Target broad keywords for local or broad keywords+local city?

[LinkPoint]

Hi,

Is it better to target broad keywords in a local market or target 'broad keywords + local city'? Or both?

The sites I'm working with currently have landing pages for each 'local city/town + keyword' ... they each have about 5 services they offer and about 7 or more nearby towns they service. This means I'm tracking about 35+ keywords per client. That seems to be a bit much. Am I wrong? Would it be just as effective to target broad keywords and track them locally being that the local market isn't very competitive. Of course the broad keywords yield more search volume according to google keyword tool. However, the current setup is sending a worthwhile traffic volume to the site.

According to Miriam's article http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide I'm working with a business model 2 - single brick and mortar location servicing many areas nearby.

Thanks,

Chris

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Joshua,

Good for you for letting the client know that duplicate content landing pages for the cities are not a good idea. If the client is rural and the competition is low, I honestly wouldn't be recommending city landing pages at all in this scenario, unless their is a genuine reason for the business to be describing its activities in cities B, C, D, etc. Again, without knowing the nuances of the specific business, it's hard to give great advice. So, I can only take a general stab at this.

Let's say the client is a farm supply store located in Sonora, California. They are the only farm supply store within a 20 mile radius, and they want to be sure that customers in neighboring communities like Angels Camp, Jamestown, Colombia and Groveland know they exist. I would likely recommend a strategy like this:

1. Optimize all key pages of the website for product/service terms + Sonora

2. Earn testimonials from the farm store's loyal customers who come to them from various towns and include these throughout the product/service pages, including the name of the town the customer comes from.

3. Build citations for the Sonora-based store

4. Put a blog on the site and, on a modest basis, blog about industry-related events in the all the surrounding towns. Good content for the blog would be things like planting forecasts for the various towns at the different mountain elevations, coverage of farm stands, rural fairs, bake sales, mills, large animal vets, farming demonstrations, school gardens and anything else that relates to agriculture taking place in the neighboring communities that shop at the farm store for products.

5. Consider offering town-specific sales, contests and other promotions.

Given the rural location and low level of competition, this would likely be all the business would need to do to become very dominant for its goods and services within its own city and in the neighboring communities. It should not be necessary in any way to create those thin, duplicate content pages. A modest but well-planned effort should be all this business needs to succeed.

[LinkPoint]

Hi,

The clients are located in small towns with many other small towns surrounding them. Most times one business is 'local enough' to be countywide and even stretch into nearby counties because of the rural-ish nature of the local market.

Currently, my company has done city pages (not unique content, just city specific titles changed) and done less effort toward the broad keywords. Even though they're getting traffic now with this method I've already notified them that they need unique content for each city page and that it's only a matter of time before Google's algorithm doesn't award such gray-hat techniques.

It'd be much easier for me to have them focus on the broad keywords then have a blog that has city-specific categories talking about the service coverage in the nearby town. However, until I have enough data I think I'll just stick to doing city-specific content (unique) with broad keyword focus as well. Review the data, then reevaluate.

Perhaps you have a better structure or approach?

Thanks,

Chris (Josh's SEO guy).

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Joshua,

That's really nice that you read my Moz Blog article. If the client is business model #2, then his city of location will almost always outweigh anything you do with additional cities. It can be difficult to offer general advice in this situation because I'm not aware of the specifics of the client's business - for instance, what is his relationship to these other cities? Is it a strong relationship or is it kind of a situation in which you're having to scramble to find a reason to build content for cities B, C and D? These nuances are very important in creating a strategy. Yes, broad keywords are almost always going to outweigh service/city terms, but for most local businesses, it's the city-related or city-based searches that count most.

[jameswesleyhunt]

I would generally track both, with the understanding that you are only looking to gain traffic from local clients. This doesn't specifically mean that your local clients are going to be typing in the city details in their search for your client's service. Some people might include the city while some might assume the search will target their location automatically. Generally on landing pages, if your client has a physical location, it's not that hard to create copy that includes the city. I would definitely include the main city in your titles--along with the service keywords. The search engines will pick up both.

[Hutch42]

While you should not fear change, your comment "However, the current setup is sending a worthwhile traffic volume to the site." says all you need to know, if the service + city landing page model is working, don't change it to change it or because you read something that says you should.  If you do however believe that targeting the broad keywords instead will net you better local results, set up a few landing pages for the broad keywords and A/B test them against the local landing pages.