's migration when the new domain is on a shared IP address.

• When migrating a site, I know to point the old domain to the new domain's IP address. But, what if the new domain's IP address is shared with other websites on a single server? Will the .htaccess take care of that?

Answer:

There are several ways to go about this. The first choice is to see if you can "add" a domain to your account where your main website is hosted. If so, for each of...