Question about partial duplicate content on location landing pages of multilocation business

[gremmy9]

Hi everyone, I am a psychologist in private practice in Colorado and I recently went from one location to 2 locations. I'm currently updating my website to better accommodate the second location. I also plan continued expansion in the future, so there will be more and more locations as time goes on. As a result, I am making my websites current homepage non-location specific and creating location landing pages as I have seen written about in many places.

My question is: I know that location landing pages should have unique content, and I have plenty of this, but how much content is it also okay to have be duplicate across the location landing pages and the homepage?

For instance, here is the current draft of the new homepage (these are not live yet): http://www.effectivetherapysolutions.com/dev/

And here are the drafts of the location landing pages: http://www.effectivetherapysolutions.com/dev/denver-office

http://www.effectivetherapysolutions.com/dev/colorado-springs-office

And for reference, here is the current homepage that is actually live for my single Denver location: http://www.effectivetherapysolutions.com/

As you can see, the location landing pages have the following sections of unique content:

• Therapist picture at the top
• testimonial quotes (the one on the homepage is the only thing I have I framed in this block from crawl so that it appears as unique content on the Denver page)
• therapist bios
• GMB listing
• driving directions and hours
• and I also haven't added these yet, but we will also have unique client success stories and appropriately tagged images of the offices

So that's plenty of unique content on the pages, but I also have the following sections of content that are identical or nearly identical to what I have on the homepage:

• Intro paragraph
• blue and green "adult" and child/teen" boxes under the intro paragraph
• "our treatment really works" section
• "types of anxiety we treat" section

Is that okay or is that too much duplicate content? The reason I have it that way is that my website has been very successful for years at converting site visitors into paying clients, and I don't want to lose aspects of the page that I know work when people land on it. And now that I am optimizing the location landing pages to be where people end up instead of the homepage, I want them to still see all of that content that I know is effective at conversion.

If people on here do think it is too much, one possible solution is to turn parts of it into pictures or put them into I-frames on the location pages so Google doesn't crawl those parts of the location pages, but leave them normal on the homepage so it still gets crawled on there.

I've seen a lot written about not having duplicate content on location landing pages for this type of website, but everything I've read seems to refer to entire pages being copied with just the location names changed, which is not what I'm doing, hence my question. Thanks everyone!

[MiriamEllis]

You're welcome, Gremmy9. Good luck with the work ahead!

[gremmy9]

Great, thanks guys, this is helpful!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Gremmy9!

Congratulations on expanding your practice - and on doing such good work in the communities you serve.

Growhat has made some good suggestions. He's linked to an older Moz blog post of mine - here's a newer one on the same topic that I believe will help inspire your work: https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages

I think your question has two parts to it, given that you've only got two locations now but plan to have more in the near future. Right now, having two-three pages on your website with a moderate amount of duplicate content on them isn't likely to cause much, if any harm, to your rankings. But, you are being very smart in forecasting this into the future, when you have 5, 10 or 15 locations throughout your state or in a variety of states. If you end up with 1/2 of your website being redundant content, that could start to get a bit worrisome, right?

So, your work right now is to develop a template that will ensure that as much of the content on your homepage and landings pages is as unique and as helpful to customers as possible. I would recommend that this template work something like this:

1. Put the full NAP (name, address, phone) of each location at the top of its landing page (not at the bottom as in your mockup). People need to see that information first to understand that they are looking at the page representing the office nearest them.

2. Then, offer a brief, unique summary of the treatments offered at this practice. You shouldn't have a problem describing this in a unique way if you take the target community into consideration. Explain that you serve both adults and kids. Try to hone the message to the community, based on whatever data/statistics you may have about that community.

3. Then, find 1-2 unique success stories from clients in that target city to share. If you wish to follow this with the information about "Our Anxiety treatments really work", I like your idea of creating a little infographic for that, to break up the page content and make it more digestible. But, I think most of this information should be conveyed in the opening description (types of ailments treated and why your methodology works).

