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.
Local SEO Over Optimization
-
We are targeting a bunch of services for our local business that works in and around their location. I'm concerned about over optimization and need some guidance on whether these points should be resolved.
The company is based in a city and works mostly in the city but also in the surrounding areas. Currently, the site has 6 services pages (accessible via main nav) targeting the same location i.e. “Made Up Service London”, “Imaginary Service London” (with URLs and H1 tags etc. in place containing this location). However this is soon going to become 9 services pages, I am concerned that the repetition of this one location is starting to look spammy, especially as its where the company is based.
Initially, I also wanted pages targeting the same services in other nearby areas. For example “Made Up Service Surrey”, “Imaginary Service Essex”. This has not happened as the info available has been too sporadic. I was going to add links to relevant case studies into these pages to beef up the content and add interest. To that end, we came up with case studies, but after a while, I noticed that these are also largely focused on the primary location. So out of 32 case studies, we have 19 focused on the primary location again with URL’s and H1 tags etc containing the location keyword. So in total, we have 25 pages optimized for the location (soon to be 28 and more if further case studies are added).
My initial feeling was that the inclusion of pages targeting services in other locations would legitimize what we have done with the main pages. But obviously we have not got these pages in place and I question whether we ever will.
What is my best course of action moving forward?
-
Hi Joe,
So canonical tag if the pages have the same (or very similar) content.
The page for each location would have different content (adding as much value as possible to the user).
So it sounds like I'm on the right track.
Thanks for your help.
Justin
-
Hello,
Yes I do mean canonical tags as don_quixote correctly pointed out "Each page should have a clearly defined purpose and respond to a customer query." however if you must use the same page for different locations...
- www.url.com/plumbing-services
- www.url.com/essex/plumbing-services
- www.url.com/camberwell/plumbing-services
I would add the following code:
to the esses & camberwell pages
-
Thanks for the clarification.
-
Hi
Each page should have a clearly defined purpose and respond to a customer query.
So if each page is unique ie plumbing toilets London, plumbing sinks London, then with great contextual relevant content that is spot on and will help the customer. ie as Each page chases local search but addresses a niche within the plumbing field.
How if both pages were to target plumbing toilets London and the content is essentially the same - that is a waste of resources for all.
So hope that helps, good luck.
-
Hi Joe,
Thanks for your answer,
Not sure I quite understand what you mean by "... or use canonicalization" I assume you're talking about the canonical tag but not sure where your suggesting I should/could apply it.
Justin
-
He there,
Your approach is fine WRT targeting - I recommend that you ensure that you create content for each location or use canonicalisation.
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
-
SEO Best Practice for Managing a Businesses NAP with Multiple Addresses
I have a client with multiple business addresses - 3 across 3 states, from an SEO perspective what would be the best approach for displaying a NAP on the website? So far I've read that its best: to get 3 GMB account to point to 3 location pages & use a local phone number as opposed to a 1300 number. Display all 3 locations in the footer, run of site
Local Website Optimization | | jasongmcmahon1 -
How many SEO clients do you handle?
I work in a small web & design agency who started offering SEO 2 yrs ago as it made sense due to them building websites. There have been 2 previous people to me and I now work there 3 days a week and they also have a junior who knew nothing before she started working for us. She mainly works for me. My question is, how many clients do you think would be reasonable to work on? We currently have around 55 and I have been working there for nearly 5 months now and haven't even got to half of the sites to do some work on. I've told them the client list is way too big and we should only have around 15 clients max. However they don't want to lose the money from the already paying clients so won't get rid of any and keep adding new ones Their systems were a mess and had no reporting or useful software so I had to investiagte and deploy that, along with project management software. Their analytics is also a mess and have employed a contractor to help sort that out too. It's like they were offering SEO services but had no idea or structure to what they did. Meta descriptions were cherry picked which ones to be done, so say 50/60 on a site not filled in. So it's not like I have 45 or so well maintained accounts. They're all a mess. Then the latest 10 new ones are all new sites so All need a lot of work. I'm starting to feel incredibly overwhelmed and oppressed by it all and wanted to see what other SEO professionals thought about it. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Local Website Optimization | | hanamck0 -
Areaserved json-ld schema markup for a local business that targets national tourism
If there is a local business that thrives on ranking nationally for people searching for their services in that location, do you target the business's actual service areas or target nationally? For instance, a hotel in Denver, Colorado. Would the areaserved markup be: "areaServed":[{"@type":"State","name":"Colorado"},{"@type":"City","name":"Denver"}] Or "areaserved":"USA" The "geographic area where a service or offered item is provided" would be denver, colorado. But we would be looking to target all people nationally looking to travel to denver, colorado. Or would it be best to target it all, like: "areaServed":[{"@type":"State","name":"Colorado"},{"@type":"City","name":"Denver"},"USA"]
Local Website Optimization | | SEOdub0 -
Subdomain vs. Separate Domain for SEO & Google AdWords
We have a client who carries 4 product lines from different manufacturers under a singular domain name (www.companyname.com), and last fall, one of their manufacturers indicated that they needed to move to separate out one of those product lines from the rest, so we redesigned and relaunched as two separate sites - www.companyname.com and www.companynameseparateproduct.com (a newly-purchased domain). Since that time, their manufacturer has reneged their requirement to separate the product lines, but the client has been running both sites separately since they launched at the beginning of December 2016. Since that time, they have cannibalized their content strategy (effective February 2017) and hacked apart their PPC budget from both sites (effective April 2017), and are upset that their organic and paid traffic has correspondingly dropped from the original domain, and that the new domain hasn't continued to grow at the rate they would like it to (we did warn them, and they made the decision to move forward with the changes anyway). This past week, they decided to hire an in-house marketing manager, who is insisting that we move the newer domain (www.companynameseparateproduct.com) to become a subdomain on their original site (separateproduct.companyname.com). Our team has argued that making this change back 6 months into the life of the new site will hurt their SEO (especially if we have to 301 redirect all of the old content back again, without any new content regularly being added), which was corroborated with this article. We'd also have to kill the separate AdWords account and quality score associated with the ads in that account to move them back. We're currently looking for any extra insight or literature that we might be able to find that helps explain this to the client better - even if it is a little technical. (We're also open to finding out if this method of thinking is incorrect if things have changed!)
Local Website Optimization | | mkbeesto0 -
Can I block blexhn30.webmeup.com. Or does it have anything to do with my Moz Local
I am getting alot of hits from blexhn30.webmeup.com. My web host says it could be a web service. Is this part of moz local activity? Otherwise I want to block it. Have you seen this before??
Local Website Optimization | | stephenfishman0 -
SEO and Main Navigation Best Practices
I've read a number of articles on SEO and main navigation for websites. I'd like to get a solid answer/recommendation to help solve this one. This is the situation. We're helping a local business that offers pest control and property maintenance services. Under each of these, there area a number of services available, eg, cockroach control, termite inspections or lawn mowing services, rubbish removal and so on. Is it best to have a main nav containing the top keywords for the services - Pest Control | Property Maintenance, with a drop down to the services under each. Or, a simple approach - Our Services > drop down to each - Pest Control > Termite Inspections, etc. My concern here is that they have quite a lot of services, so the nav could be way too long. Really appreciate any assistance here. Many thanks.
Local Website Optimization | | RichardRColeman0 -
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 -
Is translating my SEO meta data to new languages worthwhile?
When translating a website to additional languages, is it recommended, for Google SEO purposes, that the keywords, re-written URLs, meta titles and meta descriptions of each page be translated as well; or have those elements been completely depreciated?
Local Website Optimization | | sptechnologies0