Question about landing pages
-
I currently have a service based website with landing pages for surrounding towns. For example the keywords targeting and url for the town are "service+town+state". I recently noticed that I am not showing up at all for "service+zip" even though I have the zips included in all the landing pages. I was told if I made more landing pages dedicated to zip I would risk killing the rank on other landing pages.
Would it be advisable to make another totally different website that focuses on just the "service+zip" landing pages. The name of the page would be the same the company obviously but the phone numbers and content would be different along with domain url.
Any advice or suggestions are welcome. Thanks.
-
Hi There! Not quite sure I'm following your thought here. What would you be keeping the NAP off of? I understood that your original idea was to build out separate landing pages for zip codes or build a separate website. I'm recommending against either approach. Having 2 authoritative websites (with the same business name) would potentially be confusing to both humans and bots, and building out landing pages on your original site just for zip codes sounds like it might lead to thin or duplicate content, and could even fall under Google's new doorway pages update.
If you want to optimize for zip codes, my best recommendation is to find an way to work this into your existing site and existing city landing pages (as in my Monterey example). I can't think of any other approach I'd be comfortable recommending.
Hope this helps!
-
thanks for the info guys. I decided to just open another business lol. Happy Easter.
-
If you keep the name address and phone number off the radar then you're also retarding the new websites ability to rank in that new area. When it comes to rankings for geo-targeted services the NAP details are a huge piece of the ranking puzzle. Even a very weak website with a legitimate localised address that has been verified has a much better chance of ranking for those 'area service keywords' than a strong website with no locality credentials.
With regards to keeping the business name the same, I'm quite positive that won't work either. If anything, that will cause inconsistency with your main website's NAP listings, and could potentially hurt the rankings of your real website. Starting a new website also puts at least another 60 days of waiting before you're able to achieve strong solid rankings for that area. Within the next 60 days you could build some brilliant links and perform a ton of on-site optimisation to your current site.
Getting those other service area pages to rank from your real website also has the added bonus of increasing the overall authority of your real website. Yes it's tough to rank those new suburb pages, but it'll be even harder to do it from a new website that isn't even real.
-
would it be safe to keep the nap off the radar and different. The only thing that would be the same is literally the name of the business.
-
Hey There!
I am in complete agreement with Richard that building a new website to optimize for zip codes would be overkill - and could actually lead to ranking issues for your business if your complete or partial NAP is appearing on more than one website.For SABs, including zip codes in optimization can be challenging. You want to avoid ever adding big blocks of zip codes to the site, as Google has explicitly stated in their webmaster guidelines that they consider this to be a spammy practice. How naturally you can talk about zip codes may depend somewhat on the business model. For example, if you do landscaping in Monterey, CA., a quick lookup shows me that you could be working in 4 different zip codes. So, let's say you have a landing page on the site for Monterey. You could write project descriptions (with photos, videos, testimonials, etc.) on this page, and the text could include something like, "Here's a zen garden we created in the 93940 zip code area of Monterey." Or, "Here's a butterfly garden we created for the beautiful monarchs that pass through the 93499 zip code area of town every year." If your services are on the creative side, you can be creative in showcasing your work, too, but if you are a plumber, it just may not seem very natural to write, "Here's a sink we unclogged in the 93940 zip code neighborhood." Seems like a bit of a stretch.
-
Hello Spartan22, yes Google seems to be cracking down harder on this as time goes on and making it more and more difficult to rank for suburbs and areas where your business isn't physically located.
I definitely wouldn't build a whole new site unless you can associate that site with a business address that can be validated using Google (+) places and have a completely different phone number on the site, and also brand it differently using a different business name. Building a new site without disguising it as a completely new stand-alone business is exactly what Google don't want you to do.
It's much better just to build landing pages as you're already doing. Just take a closer look at your landing pages on-site Seo elements and make sure they're up to scratch. Make sure your keyword density is quite low and all of the heading tags are relevant to the keyword you're trying to rank for.
Recently I've also found that a site's standalone orphan pages that aren't connected to your main menu can really have a negative effect. It's not always optimal to have a menu item called service areas with all of the areas you service as a drop-down menu. When you cut your service area landing pages off from the rest of the website because they're not linked into the main menu or they don't have any other contextual links pointing the to them throughout the site you'll really notice that those pages will struggle to rank. Each area landing page still needs its own inbound links pointing to it too.
