Localised content/pages for identical products
-
I've got a question about localising the website of a nationwide company.
We're a small dance school with nationwide (40 cities) coverage for around 40 products. Currently, we have one page for each product (style of dance), and one page for each city; the product pages cover keywords like 'cheerleading dance class' while the city pages target the 'london dance classes'-type keywords.
To make 'localised product pages', I feel like we should make a page for every city/product combo 'London cheerleading classes' - but that seems like a nightmare for both writing sexy & original content, and link building/social stats. The other thing I can think of (which I refuse to do because it would look stupid & flag the page as keyword stuffed) is filling the page with the keyword phrases which are appropriate for every city.
Is there another way to let google know 'this page is appropriate for these cities...'? We do currently list the cities a product is available in, but it doesn't seem to help local rankings very much. Would this just be a link building job, using hyper-targeted anchor texts (inc. city names) for each product? How do the pro's tackle this problem?
-
Hello Alec,
Kane Jamison is right - if you were to do the 40x40 project, you'd have to write 1600 pages of content! Though not totally impossible, it's pretty much the next closest thing to impossible.
Kane is on the right track. What you are in need of is a plan for organization. Such a plan might looks something like this:
-Have a landing page for each of your dance schools.
-The page must be well optimized for the schools' locations.
-Write good, unique content for each of these landing pages (at least we're only talking about 40 pages here).
-List the main classes that are available at each school on its respective landing page.
-Build an onsite blog.
-Every week, write several posts about special classes, new classes, events, etc. going on at different schools.
-Have an area on each dance studio page from which you link to some of the blog posts that are specifically about something at that studio.
In this way, you can build content in a gradual way about different things that happen in each of the schools, without undertaking the crazy work of trying to write copy for 1600 pages.
Chances are, you won't rank #1 for every single thing you offer, but if you out-write and out-link most competitors, you should end up getting lots of good rankings.
What' I've suggested is just a strategy brainstormed in a couple of minutes. You can work out the fine details. You definitely need to decide on the architecture of the site first.
Good luck!
Miriam
-
40 x 40 = 1600
Yikes!
Do you really have 40 products, or can any of those products be combined in a reasonable way? For example, after looking at your site, can some of the "hen parties" go on one page titled "Cambridge type hen parties" where type is changed out with a different phrase? Then that page can have a few paragraphs of content and unique photos, and then link to the specific "salsa hen party" but non-city-specific page? This would be a lot easier to manage, and it's hard for me to imagine that "Cambridge salsa hen parties" gets a ton of traffic that you couldn't capture with a more generic page.
If you were to have just a few pages per city at most it would be reasonable to rank them for those long tail keywords such as "cambridge hen parties" using some good anchor text links in addition to good unique content on each page.
On the topic of unique content for localized pages:
There was a good post that went up today that addresses this topic:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understand-and-rock-the-google-venice-update
I'm going to quote directly from the article because he gives a few good ways to add more content to these localized pages:
**Unique Localized Page Content: **This is the true issue with localization. Most sites have cookie cutter content that might rank for locations, but it also might lead to a nice Panda slap for duplicate content. I would not build content and just replace the location information. If you are still doing this you are playing on dangerous grounds. Scaling localized page content is not easy, not very fun, and definitely not sexy. So, the companies that can make it easy, fun, and sexy are going to be the clear Venice winners.
Here are some ideas:
1. Location based reviews – Instead of one testimonial site wide add a testimonial in every market you can. It helps to sell the “locationalism” to the searcher and it’s content that doesn’t have to be written by you… just gathered.
2. Gather “Why I love my city” user generated content – Ask customers to write up information about their local city and why they like it. It’s unique and fun to read.
3. Write out directions to each location – Have you ever heard people tell directions the same way? No chance of duplicate content with directions…ever.
I would also add that you should consider the following on each city page:
- Information about the facilities in each city (this is assuming you have physical locations)
- Video from the facilities or video testimonials from customers in that city is excellent content
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
-
CTA first content next or Content first CTA next
We are a casino affiliations company, our website has a lot of the same casino offers. So is it beneficial to put the content over the casino offers, then do a CSS flex, reverse wrap, so the HTML has the page content first, but the visual of the page displays the casinos first and the content after? or just the usual i.e image the HTML as content first, and CSS makes offers come first?
