Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Targeting City Geo-tags/Keywords for Clients with Multiple Locations
-
Hey everyone! What methods are best to use for SEO campaigns working with 1 website for a company which has 2, 3, 4, or more locations in order to get keywords for their services to rank well... in all their location cities?
I feel we know the answer could be any one of the below notes, however, it's always nice to learn more about what all you other SEO's are doing or have done which saw success.
Please note:
We have heard about building microsites on sub-domains example city.domainname.com/keyword-or-service
We have heard about building sections off the root domain such as domainname.com/city/keyword-or-service
We have heard about just pushing more content to the blog which can target a wider range of keywords and cities
We have heard about building a new site for each city location replicating the main website and swapping out content for 100% originality
We have heard about just building more and more backlinks with different anchor text using the cities in the anchor textThanks in advance and look forward to hearing from some other experts facing these same challenges!
-
Thanks, Daniel! We have several clients who are regional based as well with 4 locations to sell/rent equipment or dentists with 2 or 3 offices around a city like Cleveland/Akron/Canton OH, etc. I appreciate you sharing your direct experience in how you handle it and love the idea of a drop down menu!
-
I agree with the above and would add my own experience.
I've had good results with the format www.widgetservices.com/location 1, www.widgetservices.com/location 2 etc.... all accessible from a drop down menu entitled "Locations and Clients". Each location page talks about the people who work at the location and has some mini-case studies and testimonials. The actual product descriptions, the same in each location, are elsewhere.
I also build links to the individual location pages. Each location page, in text and tags, is also optimized for the not only the main location but a few of the closest cities.
Note that this is a regional business with only 7 locations. YMMV.
-
Wonderful explanations for us to consider and work with. We assumed the domain.com/city approach would be best to get everything tagged, content relevant to the market, and links built to those inner pages. Thank you!!
-
Thanks, Francisco. I could've elaborated a bit more, you're right. We have several clients and prospective clients with multiple locations and most sell the same services/products across each location. However, some, take for example, a General Dentist we work with has 2 offices in different cities, one office does General and Cosmetic Dentistry while the other does General Dentistry and Oral Surgery. So a little different in what we'd need to target. We always do Google+ verifications as well, so that's not an issue. However, your other points are pretty valid and we have them marked down to implement. Thank you again for your feedback!
-
Howdy,
We have heard about building microsites on sub-domains example city.domainname.com/keyword-or-service
I think this was more relevant when you were wanting to get an EMD, but I think that this is now less important.
We have heard about building sections off the root domain such as domainname.com/city/keyword-or-service
We have used this and had success with it. If you look at Yelp, this is what they do as well. I think you can also consolidate your SEO reputation more effectively. I think the advantage to the subdomain or separate domain approach is that if you get penalized on one, it should not impact the other. If you keep to white hat approaches this should not be an issue.
We have heard about just pushing more content to the blog which can target a wider range of keywords and cities
If you setup the two options above, you can have a wide diversity of keywords and cities. Don't see how a blog makes it any different in being able to target more keywords. You can hang a blog off of a folder ie. domainname.com/city/blog and you can get the same effect.
We have heard about building a new site for each city location replicating the main website and swapping out content for 100% originality
The issue with this becomes scale what if you need a large number of cities covered, can you get all the domain names. What if you have a user that wants to look in more than one city? Just does not scale, especially if you want to build your main brand. Also, when you consider all the different GA and GWT etc etc accounts you would need to setup to manage, it adds a lot of overhead.
We have heard about just building more and more backlinks with different anchor text using the cities in the anchor text
This is something you would have to do regardless of all of the above techniques. You want backlinks to any page/site/etc with the city in the anchor text but with also a diversity of anchor text.
##########
Bottom line, you need to consider your brand on all of this. People go to yelp as they are a trusted source and then they rank well with local cities around the US. Same thing with places like Angies list. Citysearch uses the subdomain, but that is more of a legacy thing, seems like most newer sites use the a single TLD and then build out locations in different folders. Brand is what will make you different than all the other companies that sell the same products so IMHO the use of the single domain lets you build on that.
-
This is a tough question because we don't know the business objectives of the company or site. If it's one company and you are trying to get local listing, why not just get a Google + page and verify all your local pages via the post card Google sends through the mail.
If all locations sell different things (car parts vs women shoes), new domain or sub-domain. But if your client is selling the same thing like Starbucks, then example.com/city.
