Local Seo Service Url Best practices.
-
Hey Guys and Gals,
What's the best format for service urls for local seo?
http://www.example.com/basement-remodeling
or http://www.example.com/basement-remodeling-ashburn-leesburg-sterling-va/
-
Hey Jim,
Linkbuilding isn't really my area. One is always aiming for a natural link profile, but you might want to start a new thread about linkbuilding, and also, check these out:
https://moz.com/blog/link-building-outreach-in-a-skeptical-world-whiteboard-friday
http://niftymarketing.com/list-of-local-link-building-ideas/
Hope it helps!
-
Thanks Miriam for the awesome input, I will work on making these changes asap.
Another question (seems never ending lol).
Do you suggest I build backlinks to rank these pages higher? or should i be building backlinks to my main domain.
-
Hi Jim!
Nice of you to put these out for community feedback. You're off to a good start here, and while I don't have the necessary time to look at all of these, here's what I'm seeing on a couple:
-
Good amount of text
-
Text color is hard to read; it's too light
-
H1 Tag order of keywords might need to be rethought, putting business name at end instead of beginning
-
In the main body text, reconsider all of those 'it's important' statements. It makes it sound like 'I' am suppose to do all of that work before calling your company (inspect my house, look for leaks, etc.). If this is what YOU do, be clearer about that.
-
Some text is a bit over-optimized with basement remodeling and Ashburn terms. Example: How Long Does a Basement Finishing in Ashburn, VA Take? Unless it takes longer in Ashford than some other city to finish a basement, this type of text looks a bit awkward. Review the text for other instances and be sure keywords are being incorporated in natural language.
-
It's good you're getting testimonials, but I would scrap the rotating display. It's confusing that I'm on a page about basements reading a testimonial about blinds. Put basement testimonials on the basement page, bathroom testimonials on the bathroom page, etc.
-
Put a phone number in your call to action at the bottom of the page. Don't make people click unless they want to. Give them the number.
-
Title tag & URL look good
So, you're on a good path with this page. Some minor refinements could make it better!
-
Same comments regarding font color, H1 tag, call to action, testimonials etc. as above.
-
The text needs to be edited for grammar. For example:
Bathrooms need to be a place that makes you feel good, so that every day can be started off the right way.
- The text is not quite as creative as it might be. I feel like the copywriter was having a struggle thinking what to say.
Again, I see a good initial effort here, but with a bit more effort, there could be meaningful improvements.
I know it requires bravery to show work to the public, and the good news is here that you are off to a good start but that there are some SEO, UX and content matters that could be improved. Thanks for the chance to look at these. Hopefully what I've written above will be a starting point to evaluating all of your service pages. Good luck, Jim!
-
-
Hey Jim,
You could go either way with the description. I'm kind of a fan of putting a phone number in the description, myself! I'd rather have that there than the city names.
-
Thanks Miriam! I almost got it now.
Now I have a question regarding my "main services page"
Should I be mentioning areas under title and description on my main services pages (not local landing pages)
Service : Basement finishing
url: http://www.example.com/basement-finishing
title: Basement Finishing & Remodeling | company | Call 555-555-5555!
description: Basement Finishing & Basement Remodeling | Transform Unfinished Basements To Livable Square Footage. Ashburn | Sterling | Loudoun
Or should I leave the areas out of description under main pages and use those specifically for local landing pages.
Thanks Miriam!!
Basement Finishing & Basement Remodeling | Transform Unfinished Basements To Livable Square Footage.
-
Hi Jim,
While it won't hurt you, are you sure it would be useful for your clients in City A to click over to your City B page, or might that just add unnecessary clutter and confusion to the page?
-
Hey Guys
One More quesetions.
After I setup the pages to above format, on my local landing page can i cross link them with other local pages?
for example if im on basement remodeling ashburn page can i put other areas we serve section and cross link them to other landing pages?
-
Thanks Miriam! This makes more sense now!
-
Ah this makes more sense!
Another question if i am going to link off of those pages. could i just make the main url this?
basement-remodeling-va
kitchen-remodeling-va
and have the link silo like you mentioned from the post it self? or even service areas
-
I would have a main page about each service topic and then link off from that.
Bathroom remodeling page
Bathroom remodeling content
We do bathroom remodeling in: blah blah blah, linked page, linked page, linked page.
Or naturally in the content if possible, of course. Or even a list at the bottom:
Our service area includes: town(link), town(link) etc.
This works very well for clients I've had in the past with many suburbs & locations.
-
Hi Jim,
Don't worry, you're not being repetitive
It's very common for service area businesses to serve a variety of close-set cities, and best practice for this is 1 page per city. In fact, doing so could help you to outrank your competitors who are crunching multiple cities onto the same page.
