Targeting different cities for my service - Geo landing pages
-
I am breaking my head trying to figure out the best way around this... so we have an hvac company located in nyc. We want to also target all the different boroughs.
We have a bunch of different major keywords
hvac repair + location
hvac service + location
along with keywords such as air conditioning repair + location, heating service + location , and so on.....
Should each borough + keyword have its own page? Or should we just have one page called brooklyn and in that page target all the different keywords like hvac, air conditining, and heating ?
Also does it matter how we have it laid out? Domaim/hvac-repair-brooklyn or should I add domain/service-area/hvac. .....
Some of my competitors have the same content written on each borough page just moved around a little with different city names, how are they ranking so well? Isn't that duplicate?
Would love to hear from some people with success in this local area.
Thanks!
-
For the sake of convenience, I prefer this:
/service-area/dallas-tx
Hope that helps!
-
My thought was to have a master service area page that would be at mydomain.com/service-area. That page would have a service area map or the like that would link to the service areas themselves, which would be located at /service-area/texas/dallas or /service-area/dallas-tx, and which of the two is preferable is the essence of my question. Thank you!
-
Hey Chad!
Getting to discuss these topics with the community is the highlight of my work day, every day!
In your examples, above, what is this meant to represent:
service-area
Are you saying the domains would actually say 'service-area' in them or is that filler text for something you are meaning to convey? Please clarify. Thanks!
-
Miriam, as a follow-up, do your recommendations for city pages change if a company serves a large number number of cities across several states? In particular, which of the following link structures would you recommend:
- mydomain.com/service-area/texas/dallas and mydomain.com/service-area/louisiana/shreveport
- mydomain.com/service-area/dallas-tx and mydomain.com/service-area/shreveport-la
Seriously, Miriam, this is all so helpful. Thank you for spending your time this way!
-
Hello all, I have very recently taken on a local business to manage and quite new to all of this. Your posts on the subject of multi-location have been incredibly useful and your original blogpost on Local landing pages Miriam is in my reading list and I am sure will be revisited regularly.
I have another question on this obviously complex subject, what to do about tracking your keywords in MOZ Pro? I have subscribed and set up my main keywords and linked each to the 40 different service locations for our business, which looks like its a similar set up to Chads, however this now gives me 400 keywords to track, which seems way too much and unmanageable. Can you give me some advice on how to make this much more effective?
Many thanks,
Sarah
-
Sure thing, Chad!
-
Thank you, Miriam!
-
Hi Chad!
I see. If you have just one physical location, I recommend the following structure:
-
Include your city of location on your main pages (home, about, contact and the landing page for that city).
-
Create a unique landing page for each service city. Be sure the content is of very high quality on these pages.
-
Create a set of services pages, describing each of your company's services. Optimize these for the service keywords.
#3 has some grey area. If it is most important for you to rank for your city of location, then include that city in the optimization of these pages. If the service cities are of equal importance to the city of location, then do not optimize these for the cities - just optimize them for the services.
And, of course, be sure you are not duplicating content on any page
-
-
Thanks for getting back with me so quickly! I'm asking about a business that has only one physical location, but a broad service area. Should site pages be primarily optimized for the physical location or should I leave city names out of most page titles if I'd like to rank beyond the city of my physical location. Given that I have only one physical location, but a broad service area, which option is better (or is there a third):
Option #1: Optimize Most Pages for Physical Location
- Homepage: "Company Name | HVAC | New York City"
- About Page: "About Company Name | New York City"
- Service Page 1: "Service 1 | Company Name | New York City"
- Service Page 2: "Service 2 | Company Name | New York City"
- Service City Page 1: "New York City | Company Name"
- Service City Page 2: "Albany, NY | Company Name"
- Service City Page 3: "Philadelphia, PA | Company Name"
Option #2: Optimize Only City Pages for Physical Locations
- Homepage: "Company Name | HVAC"
- About Page: "About Company Name"
- Service Page 1: "Service 1 | Company Name"
- Service Page 2: "Service 2 | Company Name"
- Service City Page 1: "New York City | Company Name"
- Service City Page 2: "Albany, NY | Company Name"
- Service City Page 3: "Philadelphia, PA | Company Name"
-
Hi Chad,
Are you asking about a multi-location business? I believe so. If no city is more important than any other, then you would likely want to focus on the brand/keywords on the homepage and focus on the various cities on the city landing pages. If there are more details you'd like to share, feel free!
