Ranking for a service website that offers to a large geographic region. Micro sites, one site, google ads, etc?
-
Hi there I currently have a client that has a service that offers to a wide metropolitan geographic region. Currently we offer location detection when they hit the site. I'm curious what the best method going forward would be. This client is coming from a PPC initially but I've sold them on a longer term goal with organic SEO (local) .
So my question is what is the best method for ground up web creation when offering a service that services multiple areas within the same metropolitan region?
Bonus questions anyone using Flat CMS's?
-
Thanks for the helpful answer. While I apologize for not having any experience with Flat CMS, here's what I can tell you about Local:
You'll need to break this down for the client into 3 interrelated components: local, local-organic and (possibly) PPC.
On the Local Front - you'll want to be sure the website is properly optimized with the client's contact info in their city of location (header/footer, contact us page, in-text mentions etc), you'll want to build citations for the physical location and manage their accuracy/quality, and you'll want to earn and manage reviews on all citations that included a review component. The goal here is to show up well in Google's local results and organic results for terms relating to the city of location as well as being present across the major citation platforms.
On the Local Organic Front - The most typical thing to do would be to develop additional content for customers located in cities B and C, be sure these pages are internally linked to well from the navigation and elsewhere within the site, and then earn/build links to those pages. This part of the project should only be undertaken if the client can commit sufficient resources to developing really good landing pages. There must be a reason for these pages to exist beyond impressing search engines - they must contain unique content that truly helps customers from the targeted location. The goal here is rank in the organic SERPs for terms relating to the service cities.
On the PPC Front - Much can be done with the above 2 components, but where there are gaps in visibility, a supplemental PPC strategy targeting the service cities (or even the city of location) may remain a requirement, depending on the competitiveness of the client's unique geo-industry situation.
Hope this helps!
P.S. You might want to check out Moz Local for the citation component of this, and you might also like a recent post by Phil Rozek that outlines some of these components of work: http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2017/01/27/relationship-between-local-and-organic-seo-a-simple-diagram/
-
No there is no content for each serviced area. Just a contact form that auto detects location in order to generate location specific leads.
-
I'm wondering how many locations (towns/cities) you have identified for this client?
Is there content that's specific to these areas?
-
Yes this business has ONE physical location but serves multiple areas B to C (face to face)
-
Hey Swagseo,
Want to be sure I understand the business model. Is this a business with a physical location that serves customers face-to-face in this geographic region?
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
-
Google My Business answers not appearing
We've been trying to use the GMB Q&A feature as a lot of customers seem to be engaging with the listing/asking relevant questions. However, sometimes we answer a question directly from the business listing account but it does not appear (no error message is shown when posting either). When we go to re-post the answer, the text is sometimes still visible in the answer box field. Any ideas what might be causing the issue?
Local Listings | | Wagada1 -
Google Suspended My business listing
hi there, Google has Suspended By Google Business Listing Google has suspended your page due to quality issues. there is No spam Things in My Business, i have Requested Google, But It has not made active Since 10 Days, Is there any way to make My listing Publish on Google please Guide me to which steps Need take Thnx
Local Listings | | innovative.rohit0 -
Hosting Plans that offer multiple servers in different locations?
Hoping that someone may be able to advise if they've come across a hosting plan that offers multiple server locations within 1 plan? ie. One in Australia and another one in UK for example?
