Targeting different cities for my service - Geo landing pages
-
I am breaking my head trying to figure out the best way around this... so we have an hvac company located in nyc. We want to also target all the different boroughs.
We have a bunch of different major keywords
hvac repair + location
hvac service + location
along with keywords such as air conditioning repair + location, heating service + location , and so on.....
Should each borough + keyword have its own page? Or should we just have one page called brooklyn and in that page target all the different keywords like hvac, air conditining, and heating ?
Also does it matter how we have it laid out? Domaim/hvac-repair-brooklyn or should I add domain/service-area/hvac. .....
Some of my competitors have the same content written on each borough page just moved around a little with different city names, how are they ranking so well? Isn't that duplicate?
Would love to hear from some people with success in this local area.
Thanks!
-
For the sake of convenience, I prefer this:
/service-area/dallas-tx
Hope that helps!
-
My thought was to have a master service area page that would be at mydomain.com/service-area. That page would have a service area map or the like that would link to the service areas themselves, which would be located at /service-area/texas/dallas or /service-area/dallas-tx, and which of the two is preferable is the essence of my question. Thank you!
-
Hey Chad!
Getting to discuss these topics with the community is the highlight of my work day, every day!
In your examples, above, what is this meant to represent:
service-area
Are you saying the domains would actually say 'service-area' in them or is that filler text for something you are meaning to convey? Please clarify. Thanks!
-
Miriam, as a follow-up, do your recommendations for city pages change if a company serves a large number number of cities across several states? In particular, which of the following link structures would you recommend:
- mydomain.com/service-area/texas/dallas and mydomain.com/service-area/louisiana/shreveport
- mydomain.com/service-area/dallas-tx and mydomain.com/service-area/shreveport-la
Seriously, Miriam, this is all so helpful. Thank you for spending your time this way!
-
Hello all, I have very recently taken on a local business to manage and quite new to all of this. Your posts on the subject of multi-location have been incredibly useful and your original blogpost on Local landing pages Miriam is in my reading list and I am sure will be revisited regularly.
I have another question on this obviously complex subject, what to do about tracking your keywords in MOZ Pro? I have subscribed and set up my main keywords and linked each to the 40 different service locations for our business, which looks like its a similar set up to Chads, however this now gives me 400 keywords to track, which seems way too much and unmanageable. Can you give me some advice on how to make this much more effective?
Many thanks,
Sarah
-
Sure thing, Chad!
-
Thank you, Miriam!
-
Hi Chad!
I see. If you have just one physical location, I recommend the following structure:
-
Include your city of location on your main pages (home, about, contact and the landing page for that city).
-
Create a unique landing page for each service city. Be sure the content is of very high quality on these pages.
-
Create a set of services pages, describing each of your company's services. Optimize these for the service keywords.
#3 has some grey area. If it is most important for you to rank for your city of location, then include that city in the optimization of these pages. If the service cities are of equal importance to the city of location, then do not optimize these for the cities - just optimize them for the services.
And, of course, be sure you are not duplicating content on any page
-
-
Thanks for getting back with me so quickly! I'm asking about a business that has only one physical location, but a broad service area. Should site pages be primarily optimized for the physical location or should I leave city names out of most page titles if I'd like to rank beyond the city of my physical location. Given that I have only one physical location, but a broad service area, which option is better (or is there a third):
Option #1: Optimize Most Pages for Physical Location
- Homepage: "Company Name | HVAC | New York City"
- About Page: "About Company Name | New York City"
- Service Page 1: "Service 1 | Company Name | New York City"
- Service Page 2: "Service 2 | Company Name | New York City"
- Service City Page 1: "New York City | Company Name"
- Service City Page 2: "Albany, NY | Company Name"
- Service City Page 3: "Philadelphia, PA | Company Name"
Option #2: Optimize Only City Pages for Physical Locations
- Homepage: "Company Name | HVAC"
- About Page: "About Company Name"
- Service Page 1: "Service 1 | Company Name"
- Service Page 2: "Service 2 | Company Name"
- Service City Page 1: "New York City | Company Name"
- Service City Page 2: "Albany, NY | Company Name"
- Service City Page 3: "Philadelphia, PA | Company Name"
-
Hi Chad,
Are you asking about a multi-location business? I believe so. If no city is more important than any other, then you would likely want to focus on the brand/keywords on the homepage and focus on the various cities on the city landing pages. If there are more details you'd like to share, feel free!
-
How would you recommend optimizing the site for its physical location? Would the homepage Title, for example, be something like "Company Name | HVAC | New York City" if that's the physical location of the business or would it be better to go with "Company Name | HVAC" as not to nullify the attempts to rank well in Albany, New Brunswick, and other surrounding cities?
-
Hi Brian - Your instinct about this is correct. Spun pages tend to be of very low quality and largely duplicative. Ideally, if you have an important city/service combination, you should be investing the time it takes to create a unique page from scratch about it. If the term is worth it, the time is worth it.
