Optimizing Product Catalogs for Multiple Brick & Mortar Locations

[cballinger]

We're working on a project for a retail client who has multiple (5+) brick and mortar store locations in a given geographical area. They're regional, so they have locations in multiple states. We're optimizing their content (coupons, events, products, etc) across their site, but we're running into the issue of ranking well for specific products in one location, but not as well (or not at all) in others. The keywords we would like to rank for generally aren't super competitive, we're dealing with commodity products in local retail markets, so in most cases, good on page optimization is enough to rank in the top couple results.

Our current situation: (specific examples are fictitious but representative)

Title: My Company | Dogwood Trees - Fredericksburg, VA, Rocky Mt, NC, Rock Hill, SC…
Url: http://mycompany.com/catalog/product/dogwood-trees

The content on the page is generally well optimized.

We've claimed all the locations in Google places and we've deployed schema.org markup for each location that carries the item on the product page. We have specific location pages that rank well for Company name or Company Name Location, but the actual goal is to have the product page come up in each location.

In the example above, we would rank #1 for "Dogwood Trees Fredericksburg VA" or just "Dogwood Trees" if the searcher is in or around Fredericksburg, on the first page for "Dogwood Trees Rocky Mt, NC", but not at all for any other locations. As these aren't heavily linked to pages, this indicates the title tag + on page content is probably our primary ranking factor, so as Google cuts the keyword relevance at the tail of the title tag, the location keywords stop helping us.

What is the proper way to do this? A proposed solution we're discussing is subfolder-ing all the locations for specific location related content.

For Example:

My Company | Dog wood Trees - Fredericksburg, VA, Rocky Mt, NC, Rock Hill, SC…http://mycompany.com/catalog/product/dogwood-trees

Becomes:

My Company | Dogwood Trees - Fredericksburg, VA
http://mycompany.com/fredericksburg-va/product/dogwood-trees

My Company | Dogwood Trees - Rocky Mt, NC
http://mycompany.com/rocky-mt-nc/product/dogwood-trees

My Company | Dogwood Trees - Rock Hill, SC
http://mycompany.com/rock-hill-sc/product/dogwood-trees

Of course, this is the definition of duplicate content, which concerns me, is there a "Google approved" way to actually do this? It's the same exact tree being sold from the same company in multiple locations. Google is essentially allowing us to rank well for whichever location we put first in the title tag, but not the others.

Logically, it makes complete sense that a consumer in Rock Hill, SC should have the same opportunity to find the product as one in Fredericksburg, VA. In these markets, the client is probably one of maybe three possible merchants for this product within 20 miles. As I said, it's not highly competitive, they just need to show up.

Any thoughts or best practices on this would be much appreciated!

[Malika1]

Hi Thomas,

Before I ask in the community to everybody, I thought I would ask you since you know great deal of technical stuff. You helped me with Screaming Frog couple of months away.

Sorry OP for putting my question here.

Thomas, is it possible/good to have CDNs for different cities within the country to improve speed of loading? I just used GA to find out if there is difference in loading speed in different cities in New Zealand for a website and it seems like some of the cities have massively high page loading time than the other cities.

I do understand that some cities dont have super fast connections. I would like to know can I have CDNs for different locations within a country? Or am I thinking way too much stupid?

Looking forward to your response.

Thanks

Malika

[BlueprintMarketing]

Happy Labor Day weekend everyone.

I wish you a speedy recovery Robert Godspeed.

Keri, thank you for your kind words.

Was that the Bismarck that was sunk in the video? I  have a business that sells plastic to Blohm & Voss that they use when manufacturing new ships.  I love remote control cars the ships look awesome.

17 years ago now I just turned 36 on August 24 I served in the German military as part of compulsory service or Wehrpflicht I did this for nine months although I live in the United States most of the time now I was born in Germany and still hold my citizenship. I never was deployed In an engagement. However I have the utmost respect for people who have served their country.

Creg,

I agree with what everyone has stated. It is fantastic advice.

To everyone.

I really enjoy search engine optimization as well and truly enjoy answering questions.

All the best,

Thomas

[RobertFisher]

Thanks to you both. If anyone has any Unicorn dust or batwing hair, I could use it.

Still smiling cause I just love what we do.

Best

[MiriamEllis]

I just want to second Keri here in saying that this thread is AWESOME! I want to thank each of you for taking the time to contribute such carefully considered ideas. Just terrific.

