Attracting custom from 3 cities - Is this the best way to optimize?
-
Hi, I'm working for a client that draws custom from 3 nearby cities - I was thinking of creating a new page for 2 of the cities, reachable from within the website and not simply doorway pages.
Each new page would include (1) General info (2) info relevant to the city in question, if relevant to client - perhaps well-known customers already coming from the city in question (3) transport from the city - directions.
Is it OK to do this, or could Google see it as manipulative seeing that business is not geographically located in all 3 cities (in actual fact the business is in just one location, within the official borders of one city, in another city for some administrative services and 40 miles away from the third).
Thanks in advance, Luke
-
Hi Luke, This is a common practice for service area businesses (like plumbers, electricians, carpet cleaners, etc.) who are located in one city, but serve clients within a larger radius beyond their location city limits. It sounds like what you are describing is a bit different - a client to whom customer come from a variety of cities. I do not believe Google would have any problem with what you are doing, provided that you follow what you've planned to do in making the content for these city pages unique. I think a nice thing to do on these pages would be to add some testimonials from customers who come to the business from these other locations. Now, whether these pages will greatly impact your client's ability to rank well for the service+city keywords is up in the air. It really depends on the competitiveness of the industry and locale. If the client is in a situation of modest competition, these new pages could achieve some new visibility and drive some new, qualified traffic, but if the client is in a dog-eat-dog vertical, the new pages may not be able to be of big help. It's really one of those 'it depends' situations. Bottom line, though, it is not my experience that Google views such content as manipulative in intent if the content has a real reason for existing.
-
It's only OK to do this if the client has an address in each city. If each site does not have a crawlable NAP, you risk getting hit with dupe content.
Also, if you want be future proof, make sure the copy is as unique as possible along with unique meta tags.
One method that works really well for my clients, is using subdomains for different cities of pages.
Example:
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
-
Besides technical error improvement, best way to increase organic traffic to movie review website
I have a friend's website, ShowBizJunkies, that they work very had at improving and providing great content. I put the website in a more modern theme, increased speed (wpengine, but maxed out with cdn, caching, image optimization, etc) But now I'm struggling how to suggest further improving the seo structure or building backlinks. I know trying to come up for those terms like "movie reviews" and many similar are ridiculously difficult, and requires tons of high quality backlinks. What is my lowest hanging fruit here, any suggestions? My current plan is: 1. Fix technical errors 2. Create more evergreen content 3. Work on timing of article release for better Google News coverage 4. More social sharing, sharing on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook Groups, G+ Communities, etc 5. Build backlinks via outreach to tv show specific sites, movie fan sites, actor fan sites (interviews)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JustinMurray1 -
Title and Meta Description Best Practice
Hi guys, I need some creative input on this. I'm working on a Hyundai dealership's website, and I want it to rank well for "used cars" in its local market. I need it to rank well for four cities for "Hyundai Dealer" also. Can you pick apart a dummy meta title and description I put together? In the example "Metropolis" will be the home city Title, "Hyundai Dealer serving Metropolis, Gotham City, Star City & Red City, NY | Used Cars Red City, NY" Description, "Visit Bob's Hyundai in Metropolis, NY. We're a new & used car dealer near Gotham City, Star City & Red City, NY." Be brutally honest and let me know what I can do to achieve this objective beyond this too if you can. I want to know how I can achieve this objective. Thanks a bunch!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | oomdomarketing0 -
GWT 404 best practices
I'm getting back lots of 404 errors for old websites that are linking back to my current website. If the website content/anchor text has no relevancy to my current content is it still best practice to redirect to current home page, contact the web master to remove link or any other suggestions? Not exactly sure if redirecting looks spammy since it's irrelevant content. Thanks for your help!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | IceIcebaby0 -
Need advice on best strategy for removing these bad links.
