Local Optimisation for Nearby Towns

[stukerr]

Hi There,

I'm helping a friend of a friend with her business website, which is basically providing health services within a local radius of her home, so we are hoping to get her ranking for phrases such as "massage Battersea" "massage Clapham" etc. (where Battersea & Clapham are two places in London).

As i'm a bit new to local work like this my question is what is the best way to do this?

I've considered creating a page for each of these terms, however it's hard to work out how they could have unique content as a massage in Clapham is very much the same as one in Battersea, and I don't want to fill the pages with useless information about where Battersea & Clapham are because i'm sure people searching those phrases already know that!

The only other thing I can think of would be to just mention the areas on a generic massage page and hope that ranks with a bit of "massage battersea" etc. inbound anchor text.

If someone who has experience in this could offer any advice that would be great.

Many thanks,

Stuart

[stukerr]

Hi Miriam,

Thanks for the tips, i'll tkae on board what you've said and speak to the client and see if she has any input on the matter, if she genuinely can't I think i'll start off with one page targeting a few locations and try and build out more as time goes on, but hopefully she will have done something worthwhile locally (or maybe I can make her!).

Many thanks,

Stuart

[stukerr]

Thanks for the tips, google local is next on the list of attack, but for a number of the keywords it seems that old-school organic listings are still at the top (for the time being) so she is very interested in trying to get up there - and yes we don't want to attract people looking for the wrong kind of massage

[ZacharyRussell]

Good Evening Stuart,

I agree with what was being said before, Citations and Reviews are a big part of affecting your rankings. Instead of generic text, try to create two different pages each location based. For Example; yoursite.com/batteresa-massage-therapist and yoursite.com/calpham-massage-therapist, you can include keywords along with location in your URLs, this can really help. I love that paper by David Mihm, you really should take a look at it.

As far as content, try to use completely standalone content for each page. You do not want to use generic content and just replace location names, because you will have issues with duplocate content, and this is a big problem. You may want to consider adding things like landmarks or relevant places of interest into the pages to assist with a guide to your location desitred for optimizing.

Hope this helps

Zach

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Stuart,

Because true Local results are so heavily slanted to where the business is located, as opposed to where it may serve its remote customers, your client's main efforts will have to focus on the main city of location. This typically means that visibility for  secondary geo terms (like those you've mentioned) are going to have stem from your organic efforts (on-page content, off-page links, etc.).

I appreciate your high standards in not just wanting to create nonsense pages describing the regions of the city. These will be of little interest/use to humans - I agree. So, the client needs to help you brainstorm a reason to write about her involvement in those areas. For example, does she do any corporate work for business in Clapham? Could she talk on a Clapham page about how she was hired to come in once a week for a 10 minute massage for each employee as a perk that boosts company morale. Something like this? Or, does she give training workshops in Battersea? Could she write about a seminar she organized there or even just attended?

Creativity is what it's all about when it comes to writing copy that has a genuine purpose and at the same time showcases the work of the professional in various geographic regions.

If you can couple this with linkbuilding, you have a good recipe for gaining organic visibility for terms beyond the single major city term.

[stevefidelity]

Check out Davis Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors .

The way that you're talking sounds like you're focusing on optimizing the site to show up in the regular organic listings, but when you're talking local you also want to look at factors that are unique to actual local search results. So I would start off by claiming (or creating) the Google+ Local page (aka, Google Places listing). Choose your 5 categories wisely based on some sound keyword research, but don't get spammy and and put 'massage clapham' as a category.

Two of the more important predominantly 'local' ranking factors are citations & reviews. A citation is basically a place on the internet that lists your business with its name address and phone number, so think of local directory & internet yellow pages sites for example. Other types would include BBB or local chambers of commerce. You need to ensure consistency of your name, address & phone number across the web so the search engines see that all of these different citations do indeed belong to the same business.

Reviews are also important. If the search engines see people talking about your business online, it's a signal to them that your business is an important, well-known business.

Just one more quick note on your keywords... Depending on what type of massage you're talking about here, you may want to look at keywords like 'massage therapist', 'registered massage therapist', or specific massage techniques like hot stone or swedish.