Difficulty Ranking Two Locations in the Same City
-
We are in the self-storage business and have locations through the Pacific Northwest. As we grow, there are cities where we've added multiple (2-3) locations. But we're discovering that we're having a great deal of difficulty ranking for all of these. For instance, we have two locations in Vancouver, WA. One is West Coast Self-Storage Vancouver, and the other is West Coast Self-Storage Padden Parkway. Both are in Vancouver, WA, but for the most part, only West Coast Self-Storage Vancouver is getting ranked. In fact, on those searches where Vancouver ranks, Padden Parkway doesn't show up anywhere. Not in the top 10 pages anyway.
Each location has an outer landing page and an inner details page. On each page, we've placed unique, city-optimized keywords in the URL, Page Title, h1s, content. Of course each location has a separate NAP. Each location also has its own GMB page. Each location has a decent amount of reviews across multiple sites (Google, Yelp, GetFiveStars.)
Both locations were previously on their own domain until a year ago when they were redirected to their current URLs. Both of those original domains were close to the same age.
With the Padden Parkway location, we've tried to be even more hyper-local, by including the address in the URLs and in the h1 of the outer page. We've also created an h2 that references local neighborhoods around the business.
We're also running into this situation in at least one other city, so I'm wondering if this has something to do with our url structure. Other businesses in our space use the URL structure of domain.com/state/city/location. We only go down to the state level.
What are we missing?
-
This is a tricky one. Things I might consider are:
-
changing your link structure and the hierarchy of links and link equity flow throughout the page is no problem. So long as you use 301 redirects in the correct way and get things indexed in search console (there's a stricter limit on how many you can do in a day now but it's still a good 10-20 in my experience) then there will be no waiting around for the changes to take affect and rankings will not tank because of 301's like they used to. The whole structure could be changed and reindexed inside a week.
-
Pages with the same copy near one another may still be competing unfortunately (the problem you're having) but it could also just be that the new pages are newer and haven't had the traffic and user data fed back to google yet so it's not ranking them highly. Do a bulk DA check to find out.
-
I would certainly consider seriously looking at what your successful competitors are doing - if they are ranking then they have it the right way. But don't blindly follow the competition without researching their pages and crawling them with tools like Screaming Frog to see the link structure visually.
-
"Self Storage Vancouver" as David said, should be your main page, at the top. Then the local pages should all link to this page and they will make sure you're ranking for that term. Then have the sub pages with their towns in the H1's, title and URL as you describe and mark t all up in Data Highlighter and make sure the GMB categories and locations are absolutely spot on with your NAP. Like 100% identical. Use Moz Local for this.
-
The bounce rate on your main Self-Storage Vancouver page will be 0% because everyone will choose a city so this will really help with the UX signals - although google will know it's a sort of portal page.
Remember that google ranks 'entities' but it can take time for an entity to appear in local search, on the maps and on the SERP. You'll be used to having things appear instantly with your main page with it's high DA, loads of traffic etc but when you open a new one you are still starting something new in google's eyes so you cannot expect the same results immediately.
Hope this helps.
-
-
Thanks for answering, David. Yes, our goal is to get both pages ranked for keyword phrases such as "self storage vancouver." We'd prefer to not just have a Vancouver landing page since we just manage many of our locations rather than own them. We've thought about the idea of having a Vancouver landing page with both locations listed and hyperlinked to their own location pages. This appears to be what a number of our competitors are doing. But we're are trying to avoid that if possible since that would require a complete overhaul of our site hierarchy with our other locations.
Any other ideas?
-
Hi Steven,
Is your goal to have Google rank both pages for searches like "self storage vancouver"?
Ranking two pages is going to be very difficult (but not impossible) to achieve and I would consider combining the locations into a single Vancouver self storage page. From there, users could see both locations and choose the one that's more convenient for them.
I'm not sure if you would have any issues with this - are they franchised businesses?
Cheers,
David
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
-
Ranking for keywords locally with multiple locations
If we have a company with multiple physical locations across multiple states, but selling the same products, what would be an optimal strategy? All local locations have been claimed, but the site is not coming up for searches with local intent. If the corporate site focuses on the "products", what is the best way to get that associated with the individual locations as well? When implementing json+ld, would we put the specific location on the specific location pages and nothing on the rest? Any other tips would be great! Thanks in advance,
Local Website Optimization | | IDMI.Net0 -
Should Multi Location Businesses "Local Content Silo" Their Services Pages?
