Question about Local / Regional SEO

[dogflog]

Good Morning Moz Community,

I have a local SEO/regional SEO question. I apologize if this question is duplicated from another area on this forum but, a query of the term Regional SEO showed no results, as did similar queries.

Please preference this entire question with "Knowing what we know about the most recent changes to local search" I know what has worked in the past, my concern is Now.

Working with a heavily regulated client that is regional, mostly East Coast US. They are in Financial Services and state licensing is a requirement.

They are licensed in 15 states. Obviously, it would look foolish, in this day in age, to Title Tag individual pages with local modifiers and have numerous pages covering a similar topic with not much difference than localized modifiers in front of the keyword.

I've never found that SE's can understand broad regional terms such as New England or Mid Atlantic or Southeast or Northeast, if someone knows different please share. Aside from an exact match search.

The client does have 7 offices in various states.

Perfectly matching and consistent listings in G Places, Bing Local and Yahoo Local was step one and all their locations are now in those services and there are many more smaller local citation listings are in the works. We have also successfully implemented a plan to generate great reviews from actual customers, for each location, they're receiving a few a day right now.

Their local places listings, where they have physical locations, are doing very well but:

1. What would the community's suggestion be on generating more targeted traffic in the 8 states where they have no physical location?

2. The client wants to begin creating smaller blogs that are highly localized to the states and major population centers that they do not have a physical location in. There is an open check book to dedicate to this effort however, I do a lot of work in this industry so I want to offer the best possible, most up to date advice, my concern is that these efforts will have two results:

a. be obscured by the ”7 pack" by  companies with local brick and mortar

b. would detract from the equity built in their existing blog by generating content in other domains, I would prefer to continue growing the main blog.

3. As a follow up, it has been documented that Google is now using the same algorithm for local, personal and personalized, that being the case, is there any value in building links to you Places page? Can you optimize your Places page by using the same off site techniques as you would traditionally?

Sorry to kill you with such a long question on a Sunday

[RobertFisher]

Brett

I did not mean tell client you will do anything for free.

What I meant was, assuming your client has an associate in city X where there is no presence by client otherwise, you get your client to agree that you will go to their associate with a proposal to do the local for the associate in city X for no charge. The client would pay you for doing the work, the associate will now have a quality local presence in city X, and your client will be the main portion of the Places, Bing Bus.Port, etc in the city.

So, your client is BigMoneySvc.com, in city X their address would be that of the associate in X. You can name the associate in the listing. If the assoc. has their own website, that would be a problem, unless you agree to have a landing page on client site that links to assoc. site. (Assoc. gets link juice). So BigMoneySvc.com/xcity-associate-site.

If you use subdomain, you will get no push from the main site. If you use sub directory you will: Mainblog.com/Charlotte. With this, links to Charlotte will help root domain over time and links from root domain will help Charlotte.

If you buy exact match domains with or without hyphens your only issue is starting at level zero. Soooo...... that you have to figure out. Start at zero with new domain or sub domain, crate a page on main site that could be helped by mainsite DA, etc.

Hope I was helpful for you.

[SeattleOrganicSEO]

Have you checked out blumenthals.com/blog?  Mike's great at local.  Maybe he might be able to answer this question if you get it front of him.

[dogflog]

Hi Robert,

Thanks for the very helpful answer.

I'm curious what you meant by this?

"Those associates are in different cities and, if they do not have their own Places/BingBus.Portal, etc. pages, you might convince them that you would do their local for free if they let you set it up under you..."

Do you mean...I go to my client and say "You give me the contracts to do the local blog development, content creation and so on....and I'll handle your local seo on those blogs for you for free?"

If that's what you're saying, no problem or disagreement, just wanted to make sure I am not missing something.

Also...

(Local Blogs where they have a license but no brick and mortar) Would you suggest using sub-domains from their main blog, which is stand alone WP installation?

ex. - Assume an area they want to target is Charlotte, NC.

charlotte.mainblog.com

If so does this build value, PR, equity, whatever term we want to use in the Top Level Domain?

Or should I just go out and try to find KW rich Domains in those local markets?

Thanks again,

Brett

[dogflog]

Menachamp,

Thanks for the info, I guess my concern is more going after the high traffic keywords with a local modifier. The client doesn't want an appearance of bad looking page titles that are ostentatiously targeting local KWs.

Thanks for the advice that I guess really means, USE YOUR HEAD AND GET CREATIVE!

I will get creative and come up with a local strategy for those non brick and mortar locations.

Best,

Brett

[RobertFisher]

Dogflog,

As to ranking regionally, as of this moment I know of no way to rank regionally per se. So, you could set up an East Coast Financial services page and try to rank for that term....probably not a lot of queries though.

As to your local, you may want to check your Bing listings if they were set up a while back and insure they are ok with Bing Business Portal change.

On the Suggestions for 8 states where we have no physical location? Since it is a financial services firm, do they have any associate relationships in these states? I handle a firm in equities/investments/etc. and they have about 50 associates. Those associates are in different cities and, if they do not have their own Places/BingBus.Portal, etc. pages, you might convince them that you would do their local for free if they let you set it up under you...

As to 2.a. At the end of the day, if you have no way of having a local listing you will have to optimize it as much as possible and live with the "7 pack" issue. Hopefully you will rank right after it. One question is how much effort will go into the blog, how much info, etc. If it is a quality site, you might be amazed at what you could do.

As to 2.b. If you don't have it as a mere extension with the same content, but allow it to be its own "regionalized" blog with regional issue content, I don't think it will detract from main. Obviously, without knowing url, etc. this advice has a caveat or two.

3. I am going to choose not to opine on the**"it has been documented that Google is now using the same algorithm for local, personal and personalized,"** and, instead will answer your question regarding linking: I believe especially in the vertical you describe that insuring your clients are getting and using reviews in the citation sites locally is paramount. That is where I would focus. I would make sure they were in at least 10 to 12 directory/citation sites and that the reviews were being posted.

Good luck, sounds like a fun project.

[menachemp]

I'm in a somewhat similar situation, and have not got this totally figured out either.  But here's my two bits onthe subject.

First of all, you need to make sure that you're optimizing your local pages to their fullest in the 7 states that you do have locations in.  Follow http://getlisted.org's guidlines and use whitespark's citation finder to build citations.  Make sure that each location has its own page on your client's main site, with a complete and consistent NAP.

Second, I think this is a misguided assumption:  "Obviously, it would look foolish, in this day in age, to Title Tag individual pages with local modifiers and have numerous pages covering a similar topic with not much difference than localized modifiers in front of the keyword."  You need to think about what truly differentiates your client's service from state to state, and build on that.  Are licensing requirements slightly different?  I don't know any details about your industry other than financial services, but let's say it's home mortgages for example - the housing market in each state is different, people are moving in or moving away for different reasons, people are in different stages of their lives (Florida homebuyers are retirees, Boston homebuyers are just out of college (I guess?  I don't know.  You should).)  Build landing pages for each state, and possibly for all the main cities.  You shouldn't have trouble differentiating.

Good luck!