Service area local seo
-
Hello, everyone.
I am struggling a little with the vast amounts of information about how best to get a local service area business ranking and the best practice.
If I explain what I have been doing and then see how I can improve.
I have created a couple of websites for window cleaners. These window cleaners offer several services like window cleaning, gutter cleaning, conservatory cleaning, pressure washing etc.
They also cover several towns/cities so it's important for them to be able to target all these areas in search. They don't have multiple offices so only have one home/office address and by the nature of the job provide services at the customer's house/business.
What I have been doing is creating a page for each service they provide then to cover the areas I have been doing two things. Creating a page on the site called areas covered with a list of the areas they cover and also adding in the title of the page the main one or two areas that are most important to them.
From what I can gather this might not be the best approach?? Google may see the areas in titles as keyword stuffing? Google also doesn't like a list of areas in one go anywhere on a site which can also seem like keyword stuffing?
So for an example, this would be a rough title structure of service pages
Window cleaners in town/city, town/city and town/city
Gutter Cleaners in town/city, town/city and town/city
As I said I am not sure this is the best way to do this from what I read. I have read about area specific pages but i struggle to see how i could make each area specific page unique enough as the service is exactly the same in each area. I have also read that putting the most important keywords at the begingin of the the title is better so using the above example would this be better? town/city window cleaners - business name
So from what i understand having pages like this might be better
Window cleaners town/city1
Window cleaners town/city2
Window cleaners town/city3
Gutter Cleaners town/city1
Gutter Cleaners town/city2
Gutter Cleaners town/city3 and so on but like I say I am aware each of these area specific pages would need to be unique but being that the services are exactly the same in each area I am not sure how I could warrant creating all the pages. Writing about the specific area on the page seems a little odd in that the visitor who lands on that page doesn't want to learn about their area, they live there and know the area. They want to know what the service is and if they do in fact cover their area. In which case how can i best ensure all or most of the areas they cover are targeted and show in search? Some sites i have done cover around 20-30 towns around them so how can best ensure they rank for them?
I have also been reading conflicting information about how to structure pages and urls.
Some say don't use commas in page titles, some say don't use underscores and only use hyphens.
Similarly, I have read that the URL should not contain any hyphens but I am not sure about this seeing as WordPress often adds hyphens between words in URLs.
Some say you should always have an H1 on every page others say it's not all that important anymore.
With images, i have also been giving them alts the same as the page titles thay are on, is this the wrong thing to do?
Id be happy to private messge (if i can do that here) one of the sites
I would be eternally grateful if anyone can help in firstly clarifying how I could best improve ranking for areas covered and secondly what best practice is to structure page content like H1's image alts etc.
Thanks
-
Oh no no it would only be two or three max. I always say to people i do sites for that i will list all areas on areas cover page (now will be on each service page instead) and two or three main areas in titles.
-
Then, against best practices, it might be worth following suit listing just a couple of the main areas covered in the title for the sake of competition.
It's not as bad as I thought it would be. I was picturing more like "Window Cleaning in Town A, Town B, Town C, Town D, Town E".
-
It seems all towns in my area at least are listed as cities. I guess the issue is that several sites i have created all have competitors who are adding two or three areas to their titles. Using my area as an example again i just did a quick search and it seems services here are doing the same (see attached screenshot) So if i were to follow best practice and only include one area in a title then i would always loose out to listings like this. Especially if one of the potential customers was from one of the other areas.
-
Ah, I see your problem. If you look in Google Adwords planner for locations, you'll find a lot of the time that the bigger towns/cities in a county will be seen as the town/city. And surrounding towns will often be seen as neighbourhoods of that town or city. This isn't necessarily accurate in real life, but for Google's sake it works. You can see how Google identifies different locations using Google Adwords tools, even if you're not advertising.
It would be worth checking this, because then you can target the main town/city in the area specifically in the page title, and still be "covered" for the surrounding areas in terms of relevance. Though I would still mention the surrounding towns covered within the content of the landing page.
-
Ria you have been very helpful but the area thing has raised more questions for me.
If i take my area for example. I live in Cornwall UK which is a fairly big county and if I were a window cleaner would probably cover 4-5 towns near me.
In the titles having the area as Cornwall would lead to a lot of frustration of visitors as I only cover a small bit of Cornwall. Equally, if I used the town I live in in the titles it would limit my traffic possibly if say someone is in a neighbouring town looking for a cleaner.
I guess my only option would be to use my own town in this example or put a couple of towns in the title at the risk google will see it as spammy. Any other suggestions from anyone are more than welcome.
-
Great thank you. Yes, I thought maybe columns for the bullets would be better.
-
I think listing items in bullet points will be less spammy as they are marked up as list items. You can format them how you like, however, such as in multiple columns - so that they're not so ugly looking on the page, and won't look so... vertical? e.g. 3 columns of 10 rows, 5 columns of 6, etc.
And I would focus the page titles on wider areas site-wide, if it were me.
-
Thank you!
Sorry yes it was quite a lot!
So if i understand you correctly on each service page (window cleaning, gutter cleaning etc) i should have a section similar to this?
We provide our window cleaning service to these areas. If you don't see your area listed please get in touch as we may be looking to build upon our round in other areas.
- Area
- Area
- Area
- Area
- Area
- Area
- Area
Bullet-pointed lists could be quite long when we have 30 if not more towns though. I used to do this on each service page like this.
Window cleaners covering:
area, area, area, area, area, area, area, area, area, area, area, area, area, area, area, area, area, area, area, area, area, area, area, area, area, area, area, area, area.
But was told that would be seen spammy?
In regard to page titles thanks for clarifying that one thing i am still not sure of is how to target the page url. You say the main homepage should target the wider area so homepage title should be
business name - window cleaners wider area or wider area window cleaners - business name.