If you offer multiple services in multiple cities, the choice here is whether you want to create:
a) a page for each city and a page for each service
or
b) a page for every possible combination of services and cities
If budget, time or inspiration are limited, option A may be best in which case, you'd have URLs like this for your services
domain.com/bathroom-remodeling
domain.com/kitchen remodeling
and domains like this for your services:
...with the city landing pages needing to feature geo-specific content for projects you've done in those cities.
If you have ample time, inspiration and budget, you can go with option B, in which case, you'd build a set of pages like:
domain.com/bathroom-remodeling-sterling-va
domain.com/bathroom-remodeling-leesburg-va
domain.com/kitchen-remodeling-sterling-va
domain.com/bathroom-remodeling-leesburg-va
etc.
It's really a matter of how much creative writing you commit to so that, with either option A or B, every page you publish is as helpful as possible to customers, is unique, and is of the highest quality you can produce.
This recent Moz Blog post may help: https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages
-
Hey Matt,
Thanks for the response, If i were to silo them. What would I put in my main navigation?
Wouldn't it look funny if my main navigation listed multiple of the same?
basement-remodeling
kitchen-remodeling
basement-remodeling
kitchen-remodeling?
Thanks!
-
If you do more than one type of thing per location, I would silo them:
-
Hi Miriam,
Thanks for the quick response!
The reason I am asking is where my business is located we have other citys near by literally 5-10 miles apart.
I've seen my competitor do a similar thing and they seem to be ranking very well. http://www.example.com/bathroom-remodeling-sterling-leesburg-herndon-reston-ashburn-va/
http://www.example.com/bathroom-remodeling-sterling-leesburg-herndon-reston-ashburn-va/
I guess my main question is can i setup the main services url to include those near by citys and state and create additional pages like
http://www.example.com/bathroom-remodeling-in-ashburn-va/ etc etc
so main services would look like
basement-remodeling-ashburn-sterling-leesburg-va
bathroom-remodeling-ashburn-sterling-leesburg-va
and have lead capture pages like
bathroom-remodeling-in-ashburn
bathroom-remodeling-in-sterling and so on.
Sorry if my questions seem repetitive i am just confused with the whole local seo scene.
-
Hey Jim!
Normally, I would not recommend having more than one city modifier in the URL per page. So:
but not
domain.co/service-city-city-city
Ideally, you want a unique page per city. Hope that helps!
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
-
Local SEO for E-commerce
Hi there I am running an ECommerce site that supplies products globally! We have 2 administrative offices - the UK and Ireland. When setting Google my business, do you suggest setting 2 listings - one for the UK and one for Ireland? Both listings will link to the same E-Commerce homepage but with different phone numbers. Please give me advice=)
Local Listings | | Insightful_Media0 -
Not Showing Up in Local Pack - Possible Possum Filter?
We have a medical practice client who isn't showing up at all on local category searches for their zip code. Wondering whether it's a Possum algorithm filter, and if so, how we can resolve this. The client is named Wall Street Dermatology, and is located in the same building as two other medical practices in the same dermatologist specialty. They share the same address (65 Broadway, New York, NY), but have different unit numbers. My client is Suite 904. To be clear, these are entirely separate businesses that are not affiliated with each other. They happen to be located in the same building. When running local searches (for example, in US zip code 10004) for the category term "dermatologist", my client is not appearing at all. The two other practices are appearing just fine. In fact, one of the competing practices has not only their practice listed, but one of their doctors individually and even one of the physician assistants. My client, Wall Street Dermatology, isn't showing up. IMO, the GMB profile is robust, with more reviews than competitors, and more content overall. While there's SEO work to be done, the citations and link profile exceeds some of the other practices who are showing up in "dermatologist" (use zip code 10004) searches. Google is showing profiles of dermatologists who haven't even claimed their profiles or have websites.One more thing: For a two-week span, the business was showing up in the 3-pack for "dermatologist" after making upgrades to the GMB profile. This was a first. So they've been there before. However, they made some changes to NAP. 1) added the providers name to the business name: "Business Name: Provider Name". 2) Updated "Suite" to "Ste" in order to match USPS. After that change, the business fell off entirely again.Note: We do appear on searches for the business name. And we do appear for some secondary keywords (for example, "Cosmetic Dermatology"), but not for the main keyword. Is this related to Possum (https://moz.com/learn/seo/google-possum)? Is Google confused that my client is related to the other practices in the same building? Any suggestions?
Local Listings | | sponnu01230 -
Should I claim a non-local Google business listing?