And Robert, best wishes for a speedy recovery! Sending good thoughts your way.

[KeriMorgret]

You might want to check out my profile links.   My husband was just down in Houston in July for a national battle, but I don't see any more battles planned down that way for the rest of the year.

[RobertFisher]

84 Thumbs UP!!!!! Override the system Rand. This is true Rock and Roll...over.

Made my week. I have to have 5 of these. Really, really, really.

Oh, I am in trouble now with a new Hobby. Robert, Marine and now, Naval Captain!

[KeriMorgret]

Here's some manly maritime footage that might help with the allergies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iVaVqBjiqM

[EGOL]

lol...

Robert,  I am sure that you will be back to kicking ass by the end of this week.

Carry on!

[RobertFisher]

Keri,
I would appreciate it if while I am taking certain medications you refrain from emotional statements. People in this place know me as a former Marine and I am having to explain the difference between misty eyes due to allergies and that other thing that occurs to those less uh, you know, uhh strong manly Marine types.

Best to you and anyone whomever called themselves a Mozzer.

[cballinger]

Thanks Robert. I think you really hit the nail on the head here. Your statement: "To a certain degree you are asking about eCommerce as if this were eCommerce while also asking about localization which is antithetical to eCommerce as it is viewed today." both describes my dilemma and my confusion. To your concern, we're squarely in the "local interest moving online" and not the "online interest appearing local" camp, we're also not specifically in the auto parts market.

Regarding your points:

• This point, I believe, really answers my question
• We will certainly attempt to localize each location + product page as much as possible. While it wouldn't be reasonable for us to be able to put a tailored blog article (or something similar) on 1000 products x 5 locations = 5,000 product + location pages, we could wrap the product with other store location level information like coupons, events, job opportunities, etc.
• I'm not really stuck on anything, it's likely we'll try variants of the title tag format you recommended, but I have suspicions that having the brand/company at the beginning of the title may be helpful for us. These are small local shops, some of which may been around for decades, while certainly not Nike, the local shoppers we're after know and trust the name. Imagine a search for "AEM Cold Air Intake" may result in "Bob's Auto Parts | AEM Cold Air intake - My Town, NC" which may result in "Oh, I didn't know Bob's carries AEM cold air intakes, I'll just drive down there and pick it up instead of ordering it online and having it shipped".
• The queries we're after aren't specifically company related, they're product ("AEM cold air intake") or manufacturer ("AEM My Town, NC").
• We're not currently using review schema, I'll certainly take a look at that.

Thanks again your thoughts and insight on this. This isn't a strategy I've found much information on (and I've done quite a bit of looking) so your recommendations are really valuable and appreciated. I wish you a speedy recovery!

[KeriMorgret]

To everyone who contributed to this thread, thank you! I'm humbled to see that there have been 12 responses in 12 hours to this question, on a Saturday, and on a (US) holiday weekend.

Thank you all for your answers, your time, your encouragement towards each other and towards all of the people in our community. I'm awed by all of you tonight.

[RobertFisher]

Craig,

Listen to what EGOL says, especially this line: "There will also be a few types of products/services that I like to sell/provide.  So I would identify the targets on the basis of profit volume, success rate and services that make us whistle while we work.  I would attack these with  vigor."

When we interview our potential clients we go about his point this way: What do you sell, provide, etc. and, typically we get the laundry list. We then ask this: Every business sells a lot of things and over time they learn that they can sell a thousand widgets and it takes a ton of work and they only make $20. But, they can sell 20 hungtuns and it takes just an hour each and they make $1,000 per. We need to know which of these products are the hungtuns, the ones you really, really, want to sell.

Every business has just a few of these typically. I would rock these pages just like he says.

Best, great job as always EGOL.

Robert (Now I am really rolling out!)

[RobertFisher]

Sorry Craig, 
I got pulled away literally. Knee surgery so I am at the mercy of others right now. (Humbling).

As to this particular set of issues here, let's discuss some things that may provide additional clarity for you:

To a certain degree you are asking about eCommerce as if this were eCommerce while also asking about localization which is antithetical to eCommerce as it is viewed today. (I will refrain from an example by name, but say think of many large computer or electronics retailers who have an online site and locations.) (Also, I have no desire to venture toward the conversation around various apparel colors please, but I do have a few opinions I will give here.)