-
Sorry to revive an older post (I'll delete this if necessary), but I had one quick addition/question about this. I'm going to assume that using spinning software to cover the various city/service combos is out of the question, right? That it'd be better to simply not have a page devoted to a specific combination than to have a spun page?
Thanks!
-
Hey Jamie,
Well, in my suggested structure, the city landing pages wouldn't just say 'New York' on them in the titles,(by which I believe you're intending New York City, right?). They would likely include whatever the overall keyword is for the company...which would be HVAC if that is the category this company is in. What I wouldn't do, though, unless you do have the resources to create an enormous number of pages for all individual service/city combos, would be to have NYC+Heater Repair, NYC+Air Conditioner Repair, Brooklyn+Heater Repair, Brooklyn+Air Condition Repair, etc. On a limited budget/with limited resources, I think the structure I've suggested above would be the best way to convey all cities and services without repetition and without the risk of creating thin or duplicative content.
-
Miriam,
When structuring the pages as one for each domain.com/service and another for domain.com/city
would you still show up in the google search if someone was searching for the city and service?
Example new york hvac company
I found that when I used the keyword example new york hvac company in my title, page keyword, content I ranked relatively high. Thoughts as to the differences?
Thanks in advance!
-
Hi Raymond,
If I were building this from scratch, and you only served one city, I would likely recommend:
domain.com/air-conditioning-repair-brooklyn
domain.com/air-conditioning-service-brooklyn
domain.com/hvac-installation-brooklyn
domain.com/hvac-repair-brooklyn
etc.
But, if you are working with more than one city, I would have a set of pages like this:
etc.
And another set of pages like this:
etc.
So, 1 set of pages for the cities and another set for the services. How to structure this sensibly really depends on the business model (single city vs. multi-city). Most service area businesses I've worked with serve multiple cities, so I've found the above works well and keeps things simple.
-
Miriam,
I read the article, great post by the way! So in otherwords you are saying to do the following
domain.com/service-area/brooklyn/hvac-repair
domain.com/service-area/brooklyn/hvac-service
domain.com/service-area/brooklyn/hvac-installations
domain.com/service-area/brooklyn/air-conditioning-repair
domain.com/service-area/brooklyn/air-conditioning-service
domain.com/service-area/brooklyn/air-conditioning-installations
Or should all HVAC related keywords just be one page? Something along the lines of domain.com/service-area/brooklyn/hvac-repair-service-installation
thanks in advance!
-
Hey Raymond!
Jim has linked you to my great big post on the art of local landing pages. Hopefully, you can read it and identify a sensible strategy there.
Now, I'm not a New Yorker, and so this business of boroughs has always been a bit of mystery to me, but one thing that I will add to what you'll read in my post is how clearly hyper-local sensitivity is ramping up in search. My honest preference for structuring local websites is:
-
one page per city
-
one page per service
I totally understand that every local business owner worth his salt wants to rank for every possible combination of service/geo-term. Of course! But the only time I feel this landing page strategy should be undertaken to represent every possible combo is if the business owner has considerable creative or financial resources to devote to make a potentially enormous number of pages of a very high quality. Clearly - your competitors aren't hearing this advice if they're just spinning thin/duplicative content to cover the waterfront.
Now, all this being said, with Google become more and more intelligent about neighborhoods, and the mobile (and desktop) user becoming the new 'centroid', my take on this is that neighborhood (borough?) names are only going to become more important in signifying that a business is physically close to a given user. So, if I were consulting with a small HVAC company without endless funds, I'd probably suggest something like this strategy:
-
one page per city
-
one page per service
-
frequent but gentle mention of boroughs/neighborhoods throughout the website, as appropiate
-
hyperlocal blogging on an ongoing basis that emphasizes these boroughs, if the company or copywriter can swing something authentic and good to write about
I think frequent content of this sort could make phones ring. Hope these are helpful ideas!
-
-
Here's the iconic post on just that area - http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide - from Miram who's on staff here at Moz.com...
And she addresses that too....well worth the click/thru eh!
-
Hi Raymond,
You can create few pages like a/c to service area and then use the keywords for each service area page.
Also, domain/service-area/hvac url structure is good for your business
Kind Regards!
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
-
Local Search ( Automotive Vertical ) One Targeted Landing Page Listed Twice In Navigation
NOT talking about the same page being linked to twice Talking about One (1) (landing) page Being Listed Twice In Navigation. Looking for a definitive answer that there is NO negative SEO ( or negative anything ) to put the same page in your site's Navigation Bar ... twice (or more than once) Can't find anything written that there is anything to consider or be concerned with, but, thought I'd ask. I'm a newERbie, but not a NEWbie...have 2.5 years experience in local, on-page SEO...but only know what I know Maybe I should know this, but, I don't. E.g. Home New Cars Used Cars Special Offers Service Finance About Us PickUps PickUps This is JUST an example, but, we have multiple occurences, let's say, Trade-In-Value ... in two places. One page, two locations in navigation. I have SEEN it being done, 'all the time', but now, when I went to do it with a little bit of a different rationale, I was questioned about ' ... is this okay for SEO ' I THINK yes But, I want to KNOW yes ... it is ok.
