Best Approach to Rank For Multiple Locations With Similar Targeted Keywords
-
I'm trying to determine the best way to set up a website to rank for a similar set of keyword phrases in three different cities. The keyword phrases I want to rank for are all pretty much the same with the only difference being the city associated with the keyword phrase. For example, "Austin water restoration" vs "San Antonio water restoration" vs "Houston water restoration". Each city needs about 7 or 8 pages of unique content to accurately target the group of keywords I'm trying to rank for.
My initial thought was to write up unique content for each city and have each city act a site within the main site. For example, the main navigation for xyz.com/austin would be Austin specific, so when you land on xyz.com/austin and go to Services - Water Restoration, it would be all Austin specific content. The same would be true for San Antonio and Houston.
The only problem with this approach is that I have to build up the page authority for a lot of different pages. It would be much easier to build up the page authority for one Water Restoration page and just insert a little "Areas we serve" on the page that includes "Austin, San Antonio, and Houston" and maybe work the coverage area in again at the bottom of the page somewhere. However, it would be much more difficult to work "Austin, San Antonio, and Houston" into the title tags and H1s though, and I couldn't logically work the cities into the content as much either. That would be a downside to this approach.
Any thoughts on this? Wondering how large companies with hundreds of locations typically approach this? I'd really appreciate your input.
-
Hi Shaycw,
Sounds good to me...just make sure the font is a regular size (not too small!). So glad to have helped.
-
I really like this approach Miriam. Thanks so much for the suggestion. I think maybe on the services pages I will include a "serving Austin, San Antonio, and Houston" in a small font just below the main page heading. The heading would be "Water Restoration" for example, and I can get my cities just below the main keyword phrase so that they are associated with it. That's what I'm thinking anyways.
I really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts and insights on this Miriam. Very nice of you
-
Hi Shaycw,
Thanks for the further clarification. With a client like this, I like to group my page types into 3 different categories:
-
City pages
-
Service pages
-
Future pages
To start with, I create the first two sets of pages. So, in your case, you would be building an Austin page, a San Antonio page and a Houston page. These pages would open with the complete NAP of the business at the top, encoded in Schema and would feature unique content about the unique locations. These pages would be optimized for the respective city and the MAIN service term. The second set of pages would be the service pages. You would build one for each unique service, and while the content of the page could reflect the three cities, your main optimization would center on the service, itself.
At this point, once I've got the basic pages created, I like to develop a blog for the client so that he can begin writing up his projects in the various cities. His blog posts will be titled things like 'A Tough Water Restoration Job In Houston, TX - Before And After'. When you've got 8 different services in 3 different cities to cover, the combination of possibilities really adds up, and I've found that a blog is the best way to begin tacking content development for all possible keyword combinations, while also accomplishing the task of adding fresh content to the site on a regular basis.
This is the method I've found works best. You may come up with some other way that works best for your clients, but I hope my explanation of how I do this makes good sense.
Remember, too, that because the client has 3 legit physical locations and phone numbers, a big part of your marketing will revolve around building unique citations for each location in a number of places. Coupled with a good content development strategy, you should be able to earn a lot of visibility for the client.
-
-
Hi Miriam,
Thanks for the response back. We do have 3 actual physical locations with a unique address and phone number in each city.
I really appreciate your willingness to provide your input on this question!
-
Hi Shaycw,
Does your business have three physical locations or one physical location from which you serve three cities? Please, describe as fully as you can. I'll be happy to come back and read your answer.
-
Your answer doesn't make too much sense here. At one point you talk about pages on a domain, and another point you refer to the same thing as sites. Please make sure that you have knowledge of the topic before responding, and that you leave a logical answer. Thanks!
-
I read and understand it, for your solution you must register a domain and make just three pages like
- site.com/Austin-water-restoration
- site.com/San-Antonio-water-restoration
- site.com/Houston-water-restoration
Then next you are asking for internal city 7 to 8 pages, then i suggest you to make total of 10 pages and link them to all of these 3 sites, You pages looks like to cover the all three cities.
