Multiple Locations Same City
-
I have a local seo campaign im trying to reconfigure.
Lets say i am a dwi lawyer and i have multiple locations. These are merely examples for cities and keywords.
- Home page is Criminal defense lawyer - this is the term we should be targeting. Maybe i can target the state name, but i am losing so much SEO weight by not leveraging this home page as the main page for this term.
- Then we have a location page in south Boston that is "S Boston DWI lawyer" as the title tag.
- Then we have another location page north Boston that is "N Boston DWI Lawyer" as the title tag.
I can leave the city name off the home page title tag, but then what do i do with these pages that are pretty much competing with one another? I know the home page will not rank since none of the locations point to it, and only to a location page.
I was thinking about creating one page with both locations and having both G map listings go directly there, but that doesn't make sense because other locations do not have the same setup. Or choosing the most central location and pointing that to the home page and let the rest have a locations page.
Finally the home page will not rank well for any major terms. The location page does rank for the fictional south Boston DWI lawyer, but the other listing does not show up. The home page does not show up in the first ten pages either. One other aspect is that the home page ranks for terms that I am not even targeting.
These pages are all targeted on specific keywords so that they do not overlap or compete, but some pages are the services main outline, but the location pages have their own version.
I have removed all mentions of the same keyword from the home page. I made a few wchanges about 2 weeks ago and already noticed movement in rankings days later.
-
Hi Waquid!
Thank you so much for adding a bit more context to your question. I perfectly see your scenario now.
So, if a business does something like landscape design and has only two offices in San Francisco, it's likely that the homepage and both location landing pages will include references to "San Francisco" and "Landscape Design". The landing pages could also be optimized for hyperlocal terms like "North Beach" or "Glen Park" if they are in different neighborhoods.
However, if the business has, lets say, 20 offices in California, then they wouldn't be likely to use any city or neighborhood terms on the homepage because there are simply too many cities to cover. Rather, the homepage might reference regional names, like SF Bay Area, or Central Valley or Orange County, etc, or even just Northern California/Southern California.
If the service is identical at all locations, then there's really no avoiding using those service keywords on all pages. You can vary them in any way that keyword research shows you variants. For example, you could dice up findings like "sustainable landscape design, native landscape design, commercial landscape design" etc, between the pages, but if you have just one overarching service, then it will be reflected on all pages. It's the geo-terms that need to be parsed up to fit the scenario of your various offices.
-
Question is how does one target two locations in the same city with the same keyword/service, and then the home page as well.
I have GMB links to my location pages for a south and central location in one large metro city. The home page is having the same keyword.
What would you do in this instance?
For now i removed all instances of keywords located on the location pages. The home page has a totally different topic now.
I did see my rankings jump up a page and we got into the top 5 on gmaps for tons of terms. I am just trying to see if there are any options im missing on best way to setup multiple locations targeting the same city without wasting the home page SEO juice. Because right now my home page is not ranking for any major terms at all.
-
Hi Waqid,
Thank you so much for bringing your topic to to the forum. I've read through your scenario now, but I'm not seeing the question you're asking. Can you please detail what your exact question is? Thanks!
-
Thanks for the responses but the keywords are fictional and jsut an example of my predicament. The business has been around for 27+ years and in google for about ten. our backlink profile , citations and etc are all very competitive. Clean and concise citations and links.
I will re read what you said. But it sounds like we are on the same page and I do not expect rank well jsut because on page is perfect. What I’m trying to figure out is the best plan for long term success targetfing these highly Competitive terms.
Content is also exceptional and very informational and helpful.
I’m going To review competition again and make spreadsheet of their layout.
I will kepe this updated so that maybe I can help others in the future
-
"Lets say i am a dwi lawyer and i have multiple locations. These are merely examples for cities and keywords.
- _Home page is Criminal defense lawyer - this is the term we should be targeting. Maybe i can target the state name, but i am losing so much SEO weight by not leveraging this home page as the main page for this term. _
- _Then we have a location page in south Boston that is "S Boston DWI lawyer" as the title tag. _
- _Then we have another location page north Boston that is "N Boston DWI Lawyer" as the title tag. _
I can leave the city name off the home page title tag, but then what do i do with these pages that are pretty much competing with one another? I know the home page will not rank since none of the locations point to it, and only to a location page.
