How to get listed for specific locations/cities/towns
-
Best practice?? I have a client that wishes to get found for services in several towns across the UK. They only have 1 physical location
I have so far created a blog ( i use easyblog) and put a list of these towns..then added TAGS with the town names (this means each TAG gets a URL too) ..also i need to then monitor in moz pro somehow.
Alternatively i could create web pages with additional information and give the URL the town name....however i think the tags will help...any advice welcome.
-
Hi Corsolutions!
I agree with what our community members are saying here: it's tough to rank in the local packs without a physical location. Because of this, your strategy for visibility in these other service cities can include:
- Content
-Links to that content
-Social outreach
-PPC
-Offline Marketing
Your goal here will be organic, social, paid and real-world visibility, instead of local SERP visibility, because it's typically out of reach unless you are in a market with very low competition.
-
Hi CORSOLUTIONS,
I think Abogados Madrid above is right in that you're best off creating specific pages for the areas this client serves with as much local-specific information as possible.
Outside of that, without a verifiable, physical address in each local, it will be difficult to rank in the "local pack" of results - these are largely driven by "distance to centroid," or the physical distance of your business's verified location to the center of the town/zip/etc the user searched for.
In short, it's pretty tough to drive traffic without visibility in the local pack these days, but with pages for each distinct area (keyword research is a good idea to verify whether a distinct area actually has specific search volume) you have a chance.
Best,
Mike -
I think a good way is the "silo url", something like yourdomain/cityone, yourdomain/citytwo, yourdomain/citythree.
Or: yourdomain/keyword-cityone, yourdomain/keyword-citytwo, yourdomain/keyword-citythree
Or: yourdomain/keyword-cityone/service-one, yourdomain/keyword-cityone/service-two, yourdomain/keyword-cityone/service-other
You can even asigned a different Google Business for a url like that yourdomain/cityone/ you can it make it act as a directory
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 Should We Do to Fix Crawled but Not Indexed Pages for Multi-location Service Pages?
Hey guys! I work as a content creator for Zavza Seal, a contractor out of New York, and we're targeting 36+ cities in the Brooklyn and Queens areas with several services for home improvement. We got about 340 pages into our multi-location strategy targeting our target cities with each service we offer, when we noticed that 200+ of our pages were "Crawled but not indexed" in Google Search Console. Here's what I think we may have done wrong. Let me know what you think... We used the same page template for all pages. (we changed the content and sections, formatting, targeted keywords, and entire page strategy for areas with unique problems trying to keep the user experience as unique as possible to avoid duplicate content or looking like we didn't care about our visitors.) We used the same featured image for all pages. (I know this is bad and wouldn't have done it myself, but hey, I'm not the publisher.) We didn't use rel canonicals to tell search engines that these pages were special made for the areas. We didn't use alt tags until about halfway through. A lot of the urls don't use the target keyword exactly. The NAP info and Google Maps embed is in the footer, so we didn't use it on the pages. We didn't use any content about the history or the city or anything like that. (some pages we did use content about historic buildings, low water table, flood prone areas, etc if they were known for that) We were thinking of redoing the pages, starting from scratch and building unique experiences around each city, with testimonials, case studies, and content about problems that are common for property owners in the area, but I think they may be able to be fixed with a rel canonical, the city specific content added, and unique featured images on each page. What do you think is causing the problem? What would be the easiest way to fix it? I knew the pages had to be unique for each page, so I switched up the page strategy every 5-10 pages out of fear that duplicate content would start happening, because you can only say so much about for example, "basement crack repair". Please let me know your thoughts. Here is one of the pages that are indexed as an example: https://zavzaseal.com/cp-v1/premier-spray-foam-insulation-contractors-in-jamaica-ny/ Here is one like it that is crawled but not indexed: https://zavzaseal.com/cp-v1/premier-spray-foam-insulation-contractors-in-jamaica-ny/ I appreciate your time and concern. Have a great weekend!
Local SEO | | everysecond0 -
Can we use the same titles and meta descriptions for all of our office locations? We have 18 locations in total.
Hello, TTR Data Recovery has 18 different office locations and I am wondering if we can use the same title and meta description for all locations and just change the location name...For example: #1 Best Data Recovery Services in Atlanta, GA| TTRDATA TTR Data Recovery offers a comprehensive suite of data recovery services in Atlanta, GA including Hard Drive, SSD, Server and RAID/NAS. Get A Free Quote! #1 Best Data Recovery Services in Miami, FL | TTRDATA TTR Data Recovery offers a comprehensive suite of data recovery services in Miami, FL, including Hard Drive, SSD, Server and RAID/NAS. Get A Free Quote! Would this be already, or would it be better if we had a unique title and meta description for every location? We want to get the same message across and it would be difficult to change the wording 18 times. I look forward to hearing back from you guys. Thank you.
