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!!
-
Hi Anthony,
Normally, my answer would be the same as the one given by Bryan. The simplest path in most multi-location business scenarios is to have 1 page per city and 1 page per service, rather than trying to cover every possible geo/keyword combo. However, most people ask about this before they have invested so much time and money in the development of the site and its content.
Because you've already made the investment, this is what I would suggest you evaluate with the decision makers at the practice:
Is the content simply mediocre or is it actually duplicate content?
If the former, can you envision a way to take these pages to a new level of usefulness? For example, what if, on these pages you currently have, you showcased all of the free or inexpensive auxiliary local resources for mental health? I'm thinking of group therapy, mental health department, serene places to walk for meditation, free yoga or tai chi resources, elder advocacy groups, healthy and fun things for children, lectures, seminars, outdoor concerts, community gardens, pet shelters and anything else you could think of that could make a meaningful difference in patients' mind and body health. Because you would be doing this based on the symptoms of certain conditions and the resources of a given city, each page would, by its very nature, be unique and helpful. You would have, in fact, greatly enhanced the hyperlocal value of each page.
But, if the content is duplicative, that's another matter as it could really be hurting the business and not doing much for the practice's clients. You might, in this case, decide to dismantle a structure that probably shouldn't have been built in the first place and go with the 1 page per city/ 1 page per service model, perhaps even implementing some of the hyperlocal suggestions I've brainstormed to improve the city pages, the health condition pages or both. You could cull the duplicate pages for their best work, build fewer, much better pages instead using some of the old work and greatly adding to it and end up with a very strong but slimmer site.
I think either path is viable, depending on the resources available to you. Hope this helps!
-
Thanks Bryan, really appreciate it!
-
Unfortunately, I don't have any on hand - just experience running something similar with one of my clients. Yes, you'll lose juice for search terms like the one you've mentioned, but if you optimize your pages in a way that uses a lot of good, service-oriented content, it may not have as much an effect as you might expect. I can't give you any hard data or examples on that, however.
-
Bryan,
Thanks for replying, and so quickly!
I'm concerned that if someone searched for "Knoxville Child Therapy", that a non-location specific Thriveworks.com/child-therapy wouldn't rank as well as a location specific page at Thriveworks.com/knoxville-counseling/child therapy (with a 'Knoxville Child Therapy' H1 tag)
Do you happen to know of any studies, principles, or examples that might help assuage my worries on this?
-
If your services are no different between locations, I would suggest having a single page for each service rather than a page for each service in each location. To compensate for that, make sure you have pages dedicated to each location (as I'm sure you do, based on what you say). You could also write about what makes the location's services special.
- Who works there and what do they do that's unique to that location?
- How do you service that location?
- How does bringing your services to that location benefit it, specifically?
- etc. (you get the idea)
It can be taxing to write original content, do research, and such - but there's no magic bullet for content. I'm not sure how your business is structured, but as an aside, having the specialists themselves write articles about what they're doing would likely lead to very rich, organic content. Probably not plausible, but something I'd recommend nonetheless.
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
-
How to delete this question?
i want to delete this question but cant figure out how to so instead i am overwriting it with new text. Thanks, Ryan
Local Website Optimization | | RyanMeighan0 -
Service Location links in footer and on the service page - spamming or good practice?
We are are a managed IT services business so we try and target people searching for IT support in a number of key areas. We have created individual location pages (11) to localise our service in these specific areas. We put these location links in the footer which went to the specified IT support pages respectively. Now we have created a general 'managed IT services' page and are thinking of linking to these specific pages on there as well as it makes sense to do it. Would having these 11 links in the footer as well as on the 'managed IT services' page be spamming? or would it be good practice? If this is spamming, which linking location should hold preference. Would appreciate the feedback
Local Website Optimization | | AndyL93
Thanks
Andy0 -
Applying NAP Local Schema Markup to a Virtual Location: spamming or not?
