Help with local SEO strategy for service industries
-
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 StateIt 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.
-
-
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!
-
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.
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
-
Can Anyone help me Checking the SEO of my Website?
Hi, I hope you are doing well. I want know how is looking my website? Is that attractive or boring for visitor. I really need your answer to improve my website. My Website is: https://sortscut.com/
Reporting & Analytics | | Pauline210 -
Collecting post codes / zip codes in Google Analytics - Terms of Service
Hi Mozzers, Just reading up on Google Analytic's Terms of Service and wondering if collecting post codes / zip codes (from a website's 'Find my nearest...' tool) adhere's to the following: "You will not (and will not allow any third party to) use the Service to track, collect or upload any data that personally identifies an individual (such as a name, email address or billing information), or other data which can be reasonably linked to such information by Google." What do you think?
Reporting & Analytics | | A_Q0 -
Google Analytics Stopped Tracking Visits - NEED HELP!
Hi Moz Community, I have about 10 sites, static HTML sites and WordPress sites, which ALL stopped tracking Google Analytics on August 2nd. They go to a flat-line! Dead! No data! Has anyone else experienced this either currently or before? I have confirmed all code is correct as it's been tracking these sites for years. One site gets 5,000+ visits a month and they are sitting at only 1,500 now and will be a fun conversation to have with the client. If all code is correct, what should I do? How do I overcome this without having to re-create another account/tracking ID? Never dealt with something like this before and there is not much on the web or in other forums. Would appreciate any help or advice or tips! - Patrick
Reporting & Analytics | | WhiteboardCreations0 -
Campaign Tracking URLs and the Impact on SEO
Hi Guys, I am setting up tracking for a couple of offline campaigns in Analytics and would just like to know if this will cause issues. The situation is below: Two URLs Ranking Well Organically: www.domain.co.uk/area-covered/area-a www.domain.co.uk/area-covered/area-b URLs Setup for the Purpose of Offline Campaigns www.domain.co.uk/campaign1 www.domain.co.uk/campaign2 Plan to Track this in Analytics www.domain.co.uk/campaign1 redirecting to www.domain.co.uk/area-covered/area-a_&utm_medium=qr&utm_source=test1&utm_campaign=test1_ www.domain.co.uk/campaign2 redirecting to www.domain.co.uk/area-covered/area-a&utm_medium=qr&utm_source=test2&utm_campaign=test1__ So the idea is that the user gets a nice simple URL to input from the off-line media (www.domain.co.uk/campaign1). This then redirects to one of the pages thats performing well organically (www.domain.co.uk/area-covered/area-a) but with the relevant tracking (www.domain.co.uk/campaign1 redirecting to www.domain.co.uk/area-covered/area-a&utm_medium=qr&utm_source=test1&utm_campaign=test1). The only way that the tracking URL can be accessed by the user is if the off-line media URL is entered. My main concern here is how Google will treat this. Obviously I don't want to cause issues with the two URLs that are ranking well organically. Would having a version of exactly the same URL, just with tracking do so? Any help is appreciated! Thanks in advance.
Reporting & Analytics | | CarlWint0 -
How to transfer 5 domains under one Brand domain without using 301 redirect with minimum SEO loss
My situation is rather complicated , I have 5 domains with different but identical services. Some with good traffic some without, but 2 main domains have manual penalty from Google (I have tried a lot to get rid of the penalty but no success) so finally I have decided to move all our websites under one anchor website 'a brand' and pass all the seo juice + blog articles under the same. Now the problem with the procedure is that we cannot redirect the penalized domain urls to new one as penalization will also be transferred and the whole motive of creating a new brand will be lost. So if somebody could guide me as of how I should proceed transferring SEO value with minimum traffic loss but without using 301) **One way I could figure out is using canonical (Am not confident over it) but say I create 5 identical pages on new domain and declare them as canonical of old domain pages (So is it safe? will it transfer the penalty of old domain to canonical new urls? ) ** Rest i am bifurcating all the traffic sources like direct / organic / referral / Social etc and chalking out what we can control manually and in what ratio, gradually I will work on each section to transfer the traffic. Main Problem is of Organic and Not available. Some suggestions or blog urls would be appreciated.
Reporting & Analytics | | ngupta10 -
Google Webmaster Preferred Domain Settings Help
I was recently running my SEO Moz report for my domain and saw a drastic drop in page rankings on the report. After some trouble shooting, I checked my Google Webmaster Tools and saw the "Preferred Domain for my Site has changed" the last week in which I saw the drastic drop. Under the "preferred domain" area, I have it set to www.marware.com but on most of the links to my site, it reads www.marware.com/ . We also have http://marware.com , but am not sure if this carries any relevance as the preferred domain is set for www.marware.com . Does the "/" make a difference in the "Preferred Domain" section? If so, how do I update it? Is there a way to confirm it is set up correctly? In the photo attached, what does "Linked Property" "Analytics Web Property" and "Associated Webmaster Tools Site" mean? Thanks in advance! T5tSCxm
Reporting & Analytics | | Khadaran0 -
What are the top free tools to use in SEO (apart from SeoMoz of course)
Hi guys, Can you point me the best free tools you're using for SEO (link building, etc.) - apart from SeoMoz - I'm kind of newbie in that area and in a discovering process. Thanks !
Reporting & Analytics | | zedisdead0 -
Can you help me figure out what happened to my website search results in Google?
On or about the 24th of April I noticed an abrupt decrease in traffic to my website:
Reporting & Analytics | | rdominey
http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com Sorry this might be long but I’m trying to be as thorough as possible. I thought that I had been hacked, a virus, maybe penalized by Google I don’t know what ? I submitted a reconsideration request to Google and they responded with the following: Reconsideration request for http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/: No manual spam actions found
May 10, 2012
Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/,
We received a request from a site owner to reconsider http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/ for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines. - - - - - -
We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google. There's no need to file a reconsideration request for your site, because any ranking issues you may be experiencing are not related to a manual action taken by the webspam team.
Google Search Quality Team I have ran all kinds of web crawl tests, Google webmaster, talked with SEO “Experts” and still can not figure out what is happening. I decided to use a couple of SEOmoz tools to try to help me explain what is happening. I figured that if I could take a very specific and unique KeyPhrase and run it on a specific page that I might be able to better explain what is happening. Basically, We appear to be no longer searchable by key words or phrases on google?
Here is an example:
Key Phrase: Free Services to Help Improve Your Photos on Canvas
Website: http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/free-photo-canvas-retouching
Attached are some screen shots of the actual search results on Bing, Yahoo and Google along with the ranking tool results from SEOmoz and the on page grade for the key phrase.
Anybody got any Ideas? I am hurting; the internet and Google search is about 40% of by business. http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Bing-Free-Services.jpg http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Yahoo-Free-Services.jpg http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Google-Free-Services.jpg http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/SEOmoz-Ranking.jpg http://www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/SEOmoz-Report-Card.jpg [" target="_blank">iframe>](<iframe class=) Bing-Free-Services.jpg Yahoo-Free-Services.jpg Google-Free-Services.jpg SEOmoz-Ranking.jpg SEOmoz-Report-Card.jpg0