Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Local SEO Website Structure.
-
Hi everyone,
This might be quite a long post so please bear with me.
I am currently rebuilding my website. My previous website was built by a web designer and was very basic. 5 page html site consisting of home, services, gallery, testimonials, contact pages. None of them were great - thin content, not optimised as well as could be - no h1's etc.
To be fair I knew nothing about websites and didn't bother much with the site. As a new business I used it simply as a place for people to visit for more information after receiving a leaflet and never bothered much about driving traffic to the site.
A few years down the line and I have realised I need the website to be working for me as opposed to alongside me. I am building it myself via wordpress as web designer didn't want to work in wordpress. I have done my keyword research and I'm working on pages as we speak.
Previously my homepage - around 80% of visitors landed here for my main keyword (driveway cleaning glasgow) as it was number 6 in the organic listing. With my services page appearing directly underneath in 7 for the same keyword.
I have starting building a new page for that keyword which contains (driveway-cleaning-glasgow) in the url. I have 301'd my previous services page to this url.
Now for my questions...
My 2nd keyword based on volume is driveway cleaning. How do I optimise for this or will the (driveway-cleaning-glasgow) page rank for this also as the words are contained within this page?I plan on having the same structure for the remaining services - pressure-washing-glasgow, monoblock-cleaning-glasgow etc, etc. As I am building new pages for each service with location built in, where does this leave my homepage? Should I be targeting keywords for this page? It is still my strongest page and apart from the (driveway-cleaning-glasgow) page which will get some help from the 301 these are all new pages so I would expect perhaps initially to lose some traffic. But as I am not ranking well for anything other than the main 2 keywords mentioned above it can only be beneficial long term when google recognises the specific pages for each service. And when I start using Adwords I will have a specific landing page for each service.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks
-
Hey There!
If you're just offering 1 service in 1 city, I do not see the point of having a 'driveway cleaning' page and a 'driveway cleaning glasgow' page. Rather, I'd make the homepage strong about your customers + city + service and then I'd build out content about various aspects of driveway cleaning that would also mention your geography. I'd fire up something like http://answerthepublic.com/seeds/290501 and start developing additional pages like:Should you use caustic soda for driveway cleaning?
Should driveways be cleaned with chlorine?
The pros and cons of pressure washing driveways.
Research both via online tools and direct interviews with your customers + staff to discovers what common customer questions are and start developing the best content in your city around these topics.
Highlight your trust metrics via testimonials, reviews and guarantees. Show your before-and-after work. Seek out opportunities for community involvement and publicize them.
With just one service in one city, you'll have to take a granular approach to grow beyond being a 5 page website to being the most informative and useful local brand. Hope these ideas get you going.
-
Hey Miriam,
Thanks for your response. As I don't offer lots of services/locations and I'm confident I can produce unique content for these pages so my preference would be for keywords+city.
So as I stated in my original post my 2 main search terms based on volume are:
Driveway Cleaning Glasgow - which will be directed to my /driveway-cleaning-glasgow/ page.
Driveway Cleaning - I'm not sure if this needs a page of it's own or if it will be covered by the above page as it contains the keywords and as I only operate in this city so this is my local location?What do I do with the homepage? Is it a general overview with links to service pages? Reason I ask is I have looked at a competitors website - 1 of only a few decent sites. They have a very general homepage with specific landing pages yet I was surprised to find that 8 keywords ranked (1-3) to their homepage despite having landing pages for these keywords.
Thanks
-
Hey There!
Kudos to you for revisiting how important a well-optimized web presence can be for any local business. You have 2 options here, in terms of site structure:
- Build a unique page for each service you offer, optimized for that service + build a unique page for each city you serve.
or
- Build pages for each possible combo of keywords+city
Unless you have really considerable resources, approach number 1 is typically best. I'd like to point you to 2 resources here on Moz that should be a big help both with structure and landing pages:
Check out the big graphic at the beginning of this post: https://moz.com/blog/local-seo-checklist
Then, check out this article on landing pages: https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages
Hope these will get you going with your strategy!
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
-
What Service Page Strategy Should We Use to Target City-Specific Local Intent Service Keywords?