4. Then, introduce the therapists at that location, along with reviews/testimonials concerning their work.

5. Highlight 3rd party reviews following this, on whichever review platforms matter most to you clients in that city.

6. Repeat NAP, put a map, and write out driving directions. Include social media links, if appropriate.

7. End with a clear call to action. Let the website user know what you'd like them to do, whether that's call you, book an appointment, etc.

Within the above, when a specific service/ailment/etc. is mentioned, do internally link to the authoritative page on that topic. So, for example, if you have a page about OCD, and on the landing page you are mentioning that you help people with OCD, feel free to link to the authoritative page on the subject.

I think with a structure like that, the majority of the content will, by nature, be unique, because you will have a unique therapist to introduce, unique testimonials/reviews, unique NAP, unique directions, etc. Your introductory paragraphs will be the only part you really have to noodle over to make unique and compelling to the target audience. The question I'd ask is, "Is there something that would really resonate with our potential clients in X city that is unique to X city?" Maybe there's been a natural disaster there that had increased anxiety. Maybe clogged freeways there cause anxiety? Maybe environmental pollution? I'm not sure ... you are the expert, but I would strive to make that introduction as highly personalized to the community as I could, without turning anyone away.

Hope this helps, and that the blog post I linked to will give you further ideas!

[growthat]

Hey gremmy! Congrats on the success of your practice, that's awesome

I'm working through the same question, but for a client who "services" (not operates offices in) 5-10 different cities in the same state. I'm far more familiar with national SEO (blogs, or large company websites) where this doesn't come up, but I'll take a stab and the community can correct me if I'm wrong

You have 2 main options (not saying they're both good):

1- You can add an area to your homepage that says "areas we service", and simply list office name, city, address, and a photo of that location (along with a CTA if you like, to schedule an appt, etc.)

2- Create a specific location page for each office, as you're hoping.

I'd recommend #2, but I'd attack it a bit differently than you are. I would do the following:

1. Create a "parent page", called "Locations" . This page should have a simple statement like "We current serve Denver clients in the following cities:" then include a sort of bullet list of all cities. For now, that would be two cities, and each name would link to their corresponding "child page" . The URL structure would look like --

effectivetherapysolutions.com/locations/denver/   , etc.

2. On each location page, present all location relevant info as you're proposing (photos, address, phone number, a unique content form if applicable, etc.). Then do the best you can to describe your services and practice in a unique way. So for the parts that "need" to be similiar (e.g. who you are, what you do, your unique value to customers, etc.) the way I approach this is by trying to forget what I've written on the homepage (for example), and just describing the business anew.

I find it's helpful if you decide what "buckets" (H3 headings for example) you want included on each location. For example, decide you want:

-What you do

-Why you're the best / the unique value you'll add to customers

-Your experience/testimonials

-CTA

If each one of those were an H3 heading, with a paragraph (or a few sentences) of info, do your best to say it in a different way. If there's anything unique to the city and how it corresponds with your practice, add that information as well.

3. As you add  more locations, add them to the parent page (yourdomain.com/locations/) and create their corresponding location pages as child pages.

4. At the bottom of each child page, add a sentence like "Click here to view our other locations in [State Name]" and link back to the parent page. That will help Google crawl each page, and see that it's a child, stemming from one Locations page.

In my humble experience (from doing this, and looking at real world examples) you won't experience any harmful effects of overlapping. I've seen barber shops, realtors, etc. rank in the top 3 spots across the board from city to city on their locations page, with content only slightly re-worded.

I think the bigger thing is - don't intentionally create crappy, spun content to thoughtlessly rank in areas you don't service. But I personally would not worry if I were you, about harming yourself because of some overlapping info. If you get to 10 locations, how  many different ways can you describe what you do without using 70% the same words?

So, differentiate where you can - esp. with local office info and information about the city, and where it overlaps (the content you want on each location page to help sell the viewer on your services) just try and say it in a different, but relevant way.

The Moz community can correct me if I've said anything wrong, but from my experience this is how I'd attack it. Hope that helps

PS- if you haven't read it, here's a great article that might help https://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide