SEO For Local Searches
-
I run a driving school of over 100 instructors in the UK. We cover around 60 different areas.
My homepage www.driveJohnsons.co.uk is optimised for 'driving lessons' and 'driving school' search terms mainly.
My area pages are optimised for the same but with the area included ie: Driving Lessons Birmingham or Driving Lessons Leeds
I've taken a drop in many areas...
I've cleaned up my incoming links using the disavow too and upped more relevant links associated with the same industry as myself.
The question i have is should i change my URL's for my area pages from www.driveJohnsons.co.uk/driving-lessons-leeds to: www.driveJohnsons.co.uk/leeds
I've been told stuffing the URL with keywords for an area actually dilutes the strength of my homepage and all the other areas.
At the moment i have 60 area pages with: www.drivejohnsons.co.uk/driving-lessons-area
It use to work a treat, but i've started seeing some companies change their URLs to: /area and excluding the driving-lessons
If i make this change then i'm either going to have to bit the bullet on build up links for those areas again or do a redirect for each area.
I've added most areas to google places and i've added google map to many of area pages too.
If anyone knows a bit more, please let me know...
-
Hi Anthony,
So glad the resource helped!
-
Hi Miriam...
I found the local listings article very interesting, quite frightening in fact. It all makes sense but you have put a lot of things back into perspective.
-
Unfortunately, these kinds of pages, regardless of the URL, can present problems for organic SEO (even when they have some local SEO benefit). If the 60 pages are basically cookie cutter - the same content except for the city/region, then this is the kind of thin content that can cause problems with Panda. The keyword-loaded URL might marginally increase the problem, but I think the risk is real either way.
As Miriam said, if it's a few locations, it's not usually a big deal. Hundreds is definitely a risk. Sixty is a bit borderline, IMO. If your site had 1,000 indexed pages and 60 local pages, probably no big deal. If you have 100 pages total and 60 local, then I'd be concerned. There's no easy solution. Either you: (1)focus the regions and pare it down a bit, or (2) work to create more unique content on each of these pages and make sure they don't look thin.
-
Hi Anthony,
Back again. You might like to check out the good examples of multi-location businesses in this article from Local U:
http://localu.org/blog/designing-business-location-website-pages-part-2-multiple-location-business/
I'm still pretty much sticking to my original suggested URL structure, and I think these examples may be useful in your planning.
-
Hi Anthony,
You've raised an interesting point. I've asked some of our traditional SEO experts if they would weigh in on this with you. My clients typically have just a handful of locations, in which case, it's been a no-brainer for me to go with the /service-city url structure, but I think what you're asking is a valid question. It might still be the best choice to go with this structure, but if you're really concerned about it, you could go with just a /city URL structure for the office landing pages. On the other hand, the URL is only one step in your optimization work. Even if you did just go with the /city structure, wouldn't you be optimizing the tags and text of the pages with the core service phrase? Another thought, too, would be to go with /business-name-city, but when one considers that many business names may contain the core service phrase (Superior Driving Lessons, for example), this brings us back to square one.
When things become messy like this, I try to step back and ask myself if what I'm doing is natural. In this case, I think having pages on your website that specify that driving lessons are offered in X city is totally natural. It's not like you're trying to game anything with explaining this. You're giving an honest representation of what the business does and where it does it. Sometimes, I can over-think things about my clients, in which case, coming back to what is natural and honest can often provide a guiding light.
As I've said, I think your question is worthy of an answer. I've shared my thinking on this, but I really hope you'll get feedback from some of our other staff on this as I believe several heads may be better than one in hashing out the technical specifics of this.
-
Hi Miriam
I've got physical addresses for the areas. A google postcard has been sent to the area to authorise.
I'm not bothered if i rank on the first page locally or organically.
My concern with the URL was if i have 60 URL's saying /driving-lessons-AREA
Would that not dilute dilute each areas strength because of the heavy use of driving lessons and also dilute my home page optimisation which is for the whole of the UK for driving lessons.
As for links, i've had a good clean up around 2 months ago but it seems the disavow tool takes time as these horrible links are still present in my webmaster links to site section.
It's weird i have another website that is spammed to hell, bad links and poor content and that sits on the first page of local listings and i've done no work on it since the penguin update - as there was too much to do and i had other priorities.
All i've tried to do with my main site is good seo practice.
So you think the driving-lessons for every area page shouldn't make a difference ?