There is nothing good or bad in what you are doing inherently. Using auto parts, you could be the local Bob's Auto Parts who grew and is now also facing the Internet and trying to come up with options. You could be a huge National Auto Parts Chain that lazily was pushed into the 21st century and realizing they own real estate all over must also deal with this "internet thing." There is nothing wrong in either. If you are an online concern who is trying to appear local by having a few pseudo local operations, I don't like it because you may be messing with a client of mine or two (So, yes, I have skin in the game) but there is still nothing inherently wrong with the attempt IMO.

The mixing of the two is causing you a problem but I do not think it is as big as you think.

What I do think is you may think you are not ranking for reason A, but actually it is reason something else. But, that is a real issue for you. So, let's try and approach it less globally and more specifically:

• From the eCommerce side you would not want to have duplicate product pages - but you are only in 5 markets. (Interpretation - I do not believe google will in any way penalize you for the product - broccoli seeds - being identical on all 5 city sub pages. (I would not use someone elses product page 5 times though.) Oh, proof is needed of my opinion... GWMT duplicate content issue per Webmaster Blog. 
• That said, the issue is ranking in individual cities for these products - (But you throw in a curve if at any time you are saying that some cities won't have the item all the time). So back to broccoli, if Rocky Mt. is not going to have broccoli seeds, I do not think you get a broccoli seed page there. But, assuming they all have Broccoli seeds and you use the same product verbiage identically, no problem. You are going to have different city verbiage though - **Is that correct? **If not, and you are just using the city in Places and Title Tags, you have a different problem in that you are not optimizing locally IMO. Your Rocky Mt. Page must differ from Fredericksburg from Charleston, etc. "That's a fact Jack."
• Next, you seem stuck on Business name first and you state: _"We see a substantial amount of their traffic coming in from direct company name queries, company name + location name,..." _So you are seeing a query for the company name and location or you are seeing a query for Company name + Location + Item or Company name + Item + location? Not Direct traffic - Queries from WMT?
• I think one problem is possibly not attaching enough value to the Title tag and URL structure. I would be surprised to see queries as you state (not that I am saying you do not, it would simply surprise me as that is not something I have seen before - and I have yet to see it all.) I cannot say enough that IMO its Product, location, Brand.
• Next, you are using place schema and that is great. Are you using review schema? Think about it and yes you can use both (Yes, we do.). Frankly I would use authorship as well, but you cannot have both authorship and review schema show in a serp. (That is why I suggest reviews) and most CMS (more common) have review plugins that work fairly well.

So, that is the approach I would take. Where you can locally, I would insure I had my own local pictures and they contain the appropriate Exif data, etc. In other words, I would nail my local optimization at every turn. I think then you will be fine with the products in those markets.

But, hey, it's just an opinion.

I would love to know how you handle and how it works out. After you are down the road PM me please. All the best, I'm gonna wheel on outta here.......

[EGOL]

If this business is like many a small number of products/services account for the majority of **profits **(I intentionally did not say "sales").  There will also be a few types of products/services that I like to sell/provide.  So I would identify the targets on the basis of profit volume, success rate and services that make us whistle while we work.  I would attack these with  vigor.

I would have a blog that featured projects that we have successfully completed.  (Projects because this isn't an ecommerce website.  It is a portfolio website... and you make an awful lot more from a project than you do selling a couple plants.)   My site in the SERPs would look like this...

• **Dogwoods and Daffodils in Rocky Mount **
• AppalachianLandscapes.com
• Landscaping with pink dogwood trees and yellow daffodils on Elm Street.   Design sketch, planting photos, two year photo.

I would hammer the SERPs with dozens of real project pages that each have a design sketch with a splash of watercolor, plant photos and details, installation photos and photos of the finished project two years out.

These pages would showcase the plants.  Give tips on how to plant them.   Show how our staff prepares design sketches for clients.  Shows our staff doing site work.  And show finished projects that we have done.   These will show products, services and expertise.

• Sod and Landscape Project - Fredericksburg Hospital
• AppalachianLandscapes.com
• Design sketches, site preparation details and photos of a successful commercial landscaping project.

Strut your stuff for jobs that range from interior planters at a physicians office to your contract with large institutions.