Local SEO | | Kiakh19870 -
Will I get Penelized for having a .co.uk site AND a .com site?
Hi Mozers, I have a very important pitch coming up which needs to tackle a questions about international SEO. My client currently has a .com website, but we are debating internally about creating a .co.uk website too so that we can localise content for the UK versus American English on our .com site. Currently, our clients proposition is global, so we made the decision to create a .com website but using American English spelling as a large chunk of English speakers in the world use American English over British English. However, we want to grow the business within the UK, and therefore want to use British English language. Hence creating a .co.uk website. Now, my question is this.... the new .co.uk website will be identical content as the .com website, except for a few spelling changes and the way we phrase certain sentences. How would we be able to run both a .co.uk site and .com site without being penelized from Google for plagarism? Would it involve href lang tags? Server hosting location? Any ideas from you guys out there?
Local SEO | | Virginia-Girtz0 -
Setting Up Geo Location
I currently have a page that ranks pretty well for X City and is optimized for X City. However, I now want to change the strategy and set up the Home page for State and build X, Y and Z City pages under it. But I want to make sure that when I set the X City page, I somehow transfer the rankings from the home page to this page. I was wondering what the best way would be? One idea was to put a canonical tag on the home page to point to X City page until it at least gets on the first page or so. Then remove the canonical tag and start separate efforts for Home Page for State and X City page for the city. Please suggest if any other ideas.
Local SEO | | Local1280 -
Showing a preferred Google location in branded search for a multi-location business?
Background: A business has 5 brick and mortar locations, in 5 different states, with 5 separate Google+ profiles. The corporate headquarters are in Michigan. The Michigan Google+ Local profile is the one that should be most closely associated with the brand. Problem: We want the Michigan Google + Local page to show up for branded searches nationwide: right now, it only shows up on geolocated searches in Michigan. Of course, it totally makes sense that the other 4 Google+ local pages will appear for users searching with IP locations (or logged in locations) near those states. But for other states - is there a way to help Google understand or give preference to the main corporate location? What we're trying to prevent is someone in New York City searching for "company name", and then seeing a lesser location appear in SERPs associated with the brand, instead of our favored Michican location. Ideas so far: Continue to enhance out the Michigan location's Google+ page (check categories, photos, description, share content frequently, expand circles, get reviews, yada yada yada - we've already done much of this). _Maybe give this page more attention and content than other locations if we have to? _ Build links into Michigan Google+ page? Ensure general citations are up to date - use localeze/moz local etc. Website - We have a page for each location. While Michigan is featured, we also do promote our other offices as well - all kinda promoted equally on site in terms of metadata, content, etc. Any other brainstorming advice or out-of-the-box (oh no, did I just say "out-of-the-box"?) ideas to help Google associate the Michigan location as our "primary" one we want shown on more generic branded searches, even though of course the other 4 are impt too? Tricky...
Local SEO | | mirabile0 -
Google My Business Locations Query- Do I need unqiue Picture File Names for every location
Hello All, I am just in the process of updating all my google business locations for each of my depots. I have been uploading photos but I am wondering if the file names of the photo's need to be unique for every location ? I know I need to describe the picture in the filename so it's good use of keywords but I am wondering if google will see it as spaming if I upload the same product pictures etc to ever google business location ? thanks Pete
Local SEO | | PeteC120 -
Any Notable Change in Google's Location Based Results?
I've noticed with many of our clients that when searching for general terms, with obvious local intent, that Google assumes you are in the nearest metro area rather than the specific locality. Anyone else noticed this? Example: I have an HVAC client who has ranked a solid #1 for "HVAC Repairs" since January - if the user was in the small town we were targeting (Wake Forest) since January. However, now Google assumes users in this town are in the nearby metro area (Raleigh), and displays local and organic results for Raleigh instead of Wake Forest. I first noticed this change in mid-May. From what I've read about the Nov Hummingbird update, I don't see that playing a direct role. Any insight?
Local SEO | | Rusty_Shackleford0 -
Ranking http://www when its forwarded to https://www
Hello, I have a question about the best practices for assigning "https" and "http" versions. We have added https://www.mysite.com in Google WMT and was ranking. However I noticed with my other tools, that http://www.mysite.com version had better anchor text distribution and also had better Trust Flow were as the https://www.mysite.com version had no trust flow at all. Can I assign http://www.mysite.com in Google WMT and still have it do a 301 Redirect to https://www.mysite.com. This way I can capitalize on the better anchor text profile and trust flow, and still rank properly? Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks
Local SEO | | EVERWORLD.ENTERTAIMENT0