_I was thinking about creating one page with both locations and having both G map listings go directly there, but that doesn't make sense because other locations do not have the same setup. Or choosing the most central location and pointing that to the home page and let the rest have a locations page. _"
Obviously have your main keyword on your homepage, but unless your site has a unique value proposition (watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AmRg3p79pM - only watch until Miley outlines common mistake #1, the rest is pretty much irrelevant here) that trumps that of all your competitors (who may have been operating in the area before you) - don't expect to suddenly jump to number 1. Your popularity massively affects your rankings and having a unique value proposition for end users massively affects your quality and volume of organically created backlinks
As to whether you should have separate pages for S Boston (South Boston) and N Boston (North Boston?) - that depends on your implementation and the keyword volumes.
- "n boston dwi lawyer" - 0 estimated monthly searches in the USA from Google's Keyword Planner
- "north boston dwi lawyer" - 0 estimated monthly searches in the USA from Google's Keyword Planner
- "s boston dwi lawyer" - 0 estimated monthly searches in the USA from Google's Keyword Planner
- "south boston dwi lawyer" - 0 estimated monthly searches in the USA from Google's Keyword Planner
Pointless! Let's try slightly broader terms:
- "n boston lawyer" - 0 estimated monthly searches in the USA from Google's Keyword Planner
- "north boston lawyer" - 0 estimated monthly searches in the USA from Google's Keyword Planner
- "s boston lawyer" - 0 estimated monthly searches in the USA from Google's Keyword Planner
- "south boston lawyer" - 10 estimated monthly searches in the USA from Google's Keyword Planner
Still pretty bad. If I could 'quickly and easily' find evidence that Google though people were searching for these terms regularly, or broader variants - and that Google didn't 'group' their search volumes (and thus thought they were distinct search entities as per Hummingbird) I might say yeah, have two separate pages and on each page create one of those Google maps that draws a border around an area (usually created with zipcode / post-code data) which would illustrate your area of service and the cut-off boundaries
Since there isn't much volume here for these kinds of terms, is local SEO really the answer for you? Is it even going to benefit you that much? Is it even going to make a difference, whatever you do? I'm not really sure about that, looking at the data behind Google's searches
Experimenting with more terms it does very much seem that South Boston could be worth targeting independently, but North Boston is really not even worth bothering with:
- "n boston legal" - 0 estimated monthly searches in the USA from Google's Keyword Planner
- "north boston legal" - 0 estimated monthly searches in the USA from Google's Keyword Planner
- "s boston legal" - 10 estimated monthly searches in the USA from Google's Keyword Planner
- "south boston legal" - 10 estimated monthly searches in the USA from Google's Keyword Planner
Actually, people seem to care more about the distinction of 'greater' Boston and what that means. People care about South Boston and Greater Boston, rather than North / South divide of Boston:
- "n boston " - 10 estimated monthly searches in the USA from Google's Keyword Planner
- "north boston" - 480 estimated monthly searches in the USA from Google's Keyword Planner
- "s boston" - 40 estimated monthly searches in the USA from Google's Keyword Planner
- "south boston" - 12,100 estimated monthly searches in the USA from Google's Keyword Planner
- "greater boston" - 2,900 estimated monthly searches in the USA from Google's Keyword Planner
So go for South and Greater Boston related terms if possible and divide it up that way:
- "greater boston legal " - 20 estimated monthly searches in the USA from Google's Keyword Planner
- "south boston legal" - 10 estimated monthly searches in the USA from Google's Keyword Planner
- "greater boston legal services" - 1,900 estimated monthly searches in the USA from Google's Keyword Planner
- "south boston lawyer" - 10 estimated monthly searches in the USA from Google's Keyword Planner
If you have no base of operations in Greater Boston, maybe you want to fundamentally reconsider that as somewhere in Greater Boston might be considered more lucrative from a search POV. Maybe North Boston is part of Greater Boston, I don't know - I'm from the UK! I'm trying to see it a bit like London and its various districts (North London, South London, Greater London, Camden, Covent Garden etc)
With all this info coming together, I'd say don't really bother with North Boston much at all. I might Create a South Boston page and reference Greater Boston on that a lot, drawing up a Google map showing your bordered service areas (highlighting South Boston, your office in South Boston, and then surrounding Greater Boston - all on ONE map)
I'd talk a lot about the legal scene in South Boston, why the product is more relevant there (when people in North Boston don't seem to even care much for legal aid at all). I'd illustrate that your core focus in is South Boston with aspirations and clients in and around surrounding Greater Boston - where it seems like the real money is
Without an office in Greater Boston somewhere, rankings in that area (those areas) will be slightly hampered, but competition for "greater boston legal services" is "low" (at least for PPC, but it's probably also low for SEO as well) - so you might make some ground and get a bit of traffic more quickly
If having a South Boston specific location page which does not really reference North Boston much (or pollute itself with that term) necessitates for UX purposes that you also need to create a North Boston page, fine do it. Just don't expect it to bring much traffic in (based on what I am seeing!)