Local Website Optimization | | GaryT_SEO0 -
Hreflang errors "no return tag" sitemap.xml , and local search landing page with wrong Languages
Really need help , our website when search in google(US) will provide global page (keyword:asus/asus zenfone3). and search console also return "no return tags"another wear thing is when use googlebot crawl sitemap.xml googlebot cannot finish the file less than a quarterCan you please advise on what needs to be edited or changed to make sure my implementation is correct and not returning errors?
Local Website Optimization | | June01270 -
Pages ranking outside of sales area
Hi there Moz Community, I work with a client (a car dealership), that mostly serves an area within 50-100 miles at most from their location. A previous SEO company had built a bunch of comparison pages on their website (i.e. 2016 Acura ILX vs. Mercedes-Benz C300). These pages perform well in their backyard in terms of engagement metrics like bounce rate, session duration, etc. However, they pull in traffic from all over the country and other countries as well. Because they really don't have much of an opportunity to sell someone a car across the country that a customer could easily buy at their local dealership, anyone from outside their primary marketing area typically bounces. So, it drags down their overall site metrics plus all of the metrics for these pages. I imagine searchers from outside their primary sales area are seeing their location and saying "whoah that's far and not what I'm looking for." I tried localizing the pages by putting their city name in the title tags, meta descriptions, and content, but that doesn't seem to really be getting rid of this traffic from areas too far away to sell a car to. My worry is that the high bounce rates, low time on site, and general irrelevancy of these pages to someone far away are going to affect them negatively. So, short of trying to localize the content on the page or just deleting these pages all together, I'm not quite sure where to go from here. Do you think that having these high bouncing pages will hurt them? Any suggestions would be welcomed. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | Make_Model1 -
Ideas on creating location based service pages for SEO value while not worrying about local SEO?
Hello and thanks for reading! We have a bit of a rare issue, where we are a nationwide distributor but have a local side that handles all tristate area requests, the sales that happen via local basically don't impact the online side, so we're trying to not focus on local SEO but in a sense worry about abroad local SEO. We want to try the location based service pages, but not for every state, at most 5 states and inside those pages target 2 to 3 big cities. Is this a waste of time to even think about or is this something that can be done with a careful touch?
Local Website Optimization | | Deacyde0 -
Landing pages of web pages for multiple cities served
I have a customer that services literally hundreds of towns. I'm trying to figure out the best way rank in each town. Should I create a landing page or a webpage for each city and optimize for each particular town ( facts/information about the town. SEO titles H1, H2 and alt tags? Thank you!
Local Website Optimization | | Miles230 -
Disproportionate Links to Home Page
I'm a professional magician and mentalist who travels nationally for corporate events, social functions, and trade shows. Unfortunately, the landing pages are all for different venues and locations, but the product stays the same. How do you recommend optimizing for somebody whose product is essentially themselves? The pages have similar content, videos, etc., so I don't want to be dinged for duplicate content.
Local Website Optimization | | KevinViner0 -
Local seo landing pages and proper keywords to optimize and showing up for generic keyword localized results
looking for advice. I have my site built into landing pages for each city I service. Would it effect my seo in a negative way if I built other landing pages with "keyword + zip code" as well as the city ones I already have or do you think it would make my city rankings worst? Also how do you get a seo city landing page to show up for the "keyword" or "keyword near me" in the city of interest? Is making landing pages with "keyword + city" sufficient way to accomplish this or is there a trick I am unaware of?
Local Website Optimization | | Spartan220 -
One location performing worse than the rest despite no major difference in SEO strategy
Hi all, I'm flummoxed. I'm dealing with a business that has 15 or so offices in three cities, and one city is performing horribly (this includes every office therein). The other two cities have shown consistently stellar results with massive traffic increases month over month for the past year; the city in question dropped unexpectedly in June and hasn't ever recovered. We didn't perform any major website changes during or immediately prior to that time period, and the website in general hasn't been negatively affected by Hummingbird. All locations for the business are optimized in the exact same way and according to best practices; there's no significant difference in the number of local listings, reviews, G+ fans, social signals, etc across locations. All meta data and content is optimized, NAPs are all consistent, we've built links wherever we can: the SEO for every location has been by-the-books. We've run a competitor audit in this particular city that included pulling our top competitors and exploring their domain authority, meta data, on-page keyword grade for the term we're trying to rank for, number and type of inbound links, social signals, and more; and we didn't spot any patterns or any websites that were significantly outperforming us in any area (besides actual rankings). It's frustrating because the client is expecting a fix for this city and I can't find anything that needs to be fixed! Have any multi-local SEOs out there run into a similar problem? What did you do about it?
Local Website Optimization | | ApogeeResults0