Hey guys! We are targeting a number of cities in the Nassau and Suffolk County areas for foundation repair, insulation, and mold remediation keywords, and we were debating on creating city-specific pages for each location and service, or creating one service page for each type of service that contains all of the services and solutions within that service category for each city. Example: City-Specific Pages for Each Service: One page for say foundation repair, one page for foundation crack repair, one page for foundation problems, etc. (for each target city) Service Category Pages for Each City: One page for foundation contractors that lists all services on one page in sections. Which one do you think is better for local SEO and rankings? Both seem to have their advantages and disadvantages to me. Just to throw a couple out there, the category pages may not rank as high as the city pages for each individual service if our competitors have a whole page designed for that service and we only have a part of a page covering the topic. At the same time, they would save labor hours, technical issues would be less, and they would be condensed, and we would have WAY less mess on the backend. I appreciate your expert opinion on this one. The site is www. zavzaseal.com in case you want to check us out.
Local SEO | | everysecond0 -
How to speed a website which government demands a popup of age restriction to display
Hi team, Im running a website, which is related to Online Vape shop and I have some confusion regarding the core web vital algorithm. However, the Government of the USA is very strict for this kind of topic and we should have to display the age restriction popup for those new users who enter the website: https://ashvapesmoke.com/ Can anyone tell me how to speed up the website, as if the website has this kind of popup mandatory guidelines from the government. Google is launching a new core update related to speed in the may 2021 right? So if we add this kind of banner popup and all In the website, how we can get away from the issues. Please clarify to me, anyone, ASAP.
Local SEO | | hopseq0 -
Most useful things to do without developer resources on SEO
Hi fellow Moz users! I am managing SEO at our company. Perhaps some of you out there also have the problem of wanting to make SEO changes on your website but lack the developer resources to make significant changes? What are some of the things I can do in my power (can't do any backend work) to make SEO better? Currently, I have: Social media (including Moz local tips of business listings) Blog site Refining pictures Google analytics to see where we can improve Internal and external links Please feel free to expand on the above but ideally it will be new things that I could get on with! Many thanks,
Local SEO | | Eric_S
Eric3 -
Spaces between Letters and Numbers SEO question
This is a fun one - Example: Mercedes Benz is pushing to have all of there vehicle models to coincide with the world branding such as the "C300" is supposed to be "C 300" and the "E300" is supposed to be "E 300"... I have a few issues here as when I use Voice Search for "Mercedes Benz C 300" there is no way (that I know of) to add a space between the number and letter. In addition, when searching for the "C 300 for sale" Google corrects the text with "Did you mean: C300 for sale". I am seeking a way to accommodate both versions of the models WITHOUT adding the both C300 and C 300...etc. to the text on web pages. OR will Google eventually change the model names over time as Mercedes-Benz regulates the new U.S. naming convention. Tough question - any thoughts? Thank you for your help -
Local SEO | | MBS-MBA0 -
Should I Split Into Two Websites?
I'm creating a website for a new company that offers several related services. They want to have a main corporate website that has pages for all their services. However, they want to have a second website that only features a subset of those services. So they would have the same company name, same website template, but the smaller site would have a different domain name, different text/photos on the home page and be missing some pages from the main corporate site so that site would make them look more specialized. They would have separate marketing materials (brochures, business cards) that would have the website address and email address using the different domain name. They also want the smaller second site to come up on search results related to the services for that site and not the main site. Can this be pulled off without having a significant negative effect on ranking potential for either of the two site and also not risk a duplicate content penalty? It would seem you would have to add a robots.txt file that excludes indexing of the pages on the main site that are duplicating on the smaller site. However there is a potential big issue. The company is a local business. Nowadays the local results (Map + 3-pack) are as important if not more important, than the traditional organic results below the 3-pack (although I acknowledge they are related). For their Google Business Places, since they have two websites for the same company, they can only list one of the website. So if they list the corporate site, their not going to get in the local 3-pack for their specialized site for search terms. They may be able to live with this though since the main site will show ALL services. Comments? Ideas? Issues? Strategies?
Local SEO | | DJ10270 -
How to find best local websites?
For example, I'd like to type in a zipcode and get the highest ranking websites by DA/whatever metric the software uses, within a 25 mile radius? Does that type of service exist? I'm looking to build up our local links, but most of the websites have extremely low authority. I'm trying to find some good ones without having to manually check each one. Thanks, Ruben
Local SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
Two websites, same business name, same NAP
Hi, A client of mine offers loft conversions and wants to make a go of it. So he has a website dedicated to loft conversions. He is also a joiner/carpenter and has another old website which offers general joinery work and insurance work. Both websites have the same business name and same address and phone number. There is only one Google place page for the loft conversions website. The loft conversions website is not ranking as well as we would like locally. Could it be due to the same NAP? What are the best options? Redirect the old website to the loft conversions one (he might not like that idea) Change the address and phone number on one website?(and all subsequent citations?) Would love some help on this!
Local SEO | | AL123al0
