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Hi,

The clients are located in small towns with many other small towns surrounding them. Most times one business is 'local enough' to be countywide and even stretch into nearby counties because of the rural-ish nature of the local market.

Currently, my company has done city pages (not unique content, just city specific titles changed) and done less effort toward the broad keywords. Even though they're getting traffic now with this method I've already notified them that they need unique content for each city page and that it's only a matter of time before Google's algorithm doesn't award such gray-hat techniques.

It'd be much easier for me to have them focus on the broad keywords then have a blog that has city-specific categories talking about the service coverage in the nearby town. However, until I have enough data I think I'll just stick to doing city-specific content (unique) with broad keyword focus as well. Review the data, then reevaluate.

Perhaps you have a better structure or approach?

Thanks,

Chris (Josh's SEO guy).

Hi,

Is it better to target broad keywords in a local market or target 'broad keywords + local city'? Or both?

The sites I'm working with currently have landing pages for each 'local city/town + keyword' ... they each have about 5 services they offer and about 7 or more nearby towns they service. This means I'm tracking about 35+ keywords per client. That seems to be a bit much. Am I wrong? Would it be just as effective to target broad keywords and track them locally being that the local market isn't very competitive. Of course the broad keywords yield more search volume according to google keyword tool. However, the current setup is sending a worthwhile traffic volume to the site.

According to Miriam's article http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide I'm working with a business model 2 - single brick and mortar location servicing many areas nearby.

Thanks,

Chris