How to optimize on-page for a large service area?

[seolinktools]

Hello Everyone,

I'm in the process of setting up a website for a plumbing company that services a relatively large area in Michigan. They have physical locations spread out across the area, but they want to optimize for other areas as well.

Naturally, I set up pages on the site with unique content relating to the town/area. I understand that these may not rank locally, but we can at lest shoot for organic rankings in this area.

My question here more relates to how to link these pages in the site. Should I have a bunch of footer links with something like city, state, zip as the anchor text. Or should I create an "Areas Served" page, and link out from there? I don't want to appear spammy, beaus this isn't what i'm trying to do, I just want to make sure this is done right.

Thanks

Zach

[seolinktools]

Yea,

I was thinking about  incorporating the pages that have a google places page attributed to them in the footer, as the local rankings will be invaluable to their bottom line

[TakeshiYoung]

An "areas served" is probably the best approach, since you don't want a big spammy footer that is present on every page (remember, every link on a page lowers the value of every other link on a page). You can highlight a few of the larger/most popular areas in your sitewide nav, but I would avoid linking to every single one of them.