Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Local SEO
    4. Local SEO for a business serving multiple small cities

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Local SEO for a business serving multiple small cities

    Local SEO
    5
    8
    2970
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Nadiamo44
      Nadiamo44 last edited by

      We have a local business that has a showroom in one city, and serve other 5 different small cities (in total 6 small cities). Search volume for the targeted keyword is very low (around 100 each plus minus) with a variety of competition levels. The product is expensive so this justifies the low search volume with a serious user intent.
      My question is given the low search volume for each keyword, what would be the best local SEO tactic for this. The website has a DA of 20 with competitors who has similar and higher  DAs.

      Options I am considering:

      1. Create unique pages for each location with unique content (no address available so I will have to use a city name postcode)
      2. Create pages with the same content (but changing the area of service on the URL, H1 and mention the postcode and the radius of coverage twice in the content) and using a canonical tag to solve the duplicate issue.
      In this scenario, I will create the main product pages with the address of the showroom, and mention the area of service covered for the other 5 cities.
      3. Given that the 6 cities are part of a greater area, use the greater area to target them all. The keyword of the greater area has a lower search volume than the city keyword.  This might work for keywords with low competition but not for ones with high competition levels.  Not sure how well search engines will rank the keywords that include the greater area and show the pages for searches in small cities.

      Any advice on which option to go with or any recommendations for other solutions?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • sarahwalsh
        sarahwalsh last edited by

        Hi, so often to get any business onto page one of Google, you need to have a Google My Business account for each business location, we have one for Cardiff, one for Bristol, then we build NAP business citations for each location, hope this helps?

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • areebtahir1
          areebtahir1 last edited by

          I also want to improve the local SEO for my website. How can I do that?

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • vmialik
            vmialik @Nadiamo44 last edited by

            Totally @Nadiamo, do let me know if you want to run any more thoughts or ideas by us, here..

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Nadiamo44
              Nadiamo44 last edited by

              Thank you Vadim!

              vmialik 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Nadiamo44
                Nadiamo44 @Nigel_Carr last edited by

                Thank you Nigel!

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • vmialik
                  vmialik last edited by

                  I will answer your 3 specific options and general thoughts at the bottom:

                  1. Yes you have the correct game plan here.  Postal code may or may not help unless it is specifically searched for.

                  2. Unique content is the name of the game, each neighborhood/area will have their own unique elements you can write about in your content and this will engage the user and bring familiarity and will rank better, and this solves duplicate issues.

                  3. Greater area reach is hard unless you are dominating with reviews or other local listing factors. The goal is having a physical location close to your area of intent.

                  "product is expensive so this justifies" - does this justify potentially opening another physical location to be closer to the searcher?

                  Also how is the current showroom main location doing, with search and its response? Is it in the target area, is it reaching customers well?

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • Nigel_Carr
                    Nigel_Carr last edited by

                    Hi

                    You have to be careful creating city pages. make sure they are as unique as you can make them and add some local content. Treat them like you would any other page when SEO'ing them.

                    Ensure correct and on a one page one theme basis - forget the greater area and concentrate on the town/village. if you try and hoof the local area in as well you will destroy them all, especially if the local area has its own page.

                    Title
                    Description
                    H1
                    Alts
                    Local content

                    make sure it is in the form

                    City - Service - Company name

                    and not service first.

                    More here: https://moz.com/blog/do-you-need-local-pages

                    I hope that help

                    Nigel

                    Nadiamo44 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • 1 / 1
                    • First post
                      Last post

                    Got a burning SEO question?

                    Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                    Start my free trial


                    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.

                    • See all categories

                    Related Questions

                    • UpLinkSEO

                      Changing Business Address on Google Profile & Citations

                      local seo nap change of address tool

                      Hello, I'm looking to change a business address to a new one on a Google business profile (still in the same area but on a different street). So, I'll need to update all citations and website with the new address - Is it recommended to update the citations & website first, and then change the address on the Google business profile, or vice-versa? Looking to do this as safely as possible without negatively impacting the rankings much. I'm seeing a lot of conflicting information on this. Thanks in advance.

