Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Multilocation business, how can you rank for different categories in different locations with only branch pages?
-
Hello Mozzers,
I am wondering how do you rank for categories locally where when you operate from multiple branches.
Currently our eCommerce website has location pages for every category but I know that this is now classed as doorway pages and spammy so I am in the process of sorting out our site structure.
I understand that the general format for having sites with multiple branches is to have a branch page per physical location and that's about it. Is there any more to this ?
However, What confuses me though, is that if you offer all these services in all these branches, how are you going to rank for them locally if you don't have a specific page for each of them in that location?
So for example -
We rent Carpet cleaners , floor sanders, generators in each of our different branches.
My site currently has a carpet cleaner hire <location>url , floor sander hire <location>url and a generator hire <location>url. Every branch has a url for each of my categories.</location></location></location>
So if I was to get rid of all of my location category pages. How am I going to rank for these renting these products in different cities where our branches does without having specific location pages for them ?
Is it just a case that google knows that because I have branch pages at locations x, y, x , then my carpet cleaner , floor sander and generator category pages will rank locally in those locations providing I have decent citations etc etc etc
thanks
Pete -
Hi ,
Sorry for the late response, been away for a few days. Yes,. it does help alot.
Many thanks for your help
PEte
-
Hi Pete,
Hmm ... could be my Yankee lack of knowledge here. What is a tool hire affiliate? This isn't an industry with which I'm familiar here in the US, but my best guess is that you rent tools (like mowing machines or bulldozers) to people. Yea or nay? At any rate, it sounds like what you are talking about might be similar to something we used to have here in which industrial strength vacuum cleaners (hoovers) are located at the front of grocery stores. The stores don't own the machines. Rather, the machine owner has a sort of kiosk within the store from which they rent their machines. Is this similar? In such a case, you'd need to have pages specifying that your products can be found INSIDE such-and-such market at 123 Front Street. You can create web-based content for these, but should scrutinize the Google guidelines to see whether you qualify for Google+ Local pages or not: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en
Does this help, Pete?
-
Hi ,
We are an online Tool hire affiliate . The company we are partnered with has physical depots which we currently use this as our own and have branch pages for these locations.
I have also seen other partners do the same which they rank very well for.
thanks
Pete
-
Hi Pete,
I want to be sure I'm clearly understanding your business model. You are saying yours is an e-commerce site, which is most commonly a virtual model, but you are also saying you have locations. Are these locations physical locations unique to your business (not like having your products in someone else's store) and do your employees interact face-to-face with customers who come to rent your products? If yes to all these, then there is no problem with you having a page for each of your physical shops - no problem at all. Just be sure each page you create is unique and useful and linked to from your navigation.
Please, let me know if there is some facet of this I'm not quite getting. For now, the practice of having a unique page for each of your shops is still a best practice.
-
Hi Peter,
You'll want to make sure that your branch/location pages have a combination of the following:
- Links to the pages of the services they provide - if all branches deliver all products/services, then your main navigation should be fine, but if there are differences or specialties, you should highlight those on the location page (or a sub-page of the location page).
- Unique content - at the very least, an embedded map and a picture of the branch.
- Any additional relevant content that is unique to that location.
Then, on your Category pages, you'll want to make sure you have clear info about your locations. If you only have a handful of locations, you can probably include the full citation (name/address/phone) info for all of them in a footer or sidebar. If you have many locations, you'll want to make sure the location finder is a key part of all the category pages.
There are also off-site things you can do. If your reviews, social media mentions, and backlinks mention specific services while linking to a specific location, that will help that branch rank for those categories.
Hope this helps,
Ira
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
-
Which are the best off-page SEO techniques for 2020?
I have just published an awesome website or blog, and i really worked hard keeping everything perfect. Do you think it’s enough? Having a perfect blog, website or business is just enough. i need readers for my blog, visitors to my website, and customers for my business. So, what to do?
Local Website Optimization | | boxinghunter0 -
Geo-location by state/store
Hi there, We are a Grocery co-operative retailer and have chain of stores owned by different people. We are building a new website, where we would geo-locate the closest store to the customer and direct them to a particular store (selected based on cookie and geo location). All our stores have a consistent range of products + Variation in 25% range. I have few questions How to build a site-map. Since it will be mandatory for a store to be selected and same flow for the bot and user, should have all products across all stores in the sitemap? we are allowing users to find any products across all stores if they search by product identifier. But, they will be able to see products available in a particular store if go through the hierarchical journey of the website. Will the bot crawl all pages across all the stores or since it will be geolocated to only one store, the content belonging to only one store will be indexed? We are also allowing customers to search for older products which they might have bought few years and that are not part of out catalogue any more. these products will not appear on the online hierarchical journey but, customers will be able to search and find the products . Will this affect our SEO ranking? Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks - Costa
Local Website Optimization | | Hanuman881 -
Local Business Schema Image requirement
Hello, I work exclusively with Dentists and we have been putting our json schema in the footer for a while now. Just recently they made 'image' a requirement for the Dentist category. We already use the logo in our schema and that is an image. Since the schema is in the footer, it is on every page, and the only image on every page is the logo. Does the image we add to our schema need to be on the actual web page or could it be anything related to the business, like an image of the practice or the dentist? Would it hurt to have the logo listed twice in the schema - once as the logo and once as the image? Trying to figure out what the best thing to do is for the required 'image' field for a dentist. Thanks! Angela
Local Website Optimization | | tntdental0 -
How can i optimize my pages for local areas if we are not in that area?
Hi Mozers! So I watched a video about Matt Cutts he talks about creating multiple web pages just for one keywords is an absolutely no go. So I was wondering we serve a clients in NZ Australia and USA, If we target phrase like Psychic Readings California, Psychic Readings San Diego etc (USA) Psychic Readings Melbourne, Psychic Readings Sydney (AU) Psychic Readings Auckland, Psychic Readings Wellington (NZ) What is the best practice or right way to go about structuring my pages to do this without going against googles guidelines. Many thanks
Local Website Optimization | | edward-may1 -
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 -
Local SEO: City & County Pages
I'm working on developing some local pages for an HVAC company. They cover two counties, so I was planning on having two county pages, then linking them to individual city pages to keep the menu simpler and not cluttering it up with a couple dozen city pages for people to slog through. Has anybody ever done county pages before for local SEO? Or at least seen them? Just curious to see if there's any real benefit overall for have separate county pages, or if I should just stick to city pages.
Local Website Optimization | | ChaseMG0 -
Are there any suggestions when you completly redesign your web page keeping the same domain but change the host? I want it to go smoothly and want to avoid the rankings we already have including sub pages.
I am currently having our website completely redone by a design company. Are there any suggestions on this process as to not lose the rankings we currently have for our site? The domain will remain the same however we are planning on changing our host. We also have a good amount of sub domains that the web company will not be changing for us.
Local Website Optimization | | molchman0 -
Ecommerce: different product price in different regions
Hi, If an ecommerce site has different prices for the different regions within the same country (based on IP location), will this impact Google somehow? Case: Furniture website in Norway. Shipping is expensive when you ship a sofa, so prices will differ depending on where in Norway you're located. Switching location is easy, but the default price you see will be based on your IP location.
Local Website Optimization | | Inevo0