Question about local SEO when you serve many more cities than you have brick and mortar locations
-
My URL is: http://www.mollysmusic.org for the record.I run a music school that serves in-home lessons to a whole slew of cities. Since I only have 3 brick-and-mortar locations, I can't make google local profiles for all the cities served, but I want to get seen by those people searching in their own cities. Right now, our biggest competitor, takelessons.com, is top ranked for every single city you can think of, because they have individual web pages for every city served. Their content is repetitive and scrapey, and to me, that says "doorway page" which supposedly can get you de-indexed. I'm reluctant to do that because I'm afraid I'll get banned, but I have to compete. I also want a strategy that can scale when we move into new areas. Is there something that makes TakeLessons's content NOT a doorway page? What's the best practice for getting ranked in multiple individual cities if you run a service? Thanks in advance.
-
Hi Molly,
Thanks:) So glad you found that article relevant. When I wrote that piece, it was because this concept of city landing pages is so important, but so little had been formally written about it. The response has been great! I'm very happy if it will help you. Good luck!
-
Miriam,
I'm usually wary of people plugging their own content, but this is totally relevant and awesome. Exactly what I'm looking for. Thanks.
-
Thanks Paul and everyone else for your excellent answers.
I think the general consensus for my strategy will include relevant city pages (maybe the top ten in each radius), that includes music venues, karaoke bars, open mic cafes and the like. Then, we'll have blog entries about relevant events in our service areas. It's a lot of work, but it's added value for our students and prospectives, so I think it's worth the fuss.
-
Gracie,
In addition to the "good content" City Pages that Miriam and William recommend, you may also want to blog about music happenings in each city. Set Google alerts for music keyword phrases associated with each city you serve and use the Alert-identified information to discuss upcoming music events and also to provide information, photos, and video for events that have taken place. Such a blogging process might help you establish yourself as a part of each music community you serve. Each blog post gives you the opportunity to focus on one aspect of the music scene of a particular city. Good luck!
-
I would create a separate page for each city instead of one page with content covering many cities.
Linking out is a good thing. Ask yourself, "Will these links improve the users experience"? If yes, then include them.
-
Hi Gracie,
William's advice is right on. Typically, when a business gets away with thin and/or duplicate landing pages like your competitor is apparently doing, it's either because a) the pages are really, really old or b) because Google doesn't have something better to display. You can provide that 'better' solution for Google.
I think you'll find my recent article on the concept of City Landing Pages to be useful. Many business owners have told me it has really helped them clarify their options.
The Nitty Gritty of City Landing Pages
http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=1403
I hope this helps!
Miriam
-
Thanks, William.
Do you have any advice on how to split up location content? Should I designate one page for each place, and then infuse that with unique content, or should I try to fit it all into one place?
The more I think about this, the more questions come to light. For instance: would making a little directory of, say, local open mic nights, karaoke bars, and venues help? Would including a bunch of outbound links to these places hinder us by giving away link juice?
-
It may be working for them now, but using the same recycled content is not a good long term strategy. Plus, if the content stinks it doesn't really matter how well they rank because people with hit the back button (and google keeps score of that).
Focus on creating content that's going to make users have a positive experience on the site. Use case studies, photos, testimonials, videos, city/town resources that are relevant.
If the site was about construction - link to official city/town page with relevant permit info, ect - things like that.
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
-
3 word brand name + SEO. Will I be losing out on organic searches with spaces?
Hello, Starting a new website and the company name has three words. We've made the decision for the brand guide that we will not have spaces when the name is included in copy. Are we going to have difficulties ranking for both instances? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jessicarechkemmer0 -
Question RE: Links in Headers, Footers, Content, and Navigation
This question is regarding this Whiteboard Friday from October 2017 (https://moz.com/blog/links-headers-footers-navigation-impact-seo). Sorry that I am a little late to the party, but I wanted to see if someone could help out. So, in theory, if header links matter less than in-content links, and links lower on the page have their anchor text value stripped from them, is there any point of linking to an asset in the content that is also in the header other than for user experience (which I understand should be paramount)? Just want to be clear.Also, if in-content links are better than header links, than hypothetically an industry would want to find ways to organically link to landing pages rather than including that landing page in the header, no? Again, this is just for a Google link equity perspective, not a user experience perspective, just trying to wrap my head around the lesson. links-headers-footers-navigation-impact-seo
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 3VE0 -
How do I deal with Negative SEO (Spammy Links)?
