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That helps a lot. Thank you!

Seems like the safe solution would be to go with separate sites and localize hosting for each as you mentioned.

I just discovered Multilingual Press WP plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/multilingual-press/). Looks like it can provide ccTld and ability to manage all through a single WP Site with Pro version. I would lose the potential SEO benefit from local hosting, but efficient management might beat that. Need to dig into this a bit more.

Also, WordPress Multilingual plugin (http://wpml.org) was recommended to me for "folders" or "sub-domain" solutions. I need to dig into this more, but I do feel better about using ccTld for each.

Thanks for all the help and resources!

Wow that is an interesting work around! Thanks for sharing!

We have expanded into France and Brazil and now have a someone in-house that can translate to French and Brazilian Portuguese. I own ".fr" and ".com.br" versions of our domain.  We are using Wordpress for our CMS. We are currently publishing about 2 articles a week on English site which we would be translating and publishing through new international sites (when appropriate). We will be changing out photos and videos at times in addition to all the text/copy.

So, before I jump deep into this I wanted to reach out for help regarding the best modern approach to this. Should I use some sort of WP Plugin that will let me manage each of these through 1 WP install or is it better to run each separately through multiple WP installs?

I want to achieve this while...

• avoiding any duplicate content penalties.
• provide easy admin/editor management of publishing content.

Any help/advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

The breadcrumbs take up a lot of space when site responsively sizes down for smaller devices. I do not want to hide them, so what hoping i could just simplify them down a bit.

I get the same feeling when I look at the 3 options. My only hesitation is the old rule about keeping keywords early in the URL. Not sure if that really matter anymore.

There are no keywords in the domain. If there were I would definitely just go with dealers/tennessee/nashville and keep it simple and direct as you suggest.

Replying to your last statement if I were going to go with http://website.com/widget-dealers/tennesee/nashville, are you saying I should have the "widget dealers" page url be different and be just "dealers"? Wouldn't that confuse the bots on structure?

Working on the UI of a new site and I would like to simplify the breadcrumbs so they do not take up as much space. They will still communicate the same message to user. See example below:

• Before:  Home > Widget Dealers > Tennessee > Nashville
• After:  Home > Dealers > Tennessee > Nashville

The page title and/or menu item would still be "Widget Dealers". So my question is, if I remove the keyword "Widget" only from the breadcrumb could that hurt me in any way?

I'm working on a website with 100s of locations. There is a location search page (Find Widget Dealer), a page for each state (Tennessee Widget Dealers) and finally a page for each individual location which has localized unique content and contact info (Nashville Widget Dealer). My question is is related to how I should structure my URL and the keywords within the URL. Keywords in my examples being the location and the product (i.e. widget).

Here is a quick overview of each of the 3 tiered pages, with the Nashville page being the most optimized:

1. Find Widget Dealer - Dealer Page only includes a location search bar and bullet list links to states
2. Tennessee Widget Dealers - Page includes brief unique content for the the state and basic listing info for each location along with links to the local page)
3. Nashville Widget Dealer - Page includes a good amount of unique content for this specific location (Most optimized page)

That said, here are the 3 URL structure options I am considering:

1. http://website.com/widget-dealers/tennesee/nashville
2. http://website.com/dealers/tennesee-widget-dealers/nashville
3. http://website.com/dealers/tennesee/nashville-widget-dealer

Any help is appreciated! Thank you

Got it. Thank you!

One more question... Could a list of counties, small surrounding cities, towns, districts boroughs, etc covered on each dealer's local page add value or be seen as a negative? Imagine a NYC dealer targeting boroughs Manhattan, The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island or on a smaller scale an Indianapolis Dealer targeting districts Broad Ripple Village, Massachusetts Avenue, and Fountain Square. Asking because I have a list of each of these for each dealer from their old websites. And yes, I meant list. Not a paragraph about each as they are now.

