Will having a big list of cities for areas a client services help or damage SEO on a page?
-
We have a client we inherited that has flat text list of all the cities and counties they service on their contact page.
They service the entire southeast so the list just looks crazy ridiculous.
--------- Example: ----
South Carolina:
Abbeville, Aiken, Allendale, Anderson, Bamberg, Barnwell, Beaufort, Berkeley, Calhoun, Charleston, Cherokee, etc etc
------ end example ------
The question is, will this help or hinder their seo for their very specific niche industry? Is this key word spamming? It has an end-user purpose so it technically isn't spam, but perhaps the engines may look at it otherwise. I couldn't find a definitive answer to the question, any help would be appreciated.
-
Right on! It worked for the tortoise.
-
Excellent suggestion. Slow and steady wins the race.
-
Scott,
Curious if the business in question has a blog? Could he blog about 'an engine I fixed for a client in Abbeville, SC', and put a content strategy in place to start blogging about his projects in his major cities? Maybe just start with the top 10 cities from which he gets orders for engine repair? Craft writeups of each project he accomplishes for a unique client in each city and make it a blog post. Then, move onto the 10 next-most-important cities. So, maybe he would be starting with the capitols of South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and then moving on to other busy cities.
Eventually, you could have a page on the site (or a menu area) designated Successful Project Showcase that would link permanently to these posts.
My goal here would be to find an authentic and natural approach for showcasing his work in a way that adds great content to the site and doesn't simply list every city in the South East. This strategy, in combination with his service area map, could work well, I believe.
-
That certainly solves the design problem, but would not help someone in in Abbeville, South Carolina find the business (and the business certainly won't have a unique landing page for such a small city). Decisions, decisions. Thanks for the suggestions.
-
While I can't say this would results in an actual penalty, as you say, it looks spammy, so anything like that is kind of shaky ground.
Have you considered making a service area map instead, showing all of the client's service states/cities?
If he services every city in every state of the South East, I simply cannot find a logical justification for listing them all. A map would send the same message, but in a logical, visual manner.
-
Good answers. They do some seriously technical stuff with broken engines. They only have one location, but because it's so niche and there are so few competitors they have clients all over the country that ship their engines to the client in Florida for repairs.
It certainly looks spammy design wise (and we'll find ways to rectify that with some jquery drops), but I'm more concerned with any potential penalty this might cause, if any.
-
Hi Christopher,
Yes, I'd say that would end up looking pretty spammy if they've got a list like this for every state in the South East on their contact page. For the same reason that an e-commerce website wouldn't list all 1000 items they carry on a single page, this is not something I'd recommend.
What's the business model? Virtual or Local? If local, a more natural approach to this would be to have unique pages for each of their physical offices. I very much doubt they have an office in every one of those cities in South Carolina, right? But, perhaps they have 10 offices throughout the South East and could have a unique page for each of them?
Maybe you could share a few more details about the type of business this is?
-
I would create a page called "Service Area" and put an unordered list (ul) may look nicer, and is less spammy. Without knowing the product or service, I'm not sure if that will work for you.
Ex:
South Carolina
- Abbeville
- Aiken
- Allendale
- Anderson
- etc.
Georgia
- Atlanta
- Blah
- Clah
- Dlah
Most importantly - DO NOT post that list in the footer or sidebar of every page. It will significantly dilute the effectiveness. Containing this information on a single page, and peppering the rest of the site with some of your larger markets will be likely most effective for you.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Purchased domain with links - redirect page by page or entire domain?
Hi, I purchased an old domain with a lot of links that I'm redirecting to my site. I want all of their links to redirect to the same page on my site so I can approach this two different ways: Entire site
Technical SEO | | ninel_P
1.) RedirectMatch 301 ^(.*)$ http://www.xyz.com or Page by page
2). Redirect 301 /retiredpage.html http://www.xyz.com/newpage.html Is there a better option I should go with in regards to SEO effectiveness? Thanks in advance!0 -
Will this affect the local SEO listings in Google?
So, I'm trying to list the same exact address across all local listings for a client. How "exact" do they all need to match in order for them to be optimized for the 7-pack listings? Here is an example of what I'm dealing with... 999 Cherry Ln #1 Dallas, TX 75238 - Address on Google Plus page 999 Cherry Ln Ste 1, Dallas, TX 75238 - Address on every other business listing Is this close enough or is this inconsistency really hurting this client?
Technical SEO | | wiredseo0 -
Listing Categories on each page versus in the drop-down navigation; which is better for SEO
My client, www.warehouse-lighting.com, has all the links to its category pages on a left-side navigation structure. Their competitor, www.prolighting.com has all of its category-page links listed under the drop-down menu of the top-level navigation. I’m wondering if one way is better than the other for SEO and why?
Technical SEO | | TopFloor1 -
How much will changing IP addresses impact SEO?
So my company is upgrading its Internet bandwidth. However, apparently the vendor has said that part of the upgrade will involve changing our IP address. I've found two links that indicate some care needs to be taken to make sure our SEO isn't harmed: http://followmattcutts.com/2011/07/21/protect-your-seo-when-changing-ip-address-and-server/ http://www.v7n.com/forums/google-forum/275513-changing-ip-affect-seo.html Assuming we don't use an IP address that has been blacklisted by Google for spamming or other black hat tactics, how problematic is it? (Note: The site hasn't really been aggressively optimized yet - I started with the company less than two weeks ago, and just barely got FTP and CMS access yesterday - so honestly I'm not too worried about really messing up the site's optimization, since there isn't a lot to really break.)
Technical SEO | | ufmedia0 -
Why is 4XX (Client Error) shown for valid pages?
My Crawl Diagnostics Summary says I have 5,141 errors of the 4XX (Client Error) variety. Yet when I view the list of URLs they all resolve to valid pages. Here is an example.
Technical SEO | | jimaycock
http://www.ryderfleetproducts.com/ryder/af/ryder/core/content/product/srm/key/ACO 3018/pn/Wiper-Blade-Winter-18-Each/erm/productDetail.do These pages are all dynamically created from search or browse using a database where we offer 36,000 products. Can someone help me understand why these are errors.0 -
Will rel=canonical cause a page to be indexed?
Say I have 2 pages with duplicate content: One of them is: http://www.originalsite.com/originalpage This page is the one I want to be indexed on google (domain rank already built, etc.) http://www.originalpage.com is more of an ease of use domain, primarily for printed material. If both of these sites are identical, will rel=canonical pointing to "http://www.originalsite.com/originalpage" cause it to be indexed? I do not plan on having any links on my site going to "http://www.originalsite.com/originalpage", they would instead go to "http://www.originalpage.com".
Technical SEO | | jgower0 -
Planing Seo For New Seo
Hello; I have the domain which registerd in 2006 and i opened website 1 months ago and i start to do some seo like bought links pr1-pr7 50 links and 2500 social bookmarks 2000 blog links and also some wiki links am i doing good or bad ?
Technical SEO | | Sadullah0 -
Page title vs page element
Hello! I'm new to SEO as my question would imply. Can someone show me the difference between a page title and a page element? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | atrenary1