Now you have to only make authority and powerful links to only 3 pages of above that i ask, just list the title of homepage website, like Water Restoration Services - Sitename and once you got good quality of these pages link your internal cities pages to them and they also rank once they connected to better authority pages.
If you want to increase your business to many cities, then you have to make individual pages for every city, its little bit tough but not impossible. ...
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
-
What is the best markup for testimonials?
These are testimonials that our staff have collected themselves, so I'm unsure about using a block quote and citing a source, since these testimonials are original content, not references from another website. I just need to place the quote, the author's name, and, in some cases, the author's city. Any recommendations?
Web Design | | bcaples0 -
Any risks involved in removing a sub-domain from search index or completely taking down? Ranking impact?
Hi all, One of our sub-domains has thousands of indexed pages but traffic is very less and irrelevant. There are links between this sub-domain to other sub domains of ours. We are planning to take this subdomain completely. What happens if so? Google responds for this with a ranking change? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Do more links from sub-domains to domain (website) hurt rankings?
Hi all, If there are multiple sub-domains like abc.website.com, 123.website.com, etc...and if the top pages of website are linked from multiple sub-domains via top menu or footer links; will this hurts? Will too much interlinking of few top pages of a website from it's sub-domains dilute link juice? How many links ideally we can add to website from a sub-domain? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
When Site:Domain Search Run on Google, SSL Error Appears on One URL, Will this Harm Ranking
Greetings MOZ Community: When a site:domain search is run on Google, a very strange URL appears in the search results. The URL is http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com:2082/ The page displays a "the site's security certificate is not trusted." This only appears for one URL out of 400. Could this indicate a wider problem with the server's configuration? Is this something that needs to be corrected, and if so how? Our ranking has dropped a lot in the last few months. Thanks,
Web Design | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
Website Updates, will this affect my ranking/ DA or PA?
Hello All! My website is due for a big update soon, my current site is doing ok, however I want to update all of the content, structure, style and look of my whole site. I feel that with the way it's been going lately that it's time for an upgrade, my question is, will this affect my ranking? Will my page ranking's be affected? Will my DA be affected? I intend to optimize this new website perfectly too with all the things I've learnt since joining this forum. All the best, Paul
Web Design | | Paul_Tovey0 -
Old school HTML and rankings
How does really old school HTML (with inline CSS and a boat load of markup errors) affect modern SEO? I'm talking purely rankings, not conversions or bounce rate etc.
Web Design | | DavidWilsonSEO0 -
Hi Everybody. I have a large site that is made up of the main site then a large support site. The support site has a lot of overlapping content and similar titles. Would it be beneficial to separate the two? Thank you. All answers appreciated.
Hi Everybody. I have a large site that is made up of the main site then a large support site. The support site has a lot of overlapping content and similar titles. Would it be beneficial to separate the two? Thank you. All answers appreciated.
Web Design | | arithon0 -
Looking for an open source or wordpress designer that knows seo best practices
I have almost lost my patience in trying to find a web developer for our project. I have searched high and low from freelancers to us based firms. All I can find; freelancers that can't get the job done, but promise they can and us based firms that are currently getting away with murder charging through the nose on work that is not acceptable to say the least. US based Firms 1. Seem to give you as little work as possible to increase their margin. I get it we all need to make money. 2. Everyone knows how to do everything until you start telling them that you have a little education in the industry and will be testing their work. All of the sudden they no longer talk to you. 3. Got a few recommendations and they are all subpar performers. After asking them why their builds load so slow or have so many errors they have excuses that point to the customer Freelancers over seas. 1. I am not sure where to start with this. I have searched high and low in freelancer for someone that I can trust to build a site. Of course there is a ton of junk to look through. After countless hours of narrowing down the individuals I am thinking of giving a shot I find that they are not capable of the job. All I want is a new website from a firm that is honest and knows what they are doing. That is educated in seo best practices. That can build a quality website and actually has references of sites they built that are still up and running and test out alright. It is pretty bad when web development companies miss simple items like h tags. Really? Does anyone know of someone that knows what they are doing? That can work with someone that knows how to run a dvd player. Just disappointing to see all these web companies and freelancers that get away with murder. Who earns their keep in this industry?!?!?!?
Web Design | | forecastedinvestments0