Local SEO: By city, by multiple cities, or by region?
-
My client is a kitchen remodeling company in Sterling, Virginia and is trying to rank well in local results. I am struggling with keyword selection mostly because I am still learning about local SEO.
The city the company is located is Sterling, however their business comes from several other close by cities like Reston, Herndon, and Fairfax (Nobody lives in Sterling so they don't care too much about owning that in search engines).
Is the right strategy:
1. Choosing one city and focusing on that (kitchen remodeling in reston, VA)
2. Optimizing for multiple cities (kitchen remodeling, reston, herndon, fairfax...)
3. Optimizing for an entire region (kitchen remodeling, northern virginia)
I know it's hard to answer this with little information but gut reactions would be appreciated.
I am a new SEOmoz member so excuse me if this question is too specific for this forum. I'm still getting a feel for the community.
Thanks!
Sean
-
Thanks Aaron. The client listed about 16 cities that they do business in. Do you think limiting that list to about 5 cities is a good idea?
thanks
-
In Google places as well as on Adwords you can select your geographic area. As far as keywords go you can target multiple cities with keywords on the site (option 2) and through the anchor text on links. I have seen this work just fine on several auto websites - something I know a bit about.
-
If it isn't competitive, you may still display in a larger geo. You may consider multiple listings in areas which are so far away that you arent displaying in. This suggestion will probably get a lot of flack as it can be considered to be map spam.
I have done this in very limited situations. It involves getting an address in a new locality to verify your listing. I think google has gotten better and combatting this although I have had a client do it with very good success. They still get a lot of call on these listing.
Do not go overboard (a few extras at most)! also don't list anywhere if you really cant compete there. It's an option but a controversial one.
-
For Local SEO use Google Places/Maps - you should target the local cities individually and then optimize the Google map listing from there
you can also cover the county and norther part of state - this will work in MSN/Bing as well
Also combine Yelp and other local search engines as alot of local traffic is going through yelp
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
-
Need advice w/ keywords & content to get started with SEO on my own website
I am a real estate agent, marketing properties to Germans moving to / buying an overseas home in my country. I inquired with a few different SEO agencies and I cannot afford their services, $3000+ a month and my market is not huge as you will see in the search data below. So I will have to go ahead and do SEO on my own and will obviously need some help. The space is not competitive which is awesome. That's how the volume and competition look for the most popular (& broadest) search term is "immobilien countryname" (property countryname), according to Ubersuggest - attachment 1 (translation for reference): property countryname 1300 property in countryname 480 buy property countryname 260 property countryname seaview 170 buy property countryname 110 Here is an example of the top 10 searches for houses by volume. (Attachment 2 is a screenshot of the competition) 1. haus in countryname kaufen 720 $0.14
Keyword Research | | dnlpwrsellr
(house in countryname buy)
2. countryname haus kaufen 590 $0.36
(countryname house buy)
3. einfamilienhaus countryname haus kaufen 210 $0.45
(single family countryname house buy)
4. häuser in countryname kaufen 170 $0.29
(houses in countryname buy)
5. haus countryname kaufen 170 $0.46
(house countryname buy)
6. günstige häuser in countryname 110 $0.10
(cheap houses in countryname)
7. häuser kaufen in countryname location1 110 $0.22
(houses buy in countryname location1)
8. haus kaufen countryname meerblick 90 $0.20
(house buy countryname sea-view)
9. haus in countryname location2 kaufen 70 $0.03
(house in countryname location2 buy)
10. countryname haus am meer kaufen 70 $0.05
(countryname house near the sea buy) the first 5 results are taken by big portals, just the top one has done any optimization at all as you can see the competition is pretty lame, just some of them are doing any SEO, pretty badly (including spammy links), still rank. The way it seems, there are 4 main categories to optimize for: Properties Houses Apartments 'Move to countryname' information Should I optimize my homepage for a 'property' term, 3 other pages for 'house', 'apartment, and 'info' terms? How do I pick keywords to optimize for, esp. considering that they are basically the same e.g.: house in countryname buy countryname house buy house countryname buy or property countryname countryname property property in countryname ...and should I pick just one? What sort of content could I include in a "buy a house in countryname" type of page and how do I write around such keywords? I am having an issue finding examples to follow as there is no competition to emulate and the other markets/countries are dominated by large portals which also seemingly get ranked based on size / authority. Beyond that there is virtually no interest in the country = no traffic, besides general bs such as the language, the weather and such where there are a bunch of huge websites on the first page - so I am not sure what content could I use to drive traffic. I will come up with something, but there are no obvious ones.. My domain name is 1 year old, I have no links yet. Moz reports Page Authority 5, Domain Authority 2 for my domain. I reckon that's enough for starters... Any input and ideas are more than welcome! Thank you. Qy2gat6.png tG93AJt.png0 -
Authority site targeting multiple similar keywords
Hi! I found a niche I'd really like to work on. I was initially targeting a longtail keyword but there are so many available for this niche I decided to just make an authority site instead. My plan is to have multiple pages with each page targeting a separate long tail keyword in the niche. There's probably going to be over a 100. Let's say for example it's an organic gardening niche. The website will be setup for the entire niche and the page titles will be structured as such: Best Organic Gardening Soils Best Organic Gardening Tools Best Organic Gardening Seeds I'd prefer it to be setup this way so I can target traffic for the term with and without "best". I'm wondering if this sounds a bit spammy or is acceptable? Any other ideas as far as targeting similar longtail keywords in the same niche on a single site? Thanks so much!