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi Craig
I'm talking about using a parameter for your location. But International search is this ever been excepted as okay Or non duplicate content by Google.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en#1

like using Example.com/DE/Example
Or
de.Example.com

I would say schema is going to be your most powerful weapon.
It's going to allow you to target all search engines including Google the really only important one and actually give you the ability to show the phone numbers and addresses in a more powerful format that Google will pick up on and should rank you locally.
I would also play around with PPC Would be my last resort I'm hundred percent inbound marketing but it might be a situation where you can find out how effective it is worth PPC is worth it at all.

It seems to me that the site should be able to show up in the local results as a universal. Would you mind private messaging me the URL?

If video is out of the question. Which I can completely understand where you're coming from with that. That's awesome that you got to send Phil at Mozacon those are always fantastic

You can use Maybe a blog split into three categories where you would have each store have unique events occur in the blog so new content dedicated to that each location.

That way you can put the phone numbers and addresses on the stores a lot of results. Inside the schema you also may want to register with things like the Better Business Bureau in three different locations. You could also set up the homepage is a decision essentially as to which one the user wants information about. For instance people must want hours, location for directions along with phone numbers and The user might appreciate the ability to call and find out if something is in stock or if you're posting if something is in stock.

If I may ask and I know this sounds strange but why is it that you feel your main location gets the higher amount of traffic? Was that because the first brick-and-mortar was around before the website was made Or where there always the three locations?

My phone battery is dying to mind if I get back to you in about 30 minutes I am finishing dinner and using my cell phone for this so I apologize if there are any errors.
Sincerely, Thomas

[cballinger]

Thanks Thomas. The myseolabs.org tool looks very handy. I saw Phil Nottingham's presentation at MozCon last month, it was definitely eye-opening (and very enjoyable). In this case though, I really need something scalable, producing videos at this scale would be very difficult.

You mentioned "Google is okay with people using the technique you describe in your first question".

Are you referring to this:

My Company | Dogwood Trees - Fredericksburg, VA
http://mycompany.com/fredericksburg-va/product/dogwood-trees

My Company | Dogwood Trees - Rocky Mt, NC
http://mycompany.com/rocky-mt-nc/product/dogwood-trees

My Company | Dogwood Trees - Rock Hill, SC
http://mycompany.com/rock-hill-sc/product/dogwood-trees

If that is true (Can someone else confirm?) I'm good. My concern was that isn't the case.

Those pages would all display the same product (name, photo, description) but the rest of the content on the page would be unique to the location. Is that ok?

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi Craig,

I believe that what you're trying to accomplish is what's best for the end user and Google is okay with people using the technique you describe in your first question for international ranking with identical content. However I think I have a method that will get you where you want to be.

I know that bing in Yahoo account for probably very little of your search results less than 2% maybe however it never hurts to set up the site appease them as well. I did it on my own website and you can see the results of the generated tags it suggested in the link below.

http://www.myseolabs.org/?action=view_local_essentials&local_essentials_id=3083254&public=1

However why not use video schema is by far the most powerful tool for this and if you use it correctly and you incorporate video something that ranks for competitive keywords much more easily than a regular webpage without it I would bet you will being a much better place utilizing a tool called wistia for videos and Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!

you can then keep track of your progress in a granular fashion using it to figure out exactly what your rank is down to the ZIP code

https://serps.com/pages/google-plus-local-rank-tracking

http://wistia.com/

Exactly why YouTube will not be the best answer for a business

http://wistia.com/learning/advanced-seo-with-distilled

Go to Schema Creator Org this website to create your own schema you can install a WordPress plug-in as well or make the tags via this URL which (I have set the organization already.)

http://schema-creator.org/organization.php

than under organizations look for these drop-down and you will see local business

I would take a page and create a video for each one of the brick-and-mortar locations you can feature the products from the manufacturers you want to rank for via the videos and I believe that will allow you to rank organically very high in the cities of your choice once you of course are set up as I believe you are properly with Google places in every location where you have a brick-and-mortar as the rules are essentially you have to do face-to-face business there you can have it in more than one place of course.

For more guys on this I would like to see and I would e-mail Phil Nottingham from distilled.net he is probably the most Well respected authority on video search I believe he could shed quite a bit of light on this and it would be worth asking him what he would do if you were in your situation. He hopefully will chime in.