Local Listings | | IsaCleanse0 -
Placement of products in URL-structure for best category page rankings
Hi! I have some questions regarding the optimal URL-hierarchy placement of products in a marketplace setting where the end goal is to attract traffic to category pages. Let me start off with some background, thanks in advance for the help. TLDR Goal: Increase category page rankings. Alternative 1 - Products and category pages separated, flat product structure. Category page: oursite.com/category/subcategory Product / listing page: oursite.com/listing-1 Alternative 2 - Products and category pages separated, hierarchal product structure. Category page: oursite.com/category/subcategory Product / listing page: oursite.com/product/category/subcat/listing Alternative 3 - Products placed directly under category page. Category page: oursite.com/category/subcategory Product / listing page: oursite.com/category/subcategory/listing I run a commercial real estate marketplace, which means that our potential search traffic is _extremely _geographic. For example, some common searches are (not originally in english): Office space for lease {City X} Office space for lease {Neighborhood Y} Retail space {Neighborhood Z} And so on... These terms are already quite competitive, where the top results are our competitors geographic and type category pages. For example: _competitor.com/type/city/neighborhood , _is a top result, where the user reaches a landing page that shows all the {type} spaces for lease in {neighborhood}. These users are out to find which spaces are available for lease in these geographical areas, and not individual spaces. I.e. users do not search in the same extent for an individual product, in this case a specific empty space. Our approach has been to place an extreme bias towards a heavy geographical hierarchy. This means that basically any search, resulting in a category page, on our site results in a well structured URL like the following: _oursite.com/type/state/city/district/street, _since we are using Google Maps API's, this is easy and relevant for the user. Our geographical categorization beats our competitors both on extensiveness and usability, especially in long-tail search phrases where our competitors don't care to categorize where we are seeing real search volumes. The hierarchy only extends as far down as the user has searched, for example a lot of our searched just end up being _oursite.com/type/state/city/district. _ Now we are wondering how we should place our products, the empty spaces, in this URL structure. Our original hypothesis was that we should include the products in the original hierarchy, resulting in: oursite.com/category/subcategory/product. Our thinking was that we would both be serving the user with an understandable and relevant URL, and also provide search bots with a logical structure for our site and most importantly content for our category pages. Our landing pages are very dynamic, providing information by relaying graphical information on a map instead of in an SEO-friendly manner. I would however go as far as to say that these dynamic pages provide a ton of value for the user, much more so than our competitors, by describing relevant information about the neighborhood kind of like Trulia, just not in a bot-readable manner. This results in trying to rank them on their own merits being a challenge, whereas we were hoping we could create relevancy by placing products / listings and maybe even blog posts on the topic within the same URL-hierarchy. As of right now our current structure is oursite.com/products/category/subcategory/product. In other words, they are categorized in the same geographical fashion but under a separate URL-path. Our results so far is that we basically only rank for the product pages, and rank extremely poorly for our category pages, which is our ultimate goal to enhance. This is why we developed the above hypothesis. However, what we learned when we did some initial research is that very few e-commerce stores place their products directly below their categories. Most of the major websites we studied, and we looked at quite a few, just go for **alternative 1 **from above. The crux is that most of them choose alternative 1 but simultaneously implement bread crumbs that emulate alternative 3, just without the actual URL's. So, what I'm asking is, what are the actual benefits or downsides of the three alternatives? I feel as if I have a pretty firm grasp on how this could be done, I just need to better understand why most seem to choose to flatline their products or listings in the alternative 1 fashion. Thanks, Viktor
Local Listings | | Viktorsodd0 -
Reliable provider of SEO services for Baidu
Hi, Does anyone know a reliable SEO agency specialised in Baidu? Thanks! Isabel
Local Listings | | iubeda0 -
Google requires that businesses that serve there customers at their customers' locations must hide its address. However, this causes an notice in Moz Local advising that the Google listing is inconsistent. Is that something to just ignore?
I run a walking tour company that operates from a virtual office. We run tours are set locations outside the office. Because of this, Google requires that we hide our exact location. However, Moz Local is warning us that "incomplete listings can negatively impact your ability to rank well in search engine results". Most listings won't allow you to hide an exact address. Do the search engines understand this and therefore we won't get penalized? Thank you.
Local Listings | | freetours0 -
Does submitting Citations for National website help much at all?
Curious if submitting a national website info to the top citations is helpful at all when ranking a national website?
Local Listings | | surfsup0 -
Help Understanding Localized Search Results/Ranks
I have a Moz campaign for duvalasphalt.com where I want to track a non-location specific keyword, then variations that include a location. For example, here are the rankings for a keyword and the 2 location variations. asphalt company (not in top 50) asphalt company jacksonville (ranked 6) jacksonville asphalt company (ranked 6) When I do a search for just "asphalt company," I see duvalasphalt.com ranked 11. Why does Moz not show an 11 rank? I understand Google tries to show me location specific results even if my search is not location specific. Is Moz's ranking crawler searching from a location where Google will not serve Jacksonville-related results? It would make sense, but how can I get Moz to capture the rankings that are important to my client? The rankings we want to see are the results made from in and around Jacksonville. Any help here is appreciated!
Local Listings | | ElykInnovation0