What is the best information architecture for developing local seo pages?

[EthanB]

I think I have a good handle on the external local seo factors such as citations but I'd like to determine the best IA layout for starting a new site or adding new content to a local site.  I see lots of small sites with duplicate content pages for each town/area which I know is poor practice.  I also see sites that have unique content for each of those pages but it seems like bad design practice, from a user perspective, to create so many pages just for the search engines.

To the example... My remodeling company needs to have some top level pages on its site to help the customers learn about my product, call these "Kitchen Remodeling" and "Bathroom Remodeling" for our purposes.  Should I build these pages to be helpful to the customer without worrying too much about the SEO for now and focus on subfolders for my immediate area which would target keywords like "Kitchen Remodeling Mytown"?

Aside from my future site, which is not a priority, I would like to be equipped to advise on best practices for the website development in situations where I am involved at the beginning of the process rather than just making the local SEO fit after the fact.

Thanks in advance!

[EthanB]

Thanks Kane!  That answers my question completely.  In my area every town is spread out and has a low population so it gets divided up into hamlets and this can make the location targeting a real headache.  A "town" might have a population of 10-40 thousand but each hamlet is no more than several thousand.  Local people identify with the hamlet so they will only search for their hamlet name and not the actual town name.

It would be a tremendous amount of work to build all the pages necessary to cover all of the Keyword+Town/Hamlet variations even for a relatively small area.

[KaneJamison]

For low to average competition:

My preference in this situation is to start by building location pages and service pages, but not location + service pages. As you mentioned, it just feels like a better user experience across the entire site.

In other words, I would have a

• Kitchen Remodel page
• Bathroom Remodel page
• Mytown page
• MyOtherTown page

I wouldn't create a Mytown Kitchen Remodels page or a MyOtherTown Kitchen Remodels page.

Services pages should focus on that service, and briefly mention the areas you serve and link to the area pages for more info.

Area pages should focus on the area (testimonials and photos from projects there, for example), and briefly mention each service individually and link to the service page for more information.

For higher competition keywords:

I wouldn't stray from that model for most of my local clients unless it got fairly competitive for a specific keyword, such as a large city for the location.

For example, metro areas like "Seattle bathroom remodel" and "Tacoma bathroom remodel" will require their own pages. I wouldn't necessarily create a separate page for "Kirkland bathroom remodel" and "Redmond bathroom remodel", however - just depends on what I'm seeing on the SERP for those keywords.

If it is that competitive for each location, then go ahead and make the Location + Service pages, and get unique content on them.

In other words, "Seattle Bathroom Remodels" should have photos from bathtroom jobs done in Seattle, testimonials from Seattle bathroom remodeling customers, list of neighborhoods served, etc. That content will all be unique and different from what you write on the "Tacoma bathroom remodels" page.