Sincerely,

Thomas

advanced-seo-with-distilled

[cballinger]

Thank you all for your thought out and insightful answers. Miriam to answer your question, we do work with clients in the nursery space, though this specific case is actually an attempt to determine a best practice scenario across industries. Robert's example of the auto parts industry would be just as valid in our case. As we deal primarily with small to medium sized brick and mortar businesses, many with multiple locations, this is a growing concern for us.

We see a substantial amount of their traffic coming in from direct company name queries, company name + location name, but we also see a worthwhile amount in manufacturers they carry + location name and product name + location name. In many of these cases, if the searcher is nearby one of the claimed Google Places and that's one of the location names near the beginning of the title tag, the result will appear without any location modifier. (ie "Dogwood trees" would trigger the same or a similar result set as "Dogwood trees Fredericksburg VA" [commercial intent?])

The company name and company location results are fine, they kind of take care of themselves. I will look through getlisted.org for any additional optimizations we can do (Thanks Thomas). The growth we want to achieve is in ranking the manufacturer and product name queries. As I said, we see good results for the product on the first location in the title, but not the others.

I'm fairly familiar with the rel="canonical" tag, and at Robert's suggestion, I read the WMT article and watched the video, but I don't think that's a solution for us. I understand how that would prevent a duplicate content issue, but the result of that would potentially be a single URL in Google's index. I believe that would bring us to the issue we have now, the product ranks great for one location, but not for others.

In response to Robert's schema markup question, we're using the place schema markup on the product page listing which locations have the product on site. We're not having any trouble ranking for the business locations, just the product in the location.

The technical implementation is inconsequential to us. I'm a developer, and this site is powered by a CMS that I have full control over. If I need to generate 2500 pages to indicate each location has each individual product, I can do that. If I need to create a domain name for each individual location and have the catalog on each one, I can do that as well. I feel like we're kind of in a battle between "what's best for the user" (easily finding the product locally) and how Google is allowing us to provide that information to them.

Our analytics show that ranking product names in local markets is valuable to the retailer and worth whatever technical effort we need to put in to it, I think we have a use case, I'm just not sure how to communicate that to Google without triggering a penalty or seeming spammy.

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi Craig,

There our two more of the thing's that just came to mind. Obviously make sure that Google Webmaster tools has been told to use the country in this case the United States are targeting.

In addition to that I would strongly recommend using a content delivery network.

You want your users to have the same fast experience regardless of their location. Using a quality CDN like edge cast, Akamai, Level3 & net DNA are fantastic

you can get good prices and multiple CDN's using pressCDN

or even inexpensive CDN's like MaxCDN or rack space cloud files and cloud front will give you an edge when hosting one domain and looking to rank well in multiple states.

If you're looking for a method that will possibly help if you don't want to pay anything cloud flare is a decent product but make sure you check the speed before and after.

I would also implement anycast DNS this is crucial with a content delivery network. I personally feel DynECT is the best available however if it is more than you wish to pay I would use DNS made easy.

I would also use http://www.webpagetest.org/  to be certain the site is as fast as you want it to be under 2 seconds at least in the states you are targeting The Eastern Seaboard. If you click on bar that has Virginia as the default you can select many states and countries. However I feel this is very important as pops or points of presence are different for every CDN however by adding any of the CDN's you will most likely pick up a great deal of speed. I would also recommend a quality hosting company.

I hope this helps,

Thomas

[BlueprintMarketing]

I want to say that both Robert and Miriam have given outstanding answers. I really don't have much to add but one small thing I think you should be using https://getlisted.org/

I completely agree with

Robert the value of title tags, removal of essentially add-on categories like  rel=canonical /product/ & schema markup as Robert stated is a huge asset that should be taken advantage of.

The only thing I can think of that would possibly help you more is using the getlisted.org part of Moz it is an extremely valuable resource for local listing and I would also make sure that your site is properly cited in all quality local directories such as the Yellow Pages.

Matching that with a locally optimized unique landing page as Miriam stated will help a lot as long as it also contains the local phone number and address properly implemented using schema will make a big difference if you successfully get your site listed in all the high-quality directories "e.g. super pages"

then the landing page will come up in the search engines. Make sure you put your site through this tool.

https://getlisted.org/

I hope I have been of help,

Thomas

[RobertFisher]

OK Miriam, this is funny.