                      Local SEO | | UpLinkSEO
                      0
                    • Ryan07

                      New business / content marketing

                      local seo

                      Hi all SEO experts, if a website is brand new, so published in the last 3 months- new domain name and website design. We have rebranded recently, using a new domain as entered new business partnership, there doesn’t seem to be much guidance on this at all, from various SEO websites, so our question is would you delay publishing new blog posts / content marketing as frequently because the company website is brand new? So would SEO’s decrease the frequency of publication of blog posts, because the website is new? Or perhaps it does not matter, and would still post every week as you would if the website has been live for a long time? So, in nutshell, what we are wondering is, is the “Google Sandbox” still in use?

                      Local SEO | | Ryan07
                      0
                    • ThisTimeWereOn

                      Are These Urls for Targeted Cities OK?

                      local seo on-page seo city name

                      I am working for a waterproofing company out of long beach that wants to rank for other neighborhoods around the area. But I just noticed that their URLs are targeting two locations. They have the cities built on the URLs after the long beach part. Will that affect rankings? Not be as potent as a truly SEO friendly url like example.com/services/mold-remediation/mold-remediation-brooklyn-ny? Here is an example: https://zavzaseal.com/mold-remediation-service-provider-long-island-ny/mold-removal-pro-in-copiague-ny-11726/ Another thing is the URLs say "mold removal pro" if I am targeting "mold removal copiague, NY" will that matter to rankings that the URL has pro in it?

                      Local SEO | | ThisTimeWereOn
                      0
                    • Seanthewood123

                      Local Site stuck on page 2 for years. Can’t penetrate page 1! Help!

                      Hey there Moz community! This is the first time I've ever asked a question here so please forgive if I slip up on any etiquette. I manage a website for a small Orlando Florida family law and divorce law firm who are targeting search phrases that include those "Orlando divorce attorney" variants. The site is located at https://www.affordablefamilylawyer.com/ If you run a search for "Orlando divorce attorney" along with close variant search terms our law firm website for about the past two years has hovered at the top of the second page of google but has never actually penetrated page 1. When you examine metrics such as page authority, domain authority, trust, and other traditional metrics it tells you that our site should be on page 1 but alas it's not happening. We have, however been featured quite often in the three pack for the local listings for the target search terms. Though valuable, our goal has always been to be featured in the top three of the organic search results. To add to the confusion we have a practice area page located at https://www.affordablefamilylawyer.com/orlando-divorce-lawyer/ dedicated to divorce and expected that page to rank for these divorce attorney search terms but it will not rank for the search terms and instead our homepage ranks for them every single time regardless of how we swap around the optimization on the page. Never had any manual actions. any help you guys can offer is greatly appreciated and I really appreciate your time!

                      Local SEO | | Seanthewood123
                      0
                    • Dakota_G

                      Effective Real Estate SEO Strategies

                      I am looking to increase organic traffic to our Real Estate website, and am  looking for any suggestions and or feedback as to strategies to implement in this area or even the must-have SEO pages every real-estate business should build. Interested in attracting sellers & buyers, but obviously would love more to attract sellers... The issue with that being you have to outrank the massive sites like Zillow and Realtor. Some ideas I have so far. Building out Neighbourhood pages to rank for people searching for 'Neighbourhood name' Any feedback on this one greatly appreciate. What's {city name} like? {Neighbourhood name} houses for sale What are good areas of {city name} Is {city name} a good place to live? What's {city name} like? What __ are in {city name} restaraunts hospitals beaches colleges How is {city names} weather Thanks guys!

                      Local SEO | | Dakota_G
                      1
                    • Gavo

                      How important is citations for an online business?

                      If you run an online business, just how important is citation building? Our client does not want to disclose her physical home address from where she operates and the campaign does not consist of any local keywords. Should we then focus on link building and growing the site's DA instead? As well as getting onpage elements optimised. Many thanks in advance for your input!