Keyword Research | | Kusanagi170 -
Site has multiple services, how to target multiple keywords and what to to about citations
Hi i managing a site that has 3 main services its a hotel, a restaurant and a brewery. It has the word brewery in the name and URL and has for years primarily pushed the brewery side and that is doing well its has a good DA and lots of links point back to its home page. Now the problem is it doesn't rank very well for the term hotel or restaurant, theres only 2 referring domains links pointing to its hotel page. All its hotel citations point to the homepage (which is mainly optimised for the keyword brewery) should i update the citations to point to the hotel page which has been optimised for the search term hotel? or should I leave those and just create new citation pointing to the hotel page. Should i right a few blog posts about the businesses hotel and link them to the hotels page? and then I also then do the same for restaurant? I hope i've explained myself well and would appreciate the advice
Keyword Research | | juun0 -
What kind of SEO keywords should a recruitment company use?
I am relatively new to the world of SEO and have been given responsibility to improve SEO rankings for our company website (which is full of jobs). We are London based digital media recruiters and work in a number of niche industries. Should job titles be the keywords I try and optimise, as opposed to keywords such as 'digital media recruitment london', 'London digital marketing jobs', 'digital media recruiters in london' etc? Today I have signed up for a month's trial on Moz Pro so am hoping this will provide me with a lot of help as I start creating an SEO strategy, Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Keyword Research | | SumoAlice0 -
Using city location in keywords?
Hi all, new to SEO MOZ and SEO in general. I'm trying to do some keyword research to choose keywords and keyphrases for on page SEO as well as an Adwords campaign for a real estate agency that focuses on luxury high rise condos and homes in the Dallas area. My question is, when choosing keywords do you need to include your location in the key phrase? For instance luxury real estate or dallas luxury real estate? Any input would be appreciated! Thanks!
Keyword Research | | strategit0 -
Is it considered spammy to have multiple pages on the same site optimized for the same keyword?
Is it OK to keyword-optimize multiple pages for the same keyword? Is it beneficial, hurtful, or not a major factor either way?
Keyword Research | | 406lucy0 -
A question about local longtail keywords
Hello all. This is my first interaction with SEOmoz, and I am still in my learning phases. I currently own a lawn fertilization company near Allentown, PA. I do the site for myself, and I am ranked number one for organic lawn care for my cities. My question may seem kind of elementary, but I just want to clear this up for myself. I want to start a side business doing SEO, and from what I gather step one is keyword research. I plan on building new sites to start as opposed to going in and fixing existing ones. So, I've been reading a lot on how to do keyword research and so forth. I will use my current business as a reference for my question. Should my main keywords be along the lines of "lawn care" and "lawn services", and then the location specific stuff be seperate? Or should my main keywords be "lawn care allentown, pa"? I plan on running my business solely for local businesses, so I am not to interested in competing with the entire world for keywords. I just wasn't sure how to differentiate my keyword research for local business. I hope that question made some sense. I am really starting to grasp the elements of SEO, but for some reason the keyword part of things perplexes me. Thanks for any responses!
Keyword Research | | GroundFloorSEO0 -
SEO for compound word derivatives
Our company offers services for nonprofit organizations and we are finding that "non profit" and "nonprofit" are both used very frequently in search queries. I suspect Google will treat the two variations similarly but am looking for something more concrete than my anecdotal experience. How does Google treat compound words that are commonly searched for as multiple words? Any suggestions on resources or tests to find a concrete answer for "nonprofit"?
Keyword Research | | Jon_KS0