SEO planning: Franchise/multiple local sites
-
I am in the planning stages of franchising a cleaning business and was wondering if anyone had some ideas on SEO strategy. If money were no object and I had a team of hundreds of copywriters at my disposal, would the ultimate solution be to have the following sort of URL structure www.cleanbiz.co.uk/city within which there are numerous www.cleanbiz.co.uk/city/local-town pages?
If this is the best strategy then is it worthwhile to begin work towards ranking for cities and local towns within them prior to actually operating there? I understand that lack of physical presence will penalize me in terms of local search but would a lack of physical address and phone number render any foundation work pointless (for example, prior to having any franchises in say London, would it be worth while building quality content and links on a www.cleaningbiz.co.uk/london page, and then www.cleaningbiz.co.uk/london/notting-hill, alongside a blog and so on?)
Interested to understand the best way to go about this given the enormity of the campaign!
Thanks
-
All of the sites you mentioned seem to do this primarily through user generated content (ie reviews). This path makes sense as it is "unique and providing value." It looks like reviews may just be the table stakes to play this game at scale.
I do like how thumbtack created some localized content here http://www.thumbtack.com/tx/houston/#/2014/1. That looks like something I could use for inspiration.
-
If that content is unique and providing value to searchers, then that's exactly what's working well in the Hummingbird/Pigeon SERPs these days. Many national directories with trusted brands are outranking individual small businesses. Check Yelp, Avvo, TripAdvisor, Thumbtack, Angie's List, etc.
-
We're talking about something along the lines of http://www.searshomeservices.com/pa/philadelphia-air-conditioning-repair? The way this site does it seems quite redundant - creating lots of duplicate content that I can't imagine Google likes. Have you ever seen someone do this at scale properly? If so can you show an example?
Thank you for the help David!
-
No, I'd strongly recommend a page (or set of pages) about the location that lives on your primary domain. Non-physical locations can only rank organically, and you're much more likely to rank organically using the strength of a parent domain.
-
Would you recommend creating the dedicated website, even if there is no physical local location? Thanks David!
-
I generally agree with Matt about the two pronged approach. If money is no object, build out a completely dedicated www.cleaningbiznottinghill.co.uk website for Local results, but for organic results, a directory like
cleaningbiz.co.uk/locations/london/nottinghill
is likely to rank better, at least in the current Hummingbird iteration.
-
"If money were no object" then the best plan would be a two-prong approach. Your prong would be #1. And cleanbizCITY.co.uk would be the second prong.
This would give you the possibility of not only multiple results in each page 1 but a dedicated landing page to build maps/NAP and local SEO to as well.
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 to optimize landing pages for local search?
I'm trying to understand how to optimize landing pages to appear in local search. For example, if someone in Chicago searches for "plumber", Yelp has a page "Top 10 Plumbers in Chicago." They are generating these pages for numerous business types and cities. I can't see anything on the page or metadata that indicates a geographic location or business type. What optimizations are they doing to get Google to know that it's a page for a specific city and type of business?
Local SEO | | Tourizee0 -
Why no backlinks from popular local news portals?
Hi friends. I build link portfolio for local businesses and found out that publishing payed news articles in biggest local news portals we never see backlinks coming from these portals. Interesting is that these articles even appears in google search. Backlinks is correct with anchor text. How is it even possible? For example latest article https://www.delfi.lv/bizness/komerczinas/kravu-parvadajumi-ar-temperaturas-rezimu-lielakie-izaicinajumi.d?id=52924741 or this https://www.tvnet.lv/7092731/es-ierobezojumu-ietekme-uz-kravu-parvadajumiem Stuff swears there is no restrictions. They even asked extra money for google indexing. You can see there is correct link in article. Any suggestion or idea how is this possible would be highly appreciated.