On service pages should I also have this structure focusing on the wider area as I guess adding two or three areas in the page title may also seem spammy?
-
Wow, that's a lot to answer.
I assume that those towns form part of a bigger area, like a county? I would personally target the landing page to the whole area. Then, as you mentioned, have an "areas covered" section on each landing page with a Google map and bullet list of towns. Use the landing page to target the towns you cover, without it sounding spammy. Just read it aloud afterwards and ask yourself, "does that sound natural?".
You're right that you shouldn't have separate town pages if you can't think of anything unique to say on each one that would be of value to your customer.
Also:
- There is nothing wrong with commas in your page titles. Or hyphens. I don't know why you'd want an underscore in there, but they're fine too.
- There is nothing wrong with hyphens in your URLs. In your domain, however, if you are keyword stuffing your domain using a hyphen as a word separator, then that can look a little spammy. In your URL though, it's fine to separate words and is preferred over the underscore.
- It's still a good idea to ensure each page has ONE H1 (this is often quite similar/relevant to the page title). Then structure your H2s and H3s beneath in way that makes logical sense to your content.
- Alt text for images should provide a short description of what the image actually depicts. If the image depicts window cleaning, then you can tag it just as "Window Cleaning".
And, if you haven't already, you'll want to make a Google My Business account and verify it.
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
-
Using the Onpage Grader for Local Business websites
Hey Guys, Curious how people use the onpage grader for optimizing pages for local businesses specifically, I'm interested if people use keywords with or without a geo modifier since adding a geo modifier will prevent more natural writing to increase the score. If you don't use a geo modifier do you have some general rules of the city that needs to be in the H1 and first paragraph etc. Any tips for using the page grader for local businesses would be great Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | solidlocal0 -
International SEO - How do I show correct SERP results in the UK and US?
Hi, Moz community. I hope you’re all OK and keeping busy during this difficult period. I have a few questions about international SEO, specifically when it comes to ranking pages in the UK and the US simultaneously. We currently have 2 websites set-up which are aimed towards their respective countries. We have a ‘.com’ and a ‘.com/us’. If anybody could help with the issues below, I would be very grateful. Thank you all. Issues When looking in US Google search with a VPN, the title tag for our UK page appears in the SERP e.g. I will see: UK [Product Name] | [Brand] When checking the Google cache, the UK page version also appears This can cause a problem especially when I am creating title tags and meta descriptions that are unique from the UK versions However, when clicking through from the SERP link to the actual page, the US page appears as it should do. I find this very bizarre that it seems to show you the US page when you click through, but you see the UK version in the SERP when looking in the overall search results. Current Set-Up Our UK and US page content is often very similar across our “.com” and “.com/us” websites and our US pages are canonicalised to their UK page versions to remove potential penalisation We have also added herflang to our UK and US pages Query How do I show our US SERP as opposed to the UK version in US Google search? My Theories/ Answers US page versions have to be completely unique with content related to US search intent and be indexed separately - therefore no longer canonicalised to UK version Ensure hreflang is enabled to point Google to correct local page versions Ensure local backlinks point to localised pages If anyone can help, it will be much appreciated. Many thanks all.
Local Website Optimization | | Katarina-Borovska0 -
In local SEO, how important is it to include city, state, and state abbreviation in doctitle?
I'm trying to balance local geographic keywords with product keywords. I appreciate the feedback from the group! Michael
Local Website Optimization | | BFMichael0 -
Hreflang errors "no return tag" sitemap.xml , and local search landing page with wrong Languages
Really need help , our website when search in google(US) will provide global page (keyword:asus/asus zenfone3). and search console also return "no return tags"another wear thing is when use googlebot crawl sitemap.xml googlebot cannot finish the file less than a quarterCan you please advise on what needs to be edited or changed to make sure my implementation is correct and not returning errors?
Local Website Optimization | | June01270 -
Ranking for similar local keywords
Hello All, It's my first day using a Moz Pro account and it all seems really good so far! Our business has 26 stores throughout the UK so I created a store locator page that has a page for each store. Inside here, I've created unique content for the same products for each store and it's really working wonders. The problem here though is one of my locations (Rotherham) contains two stores - so I feel that they'll both be fighting for the position all of the time. Would a canonical tag be suitable for this? I do need both pages to appear in Google's map results but as for organic rankings of keywords - it shouldn't matter too much if just one page appears. Thanks! Liam
Local Website Optimization | | LiamMcArthur0 -
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 -
Server response time: restructure the site or create the new one? SEO opinions needed.
Hi everyone, The internal structure of our existing site increase server response time (6 sec) which is way below Google 0.2sec standards and also make prospects leave the site before it's loaded. Now we have two options (same price): restructure the site's modules, panels etc create new site (recommended by developers)
Local Website Optimization | | Ryan_V
Both options will extend the same design and functionality. I just wanted to know which option SEO community will recommend?0 -
Yoast Local SEO Reviews/Would it work for me?
Hi everyone, I'm looking for some feedback on Yoast Local SEO, and if you think it'd work for our site. www.kempruge.com. Our site is a wordpress site, and there's nothing about it, off the top of my head, that makes me think it wouldn't work, but I've been wrong before. We do use All-In-One SEO, not the Yoast plugin, so I'm not sure if that's compatible.or would cause a problem? (The reason we use All-In-One and not Yoast is because that's what we had when I got here, and I'm worried what would happen if we switched). Also, we have three offices, and I need to be able to do local seo for all three. I know Yoast says it supports multiple offices, but I'd feel more comfortable if someone on here let me know from his/her experience that it did. Anything else you want to add about Yoast Local, I'm all ears! Thanks, Ruben
Local Website Optimization | | KempRugeLawGroup0