On-Page Optimization | | JoelssonMedia0 -
For an e-commerce product category page that has several funnels to specific products, for SEO purposes does it matter whether the category page's overview content is above or below those funnels?
We manage an e-commerce site. On a category page, there are several funnels to specific products. We moved the category overview content below those funnels to make it easier for users to quickly get to products. Seems more user friendly to me, but could that move of the main content to the lower part of the page be a negative ranking factor?
On-Page Optimization | | PKI_Niles0 -
Should you do on-page optimization for a page with rel=canonical tag?
If you ad a rel=canonical tag to a page, should you still optimize that page? I'm talking meta description, page title, etc.
On-Page Optimization | | marynau0 -
Do You Include Product Prices In Your Page Titles?
Hi Guys, So I'm currently mapping out a load of meta recommendations for a new client we're working with and i just wanted to get an idea about the do's and don'ts of adding product prices into page titles etc. I've looked around to see how people and other marketer feel about this and the response seems to be mixed. I've included prices in titles in the past and had mixed success - I was just wondering if it's something you do regularly or something that you prefer to avoid? I don't think there is any right or wrong answer here - just be good to see how people feel about it. Thanks! 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | daniel-brooks0 -
Positioning H1 and H2 tags adjacent on a page without content in between
Is it best practice to separate H1 and H2 tags with P tag or other content, or is it ok to have H1 and H2 adjacent without content in between?
On-Page Optimization | | Avid-Design1 -
Ranked page is not desired page
I have a question on a problem I am currently faced with. There is a certain keyword that my employer wants to rank for. The good news is that sometimes it does rank in the top 5 pages of Google. (It drops in and out) The bad news is that it is going to a page that we need to keep, but not the ideal place we want people who are looking for that keyword to go to. I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with this type of situation and what tactic they used to get people to the better page.
On-Page Optimization | | trumpfinc1 -
Duplicate Page Titles and Duplicate Content
I've been a Pro Member for nearly a year and I am bound and determined to finally clean up all the crawl errors on our site PracticeRange.com. We have 180 errors for Duplicate Page Titles and Duplicate Content. I fixed many of the pages that were product pages with duplicate content. Those product descriptions were edited and now have unique content. However, there remain plenty of the errors that are puzzling. Many of the errors reference the same pages, for example, the Home Page, Login Page and the Search page (our catalog pages).
On-Page Optimization | | AlanWills
In the case of the Catalog Page errors, these type pages would have the same title every time "Search" and the results differ according to category. http://www.practicerange.com/Search.aspx?m=6
http://www.practicerange.com/Search.aspx?m=15 If this is rel=canonical issue, how do I fix it on a search result page? I want each of the different category type pages to be indexed. One of them is no more important than the other. So how would I incorporate the rel=canonical? In the case of the Home Page errors, I'm really confused. I don't know where to start to fix these. They are the result of a 404 error that leads to the home page. Is the content of the 404 page the culprit since it contains a link to the home page? Here are examples of the Home Page type of crawl errors. http://www.practicerange.com/404.aspx?aspxerrorpath=/Golf-Training-Aids/Golf-Nets/~/Assets/ProductImages/products/Golf-Training-Aids/Rubber-Wooden-Tee-Holder.aspx http://www.practicerange.com/404.aspx?aspxerrorpath=/Golf-Training-Aids/Golf-Nets/~/Assets/ProductImages/products/Golf-Training-Aid/Impact-Bag.aspx Thanks , Alan WillsPracticeRange.com0 -
No Content on home page + rankings
If a home page has no content will it hurt the sites ability to rank? The interior pages will have content but not the home page. (See attached image) My client does not want content on the home page as he feels it will take away from the look and feel he wants to achieve. This website is actually 10 sites or locations in one as we intend to market each location (a total of 10) separately. In reality the home page is a doorway page to each separate location. I'd like feedback if possible as to the necessity or not, of content on the Home Page of this or any website. Will the lack of content hurt on the Homer Page hurt with SEO? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | fun52dig
Gary Downey bobby-vans.jpg0