How to Handle Multiple Locations
-
We are working with a client who will have multiple locations––same company, same services [for the most part], different location. They want each location to get picked up locally in the search engines.
What is the best way to handle the website and URLs?
One overarching website with a page for each location?
Separate Company Name with the town in each - "XYZ Company - Orlando"?
Have a separate URL with the town name for each location that points each location's page?
All addresses on each page in the footer?Thanks.
-
Hi vzPro,
Absolutely. Schema for local is a very good thing to use whenever a physical address exists. Also, thought you might like to read a fairly recent article of mine on the topic of city landing pages. A lot of folks have told me it helped them to understand their opportunities.
The Nitty Gritty of City Landing Pages
http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=1403
Hope this helps!
-
Thanks for the extra info Miriam. Do you think adding "Local Business" schema is a good idea for these landing pages too? Is there any SEO value to that?
-
Hi ThinkCreativeGroup,
Great discussion going on here. I'll try to add a bit.
-
Yes, have a unique page for each of the locations on the website. Make sure that the content on each of the pages is unique. Do not simply change out keywords from page to page. Take the most creative approach you can to each location and find something of value to the user to write about.
-
Optimizing the website footer with the NAP (name, address, phone) for each of the locations is a best practice if the total number of locations isn't too large. I would say 6 or less would be fine.
-
You can also put all of these locations on a main contact page.
-
Yes, having the name of the city in your legal business name or DBA may be of some value, but be careful that:
-
You are listing it identically in all places across the web. In other words, don't be Bob's Chicago Taco Shop in some places and Bob's Taco Shop in others. Unless the business is utterly new and has absolutely no footprint (including offline Yellowpages), then chances are the name of the business has already been indexed in a variety of places. If the business chooses to change its name, all citations must be updated to match so that only one form of the business name exists everywhere. Also, be advised that if your client has already built up a good rep on the web around their existent name (with local listings, reviews, citations, etc.) then a change of name can be catastrophic. You can expect to lose all reviews and many citations by changing the name of an established business, as a new name will be a signal of a brand new business. So, be careful with this!
-
You are not over-optimizing your title tags. A few months ago, Andre Weyher (formerly of Matt Cutts' search quality team) said in an interview, "Don't put more than 2 commercial keywords in your titles or Google will frown on it." This statement led to an interesting theoretical disussion over at CatalysteMarketing's local search forum in which it was suggested that a city name not appear too many times in a title tag. (see: http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/local-seo-ranking/984-local-search-engine-optimization-warning-city-title.html)
I mention this here because, if you are Bob's Chicago Taco Shop, and you're putting your business name in your title tags, then your name represents one usage of a city name. So, be aware of that and don't over-do it.
-
-
I would definitely take the time to read up on this blog post from Mike Ramsey over at NiftyMarketing. It was posted on SEOmoz at the end of January. It will answer a lot of your questions.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/40-important-local-search-questions-answered
-
Thanks, very helpful!
Each location is in the same city, does that change your response at all? And, is it OK if each landing page is within the same site with a separate URL, or should the landing pages be completely separate sites?
-
I would have a single locations page that lists all of your businesses locations by city, state.
I would link the city, state to a landing page for the specific city,state.
Each city, state landing page would have a unique, URL, title, headings, content, etc that would use a format like Keyword | City, State | XYZ Company - because if someone Googles your company name, you should already come up... it is more important to have the keywords, then city or city, then keywords in your title - do some keyword research on this to see which is best for you.
THEN register each of those city,state landing pages using GetListed.org - this will help you build up your local presence in those areas since you have a physical office location.
If you wanted, you could do the footer idea... I think that gets to be kind of spammy, but I guess it all depends on the industry and the number of locations.
Hope that helps.
Mike
-
Thanks for the responses, they make sense.
Do you know if adding the name of location into the official company name will have any impact on SEO?
And, should we list the locations in the footer or on a "locations" page?
-
you could also modify subdomains
i.e. www.company.com; orlando.company.com; seattle.company.com etc..
-
The bese way is to have one website with multiple urls for different locations with the right title tag. This way gives me the most feedback. I did this for a payroll company and it worked out great. so if your website is example.com you can say the locations url can be example.com/locations/orlando.html
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
-
Issues with Multiple H1 tags on homepage?