Heres the scenario... We recently took on a new client who's previous seo company had partaken in some dodgy link building tactics. They appear to have done some blog comment spam, very poorly. The situation we are now in is this: We have a site with an internal page deemed more important than the homepage (the homepage has 60 linking root domains and the internal page 879). It looks as though the previous seo company submitted a disavow request, theres a message in webmaster tools from a few weeks back saying it had been received, but no further correspondence. I have doubts as to whether this disavow request was done correctly... Plus im not sure that Google has issued the site a warning yet as they are ranking position one for the keyword on the internal page. Our clients want us to handle this in the correct manner, whether it be to simply ignore it and wait for Google to send a warning about the links, remove the offending internal page and leave a 404, or try to disavow the links that google doesnt know about yet from 800+ websites. Suggestions for the best practice for dealing with this situation? Any advice is much appreciated, Thanks, Hayley.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Silkstream0 -
Month old site and alreasdy ranks 3 for competitive keyword
I know this individual does this with several sites and then offers them for sale to his competitors. Obviously spammy thru and thru, but how can google reward a site thats not even two months old, with 1900 + links with a ranking of #3 for a highly competitive keyword? Please dont post the actual name or url of the website as we dont want to give him any more credit but this blows my mind as he has done this several times with other sites and never gets penalized. http://tinyurl.com/b9jysa5 Any ideas as to how he can accomplish this besides almost 2000 links in less than 2 months? How is that even remotely natural? I know his other sites have been reported to google but they never did anything about it. Thanks for any feedback.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | anthonytjm0 -
Best Website Security Service
Having been hacked twice and, it seems, still suffering from problems as a result (file changes and alterations, etc) I'm wondering if there is a good paid service that provides security for websites? I'm an online travel agent so our websites "up-time" and search engine position is vital but I'm spending more time trying sort out our websites' security than selling travel. It would be sensible to pay for a service that would ensure, as much as possible, that our site is secure and any optimisation we do is not cancelled out by hacking and security problems. If anyone could recommend a good company I would be very grateful. Colin
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | NileCruises0 -
In (or In-between) 2 cities - and mentioning both cities in title tags
Hi, just wondering what your thoughts are on this one - several businesses I work for are located in in-between places. For example, one is in one city for its address, but in another city's council (/state) area. Another is in a rural area, almost exactly the same distance between 2 cities (about 10 miles either way). Both businesses mention both cities on several pages of their websites, including in title tags (including homepage title tags), and it seems to be working OK in terms of rankings (ie they're ranking well for keyphrases for both cities). Is it acceptable practice to mention both cities in a single title tag though? That's my question. (some of this confusion dates back to UK local authority boundary/name changes, in 2009)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | McTaggart0 -
EXPERT CHALLENGE: What link building strategies do YOU think will work after the latest 3/29/2012 Google algorithm change?
FOR ALL SEO THOUGHT LEADERS...What link building strategies do YOU think will work after the latest 3/29/2012 Google algorithm change? NOTE: My hope is that the responses left on this thread will ultimately benefit all members of the community and give recognition to the true thought leaders within the SEO space. That being said, my challenge is a 2 part question: With the 80/20 rule in mind, and in light of recent algorithm changes, what would YOU focus most of your SEO budget on if you had to choose? Let's assume you're in a competitive market (ie #1-5 on page 1 has competitors with 20,000+ backlinks - all ranging from AC Rank 7 to 1). How would you split your total monthly SEO budget as a general rule? Ex) 60% link building / 10% onsite SEO / 10% Social Media / 20% content creation? I realize there are many "it depends" factors but please humor us anyways. Link building appears to have become harder and harder as google releases more and more algorithm changes. For link building, the only true white hat way of proactively generating links (that I know of) is creating high quality content that adds value to customers (ie infographics, videos, etc.), guest blogging, and Press Releases. The con to these tactics is that you are waiting for others to find and pick up your content which can take a VERY long time, so ROI is difficult to measure and justify to clients or C-level management. That being said, how are YOU allocating your link building budget? Are all of these proactive link building tactics a waste of time now? I've heard it couldn't hurt to still do some of these, but what are your thoughts and what is / isn't working for you? Here they are: A. Using spun articles edited by US based writers for guest blog content B. 301 Redirects C. Social bookmarking D. Signature links from Blog commenting E. Directory submissions F. Video Submissions G. Article Directory submissions H. Press release directory submissions I. Forum Profile Submissions J. Forum signature links K. RSS Feed submissions L. Link wheels M. Building links (using scrapebox, senukex, etc.) to pages linked to your money site N. Links from privately owned networks (I spoke to an SEO company that claims to have over 4000 unique domains which he uses to boost rankings for his clients) O. Buying Contextual Text Links All Expert opinions are welcomed and appreciated 🙂
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seoeric2