I've been noticing exactly the same thing lately. I have created some of the best pages in that niche for that area and continue to see these service area landing pages floundering around at the bottom of page 1 and even on page 2, despite them being twice as good as any other landing page in the niche, and despite them being on an established website with half decent authority.
The major difference I've noticed is that the sites that have all of the area landing pages incorporated into the menu always perform much better than the sites that only have these landing pages in the site's sitemap. It'd be interesting to know whether I can access your site's area service pages via your main menu? Hope that helps a little.
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
-
Add Content to Page or Create New Page?
We are doing some local SEO for our business which is in 10 cities. We have built a city page with unique content for each city and linked to a unique contact page with contact information unique for each city. The content on our existing page is fairly thin. 2/3 of it is the same amongst all pages as our services are the exact same from city to city so the description ad menu of our services. Then 1/3 of the content is unique to the city which is a stock photo and 1-2 paragraphs of text containing about 175 words. We have another chunk of content for each city which is probably 2-3 paragraphs but each paragraph will be short so probably in total 200 words in 1-3 paragraphs. The subject of the content is related to one of the most popular search queries that are location specific. For example, if we were a company that provided say, environmental remodeling services in city X, this second chunk of content might be about required building permits when doing remodeling in City X and how to get them, how much they cost. If the original content on the pre-existing landing page is already pretty thin, is the SEO effect going to most likely be better to add the content to the existing page or, even though it's less than 200 words, add the content to a separate page and cross link between the main city page and the city contact page.
Local Website Optimization | | SEO18051 -
Page Title Local SEO - 2 places
Hello guys, I am from azores are 9 islands in portugal. I live in São Jorge is one island. My question is. If one person seach by Azores Canyoning or São Jorge Canyoning. Because Azores is one region and São Jorge is one island inside Azores. And i want have this two exact keywords in title page. Canyoning is a service. Azores Canyoning - São Jorge Canyoning | Brand Name what is best way to write this title? Or is not good?
Local Website Optimization | | Flaske0 -
Structuring URLs of profile pages
First of all, I want to thank everyone for the feedback that I received on the first question. My next question has to do with the URL structure of personal trainer profiles pages on www.rightfitpersonaltraining.com. Currently, the structure of each trainer profile page is "www.rightfitpersonaltraining.com/personal-trainers/trainer/" and at the end I manually add the trainer's "city-firstname-lastinitial". Would it be to my benefit to have the developers change the structure so that the trainer profile URLs are "www.rightfitpersonaltraining.com/city-personal-trainers/trainername"? That way, each trainer profile would link directly to the trainer's city page as opposed to the general "personal-trainers" page. I don't mind paying a little extra to go back into the site to make these changes, as I think they would benefit the search ranking for each city page.
Local Website Optimization | | mkornbl20 -
404 error from linking page that does not exist
We migrated our site from php to wordpress about a month ago. All of the old website files have been removed. I ran Moz analytics and get 17 critical 404 errors from linking pages that do not exist. 404 : Received 404 (Not Found) error response for page. http://www.preventivesupport.com/freeestimates.php404010http://preventivesupport.com/freeestimates.phpN/AThe www thing is interesting but freeestimates.php does not exist?
Local Website Optimization | | KrisIrr0 -
Company Knowledge Box Questions
I've been keeping track of changes in my company's Knowledge Box, and it's been responding in completely unpredictable ways. We are currently in the middle of a site redesign -- the current site has not received any SEO attention in a while, apart from two major edits: 1. Adding the social media schema (which Google has not picked up -- we did this close to two months ago). 2. Citation cleanup through Moz Local and BrightLocal What I've noticed about the Knowledge Box is that it would show up for the query "Now Media Group" if and only if the location was set for San Diego, CA, which is where we're based. Now, it will only show up for the query "Now Media Group San Diego." My first question: If the location setting is already set for San Diego, why would Google need the additional qualifier to show the Knowledge Box? Any theories? My second question: Is our local SEO efforts hurting our online presence? We don't provide services locally, except to a handful of clients. We have clients throughout the United States and Canada. It'd be nice if our Knowledge Box showed up regardless of where someone is searching our brand name from. The reason I point at local SEO specifically is because I've noticed that an ex-client of ours has a knowledge box no matter where you search from, and she has no local SEO whatsoever -- the Box shows the address: Douglass, KS. Is our local SEO sending Google mixed signals and affecting when/where the Knowledge Box shows up? Thank you!