"_Finally the home page will not rank well for any major terms. The location page does rank for the fictional south Boston DWI lawyer, but the other listing does not show up. The home page does not show up in the first ten pages either. One other aspect is that the home page ranks for terms that I am not even targeting. _
_These pages are all targeted on specific keywords so that they do not overlap or compete, but some pages are the services main outline, but the location pages have their own version. _
I have removed all mentions of the same keyword from the home page. I made a few changes about 2 weeks ago and already noticed movement in rankings days later. "
Strong technical SEO and keyword 'cannibalisation' avoidant deployment 'allow' you to rank well. They don't make your site the best page for Google to rank. All they do is clear your roadblocks, but if you don't have enough fuel (popularity, value-add propositions) to be competitive and win the race - don't expect to win
SEO is not a substitute for a business offering which may not be more competitive, than all others sites ranking above itself. SEO helps your website to rank appropriately, where an unbiased user would expect to see it in Google's rankings
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
-
Expanding to Other Geo Locations
Our company originally started in one city, now it is in multiple and the city we started in is actually now less important to our business than some of the new cities. We've of course have Google Places for Business listings for all our cities and are listed in the other prominent directories for each City (Bing Places, Manta, Superpages, etc etc) We have created once city page for each city in our domain. All this has improved our Local SERPs for those cities but they pale in comparison to our dominance in the city we started out in. We did have the first city in our home page title, we took that out. The obvious problem is from an SEO standpoint your home page is your "strongest" page but how do you make your home page rank top for multiple location intent searches: "{city} {target keyword}" ? The 3-pack is KEY. For example, for one city we make it into the local 3-pack but we are not in the organic SERPs on page 1 outside of the 3-pack. As far as I can tell the major factor in 3-pack ranking is of course proximity of business to the user's location or user's location intent. I would say followed by the natural ranking factors (or at least a large subset of them) that Google uses for its normal organic rankings, followed by Google Places reviews. You would think the Google places reviews really make a difference, but not as much as you think. So how do you dominate local searches in different cities when competing against local-only companies? My only guess is you need to create as much content as possible. You don't want to make micro sites I think as you lose all the link juice going to your main site. But how much content can one make that isn't duplicative. You can describe the same products and services over and over for each city but that's not useful nor wise. I guess you could do some re-writing. But other than a different address, phone, and staff members, if your service is identical for each city it doesn't leave a lot of room for useful content creation to improve local search SERPS. I guess this begs the overall question, can a multi-city company ever dominate local SERPS when the search has a location intent (city name in the search) it there is even just a couple competing local companies doing some SEO work. it seems it is an extreme uphill battle if not next to impossible. (Never say never.)
