Help with local SEO strategy for service industries

[MozMan2]

Here is the scenario I often wonder about:

My client's  tree removal service is ranking in #1 in local search for
"tree removal  town state." His Google Places account is set for a 30 mile radius. He has lots of directory listings and positive reviews. Some inbound links as well.

The same client is ranking #1 in organic listing for "tree removal county state" ...I chose to target the county for organic listings because the client was dominating local search for the town.

My reasoning: I thought, Google local search would bring all of the local specific searches for "tree removal town state" and organic listings would bring the broader searches for "tree removal county state." That is exactly what's happening and stats show there are some visitors coming to the site searching with the county name. Not a ton of traffic but a lot of keyword variations using the county name. The bulk of the traffic comes from the his Google Places listing for the town the business is located in which is great.

Dilemma: My client is not ranking in local search results for neighboring towns just a few miles away and certainly not ranking in organic listings for neighboring towns either because we are targeting the county. He has a long list of town names he services in the footer area and this does seem to help for organic search in neighboring towns with little competition.

Broad Question: How can I optimize pages for the same services in neighboring towns without duplicating content. For example, the home page title tag and H1 reads:
Tree Removal, Tree Trimming, Stump Removal, County State

It would be very easy to create identical pages with title tags and page headings for the different towns but that would undoubtedly create duplicate content and would look weird to someone browsing the site.

Specific Questions:

• Should I put the town name where the business is located in the title tag even though the site already ranks #1 for that town in local search, without having the town in the title tag? Why not use this importunity for an area that we are not ranking for?

• Do I nix the county and state and try to insert another town or two in the title and H1?

  Ideally I would like to have this site rank well in local search for all of the neighboring towns.

This may be too broad of a post, (it is my first one) but perhaps there are a few of you out there that can outline strategies that work for service industries like, lawn care, tree removal, landscaping, etc.

Thanks for reading.

[MiriamEllis]

Greetings, MozMan2,

As you know, Google's take on local is that it is address-based. Thus, if you have an office in San Francisco, you can create a Google Place Page and shoot for rankings in San Francisco, but not in neighboring Oakland, Berkeley, San Jose etc. Google's picture of Local has proved problematic for all go-to-client businesses (lawn care, tree removal, nannies, chimney sweeps etc.) because there is a genuine bias towards those businesses which at least operate out of their own storefront or at least within their own town. Service area businesses receive less specific solutions from Google Places.

So, what can a business like your client's do? You are on the right track with creating landing pages for the cities/counties/neighborhoods/regions in which you client serves, but you have to take the creative route with this. Don't simply duplicate content from page to page, and definitely don't just stuff a bunch of keywords in the footer. Make these pages interesting for your clients (and for the bots) by making each one a profile of the work the company does in that location. Tell stories, use photos, videos, talk about special concerns for that region (floods, droughts, watering, laws, maintenance). By taking this approach, you will be creating legitimate content that showcases what the client does in the areas where he serves.

You cannot count on this content enabling you to outrank competitors who have physical locations in the neighboring cities, but it is the strongest move you can make towards improved visibility for these secondary terms. After this, all traditional off-page SEO tactics apply (linkbuilding, Social Media, etc.)

Hope these thoughts are helpful!

[Goetzman]

I heard you get a better effect by not stating a radius.

*edit: 2 downvotes, so I'll add: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/018216.html says no less then 20 miles. I still don't think you should specify a radius, let Google decide.