-
How would you recommend optimizing the site for its physical location? Would the homepage Title, for example, be something like "Company Name | HVAC | New York City" if that's the physical location of the business or would it be better to go with "Company Name | HVAC" as not to nullify the attempts to rank well in Albany, New Brunswick, and other surrounding cities?
-
Hi Brian - Your instinct about this is correct. Spun pages tend to be of very low quality and largely duplicative. Ideally, if you have an important city/service combination, you should be investing the time it takes to create a unique page from scratch about it. If the term is worth it, the time is worth it.
-
Sorry to revive an older post (I'll delete this if necessary), but I had one quick addition/question about this. I'm going to assume that using spinning software to cover the various city/service combos is out of the question, right? That it'd be better to simply not have a page devoted to a specific combination than to have a spun page?
Thanks!
-
Hey Jamie,
Well, in my suggested structure, the city landing pages wouldn't just say 'New York' on them in the titles,(by which I believe you're intending New York City, right?). They would likely include whatever the overall keyword is for the company...which would be HVAC if that is the category this company is in. What I wouldn't do, though, unless you do have the resources to create an enormous number of pages for all individual service/city combos, would be to have NYC+Heater Repair, NYC+Air Conditioner Repair, Brooklyn+Heater Repair, Brooklyn+Air Condition Repair, etc. On a limited budget/with limited resources, I think the structure I've suggested above would be the best way to convey all cities and services without repetition and without the risk of creating thin or duplicative content.
-
Miriam,
When structuring the pages as one for each domain.com/service and another for domain.com/city
would you still show up in the google search if someone was searching for the city and service?
Example new york hvac company
I found that when I used the keyword example new york hvac company in my title, page keyword, content I ranked relatively high. Thoughts as to the differences?
Thanks in advance!
-
Hi Raymond,
If I were building this from scratch, and you only served one city, I would likely recommend:
domain.com/air-conditioning-repair-brooklyn
domain.com/air-conditioning-service-brooklyn
domain.com/hvac-installation-brooklyn
domain.com/hvac-repair-brooklyn
etc.
But, if you are working with more than one city, I would have a set of pages like this:
etc.
And another set of pages like this:
etc.
So, 1 set of pages for the cities and another set for the services. How to structure this sensibly really depends on the business model (single city vs. multi-city). Most service area businesses I've worked with serve multiple cities, so I've found the above works well and keeps things simple.
-
Miriam,
I read the article, great post by the way! So in otherwords you are saying to do the following
domain.com/service-area/brooklyn/hvac-repair
domain.com/service-area/brooklyn/hvac-service
domain.com/service-area/brooklyn/hvac-installations
domain.com/service-area/brooklyn/air-conditioning-repair
domain.com/service-area/brooklyn/air-conditioning-service
domain.com/service-area/brooklyn/air-conditioning-installations
Or should all HVAC related keywords just be one page? Something along the lines of domain.com/service-area/brooklyn/hvac-repair-service-installation
thanks in advance!
-
Hey Raymond!
Jim has linked you to my great big post on the art of local landing pages. Hopefully, you can read it and identify a sensible strategy there.
Now, I'm not a New Yorker, and so this business of boroughs has always been a bit of mystery to me, but one thing that I will add to what you'll read in my post is how clearly hyper-local sensitivity is ramping up in search. My honest preference for structuring local websites is:
-
one page per city
-
one page per service
I totally understand that every local business owner worth his salt wants to rank for every possible combination of service/geo-term. Of course! But the only time I feel this landing page strategy should be undertaken to represent every possible combo is if the business owner has considerable creative or financial resources to devote to make a potentially enormous number of pages of a very high quality. Clearly - your competitors aren't hearing this advice if they're just spinning thin/duplicative content to cover the waterfront.