I would personally create a page with schema.org markup for addresses and link them to /city
-
Great feedback about the sub-domains and microsites as yes, it would be a lot of work for the build outs and the new content. I appreciate the input!
-
Hello,
Assuming that we leave blogging out of the equation for now...
(Since you should be using a blog to provide value to readers, and will probably going for longer-tail phrases rather than things like "keyword-or-service in City")
My strong preference is building sections off the root domain rather than microsites on subdomains. You'll get more benefit from the other tactics you mentioned with this setup than you will from subdomains. You'll also have a far easier time of it trying to rank one site with multiple pages, rather than a new site for each location.
Realistically, the subdomain and new site tactics are going to be either 1) A massive amount of work to write great content or 2) Full of weak content. Using the root domain, on the other hand, allows you to rank for your keyword and location while still offering visitors great content that is more generalized (assuming that your different locations provide the same services).
Link-building wise, I'd definitely focus on building links to the location pages. I would be wary of getting too specific with your anchor text, however -- I wonder how much value there is in a link where you could get anchor text that includes both the keyword and location, and too much of it is going to look artificial very quickly. In this situation, I rely more on on-page targeting and strong local search listings for each location than I do anchor text.
I'm sure others will have more to contribute, but I hope this helps.
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
-
How many links per week/month should a link building campaign acquire?
I am running a linkbuilding campaign for my company. I am mostly focusing on guest blogging opportunities and responding to emails from HARO. How many links would I have to acquire each week or month to be considered doing a good job over a 6 month or a year time period? Thank you,
Link Building | | fersu0 -
Why have I lost 1/3 of my backlinks (about 5,000) in 3 months?
In August, my client's site (I work at a marketing agency) had about 15,000 backlinks. Now they suddenly have about 10,000 backlinks. And their Domain Authority has dropped from 48 to 40! Can someone please help me understand what could've happened? At first I assumed this had something to do with the latest Penguin update, since I knew my client's site had some extremely spammy backlinks they hadn't cleaned up yet. (The site was hacked at some point and hidden pages were created as part of some kind of link-building scheme, and there were lots of links from sketchy sites to those pages. The hidden pages have been taken down and the URLs now redirect to my client's home page.) But that would only explain a sudden drop in Domain Authority, right? How could Penguin suddenly cause my client to lose 5,000 backlinks? And if it's not Penguin, what could it be? Thanks in advance for any insight that anyone can share!
Link Building | | matt-145670 -
My keywords are stuck
I have a question to moz pros. I have a blog about tattoos and i am using extremely low competition keywords in all my post. Some of my keywords are ranked in top 10 results in google but they are stuck, e.g. i've target a keyword "lion king tattoos" and it is currently ranking on no 6. its been a long time its stuck on no 6 and i am not getting any traffic from this keyword as well. i am very new in SEO and want some suggestions so that i can improve my rankings and traffic. my blog link is http://tattoosalbum.com please have a look and help me 🙂 thanx
Link Building | | SyedNumanshah0 -
How to find keyword related questions to answer?
Is there any search operator to find keyword relevant questions on yahoo answers and on other websites? So that I can answer those and put my website link.
Link Building | | Green.landon0 -
What tools/techniques you use to check if a domain has been penalized?
If we think to buy expired or otherwise dropped domains, what tools or techniques you would recommend to check if there has bad SEO history? We could of course, check with Google itself if the site is indexed and ranks, but I am asking if there is a particular tool out there that would provide more information if a website had been shady. Thanks so much, guys! Lily
Link Building | | wspwsp0 -
Blog. vs /Blog
I need to be able to explain to a client the difference from an SEO perspective between Blog. vs /Blog. www.website.com/Blog vs Blog.website.com The client wants to know which one will help there website with SEO. I belive both will but /Blog will more. I'm looking for a tangible answer only centered around this subject. Thanks,
Link Building | | cfield_splashmedia.com0 -
Links on the same keyword
When is linking from one particular keyword to much. At what point could link building from one keyword be considered spam and potentially delist a site ? Is it possible for a site to be delisted for having to many links from the same keyword ? Heard linking from the website name is more important following recent changes. I try and link from a selection of 3 to 4 keywords. Thanks for your help
Link Building | | onlinemediadirect0 -
List of free directories for building / real estate website.
Hi Any suggestion where to source a list of free directories for a property / real estate company which gives reasonable linkback juice Thanks Peter
Link Building | | peterds0