I've seen and heard alot about city-specific landing pages for businesses with multiple locations, but what about city-specific landing pages for cities nearby that you aren't actually located in? Is it ok to create landing pages for nearby cities?

[RickyShockley]

I asked here https://www.google.com/moderator/#7/e=adbf4 but figured out ask the Moz Community also! Is it actually best practice to create landing pages for nearby cities if you don't have an actual address there? Even if your target customers are there? For example, If I am in Miami, but have a lot of customers who come from nearby cities like Fort Lauderdale is it okay to create those LP's?

I've heard this described as best practice, but I'm beginning to question whether Google sees it that way.

[AlanMosley]

Yes you can, but how well multiple locations works, I don't know.

Its hard to get your homepage to rank in one location, let alone landing pages ranking in every location. Worth the try, but hard to do.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Ricky,

Google's rule of thumb has always been 'what's good for the user is what's good for Google'. They try to abide by this, and while they don't always get it right, this has been their modus operandi for many years.

I can see why the advice you've read about city landing page development is giving you pause. I think your confusion may be founded on the fact that this is typically considered a best practice for SABs (service area business like plumbers, chimney sweeps, etc.). In these cases, building a unique page for each city the business travels to for service is, indeed, a best practice. Google has no problem with it.

By contrast, what you are describing is a brick-and-mortar business that stays put while customers travel to it from various locations. This is a completely different situation. The questions I'd be asking myself is,

"Does it serve a genuine purpose (other than meeting SEO goals) to write about customers coming from different locations to mine?"

Chances are, it doesn't. Stating that "Bob comes from Fort Lauderdale to shop here' doesn't really help anybody, right?

So, ruling this out, what can you do in this scenario to help users and to meet SEO goals at the same time? For B&M businesses, this is a really tough question. One thing to consider is whether the business has any legitimate involvement in surrounding cities. For example, a doctor might have hospital affiliations within another city, or a sporting goods store might sponsor little league events in another town. These are things the business can write/brag about to show their connection to neighboring cities.

Will taking this approach enable the business to rank well locally in these other cities? Almost certainly not. Can it gain you some organic visibility in these other cities? Possibly. Whether the investment of time and effort in such content development is going to yield worthwhile returns is a question only the individual business can answer.

I think you've asked a very smart question here and I hope my thoughts on the subject are helpful!