Local SEO | | netcomsia0 -
Page Structure for Law Firm with Multiple Services
Hello and thanks in advance for any help. I'll try to keep this simple. I am about to do some major SEO for our Law Firm. We have 4 practice areas and I will be focusing on Lemon Law Attorneys for this example. I always try my best to keep it clean, organized and for the user. This one just has me a little confused about which direction to take as its a little more complex. The business is 1 location. The office is in San Diego but we service all of California. CURRENT PAGE STRUCTURE
Local SEO | | ChrisCanada
.com (home)
.com/practice-areas/
.com/practice-areas/lemon-law-attorneys/
.com/practice-areas/service-two-example/
.com/practice-areas/service-three-example/
.com/practice-areas/service-four-example/ I did some research and got better keywords (listed below) KEYWORD & SEARCH VOLUME lemon law 40500
- california lemon law 9900
- lemon law california 9900
- lemon law attorney 3600
- california lemon law attorney 880
- lemon law attorney san diego 170 It would be nice to rank for both California and San Diego search terms but I'm ok if that's not the right way to do it. These are the options I can think of using Lemon Law Attorney as an example. I'd love to hear what you think would work best and im open to other options. PAGE STRUCTURE (Option A)
.com/practice-areas/
.com/practice-areas/lemon-law-attorney-san-diego/ PAGE STRUCTURE (Option B)
.com/practice-areas/
.com/practice-areas/california-lemon-law-attorney/
.com/practice-areas/california-lemon-law-attorney/lemon-law-attorney-san-diego/ PAGE STRUCTURE (Option C)
.com/lemon-law/
.com/lemon-law/california-lemon-law-attorney/
.com/lemon-law/california-lemon-law-attorney/lemon-law-attorney-san-diego/ PAGE STRUCTURE (Option D)
.com/lemon-law/
.com/lemon-law/california/
.com/lemon-law/california/san-diego/ PAGE STRUCTURE (Option E)
.com/lemon-law-attorney/
.com/lemon-law-attorney/california/
.com/lemon-law-attorney/california/san-diego/ The biggest problem I see if having to make unique Lemon Law content for both California and San Diego Lemon Law Attorney pages. I dont want the site to look spammy to the end user. At the same time I want to make sure im setting myself up for success from the start. Thank you,
Chris1 -
Spaces between Letters and Numbers SEO question
This is a fun one - Example: Mercedes Benz is pushing to have all of there vehicle models to coincide with the world branding such as the "C300" is supposed to be "C 300" and the "E300" is supposed to be "E 300"... I have a few issues here as when I use Voice Search for "Mercedes Benz C 300" there is no way (that I know of) to add a space between the number and letter. In addition, when searching for the "C 300 for sale" Google corrects the text with "Did you mean: C300 for sale". I am seeking a way to accommodate both versions of the models WITHOUT adding the both C300 and C 300...etc. to the text on web pages. OR will Google eventually change the model names over time as Mercedes-Benz regulates the new U.S. naming convention. Tough question - any thoughts? Thank you for your help -
Local SEO | | MBS-MBA0 -
Duplicate site with same content
Hi All, I hope someone can assist, We have 2 brands that sell the exact same products. We have a main and an off brand. We just redeveloped the main brands site and now have to do the off brand (was owned by another company and we acquired them, we then changed their products to match ours). Am I able to pretty much clone the site and just change the branding and rel canonical each page to its original on the main brand? Granted I will lose rankings but will it be something that will affect anything else? I want to do this so it saves us time in updating products on both sites (and avoids errors in incorrect pricing). Would appreciate some guidance with this one 🙂 Cheers Dave
Local SEO | | CFCU1 -
Linkbuilding for Medical-Industry Sites
Hey Mozzers, I currently have a client in the medical industry who I'm trying to build some keyword rankings for, but I'm having a hard-time finding low-/no- cost link partners. The client specializes in 'breast augmentation procedures' (ex. breast reduction, breast enhancement, reconstruction, etc.), however, a lot of the sites I've been finding throughout my link prospecting efforts are either low-quality or haven't published content in at least several years. My question to you all is: Have you found any SEO strategies to be particularly successful for medical industry-based sites or plastic surgeon sites? Thank you all so much for taking the time to read this! I'm looking forward to reading your responses!
Local SEO | | maxcarnage0 -
How to optimize local practices in a hospital group
We are redoing a hospital site, and one of the goals is to increase traffic for the various practices associated with the hospital. Which brings up an interesting dilemma -- how to optimize these practices with respect to local SEO. Currently, the sites are listed as in a directory, one after the other, with multiple addresses. Would it be best to create individual pages to each one? Should these then link to the practice's website, if applicable? Any other insights would be appreciated.
Local SEO | | SecondSEOMOZAcct0 -
Video marketing strategy for new sites - Youtube / third party vs self hosted?
Howdy Mozzers, We are a new UK solar comparison site looking to implement video to help buid our site traiffic / leads. We currently make a 1 min video summary of our blog posts using Animoto and embed the video at the top of the blog post on our site. The original thought of introducing video was to help our blog posts rank higher. My question is, which of the following strategy is the best for building traffic and generating leads for our site 1. Hosting video on Youtube and embedding it on our site 2. Hosting video on Animoto and embedding it on our site (not sharing on youtube) 3. Hosting the video on our own domain and not sharing it on Youtube and other third party sites 4. Embedding the video from youtube or animoto on our site and sharing it everywhere (dailymotion, vimeo,etc) Our target audience is UK only for the time being. We would like to build traffic quickly and are focused on the short term. I would be appreciate any replies discussing the different advantages disadvantages of the options and a final personal opinion. Thanks!
Local SEO | | MozBoy0