                      Local SEO | | Gavo
                      0
                    • Cleanily

                      Strategy for [list of keywords] + hundreds of cities

                      Hi, hoping to get some suggestions on strategy in terms of building out my site as I'm a bit overwhelmed. We provide home services throughout hundreds of locations - some major cities, others smaller yet affluent towns where demand is sufficient, though have no physical presence in the majority. My question is really regarding ranking organically (given local listings will be so difficult). I am new to Moz and have been using the Keyword Explorer to generate a long list of keywords, which I've refined to those which offer the most opportunity. Do I simply now take this list and append [city_name] to each keyword/phrase? If so, working in [list_of_keywords] + [city] into hundreds of location pages is surely going to be a nightmare to make unique, and most likely a horrible user experience. All my customers really want to see is: that we service their area, some info on how we operate, that we are trustworthy (reviews/site quality etc) clear pricing/information (across mobile/desktop) and an easy way of contacting us. If I was searching for a lawn care service in Manchester for example, I couldn't care less about anything else other than the above information. So is padding out pages with content like 'Things to do in Manchester' etc. really the way forward? Would I be better off focusing on building relationships/links with other local complimentary businesses/influencers rather than building out tons of content (on the assumption of course that what content is there is high quality, contains a smattering of keyword + city, and optimised very well)? Any help hugely appreciated!

                      Local SEO | | Cleanily
                      1
                    • sfrediktru8

                      Local SEO Website Structure.

                      Hi everyone, This might be quite a long post so please bear with me. I am currently rebuilding my website.  My previous website was built by a web designer and was very basic.  5 page html site consisting of home, services, gallery, testimonials, contact pages.  None of them were great - thin content, not optimised as well as could be - no h1's etc. To be fair I knew nothing about websites and didn't bother much with the site.  As a new business I used it simply as a place for people to visit for more information after receiving a leaflet and never bothered much about driving traffic to the site. A few years down the line and I have realised I need the website to be working for me as opposed to alongside me.  I am building it myself via wordpress as web designer didn't want to work in wordpress.  I have done my keyword research and I'm working on pages as we speak. Previously my homepage - around 80% of visitors landed here for my main keyword (driveway cleaning glasgow) as it was number 6 in the organic listing.  With my services page appearing directly underneath in 7 for the same keyword. I have starting building a new page for that keyword which contains (driveway-cleaning-glasgow) in the url. I have 301'd my previous services page to this url. Now for my questions...
                      My 2nd keyword based on volume is driveway cleaning.  How do I optimise for this or will the (driveway-cleaning-glasgow) page rank for this also as the words are contained within this page? I plan on having the same structure for the remaining services - pressure-washing-glasgow, monoblock-cleaning-glasgow etc, etc.   As I am building new pages for each service with location built in, where does this leave my homepage?  Should I be targeting keywords for this page?  It is still my strongest page and apart from the (driveway-cleaning-glasgow) page which will get some help from the 301 these are all new pages so I would expect perhaps initially to lose some traffic.  But as I am not ranking well for anything other than the main 2 keywords mentioned above it can only be beneficial long term when google recognises the specific pages for each service.  And when I start using Adwords I will have a specific landing page for each service. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks

                      Local SEO | | sfrediktru8
                      0

                    Get started with Moz Pro!

                    Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                    Start my free trial
                    Products
                    • Moz Pro
                    • Moz Local
                    • Moz API
                    • Moz Data
                    • STAT
                    • Product Updates
                    Moz Solutions
                    • SMB Solutions
                    • Agency Solutions
                    • Enterprise Solutions
                    • Digital Marketers
                    Free SEO Tools
                    • Domain Authority Checker
                    • Link Explorer
                    • Keyword Explorer
                    • Competitive Research
                    • Brand Authority Checker
                    • Local Citation Checker
                    • MozBar Extension
                    • MozCast
                    Resources
                    • Blog
                    • SEO Learning Center
                    • Help Hub
                    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                    • How-to Guides
                    • Moz Academy
                    • API Docs
                    About Moz
                    • About
                    • Team
                    • Careers
                    • Contact
                    Why Moz
                    • Case Studies
                    • Testimonials
                    Get Involved
                    • Become an Affiliate
                    • MozCon
                    • Webinars
                    • Practical Marketer Series
                    • MozPod
                    Connect with us

                    Contact the Help team

                    Join our newsletter
                    Moz logo
                    © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                    • Accessibility
                    • Terms of Use
                    • Privacy

                    Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.