I go through this whole thing in my head as I sit here confined on a Saturday. I keep wondering why each product would be optimized, but rationalize it this way: He could have 5 auto parts stores and many of those parts will be localized by searchers. But, still how far do you go? I think that for some business owners they really will put the effort in to rank each and every one.

Now, for the plants I can see certain gardeners looking for a specific plant, but most are looking for location. I am a gardener; I would not search for Basham Crepe Myrtle Houston. I would go to the nearest nursery first.

So, it will be interesting to see how they lay this out.

Best to you,

[RobertFisher]

Craig,

Your issue is not uncommon but I would first suggest you reconsider your Title Tag structure and go with either product | location | brand (best IMO) or location | product | brand (OK IMO). Typically the keyword closest to the front of the Title Tag is attributed as receiving the most weight. If you want to optimize for searches on the company name, I would put it first. The cautionary here is that you really need to have a lot of searches on your company name if that is what you are doing. (In other words, companies like Nike, etc. should have brand first.)

The URL structure you have using sub folders is how I would go, but if you can take /product/ out as a sub directory that would be even better. This will typically depend on items such as your menu structure, CMS, etc. and is not hyper-critical.

Your concern re duplicate content is astute and there is a fix that is easy to implement. What you want to do is use a rel=canonical for the actual product you want to display. Google provides easy to do instructions in WMT/Canonicalization. You already have the url structure correct and for each you will choose which is the canonical for that product so you end up actually having the urls as you have here, and they all point to the canonical. With rel=canonical you are telling google, no matter what is here in the url, this is the page.

You stated that your problem as in some areas you can rank well for a given product/service and in another not rank as well. You also state you implemented Schema markup for each location that carries the item on product page. So what markup Type are you using: Place, Event, Product, Review...? If you are using product markup where you are having trouble ranking locally, and you are not using Place markup for a local business, you are missing an opportunity to help yourself.

If you have a B&M location you can obviously utilize that markup. You stated you have claimed the listings in Google Places for each location, is each location showing in maps? is each location showing in a seven pack (or whatever # pack is showing)? Make sure that you have correctly optimized each locally. Make sure you have not thrown in superfluous categories or geotarget KW's. You can make mistakes here that will work against your product pages showing. 
The moral of the story is the SEO moral: It is not playing a flute well, it is making sure all in the orchestra are playing well and at the same time and to the same tune. (OK, I just made that one up, gotta go copyright it!)

Hope that helps you out. This is a good question and I hope to see others respond as well.

Best

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Craig,

I agree that duplicate content is a concern here. Let's say your client is a plant nursery with 5 locations. Typically, what I would do would be to create 5 branch landing pages (one for each of the nurseries) and these would be locally optimized, but my inventory pages would not be assigned to a specific location. If my plant nursery client has the same 500 tree varieties in the 5 locations, I do not find it reasonable that I would turn the nursery into a 2500+ page website. This is way beyond the scope of any local business site I've ever created and I can't imagine any way a local business could reasonably create that much unique content for the same 500 trees. Nor can I envision that this would be necessary, if as you say, the scenario isn't terribly competitive.

I'm curious as to whether your client is actually a plant nursery owner. I ask, because I live in a pretty garden-oriented state - California - and even in bigger cities, there are only going to be a modest number of plant nurseries. I would be surprised if people are doing a ton of actual searching for 'orange trees san jose', 'liriodendron trees san jose', 'birch trees san jose'. I would assume they would be searching more for things like 'tree nursery san jose', 'plant nursery san jose' and that if I ranked highly enough for these things, I would convert at a high level.

Now, that being said, should there be special things the client would like to highlight, perhaps on a seasonal level, like 'bare root fruit trees now on sale' or 'special on trees for shade gardens' that apply across all branches of the franchise, a blog might be a good solution for this, bringing extra attention to certain inventory items.

My thinking is that, if your client was a virtual e-commerce company, then yes, getting high rankings for every single item in the inventory would be essential, but the optimization would not be associated with geography in any way. Thus, you would have a single page for each product - optimized only for the product name. But, once you bring geography into this, the concept of optimizing each product for each city just puts the project beyond what will be typical (or, I would say, necessary) for a local business website. Take a look at how major franchises are doing this. I don't think McDonalds' has created a page for 'Big Mac+ City Name' for every city in which they have a restaurant, right?

Does this make sense, Craig, or am I missing your point?