For the past 12 months, our website has been hit by spammy links with annoying anchor text. We suspected one of our competitor are deploying negative SEO on us. The image is an example of the sites and anchor text we have been spammed with. The frequency is about 1 - 2 spammy links a day. I have a few questions from here onwards: Does those links affect our SEO? (Most are mainly nofollow) Other than disavow, what other stuff can I do? How will google and other search engines see this incident? TcmFsti
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Changsst0 -
More pages is good for SEO? Is this true?
Hi Guys I have a question, I was told the more pages I have the better for SEO, Is this true?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may0 -
Negative SEO? Or?
We had another website attacked by negative SEO, so now I'm getting a little suspicious. The website went from around 26 linking domains to 1001 links from 311 linking domains in webmaster tools. They're all in different languages, and directories. I asked everyone at the organization and they said they didn't sign up for any services. I trust them, because I know they don't have time to breath right now, with 7 product launches this month. OSE says 79 links from 26 linking domains, so the spam links must be gone now.. but the website's been wiped pretty much clean from Google.com and is just starting to slowly (very slowing) crawl back 😞 Is there anything else that could be targeting the website with hundreds of links? Anything I can do to protect it? I've disavowed the links, but they're gone now so it probably won't help. Thanks in advance for ideas 🙂 UPDATE: The website is still not recovering in Google.com. It seems to be ok in .ca, but a recent conundrum is that it's been basically wiped clean from Bing and Yahoo rankings. I've emailed Bing and the team says it is indeed indexed, and not penalized (manually anyways). OLE says the "bad links" are no longer there, but webmaster tools still lists them all (I know, they don't update that often). My latest strategy is to start building some really strong links into the website with killer content. Their products are amazing (tv lift furniture) so it shouldn't be difficult. Just time consuming! I'm also being super-active on their social media platforms, to see if this helps boost rankings in the mean time. Any further tips to recover from negative SEO?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SmartWebPros
(Note: I do not need link removal tools. We have a process that's working just fine).0 -
Keyword Density Question
Here's my hypothetical. I'm working on a car dealer site. And it's a Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram dealer. Would "Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram dealer," count as four keywords rather than one? My goal is to make the website show up for either Chrysler Dealer, Jeep Dealer, et cetera. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | OOMDODigital0 -
Possibly a dumb question - 301 from a banned domain to new domain with NEW content
I was wondering if banned domains pass any page rank, link love, etc. My domain got banned and I AM working to get it unbanned, but in the mean time, would buying a new domain, and creating NEW content that DOES adhere to the google quality guidelines, help at all? Would this force an 'auto-evaluation' or 're-evaluation' of the site by google? or would the new domain simply have ZERO effect from the 301 unless that old domain got into google's good graces again.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ilyaelbert0 -
Thought on optimising the perfect keyword location link
My site works a bit like a directory, so say I have a page called "Ice Cream Vendors" - on that page I would talk a bit about Ice Cream Vendors, then I will have a list of Ice Cream Vendor Locations. My list of locations can be quite big depending on the product and the amount of locations they occur in - when you click a location, it goes to a page showing all "ICeCream Vendors" in that location. So Currently I will have a table on the page a bit like this: ICE CREAM VENDOR LOCATIONS
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | James77
New York
Miami
Las Vegas This is all perfectly nice, simple and usable - BUT it is not producing perfect keyword links - for perfect keyword links the list should be like this: ICE CREAM VENDOR LOCATIONS
New York Ice Cream Vendors
Miami Ice Cream Vendors
Las Vegas Ice Cream Vendors Now I have my perfect anchor links - BUT it looks rediculous and is NOT user friendly. So What do I do?
1/. Build it for users and not have perfect anchor links, and loose in SEO?
2/. Build a perfect SEO links and make it less usable and looking spammy? OR 3/. Deliver the search engine the perfect SEO links, and the user the userfriendly version? In this I mean I could do the following:
SE's (and screen readers I think would see):
ICE CREAM VENDOR LOCATIONS
New York Ice Cream Vendors
Miami Ice Cream Vendors
Las Vegas Ice Cream Vendors Users would See
ICE CREAM VENDOR LOCATIONS
New York
Miami
Las Vegas Now in my view I am doing nothing wrong - I am mearly giving the user the most userfriendly version and I am giving the SE more information on the link, that the user doesn't need. So - In my view I am doing something that is honest - but what are your thoughts?? Has anyone tried to do this? Thanks0