Now, all this being said, with Google become more and more intelligent about neighborhoods, and the mobile (and desktop) user becoming the new 'centroid', my take on this is that neighborhood (borough?) names are only going to become more important in signifying that a business is physically close to a given user. So, if I were consulting with a small HVAC company without endless funds, I'd probably suggest something like this strategy:
-
one page per city
-
one page per service
-
frequent but gentle mention of boroughs/neighborhoods throughout the website, as appropiate
-
hyperlocal blogging on an ongoing basis that emphasizes these boroughs, if the company or copywriter can swing something authentic and good to write about
I think frequent content of this sort could make phones ring. Hope these are helpful ideas!
-
-
Here's the iconic post on just that area - http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide - from Miram who's on staff here at Moz.com...
And she addresses that too....well worth the click/thru eh!
-
Hi Raymond,
You can create few pages like a/c to service area and then use the keywords for each service area page.
Also, domain/service-area/hvac url structure is good for your business
Kind Regards!
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
-
Content Page URL Question
Our main website is geared toward the city where we are located and includes the city name in content page URLs. We also have separate websites for three surrounding cities; these websites have duplicate content except the city name: MainWebsite.com
Local Website Optimization | | sharon75025
City2-MainWebsite.com
City3-MainWebsite.com
City4-MainWebsite.com We're restructuring to eliminate the location websites and only use the main website. The new site will have city pages. We have well established Google business locations for all four cities. We will keep all locations, replacing the location website with the main website. Should we remove City-IL from all content page URLs in the new site? We don't want to lose traffic/ranking for City2 or City3 because the content pages have City1 in the URL. Page URLs are currently formatted as follows: www.MainWebsite.com/Service-1-City1-IL.html
www.MainWebsite.com/Service-2-City1-IL.html
www.MainWebsite.com/Service-3-City1-IL.html
www.MainWebsite.com/Service-4-City1-IL.html Thanks!0 -
Are local business directories worth the effort? Eg. White pages, Yell.com, Local.com?
Hi Guys, Im new to Moz and very keen to do SEO right without upsetting Mr. Google too much. Are local business directories worth the effort? Its a laborious job, but happy to do it, if its effective and won't be considered spammy by Google? Thanks
Local Website Optimization | | Fetseun0 -
Repairing SEO issues on Different Platforms
I work for a car dealership in Southern California and have been tasked with a seemingly impossible task. They would like for me to remove Title Tags, Duplicate Content, Descriptions, and get all other SEO issues in order. The concerns I have rank in this order: 1. Remove Duplicate Metadata: When the platform spits out new pages they use template Title/Description/Keywords and we are not always informed of their addition. There are also somewhere near 1K vehicles in the inventory that are being accused of duplicate content/Metadata. The fix that I have been spit balling is adding canonical - No Follow to these pages. I am not sure that this is the best way forward, but would appreciate the feedback 2. Duplicate Content: Most of the information is supplied from the manufacturer so we have been sourcing the information back to the manufacturers site. They are showing up on random "SEO Tools" pulls as harmful to the site. Although we use the Dealers name and local area, the only way I can assume to get the heat off and possibly fix any negative ramifications is to once again use a Canonical Tag - No Follow to these pages. 3. Clean up Issues: Most of the other issues I am finding is when the website platform dumps new pages to the site without notice and creates more then 1k pages that are coming with duplicate everything. Please provide with any assistance you can.