If I have a business which is non-local, but has one location and is showing up with the address and directions already in the knowledge panel, should I claim the business? Eg: the company manufactures a single product and ships directly to customers all over the world. On the one hand, of course it seems I should claim it and get more control. On the other hand, part of that process is setting a service area and I worry that by doing so I may be making the company seem less relevant outside the service area in Google's eyes.
Local Listings | | PlusROI0 -
Do You Know What's Triggering Your Local Packs?
Hey To All My Local Pals, Here 🙂 Recently, I watched a totally fascinating LocalU video in which Mike Blumenthal introduced a hypothesis that there may be a way to analyze what, specifically, is triggering a specific local pack. Now, Mike is stating that correlation is not causation in explaining this, but basically what he starts talking about at around 4:40 in the video is that what you are seeing rank well in the local packs may be demonstrably caused by what you see ranking organically beneath the pack, or may be caused by totally different signals. Mike says, _"If you're seeing the top 10 results are all IYP industry sites, and there's a pack showing, and the highest local site is 24 or something in organic, it's unlikely that that's what's triggering the pack. And so then you want to look at third-party triggers and see if that's what's actually triggering the pack." _ Obviously, all of us who do Local are familiar with the idea that a tremendous variety of elements contribute to pack rankings, but I am particularly intrigued by the idea of looking at the organic result beneath a pack and determining that there is little or no correlation between them, and this then driving one to look elsewhere for contributing factors. In a recent response to another thread here on Q&A, I discussed some common local pack ranking failure causes when organic rank is high. What I'd love to see is whether, if you look at some of your clients' desired packs, can you tell if organic signals are driving them, or can you see that it's not organic signals driving the pack, as Mike suggests. What, in those cases, does appear to be driving the packs? I'd be so interested in a discussion on this. What do you see? What do you think of Mike's suggestions?
Local Listings | | MiriamEllis9 -
Local Citation with multiple offices
We have 5 different offices and each has its own google+ page and yell page. At first they were ranking poorly and the wrong offices were coming up for searches in that town so we change the name to :
Local Listings | | EJmoz
BusinessName (Location1)
BusinessName (Location2) Etc. those listing all starting to rank top for searches in Location1 and Location2. We have now been told that it is bad for our overall SEO to have the business name appearing differently in different listings and this led me to look at Moz Local. My question is should I remove the (Location1) from the Google+ business listing so that all our offices have the same name (but obviously different addresses) even though it appears to have a negative impact on rankings? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks0 -
Local search results question
Hello, I wonder if anyone can help. I have a client who is based outside the main city that he is wanting to rank in. The address on his website is his own home which is about 20 miles from the city. However, he services the city and the surrounding area. His ranking for the very competitive keyword is on page 2 and won't budge. We have made his Google+ page show the servicing area to include the city. We add new content regularly. The onsite SEO is strong and the city name is in the Title and H1 tags. We have lots of local consistent citations for him. This usually results in movement in the SERPS in my experience. But after 3 months this keyword is stuck whilst his other less competitive keywords are moving up. He is ranking 1st for the local area to his home address for the competitive keyword. So my question is - is this purely a result of his local address. Does Google rate him less local than his competitors who have addresses in the city even after we do a lot of citation building etc for him? Will it be possible to rank him for the city? I know 3 months isn't long but still would expect to see some difference. Anyone got any thoughts?
Local Listings | | AL123al0 -
Can We Outrank The Google Places Local Listing 7 pack in 2015?
Hello everyone, I would like to know if it's possible and if any of you had success outranking / ranking above the Google Local Listing 7 pack? I am in Canada and every time I search for something like (city+dentist) (toronto dentist) I do not see any organic result above the 7 pack. I searched for like 10 city and every searches the local listing are the first to show up and the organic result under it. So I did not see any organic result outranking the Google Places and I look at like 10 different city if not more. So I would like to know If i can rank above them for organic results with no Google places, with no physical address, local phone number and/or citations even if there is currently no organic result showing up above them ? What do you guys think ? Thank You
Local Listings | | majesticlub1 -
Best Practices For Local SEO For A Nation Wide Property Company?
Hi There, I've recently acquired a client that sells property all over the country (South Africa). It's in their best interests to rank well for localised keywords relating to the areas they have listed properties in. eg. Property for sale in example suburb/town/province. The project has a number of challenges which I'd appreciate any suggestions for The site acts as an aggregator for numerous partner property agents and, as s such, has a lot of duplicate content on it The company only has offices in one city. It handles online bookings which it then passes to its partner agencies - this presents me with a problem of creating listings in the areas I need to rank for I cannot list the actual addresses of properties Your thoughts and advice would be seriously appreciated.
Local Listings | | KJDMedia1