Local Website Optimization | | Searchout1 -
Service Area Location Pages vs. User Experience
I'm familiar with the SAB best practices outlined here. Here's my issue: Doing local landing pages as described here might not be ideal from a user experience point of view. Having a "Cities We Serve" or "Service Areas" link in the main navigation isn't necessarily valuable to the user when the city-specific landing pages are all places within a 15-mile radius of the SAB's headquarters. It would just look like the company did it for SEO. It wouldn't look natural. Seriously, it feels like best practices are totally at odds with user experience here. If I absolutely must create location pages for 10 or so municipalities within my client's service area, I'd rather NOT put the service areas as a primary navigation item. It is not useful to the user. Anyone who sees that the company provides services in the [name of city] metropolitan area will already understand that the company can service their town that is 5 miles away. It is self-evident. For example**, who would wonder whether a plumbing company with a Los Angeles address also services Beverly Hills?** It's just... silly. But the Moz guide says I've got to do those location pages! And that I've got to put them high up in the navigation! This is a problem because we've got to do local SEO, but we also have to provide an ideal experience. Thoughts?
Local Website Optimization | | Greenery1 -
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
Local Website Optimization | | WorkhorseMKT0 -
Ideas on creating location based service pages for SEO value while not worrying about local SEO?
Hello and thanks for reading! We have a bit of a rare issue, where we are a nationwide distributor but have a local side that handles all tristate area requests, the sales that happen via local basically don't impact the online side, so we're trying to not focus on local SEO but in a sense worry about abroad local SEO. We want to try the location based service pages, but not for every state, at most 5 states and inside those pages target 2 to 3 big cities. Is this a waste of time to even think about or is this something that can be done with a careful touch?
Local Website Optimization | | Deacyde0 -
Is it worth it having different cities in your footer, each with a separate page?
I have been looking at the website of local web design companies and every single one in my area has a footer with links to a separate page for that local city. This seems like a bad idea to me, but everyone in the local pack has it. Does it work?
Local Website Optimization | | EcommerceSite0 -
Multiple Locations with Branded Name/Keyword in URL
I have a client, let's call him "Bob". Bob has 2 stores where he sells "Widgets", Bob's Widgets and Bob's Widgets South. These locations are roughly 40 miles from each other and serve two different marketplaces. Each location has their own website "www.bobswidgets.com & www.bobswidgetssouth.com". Each location is run by different individuals. The Store Manager at Bob's Widgets is complaining that when you type "Bob's Widgets" into the search engines "Bob's Widgets South" website is indexing in the 2nd and/or 3rd position. The Store Manager at Bob's Widgets feels that Bob's Widgets South could be stealing business from him because of the way Google is indexing the sites. I have explained to him that the keyword the user is typing in is in both names of the locations and in each URL and this is prompting the search engine to index both sites. Am I missing something else???
Local Website Optimization | | mittcom0 -
Best practices for 301 redirect to a new location website.
We just opened a new location in a nearby city. We were already servicing this location from our main base. As such we had a special page for this location which raked fairly well. The new location will have its own website. Would it be better to 301 redirect the current location page to the new location website? Or should we simply link from the old page to the new location's website? Any best practices?
Local Website Optimization | | Vspeed0 -
Ecommerce Site with Unique Location Pages - Issue with unique content and thin content?
Hello All, I have an Ecommerce Site specializing in Hire and we have individual location pages on each of our categories for each of our depots. All these pages show the NAP of the specific branch Given the size of our website (10K approx pages) , it's physically impossible for us to write unique content for each location against each category so what we are doing is writing unique content for our top 10 locations in a category for example , and the remaining 20 odd locations against the same category has the same content but it will bring in the location name and the individual NAP of that branch so in effect I think this thin content. My question is , I am quite sure I we are getting some form of algorithmic penalty with regards the thin/duplicate content. Using the example above , should we 301 redirect the 20 odd locations with the thin content , or should be say only 301 redirect 10 of them , so we in effect end up with a more 50/50 split on a category with regards to unique content on pages verses thin content for the same category. Alternatively, should we can 301 all the thin content pages so we only have 10 locations against the category and therefore 100% unique content. I am trying to work out which would help most with regards to local rankings for my location pages. Also , does anyone know if a thin/duplicate content penalty is site wide or can it just affect specific parts of a website. Any advice greatly appreciated thanks Pete
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC120