Optimizing Local SEO for Two Locations
-
Hi there!
I have a client that has just opened a 2nd location in another state. When optimizing for local I have a few questions:
- We're creating a landing page for each location, this will have contact information and ideally some information on each location. Any recomendations for content on these landing pages?
- The big question is dual city optimization. Should Include the city & state of BOTH locations in all my title tags? or should I leave that to the unique city landing pages?
- What other on-page optimizations should i consider across the site?
Thanks!
Jordan
-
Hi Jordan!
Regarding your local landing pages, I think you'll find this Moz Blog piece really fills the bill: https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages
Regarding optimization, with just 2 cities, you may be able to include both in the tags and titles on some of your main pages (home, about, contact) but that kind of depends. So, for example on your homepage title tag, you could have
Green Tree Bank: Serving Jackson, OR and Yola, CA
Or, you can skip that approach and just go with the brand and a message on main pages' tags and focus very heavily on geographic terms on the landing pages. It something to experiment with.
Main thing is, those landing pages should be viewed as 2 of the most important pages on the website, as they are the ones your citations should link to and your customers will be reaching most easily via those citations. Make these pages shining stars, expending all possible resources to offer an exceptional, persuasive experience in order to maximize conversions.
Hope this helps!
-
- For content on your landing page keep it simple, but use keywords that you want to rank for. Obviously, don't stuff them, make it organic. Have each page have events, news, or any other location specific news on the page.
- I wouldn't worry about placing the city in all the title tags, use it within the content and have internal linking to the city specific landing pages.
- Keep adding new content to the site. This is a great way to keep readers engaged and also places to continue using your keywords. Remember, use variations of your keywords.
Hope this helps.
Chris
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
-
International SEO - How do I show correct SERP results in the UK and US?
Hi, Moz community. I hope you’re all OK and keeping busy during this difficult period. I have a few questions about international SEO, specifically when it comes to ranking pages in the UK and the US simultaneously. We currently have 2 websites set-up which are aimed towards their respective countries. We have a ‘.com’ and a ‘.com/us’. If anybody could help with the issues below, I would be very grateful. Thank you all. Issues When looking in US Google search with a VPN, the title tag for our UK page appears in the SERP e.g. I will see: UK [Product Name] | [Brand] When checking the Google cache, the UK page version also appears This can cause a problem especially when I am creating title tags and meta descriptions that are unique from the UK versions However, when clicking through from the SERP link to the actual page, the US page appears as it should do. I find this very bizarre that it seems to show you the US page when you click through, but you see the UK version in the SERP when looking in the overall search results. Current Set-Up Our UK and US page content is often very similar across our “.com” and “.com/us” websites and our US pages are canonicalised to their UK page versions to remove potential penalisation We have also added herflang to our UK and US pages Query How do I show our US SERP as opposed to the UK version in US Google search? My Theories/ Answers US page versions have to be completely unique with content related to US search intent and be indexed separately - therefore no longer canonicalised to UK version Ensure hreflang is enabled to point Google to correct local page versions Ensure local backlinks point to localised pages If anyone can help, it will be much appreciated. Many thanks all.
Local Website Optimization | | Katarina-Borovska0 -
Geo-location by state/store
Hi there, We are a Grocery co-operative retailer and have chain of stores owned by different people. We are building a new website, where we would geo-locate the closest store to the customer and direct them to a particular store (selected based on cookie and geo location). All our stores have a consistent range of products + Variation in 25% range. I have few questions How to build a site-map. Since it will be mandatory for a store to be selected and same flow for the bot and user, should have all products across all stores in the sitemap? we are allowing users to find any products across all stores if they search by product identifier. But, they will be able to see products available in a particular store if go through the hierarchical journey of the website. Will the bot crawl all pages across all the stores or since it will be geolocated to only one store, the content belonging to only one store will be indexed? We are also allowing customers to search for older products which they might have bought few years and that are not part of out catalogue any more. these products will not appear on the online hierarchical journey but, customers will be able to search and find the products . Will this affect our SEO ranking? Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks - Costa
Local Website Optimization | | Hanuman881 -
In local SEO, how important is it to include city, state, and state abbreviation in doctitle?
I'm trying to balance local geographic keywords with product keywords. I appreciate the feedback from the group! Michael
Local Website Optimization | | BFMichael0 -
Best SEO practice for project galley (image gallery) ? I need SEO Professionals advice.