Local Website Optimization | | BBsmyth0 -
A question about similar services a multiple locations
Moz Friends, I hope you can help with this question. My company has 25 locations, and growing. Our rankings are strong in the Serps and Local Maps. With each location, we create a new page (with a unique URL) for that specific location (ex: Thriveworks.com/knoxville-counseling). We then write about 15 pages of unique content for that location, each page about one of the services we provide like: Depression Counseling, Couples Therapy, Anger Management, Eating Disorder Treatment, Life Coaching, Child Therapy, and the list goes on and on.... Hence, for each location, we create a pile of URLS like: Thriveworks.com/knoxville-counseling/couples-therapy, ..../knoxville-counseling/depression-therapy, .../knoxville-counseling/anger-management... We do this to rank for medium-long-tail searches like "Knoxville Marriage Therapy." As we grow, this results in us writing lots and lots of original content for each location. Original, but somewhat redundant. We would much rather write one AMAZING article on depression counseling, than 25 'okay' ones for each office we open. So, my question (if you're still reading) is our current approach the right one? Should we continue the grind and for each location create a unique page for each service offered out of that office? Or is there a better way, where we can create One anger management page that would suffice for each of our local offices? Has anyone addressed this topic in an article? I Haven't found one... I look forward to your feedback, and thanks in advance!!
Local Website Optimization | | Thriveworks-Counseling0 -
Internationalization: 2 Websites in English for different location?
Hi guys, My customer is already well established in France. They have a good Domain Authority and a lot of Inbound Links. They're doing very well in France. They're now looking at entering the US market, however, their trademark is already registered within the US. They therefore decided to go with a new name. Basically: They open an english-only website for the US presence They add English as a language on their French website for their European presence They'll therefore have two domains: aaa.com: US Presence bbb.com: European Presence; 2 languages: French & English My main reaction was that: since the content on aaa.com and bbb.com/english/ will be the same, they'll necessarily have Duplicate Content issue. How would you look at this? What would be the best alternative for them? Thank you
Local Website Optimization | | PierreLechelle0 -
Question about landing pages
I currently have a service based website with landing pages for surrounding towns. For example the keywords targeting and url for the town are "service+town+state". I recently noticed that I am not showing up at all for "service+zip" even though I have the zips included in all the landing pages. I was told if I made more landing pages dedicated to zip I would risk killing the rank on other landing pages. Would it be advisable to make another totally different website that focuses on just the "service+zip" landing pages. The name of the page would be the same the company obviously but the phone numbers and content would be different along with domain url. Any advice or suggestions are welcome. Thanks.
Local Website Optimization | | Spartan221 -
How Google's Doorway Pages Update Affects Local SEO
Hey Awesome Local Folks! I thought I'd take a proactive stance and start a thread on the new doorway pages update from Google, as I feel there will be questions coming up about this here in the forum: Here's the update announcement: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/03/an-update-on-doorway-pages.html And here's the part that will make local business owners and Local SEOs take a second glance at this: Here are questions to ask of pages that could be seen as doorway pages: Do the pages duplicate useful aggregations of items (locations, products, etc.) that already exist on the site for the purpose of capturing more search traffic? I think this will naturally lead to questions about the practice of creating local/city landing pages. At this point, my prediction is that this will come down to high quality vs. crummy quality pages of this type. In fact, after chatting briefly with Andrew Shotland, I'm leaning a bit toward seeing the above language as being strongly geared toward directory type sites and large franchises. I recommend reading Andrew's post about his take on this, as I think he's on the right track: http://www.localseoguide.com/googles-about-to-close-your-local-doorway-pages/ So, I'm feeling at this point that if you've made the right efforts to develop unique, high quality local landing pages, you should be good unless you are an accidental casualty of an over-zealous update. We'll see! If anyone has thoughts to contribute on this thread, I hope they will, and if lots of questions start coming up about this here in the community, feel free to link back to this thread in helping your fellow community members 🙂 Thanks, all!
Local Website Optimization | | MiriamEllis9 -
City in title tag hurt Local Search?
Big city A is the target optimization for services. Suburb city B is the location of the business. Will having big city A in the title tag of pages confuse the NAP consistency and local SEO for the site?
Local Website Optimization | | LyntonWeb0