Local SEO question
-
Hi
I was wondering is there any specific rules for Local SEO for a service company which provides a service in a variety of cities but only has one physical location. For example is it ok to target the other cities in Title Tags or would this be frowned upon?
Regards
-
Hey There,
This post should help you become conversant with the ins and outs of local landing pages:
http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide
You can definitely optimize each city landing page you build for the city in question. The main pitfall to avoid with this practice is developing thin or duplicative pages. Be sure if you're embarking on this content development project that you have the resources to devote to making unique pages of the highest possible quality.
Hope this helps!
-
You can sort of get away with targeting 2-3 cities with a single page, but it's less than ideal. If you cover a lot of areas, consider breaking your site down into silos. /city1, /city2, /city3, then into the services for each /city1/service1, /city1/service2, /city1/service3, or even further into something like /city1/service2/something-related-to-service2, etc. The content needs to be unique on each page of course, but this will let you target multiple cities easier. How far your break them down and how much content you make for each can be determined by the volume of searches or importance of the city to you. Some cities you might want to just build a city page that lists all services (such as low importance, low search volume, or low competition areas,) others you may want just a few main service pages for, and other important locations you may want pages for all the services you offer.
-
Hi,
Well to the best of my knowledge and experience, a few questions to ask would be:
1. How many websites do you have? If one website, targeting all locations is quite OK and shouldn't be frowned upon. This is part and parcel of having corporate businesses running in different locations.
2. If you have more than one website, do all the is websites have the same content? I hope not, hope you only have a single website. Especially, one designed to help visitors to navigate to different pages of site related to their particular locations, Just a suggestion....If you running an International Business, you could have a website with the following landing page: http://www.airtel.com/
Thank You
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 many SEO clients do you handle?
I work in a small web & design agency who started offering SEO 2 yrs ago as it made sense due to them building websites. There have been 2 previous people to me and I now work there 3 days a week and they also have a junior who knew nothing before she started working for us. She mainly works for me. My question is, how many clients do you think would be reasonable to work on? We currently have around 55 and I have been working there for nearly 5 months now and haven't even got to half of the sites to do some work on. I've told them the client list is way too big and we should only have around 15 clients max. However they don't want to lose the money from the already paying clients so won't get rid of any and keep adding new ones Their systems were a mess and had no reporting or useful software so I had to investiagte and deploy that, along with project management software. Their analytics is also a mess and have employed a contractor to help sort that out too. It's like they were offering SEO services but had no idea or structure to what they did. Meta descriptions were cherry picked which ones to be done, so say 50/60 on a site not filled in. So it's not like I have 45 or so well maintained accounts. They're all a mess. Then the latest 10 new ones are all new sites so All need a lot of work. I'm starting to feel incredibly overwhelmed and oppressed by it all and wanted to see what other SEO professionals thought about it. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Local Website Optimization | | hanamck0 -
Multiple My Business pages affecting local SEO?
Hey Moz! We have a situation with a dentist firm with multiple doctors at the same address. They have two locations for their dental offices, and each of the dentists operate at both offices. The issue: Each doctor insists on having their own by business page for each location and i'm afraid this is hurting their local SEO. We've been tracking keywords by week and we've seen some big fluctuations in ratings and i'm looking into why this is happening. The office in location 1 has it's own Google My Business page and the three dentists have their own my business page set up at the exact same address. The office in location 2 has it's own Google My Business page as well and the three dentists have their own my business page there also. This leads the two addresses of the main offices having multiple My Business pages at the same address competing against eachother since they are all are registered with similar names and specialties. Could this be hurting our local SEO? Thanks! -Z
Local Website Optimization | | zacgarrison_700 -
Using geolocation for dynamic content - what's the best practice for SEO?
Hello We sell a product globally but I want to use different keywords to describe the product based on location. For this example let’s say in USA the product is a "bathrobe" and in Canada it’s a "housecoat" (same product, just different name). What this means… I want to show "bathrobe" content in USA (lots of global searches) and "housecoat" in Canada (less searches). I know I can show the content using a geolocation plugin (also found a caching plugin which will get around the issue of people seeing cached versions), using JavaScript or html5. I want a solution which enables someone in Canada searching for "bathrobe" to be able to find our site through Google search though too. I want to rank for "bathrobe" in BOTH USA and Canada. I have read articles which say Google can read the dynamic content in JavaScript, as well as the geolocation plugin. However the plugins suggest Google crawls the content based on location too. I don’t know about JavaScript. Another option is having two separate pages (one for “bathrobe” and one for “housecoat”) and using geolocation for the main menu (if they find the other page i.e. bathrobe page through a Canadian search, they will still see it though). This may have an SEO impact splitting the traffic though. Any suggestions or recommendations on what to do?? What do other websites do? I’m a bit stuck. Thank you so much! Laura Ps. I don’t think we have enough traffic to add subdomains or subdirectories.
Local Website Optimization | | LauraFalls0 -
Schema training/resources for local SEO?
I am currently in the process of apply schema for dozens of clients (many are large retailers). Although I am not a developer, I do know the basics of schematic markup & structured data. I do work with a development team and I'm trying to provide them with schema application best practices. Obviously there are many good articles/blog posts out there about schema. However I'm looking for a more substantial training course, webinar or resource website about schema application. Does anybody have any good recommendations?
Local Website Optimization | | RosemaryB0 -
Title Tag, URL Structure & H1 for Localization
I am working with a local service company. They have one location but offer a number of different services to both residential and commercial verticals. What I have been reading seems to suggest that I put the location in URLs, Title Tags & H1s. Isn't it kind of spammy and possibly annoying user experience to see location on every page?? Portland ME Residential House Painting Portland ME Commercial Painting Portland Maine commercial sealcoating Portland Maine residential sealcoating etc, etc This strikes me as an old school approach. Isn't google more adept at recognizing location so that I don't need to paste it In H1s all over the site? Thanks in advance. PAtrick
Local Website Optimization | | hopkinspat0 -
How can i optimize my pages for local areas if we are not in that area?
Hi Mozers! So I watched a video about Matt Cutts he talks about creating multiple web pages just for one keywords is an absolutely no go. So I was wondering we serve a clients in NZ Australia and USA, If we target phrase like Psychic Readings California, Psychic Readings San Diego etc (USA) Psychic Readings Melbourne, Psychic Readings Sydney (AU) Psychic Readings Auckland, Psychic Readings Wellington (NZ) What is the best practice or right way to go about structuring my pages to do this without going against googles guidelines. Many thanks
Local Website Optimization | | edward-may1 -
URL structure for local SEO
Hi fokes, question; which url structure is best for local rankings. For example: when I want to rank on the keyword: "Plumber Londen". And I dont have plumber in my brand. What is the best url structure: example.com/plumber/londen example.com/plumber-londen
Local Website Optimization | | remkoallertz1 -
Out of State Local Search
I've noticed when traveling that a local search (be it city, region, or state) yields different results depending on my physical location. This is very anecdotal, but with an incognito search in my clients city I'll get one result, in a different city about 30 miles away I'll get a slightly different result, in a different state but still only about 30 miles away I'll get another slightly different result, and many states away the result is different still. This isn't very scientific data, but I think something is going on. Have people experienced this? Is anyone aware of research or has an understanding of what can bias a local search in different directions depending on the distance from the area represented by that local search? These don't seem to be fluctuations in ranking, the results are widely different, but mostly constant in their respective locations. Any guidance would be appreciated.
Local Website Optimization | | Oren.0