I manage a site for a medical practice that has two locations. We already have a location page for each office location and we have the NAP for both locations in the footer of every page. I'm considering making a change to the structure of the site to help it rank better for individual services at each of the two locations, which I think will help pages rank in their specific locales by having the city name in the URL. However, I'm concerned about diluting the domain authority that gets passed to the pages by moving them deeper in the site's structure. For instance, the services URLs are currently structured like this: www.domain.com/services/teeth-whitening (where the service is offered in each of the two locations) Would it make sense to move to a structure more like www.domain.com/city1name/teeth-whitening www.domain.com/city2name/teeth-whitening Does anyone have insight from dealing with multi-location brands on the best way to go about this?
Local Website Optimization | | formandfunctionagency1 -
Question about partial duplicate content on location landing pages of multilocation business
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!
Local Website Optimization | | gremmy90 -
Does having a host located in a different country than the location of the website/website's audience affects SEO?
For example if the website is example.ro and the hosting would be on Amazon Web Services. Thanks for your help!
Local Website Optimization | | IrinaIoana0 -
Comparing oddities between two websites
I've been working on SEO for a local website for a few years, last year a new competitor has popped up and started kicking my tail. So I figured I would pose the question and see if someone could point me in a different more helpful direction. I'm mainly stumped as to why the newer competitor has a higher DA and PA when I look at his link profile and lack of website content. A few Comparison notes Competitor is using SSL on the entire site. I am not (Checkmark for him) Competitor has a spam score of 8 out of 17 I have a 1 out of 17 (Checkmark for me) Competitor has a DA of 18 - My DA is 17 (Checkmark for him) Competitor has a PA of 32 - My PA is 28 (Checkmark for him) My Established Link Domains 14 and 127 Links. Also the PA and DA of my external links are much better than the competitor. Competitor has Established Link Domains 9 and 30 Links Also the PA and DA of my external links are much better than the competitor. (Checkmark for me) I have created around 50 custom blog articles along with the pages on my site he has 0 and only 5 pages indexed by Google. (Checkmark for me) The major issue when I do a comparison on OSE is that he has more external links and external equity passing links even though the links are very low value.
Local Website Optimization | | SEO_Matt0 -
Drastic changes in keyword rankings on a daily basis
Anybody ever seen keyword rankings for a site change drastically from day to day? I've got a client, a local furniture store, whose local keywords (furniture + city) rank consistently well without much change, but when it comes to broader keyword rankings (like "furniture" or "furniture store") in their zip code, they'll go from ranking at the top of Google one day to not being ranked at all the next (at least according to Raven Tools). My best guess is that it's just a reflection of personalized results from Google, but such a dramatic change day in and day out makes me wonder.
Local Website Optimization | | ChaseMG0 -
Local SEO: City & County Pages
I'm working on developing some local pages for an HVAC company. They cover two counties, so I was planning on having two county pages, then linking them to individual city pages to keep the menu simpler and not cluttering it up with a couple dozen city pages for people to slog through. Has anybody ever done county pages before for local SEO? Or at least seen them? Just curious to see if there's any real benefit overall for have separate county pages, or if I should just stick to city pages.
Local Website Optimization | | ChaseMG0 -
Do more page links work against a Google SEO ranking when there is only 1 url that other sites will link to?
Say I have a coupon site in a major city and assume there are 20 main locations regions (suburb cities) in that city. Assume that all external links to my site will be to only the home page. www.site.com Assume also that my website business has no physical location. Which scenario is better? 1. One home page that serves up dynamic results based on the user cookie location, but mentions all 20 locations in the content. Google indexes 1 page only, and all external links are to it. 2. One home page that redirects to the user region (one of 20 pages), and therefore will have 20 pages--one for each region that is optimized for that region. Google indexes 20 pages and there will be internal links to the other 19 pages, BUT all external links are still only to the main home page. Thanks.
Local Website Optimization | | couponguy0