Hi, i Have a website that is powerful and i dont want to hurt it. http://dreamgaragedoor.com/ right now i need a projects gallery page that people goes there to find out the models and products and services images. i have created the page and it would be 6 slider in the page and each slider has at least 10 images inside. first question is having this much images would or wouldnt hurt my webiste. second what ALT should i use for this many pictures in 1 page. for example i think having ALT like below in one page would be bad SEO wise. Sliding-gate-1, Sliding-gate-2, Sliding-gate-3, Sliding-gate-4,... please take a look at the gallery page and let me have your pro ideas. http://dreamgaragedoor.com/galleries/ thanks
Local Website Optimization | | Mishel2980 -
Subdomain vs. Separate Domain for SEO & Google AdWords
We have a client who carries 4 product lines from different manufacturers under a singular domain name (www.companyname.com), and last fall, one of their manufacturers indicated that they needed to move to separate out one of those product lines from the rest, so we redesigned and relaunched as two separate sites - www.companyname.com and www.companynameseparateproduct.com (a newly-purchased domain). Since that time, their manufacturer has reneged their requirement to separate the product lines, but the client has been running both sites separately since they launched at the beginning of December 2016. Since that time, they have cannibalized their content strategy (effective February 2017) and hacked apart their PPC budget from both sites (effective April 2017), and are upset that their organic and paid traffic has correspondingly dropped from the original domain, and that the new domain hasn't continued to grow at the rate they would like it to (we did warn them, and they made the decision to move forward with the changes anyway). This past week, they decided to hire an in-house marketing manager, who is insisting that we move the newer domain (www.companynameseparateproduct.com) to become a subdomain on their original site (separateproduct.companyname.com). Our team has argued that making this change back 6 months into the life of the new site will hurt their SEO (especially if we have to 301 redirect all of the old content back again, without any new content regularly being added), which was corroborated with this article. We'd also have to kill the separate AdWords account and quality score associated with the ads in that account to move them back. We're currently looking for any extra insight or literature that we might be able to find that helps explain this to the client better - even if it is a little technical. (We're also open to finding out if this method of thinking is incorrect if things have changed!)
Local Website Optimization | | mkbeesto0 -
Service area local seo
Hello, everyone. I am struggling a little with the vast amounts of information about how best to get a local service area business ranking and the best practice. If I explain what I have been doing and then see how I can improve. I have created a couple of websites for window cleaners. These window cleaners offer several services like window cleaning, gutter cleaning, conservatory cleaning, pressure washing etc. They also cover several towns/cities so it's important for them to be able to target all these areas in search. They don't have multiple offices so only have one home/office address and by the nature of the job provide services at the customer's house/business. What I have been doing is creating a page for each service they provide then to cover the areas I have been doing two things. Creating a page on the site called areas covered with a list of the areas they cover and also adding in the title of the page the main one or two areas that are most important to them. From what I can gather this might not be the best approach?? Google may see the areas in titles as keyword stuffing? Google also doesn't like a list of areas in one go anywhere on a site which can also seem like keyword stuffing? So for an example, this would be a rough title structure of service pages Window cleaners in town/city, town/city and town/city Gutter Cleaners in town/city, town/city and town/city As I said I am not sure this is the best way to do this from what I read. I have read about area specific pages but i struggle to see how i could make each area specific page unique enough as the service is exactly the same in each area. I have also read that putting the most important keywords at the begingin of the the title is better so using the above example would this be better? town/city window cleaners - business name So from what i understand having pages like this might be better Window cleaners town/city1 Window cleaners town/city2 Window cleaners town/city3 Gutter Cleaners town/city1 Gutter Cleaners town/city2 Gutter Cleaners town/city3 and so on but like I say I am aware each of these area specific pages would need to be unique but being that the services are exactly the same in each area I am not sure how I could warrant creating all the pages. Writing about the specific area on the page seems a little odd in that the visitor who lands on that page doesn't want to learn about their area, they live there and know the area. They want to know what the service is and if they do in fact cover their area. In which case how can i best ensure all or most of the areas they cover are targeted and show in search? Some sites i have done cover around 20-30 towns around them so how can best ensure they rank for them? I have also been reading conflicting information about how to structure pages and urls. Some say don't use commas in page titles, some say don't use underscores and only use hyphens. Similarly, I have read that the URL should not contain any hyphens but I am not sure about this seeing as WordPress often adds hyphens between words in URLs. Some say you should always have an H1 on every page others say it's not all that important anymore. With images, i have also been giving them alts the same as the page titles thay are on, is this the wrong thing to do? Id be happy to private messge (if i can do that here) one of the sites I would be eternally grateful if anyone can help in firstly clarifying how I could best improve ranking for areas covered and secondly what best practice is to structure page content like H1's image alts etc. Thanks
Local Website Optimization | | Gavpeds0 -
Multiple My Business pages affecting local SEO?
Hey Moz! We have a situation with a dentist firm with multiple doctors at the same address. They have two locations for their dental offices, and each of the dentists operate at both offices. The issue: Each doctor insists on having their own by business page for each location and i'm afraid this is hurting their local SEO. We've been tracking keywords by week and we've seen some big fluctuations in ratings and i'm looking into why this is happening. The office in location 1 has it's own Google My Business page and the three dentists have their own my business page set up at the exact same address. The office in location 2 has it's own Google My Business page as well and the three dentists have their own my business page there also. This leads the two addresses of the main offices having multiple My Business pages at the same address competing against eachother since they are all are registered with similar names and specialties. Could this be hurting our local SEO? Thanks! -Z
Local Website Optimization | | zacgarrison_700 -
Does Schema Replace Conventional NAP in local SEO?
Hello Everyone, My question is in regards to Schema and whether the it replaces the need for the conventional structured data NAP configuration. Because you have the ability to specifically call out variables (such as Name, URL, Address, Phone number ect.) is it still necessary to keep the NAP form-factor that has historically been required for local SEO? Logically it makes sense that schema would allow someone to reverse this order and still achieve the same result, however I have yet to find any conclusive evidence of this being the case. Thanks, and I look forward to what the community has to say on this matter.
Local Website Optimization | | toddmumford0