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
-
How Do You Think My Local SEO Multi-location Geotargeting Strategy Will Work?
I have a question. I just got a full-time job at Zavza Seal, an upstanding insulation contractor targeting neighborhoods of Suffolk and Nassau counties in New York. I was hired as an SEO content specialist. (Thanks Rand! You're one of my mentors~!) So, they handed me a spreadsheet of pages for city-specific terms, and they had a system in place for local rankings. But I was taught to do service-specific city pages a certain way. If the search term is for people looking for a service in that town, that's what you give them. However, I was told to proofread them, and as an SEO specialist, I couldn't keep my hands off of them. The pages were skimpy. (Example: h2, paragraph, bullets, short paragraph summary, short paragraph about the city.) What threw me off is that the content, while it was service specific, it was blog topics localized. Those are great (when long enough and optimized to compete in SERPs) but I've never seen them done on service pages. (Example: Why is Mold Remediation Necessary in Baldwin?. Now, this went in two directions in my mind. (and I wanted to do the best for the company, because I'm a wicked brat for teams, AND I get commissions on leads, so that was motivation, too.) 🐷 Anyway, 1. This could be a new approach and worthy of an SEO study on my startup site, where I take on part time clients after work, because I've never seen it done before and it could, if optimized for the target service and city rank high in SERPs AND build thought leadership and authority as a local expert. (Whereas city service pages in standard format would just promote your service. ..) What do you guys think? I just put the topic up for discussion for my team, asked them about it in detail and asked if they wanted to A'/B test a few to see what get's better traction organically. Mr. Fishkin was one of my mentors. I really wish I just had his number for this one LOL.
Local SEO | | ThisTimeWereOn0 -
Unsolved GMB Local SEO question
I am trying to diagnose how one particular competitor is smoking us in local rankings. I came across a text field “Service Details' within Google My Business Services. This allows me to put in a brief description of each service we offer. My thought is that this could be a good place for keywords. That said, the descriptions are not public facing (or to the best of my knowledge) so I am reluctant to do all the work for nothing. I am wondering if anyone has filled these out and if there were any noticeable results. Any insight is appreciated
Local SEO | | jorda0910 -
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 -
Does having a subdomains UK affect SEO in UK google results?
For exemple we set a UK subdomaine for : www.igomorocco.com www.uk.igomorocco.com Does having a subdomains UK affect SEO in UK google results? How this should be set up correctly?
Local SEO | | mounirigomorocco0 -
Should you set an hreflang if the website is only in one language
We have a website, which is written in British English. There are no other versions of the site in different languages and the website only serves a UK audience. We have not set an hreflang tag up. Is this something we would still need to do and what would the benefits (if any) be?
Local SEO | | HubMDP0 -
International Versus Local Backlinks?
I'm running a dentist's website and I've been wondering if there is any additional benefit to achieving local backlinks from other medical sites versus larger international ones? For example, if I had a blog article that I wanted another site to link to, would you choose the local medical website within the same city or the international one that has more viewers?
Local SEO | | Undergrnd0 -
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