Actually, I just looked at what I thought was our Santa Rosa, CA dealer and their address is actually in Rohnert Park, CA (15 miles north of Santa Rosa). So to go a little further, should the dealer be listed on Google+ Local and their local page as "ABC Plumbing Rohnert Park", "ABC Plumbing Santa Rosa" or "ABC Plumbing San Francisco"? FYI - Currently, they are optimized as "Northern California", which I do not feel is helping at all.

It is a pretty competitive market, so I am not sure of its reach. Looking at competition though, I think if we optimize correctly we could still rank even from Santa Rosa.

You are correct, it is an in-home service. And Miriam, once again you are awesome!

Currently, only 12 of them cover 2-3 cities, but this will most likely increase over the next year. We have the resources to implement a local page for each of the 2-3 cities they cover and create good unique content. If we were to do this though, there could only be one "true" NAP (true as in a street address registered with Google+ Local, etc). While these secondary city pages will not have back links from local listing/directory sites, it seems it would still be better to go this route then cram into one page, right?

If I were to create these secondary city pages I could change the dealer name to include each city name "ABC Plumbing Santa Rosa", have them get a local number for each city and include just the city/state. Also, I mentioned that they get a local number for each city they want to be optimized for, is this true? If their main NAP uses a toll-free number could each of that dealer's local pages use that same number, or would that be a duplicate issue? Leaning toward local numbers for each city anyway for better ux, but curious if it matters.

I am setting up local pages on our main site for each of our dealers. Some of them cover multiple cities. For example, one dealer in Santa Rosa, CA, but also covers San Francisco (50 mile drive). While I know that with Google+ Local I can add coverage radius or zip code/cities covered, what about on that dealer's local page on our site? Should I create local pages for each city covered or cram local optimization into one? Keep in mind I only have one address to work with for each dealer (P.O. Boxes or Virtual Mail Boxes are NOT a good solutions).

Looking for any white hat tips before I implement for all 100+ dealers.

Thank you for sharing that webinar! Great stuff!

While they are getting decent traffic, I do not want to think short term. Like you said, we could be left with nothing. Many locations have seen the drop in rankings, so probably just a matter of time. So I'm going to switch over to the unique local pages on our site and redirect their pages to the main site. Much more manageable solution with less risk of duplicate content. (ahhh...)

If I redirect their old homepage to their new local page on our site and each product page on their site to that product page on our main site we should benefit from that link juice right both nationally and locally? Their is some value in acquiring those ranking URLs, right?

"If it ain't broke, why fix it?" Haha! True. Pretty sure that is the exact response from one of my dealers.

Another variable I failed to mention is that the dealer sites are running on a very old CMS version, and their current template is not compatible with updated version. Outdated CMS has resulted in a few security issues. Meaning, I am forced to make a decision.

They are not very unique. Same product and service just in a different regions.

1. How would you respond to a local dealer that has a site ranking #1 for targeted keywords?
2. Any outstanding corporate websites with good location structure you would recommend?

I just started with a new company that requires multi-location SEO for its niche product/service. Currently, we have a main corporate website, as well as, 40+ individual dealer websites (we host all).  Keep in mind each of these dealers consist of only 1-2 people, so corporate I will be managing the site or sites and content strategy. Many of the individual dealer sites actually rank very well (#1-#3) in their areas for our targeted keywords, but they all use the same duplicate content. Also, there are many dealer sites that have dropped off the radar in last year, which is probably because of the duplicate and static content. So I'm at a crossroads...

1. Attempt to redo all of these location sites with unique and local content for each or
2. Create optimized unique pages for each of them on our main site and redirect their current local domains to their page on our site

Any advise regarding which direction to go in and why. Why is very important. It will be very difficult to convince a dealer that is #1 with his local site that we are redirecting to our main site, so I need some good ammo and reasoning. Also, any tips toward achieving local seo success will be greatly appreciated, too!

Thank you!