Local Website Optimization | | nowmedia10 -
Best way to remove spammy landing pages?
Hey Mozzers, We recently took over a website for a new client of ours and discovered that their previous webmaster had been using a WordPress plugin to generate 5,000+ mostly duplicated local landing pages. The pages are set up more or less as "Best (service) provided in (city)" I checked Google Webmaster Tools and it looks like Google is ignoring most of these spammy pages already (about 30 pages out of nearly 6,000 are indexed), but it's not reporting any manual webspam actions. Should we just delete the landing pages all at once or phase them out a few (hundred) at a time? Even though the landing pages are mostly garbage, I worry that lopping off over 95% of a site's pages in one fell swoop could have other significant consequences. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | BrianAlpert780 -
Perfect Site Structure help please and EMD question
Hello to all, I appreciate your time and trouble greatly, so thank you in advance. Question - 1 - I just watched a video regarding onsite <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">seo</acronym>. This video explained to instead of using a services page to list each service, instead if possible make a page and menu item for the most popular search terms. So my families business site is allspecialtybuildings.com We do construction. I currently have it setup to have a services page then the listings of the services with its own page under the menu. But from watching this video, would you also suggest that it would be best to take maybe the top 3 or 4 services, then list the services as actual page menus? So say instead of this: Service Menu Link -
Local Website Optimization | | Berner
-Pole Barns
-Indoor Riding Arenas
-Garages
-Horse Barns
-Loafing Sheds Would it be best to have each service as a menu in itself like this: Home
Pole Barns
-Pole Barn Construction
-Pole Barn Kits
-Pole Barn Color Charts Indoor Riding Arenas
-Indoor Riding Arena Construction
-Indoor Riding Arena Kits
-Indoor Riding Arena Color Charts Same- Different word
Same- Different Word So basically create specific and relevant pages and remove the popular pages from a service page. Not sure if this make sense, or is basically not needed? Last Question - Branding- I got 2 <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">seo</acronym> companies reviews back, and was told to change my branding and domain. See the issue is that the company name is All Specialty Buildings. So All is basically thrown out of some search results, almost like its a stop word. So "Specialty Buildings" shows up on many results. I would like to counter this. So I am curious if I get a new domain, like say something like ColoradoBarnConstruction.com Would this be a better domain for <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">seo</acronym> rankings and memory for people? Or would I risk an EMD penalty? When I look for dentists, or <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">seo</acronym> help, I get coloradodentist, or coloradoseo(dot)com's So they all rank well, I just want something brandable and easy to remember. I figured the company name would be best, But these companies that want 3500 a month for <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">seo</acronym> services are saying different. Again thank you for your time, your ideas, and your advice. Thank you Chris0 -
Bing ranking a weak local branch office site of our 200-unit franchise higher than the brand page - throughout the USA!?
We have a brand with a major website at ourbrand.com. I'm using stand-ins for the actual brandname. The brand is a unique term, has 200 local offices with sites at ourbrand.com/locations/locationname, and is structured with best practices, and has a well built sitemap.xml. The link profile is diverse and solid. There are very few crawl errors and no warnings in Google Webmaster central. Each location has schema.org markup that has been checked with markup validation tools. No matter what tool you use, and how you look at it t's obvious this is the brand site. DA 51/100, PA 59/100. A rouge franchisee has broken their agreement and made their own site in a city on a different domain name, ourbrandseattle.com. The site is clearly optimized for that city, and has a weak inbound link profile. DA 18/100, PA 21/100. The link profile has low diversity and generally weak. They have no social media activity. They have not linked to ourbrand.com <- my leading theory. **The problem is that this rogue site is OUT RANKING the brand site all over the USA on Bing. **Even where it makes no sense at all. We are using whitespark.ca to check our ranking remotely in other cities and try to remove the effects of local personalization. What should we do? What have I missed?
Local Website Optimization | | scottclark0