-
Hi Anthony,
Are you saying that your business has a physical office in each of these cities? I am assuming this is so, as you are only allowed to create Google+ Local pages for physical offices. If there is some chance that you've done so, lacking physical offices, then you could expect Google to remove these listings if they become aware that they don't represent physical offices.
I see no problem with your URLs. I'm curious as to what you read. Those look like perfectly fine URLs for local landing pages to me.
Are you aware that there is currently a shakeup going on in Google's local results? It's possible that this could account for any fluctuations you are seeing.
If not, it sounds like you may have had some link problems in the past. Is there any chance that you might have run afoul of the Google Places Quality Guidelines in some way? Here's a link to them: https://support.google.com/places/answer/107528?hl=en
Ranking fluctuations happen in Local. Sometimes they are caused by tweaks to Google's algo. Other times, they occur when you are surpassed by a competitors' efforts. And, in some cases, a business drops because of engaging in bad practices. Consider these three scenarios and see if one of them fits your business most closely. 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
-
What's an example of an SEO firm's site that lists their SEO packages excellently
Hello, I'd like to make a packages page on the site I'm still building bobweikelseo.com What's an example of a firm or SEO that lists their packages in a way that is appealing, useful, and all around excellent? I'm thinking of having a first package for analysis at $440, a second package for analysis and on-site SEO for $880, and a third package for analysis, on-site SEO, and link building for $2000-$4000/month depending on how fast they want the link building to go. Looking for some input on how to create a packages page, if my prices are appropriate (I want to be affordable), and an example of a website that does an excellent job at presenting their packages.
Industry News | | BobGW0 -
SEO Services for small business
Hi all, Apologies first of all if someone in the forum already posted this question. We are a small business in the UK looking for a proven SEO service. Can someone please advise. Thank you! note: we are using Volusion ecommerce platform for our online shop. The SEO service provider doesn;t have to be based in the UK.
Industry News | | haveahobby1 -
What are the click-through rates by position for organic search on Google by industry?
I'm interested in knowing what the average CTRs are by industry (specifically for the credit card industry). Here's an example of what I want in aggregate (not by industry): http://searchengineland.com/organic-click-thru-rates-tumbling-study-97338 Is this information available?
Industry News | | wepayinc0 -
Site search
My google site search is now costing us $750/year. That is an outrageous fee for providing a search feature on our website. does anyone know of an effective search box we can put on our site that is less expensive than google?
Industry News | | StreetwiseReports0 -
Organic Search Results Display
If you do a Google search on northface a beautiful display of the search results is show in the number 1 organic position. How are they able to get this type of search results? I have never seen anything like it before, and would like to have our search results displayed like this.
Industry News | | FreightBoy0 -
SEO Certification + SEO Experience = Ideal SEO Consultant ???
Since the responsibilities of SEO have increased so much, I think there has to be a kind of basic industry wide Certification / Degree system. Many people may argue that experince is much more important than certification but how about like any other trade or profession; we have (1) SEO Certification PLUS (2) SEO Experience for the Internet Marketers. One of the reasons, I get so many calls from people that they claim they are SEO experts and they are trying to sell their services to us, but when you talk with them, you can easily tell that they do not have any knowledge about it. But they sell the service to business owners that do not understand SEO. It is very sad to see small business owners believe those people.. and I understand it is business owners responsibility to check the background & portfolio of SEO agency, but wouldn't it be nice to have another credential that they can ask "are you also certified SEO"? what do you think about "Certified SEO" or "Certified Internet Marketing Consultant" concept? can there be an international or national organization to coordinate and superwise the certifications? Thanks, Lewis
Industry News | | CertifiedSEO0 -
Hire single SEO & SEM person or hire separate people?
I've been moved to a busines development part of the business but I'm still in charge of all of our SEO and SEM. I was only an advanced beginner to begin with but our needs have grown. I'm not sure whether to contract with one or two people. Can someone be extremely well versed in all things SEO and SEM or is it better to get two people on board that might serve as a better sounding board? While they certainly work together, both are a constant moving target and it requires us to stay on top of trends and white hat policies of all the major players. My worst nightmare is to get someone that tries to game the system and screws up our rankings long term.
Industry News | | thenorrisgroup0 -
How do you hire an SEOmoz-savvy SEO consultant?
I'd like to find an SEO free-lancer to review WikiTree.com and give me ongoing advice. My first instinct would be to go through oDesk, but I know I want someone who is tuned-in to this community and uses SEOmoz's tools. Advice or recommendations? Thanks!
Industry News | | Interesting.com0