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I have a dynamic website which will have location-based internal pages that will have a <title>and <h1> title, and meta description tag that will include the subregion of a city.  Each page also will have an 'info' section describing the generic product/service offered which will also include the name of the subregion.  The 'specific product/service content will be dynamic but in some cases will be almost identical--ie subregion A may sometimes have the same specific content result as subregion B.  Will the difference of just the location put in each of the above tags be enough for me to avoid a Duplicate Content concern?</p></title>

It seems there are 2 opposing views, and as a newbie this is very confusing. One view is that as long as your site pages have relevant content and are easy for the user, Google will rank you fairly. The other view is that Google has 'rules' you must follow and even if the site is relevant and user-friendly if you don't play by the rules your site may never rank well. Which is closer to the truth?  No one wants to have a great website that won't rank because Google wasn't sophisticated enough to see that they weren't being unfair. Here's an example to illustrate one related concern I have: I've read that Google doesn't like duplicated content.  But, here are 2 cases in which is it more 'relevant' and 'usable' to the user to have duplicate content: Say a website helps you find restaurants in a city.  Restaurants may be listed by city region, and by type of restaurant.  The home page may have links to 30 city regions.  It may also have links for 20 types of restaurants.  The user has a choice.   Say the user chooses a region.  The resulting new page may still be relevant and usable by listing ALL 30 regions because the user may want to choose a different region.  Altenatively say the user chooses a restaurant type for the whole city.  The resulting page may still be relevant and usable by giving the user the ability to choose another type OR another city region.  IOW there may be a 'mega-menu' at the top of the page which duplicates on every page in the site, but is very helpful.  Instead of requiring the user to go back to the home page to click a new region or a new type the user can do it on any page.  That's duplicate content in the form of a mega menu, but is very relevant and usable.  YET, my sense is that Google MAY penalize the site even though arguably it is the most relevant and usable approach for someone that may or may not have a specific region or restaurant type in mind.. Thoughts?

Google will use the user's location for a restaurant search but it doesn't look to me like it uses it for a national company like Kohls.  Is there a way to determine that? Assume I have no physical local presence in Houston for answering the question. Assume also that the coupon I list is a national one that applies everywhere.  It seems to me that a facebook post that uses the first one as a link is better because more people live outside of Houston than inside and will see it as relevant, AND I may list it for more than one city.  But, for specificity perhaps it makes sense to have the second one as it may be more likely to show up in a Google search result by someone in Houston.. Your thoughts please? Thanks.

Say I have a coupon site in a major city and assume there are 20 main locations regions (suburb cities) in that city. Assume that all external links to my site will be to only the home page.  www.site.com    Assume also that my website business has no physical location. Which scenario is better? 1. One home page that serves up dynamic results based on the user cookie location, but mentions all 20 locations in the content.  Google indexes 1 page only, and all external links are to it. 2. One home page that redirects to the user region (one of 20 pages), and therefore will have 20 pages--one for each region that is optimized for that region.  Google indexes 20 pages and there will be internal links to the other 19 pages, BUT all external links are still only to the main home page. Thanks.

Not sure where this belongs.. I am developing a coupons site for listing local coupons and national coupons (think Valpak+RetailMeNot), eventually in all major cities, and am VERY concerned about how many internal pages to let google 'follow' for indexing, as it can exceed 10,000 per city. Is there a way to determine what the optimal approach is for internal paging/indexing  BEFORE I actually launch the site (it is about ready except for this darned url question, which seems critical) Ie can I put in searchwords for google to determine which ones are most worthy to have their own indexed page?  I'm a newbie sort of, so please put answer in simple terms. I'm one person and have limited funds and need to find the cheapest way to get the best organic results for each city that I cover. Is there a generic answer?  One SEO firm told me the more variety the better.  Another told me that simple is better, and use content on the simple pages to get variety.  So confused I decided to consult the experts here! Here's the site concept: **FOR EACH CITY: ** User inputs location: Main city only(ie Houston), or 1 of 40 city regions(suburb, etc..), or zip code, or zip-street combo, OR allow gps lookup.    A miles range is defaulted or chosen by the user. After search area is determined, user chooses 1 of 6 types of coupons searches: 1. Online shopping with national coupon codes, choice of 16 categories (electronics, health, clothes, etc) and 100 subcategories (computers, skin care products, mens shirts)  These are national offers for chains like Kohls, which do not use the users location at all. 2. Local shopping in-store coupons, choice of same 16 categories and 100 subcategories that are used for online shopping in #1 (mom & pop shoe store or local chain offer).  The results will be within the users chosen location and range. 3. Local restaurant coupons, about 60 subcategories (pizza, fast food, sandwiches).  The results are again within the users chosen location and range. 4. Local services coupons, 8 categories (auto repair, activities,etc..) and around 200 subcategories (brakes, miniature golf, etc..).  Results within users chosen location and range. 5. Local groceries.  This is one page for the main city with coupons.com grocery coupons, and listing the main grocery stores in the city.  This page does not break down by sub regions, or zip, etc.. 6. Local weekly ad circulars.  This is one page for the main city that displays about 50 main national stores that are located in that main city. So, the best way to handle the urls indexed for the dynamic searches by locations, type of coupon, categories/subcats, and business pages The combinations of potential urls to index are nearly unlimited: Does the user's location matter when he searches for one thing (restaurants), but not for another (Kohls)?  IF so, how do I know this?  SHould I tailor indexed urls to that knowledge?  Is there an advantage to having a url for NATIONAL cos that ties to each main city: shopping/Kohls vs shopping/Kohls/Houston  or even shopping/Kohls/Houston-suburb? Again, I"m talking about 'follow' links for indexing.  I realize I can have google index just a few main categories and subcats and not the others, or a few city regions but not all of them, etc.. while actually having internal pages for all of them.. Is it better to have 10,000 urls for say  coupon-type/city-region/subcategory  or just one for the main city: main-city/all coupons?, or something in between?  You get the gist.  I don't know how to begin to figure out the answers to these kinds of questions and yet they seem critical to the design of the site. The competition: sites like Valpak, MoneyMailer, localsaver seem to favor the 'more is better' approach, with coupons/zipcode/category  or coupons/bizname/zipcode   But a site like 8coupons.com appears to have no indexing for categories or subcategories at all!  They have city-subregion/coupons and they have individual businesses  bizname/city-subregion  but as far as I see no city/category or city-subregion/category.  And a very popular coupons site in my city only has maincity/coupons maincity/a few categories and maincity/bizname/coupons. Sorry this is so long, but it seems very complicated to me and I wanted to make the issue as clear as possible.  Thanks, couponguy