How Do We Satisfy Similar Content Needs For 3 States Without Sounding... Umm... Silly.

[Wayne76]

Hi Gang,

Background: We're a multi-state personal injury law firm with offices in IN, MI, and NM. Michigan and New Mexico used to have their own individual subdomain under 2keller.com, but we recently combined them so that all of our locations were represented in one mega-site.

Problem: Our practice areas include the usual array of plaintiff's law categories, e.g., Car Accidents, Defective Drugs, Motorcycle Accidents, etc. We want to write honest, useful content for each practice area in each state, but it becomes a bit challenging not to duplicate some of these pages. In many instances there are minor differences between the states with regard to things like what we can offer clients, what a client's rights are, how a client is compensated, etc. Even individual state laws are also very similar in most cases.

Question: Any ideas how we can avoid sounding duplicitous? Or does anyone have a suggestion about an effective way we might go about tackling the three states in a manner different from the one we have chosen? Or does it matter?

Any input would be appreciated!

Wayne

[MiriamEllis]

Cool, Wayne. I hope it does help!

[Wayne76]

(Wow... thanks, Miriam. I'm on my way out the door and scanned what appears to be an incredibly thoughtful answer. Look forward to digging into it when I get home! Thank you very much!)

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Wayne,

Great question and appreciate your stated intent to make the website as useful as possible for clients. I recommend you start by reading this post (you are business model III): http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide

Basically, one approach I am recommending in that post is to optimize your core pages for your brand and service keywords and optimize your office landing pages for your geo keywords. Think about a massive brand like McDonald's. Apparently, you can order a big mac at any of their 30,000 restaurants. Their brand is so strong, they don't have to say, 'We offer a big mac in Boise, a big mac in Boston, a big mac in Detroit." They've got this : http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/full_menu_explorer.html for everybody, right? It wouldn't really be useful for customers if McDonald's had a separate menu page for every fast food joint in every city around the world.

Now, of course, you are not McDonald's and your brand doesn't have quite this authority, I'm assuming. Take a look at REI.com. Look at the way they've got all of their products and then, separately, they've got great landing pages for the cities in which they are physically located, with good, unique content on them. Here's a somewhat smaller brand you can take inspiration from.

Additionally, to continue on with your work of providing useful content to the different communities in which you serve, you might consider having a blog that does speak to the differences of laws, even if they are minor, in the various cities/states. But your overall website structure could look like:

• Core pages, optimized for the brand and service keywords

• Landing pages, optimized for the brand and geography

I'm not saying this is the only approach to take, but it strikes me as a simple and sensible one.