Why would a domain rank well in some markets and poorly in others?

[PM_Academy]

We are having an issue with our SERP results. Basically here is what’s happening.

We offer training in 47 cities. Our main sales page is [http://example.com/product/city-name]. Whenever we change our location preferences in Google, and that URL format is the landing page for our main 3 keywords, we rank no worse than 15. Most of those are on the first page. However, if that is not the landing page in the SERPs, we rank poorly. Depending on which keyword is used, one of three URLs will ALWAYS appear instead of the desired city-specific landing page, and we rank somewhere between pages 6 and 9. The other landing pages, depending on which keyword is used, are http://example.com (home page), http://example.com/product (without the city), or http://example.com/product/san-francisco (regardless of how close this is).

Out of the 141 keywords, there have been between 9-25 keywords that have this issue. Having all 3 of these keywords in the top 10 for each city is the number one priority from our CEO. We have noticed if a page starts moving down the ranks, once it goes past 15, the landing page changes.

Anyone have any ideas what could be causing this, or how to fix it? Any insight into this is much appreciated!

[PM_Academy]

Thank you for the response, we will look into that!

[TheeDigital]

Could be that you used the same or mostly similar content on the city pages so Google isn't showing them. It also could be that your main product page is the one where all the links are pointing and none on the city pages, and probably in the menu or even the footer of this product page you have the city name pages linked as well and Google is simply weighting all the factors and determining the stronger page that may only show the city name once is more relevant than the city page which would be better optimized.