Hi folks, My homepage has 3 identical H1 tags due to the fact that I have had to create individual hero images (with headings) for desktop, tablet and mobile. I couldn't get my theme to display the layout in exactly the way I wanted on each device without doing a specific hero image and tag for each device type. Does this have a major impact on my SEO? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | Veevlimike
Mike.0 -
Adding Location to Title Tags has dropped SEO Rankings
After adding the suburb of my business to each title tag on my website, I've noticed their rankings have dropped from page one to page four in a lot of cases. Should I wait it out and expect to see them improve in the future? Should I revert them back to their old title tags? I'm a little concerned!
On-Page Optimization | | thomaslutrov0 -
HTTPS and HTTP both exist! How to handle?
I was asked to do some SEO work for a website and learned that just 6 weeks ago, their webmaster added an HTTPS instance of the site. Their backlinks all point to HTTP and the 6 pages that are already ranking are all on the HTTP site. I'm afraid to rock the boat by redirecting the site from HTTP to HTTPS as we may lose rank. What are some suggestions? If I just pull down the HTTPS will that hurt us? Would you just go ahead and redirect it? IF so, would you do each page individually or as a whole?
On-Page Optimization | | dk80 -
Optimal URL structure for location-specific pages
I'm in the middle of revamping a website for a restaurant that has multiple locations and am trying to decide what the best URL/internal link structure would be. Right now, each restaurant has a single location page, but we are going to add additional pages for catering. Sitewide-linked pages exist for /catering and /locationname. The way I see it, we have two basic options: Option #1: Catering page - /locationname/catering/ Option #2: Catering page - /catering/locationname/ In both cases, there would be links from the /locationname an /catering pages to the location-specific catering pages. Is either option preferable to the other?
On-Page Optimization | | mblair0 -
Avoid Multiple Page Title Elements...
Hi guys i'm just going trough some pages with the seomoz one page optimization tool. As one of the "easy fix" suggestions it says: "Avoid Multiple Page Title Elements" "Explanation: Web pages are meant to have a single title, and for both accessibility and search engine optimization reasons, we strongly recommend following this practice.Recommendation: Remove all but a single page title element." By single element does it mean 1 single word? Is that realistic?
On-Page Optimization | | Immanuel0 -
Which is better, have our location in the title or have a title that is 66 characters?
I was told by an SEO company that I need to put our name and location in every page title, however, an seomoz.org campaign gave me warnings for having a page title that is too long. Which is better, have our location in the title or have a title that is 66 characters? We have both a physical and online store, so it would still be nice to direct foot traffic to our physical store.
On-Page Optimization | | HockSports0 -
Existing good authority LP with multiple keywords, how to optimize for these keywords?
Hi Mozzers, Currently I am optimizing ONpage after I made a report for which keywords the website already ranks in the serps. I was surprised about the numbers of keywords the website ranks in Google. The website ranks for multiple keywords in 1 landing page. They get a lot of traffic, but has a position #5 or #7/#8, onpage grade is for most of the keywords a C or D and lots of them a F, so it's worth to optimize it. How should I do that when the landing page is domain.com/category and the 5 different keywords are partofcategoryname. Should I put all these keywords in the title and landing page body content as the onpage tool recommend me that? I was thinking about the option I described above OR to create a new landing page for the specific keyword each. However, the already ranked landing page has a PA of 38. When starting to build new landing pages is starting to build from PA 0. Anyway, it's definitely I chance to do onpage, I just don't know what I should do since there are 5 different keywords that already ranks for the landing page with good traffic. I want to let it rise in the serps to increase the traffic of course. Looking forward to recommendations! thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | Falcopa0 -
Location in keyword terms
I'm optimizing a website for a dentist and I'm looking for the best approach to incorporating the location into the keyword terms. For example if a dental practice in Boston has a page on Cosmetic Dentistry what would be the best approach for optimizing for "Boston Cosmetic Dentist", "Boston Teeth Whitening" and "Cosmetic Dentist in Boston"? How should I handle the repetition of the location name? Will I get the best results by using the full keyword terms several times on the page "example a" or will "example b" provide similar results? Title Tag: a) Boston Cosmetic Dentist | Boston Teeth Whitening | Cosmetic Dentist in Boston
On-Page Optimization | | OptioPublishing
b) Boston Cosmetic Dentist | Teeth Whitening H1
a) Boston Cosmetic Dentist | Boston Teeth Whitening | Cosmetic Dentist in Boston
b) Boston Cosmetic Dentist | Teeth Whitening keywords to sprinkle through content
a) Boston Cosmetic Dentist, Boston Teeth Whitening, Cosmetic Dentist in Boston
b) Boston Cosmetic Dentist, Teeth Whitening etc... It's important to rank for all 3 keywords but the pages would be flooded with the words Dentist and Boston if I use each phrase exactly. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance,
Jason0