I have a client that has multiple virtual locations to show website visitors where they provide delivery services. These are individual pages that include unique phone numbers, zip codes, city & state. However there is no address (this is just a service area). We wanted to apply schematic markup to these landing pages. Our development team successfully applied schema to the phone, state, city, etc. However for just the address property they said VIRTUAL LOCATION. This checked out fine on the Google structured data testing tool. Our question is this; can just having VIRTUAL LOCATION for the address property be construed as spamming? This landing page is providing pertinent information for the end user. However since there is no brick and mortar address I'm trying to determine if having VIRTUAL LOCATION as the value could be frowned upon by Google. Any insight would be very helpful. Thanks
Local Website Optimization | | RosemaryB1 -
Local Service pages guide?
There are a lots of Local landing pages guide on the internet. Is there any guide for Local service pages? How to create them, what to include?
Local Website Optimization | | Michael.Leonard0 -
Removed huge spammy location footer, looking to rebuild traffic the right way
Hello, On this site, I removed a huge spammy location footer with hundreds of cities, states, and dog training types. The traffic and rankings have gone down a lot, and I'd like a discussion on how to rebuild things the right way. There's some local adjustments to be made to the home page content, but other than that: My plans: 1. Analyze top 10 Google analytics keyword queries and work them into the content as best as possible, though I am debating whether the client should make new pages and how many. 2. I'm going to suggest he add a lot of content to the home page, perhaps a story about a dog training that he did in Wisconsin. I'll think about what else. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.
Local Website Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Does multiple sites that relate to one company hurt seo
I know this has been asked and answered but my situation is a little different. I am a local electrical contractor. I specialize in a service and not a product. Competition is high in the local market due to the other electrical contractors that have well seasoned sites with very good DA/PA. Although new to the web I am not new to the trade. Throughout years almost back to the AOL dialup days I have been collecting domain names for this particular purpose. Now I want to put them to good use. Being an electrical contractor, there are many different facets of work and services we provide. My primary site is empireelec.com A second site I threw online overnight with minimal content is jacksonvillelightingrepair.com. Although it is a fresh site, there is minimal content and I have put almost zero effort in to it. It appears to be ranking for keywords a lot quicker. That leads me to believe I should utilize my other domain jacksonvillefloridaelectrician.com and target just the keyword Jacksonville Florida Electrician. It leads me to believe I should use jacksonvillebeachelectrician.com for targeting electricians in jacksonville beach. And again with jacksonvilleelectricianservice.com I can provide a unique phone number for each site. Am I going about this all wrong? Everything I read says no,no,no but I feel my situation is a little more unique.
Local Website Optimization | | empireelec1 -
Local Area SEO - Directions Page and Multiple Use of Direction pages
Hello, We are looking to focus on multiple local areas and it has been suggested one way to mention lots of different locations on pages without doing lists or using grey SEO practices is to create directions pages. We are trying this with a client who has 2 business at the same address. The layout is:- Introduction - 2-3 sentences Directions by Car Park Parking info Directions by Public Transports Closing - 3-4 sentences - using clients keywords The hope is the having locations/areas and the clients keywords on the same page will capture some of the local areas with the clients keywords. I have some questions:- 1. If we use the same directions text and just change the opening and closing paragraphs on the different website will this be enough to not have a duplicate content issue. 2. Are the directions pages the best way to capture keywords and local area/locations on the same page. 3. Is there anything I am missing or could do instead? Looking forward to everyone's input....
Local Website Optimization | | JohnW-UK0 -
Website Mods and SEO for Multi-Location Practice?
We're in the process of taking over a WordPress website within the next week for a 3 location medical practice. These are in 3 different cities. 1 location is in a pretty competitive market, while the other 2 are not. The current site isn't bad for design and navigation and they don't have the budget for a full-redesign. Structurally, it is sound. It lacks a lot of content though and a blog. It is not responsive, should we convert to make it responsive? At first glance you can't tell they have 3 locations and their content for each location and services offered is pretty weak. What other suggestions do any of you have for getting the main site to rank for all 3 locations? I know it'll take some time since they are no where to be found now, but just looking for any other tips you may all have. Thanks!! - Patrick
Local Website Optimization | | WhiteboardCreations0