Local SEO for a business serving multiple small cities
-
We have a local business that has a showroom in one city, and serve other 5 different small cities (in total 6 small cities). Search volume for the targeted keyword is very low (around 100 each plus minus) with a variety of competition levels. The product is expensive so this justifies the low search volume with a serious user intent.
My question is given the low search volume for each keyword, what would be the best local SEO tactic for this. The website has a DA of 20 with competitors who has similar and higher DAs.Options I am considering:
1. Create unique pages for each location with unique content (no address available so I will have to use a city name postcode)
2. Create pages with the same content (but changing the area of service on the URL, H1 and mention the postcode and the radius of coverage twice in the content) and using a canonical tag to solve the duplicate issue.
In this scenario, I will create the main product pages with the address of the showroom, and mention the area of service covered for the other 5 cities.
3. Given that the 6 cities are part of a greater area, use the greater area to target them all. The keyword of the greater area has a lower search volume than the city keyword. This might work for keywords with low competition but not for ones with high competition levels. Not sure how well search engines will rank the keywords that include the greater area and show the pages for searches in small cities.Any advice on which option to go with or any recommendations for other solutions?
-
-
I also want to improve the local SEO for my website. How can I do that?
-
Totally @Nadiamo, do let me know if you want to run any more thoughts or ideas by us, here..
-
Thank you Vadim!
-
Thank you Nigel!
-
I will answer your 3 specific options and general thoughts at the bottom:
-
Yes you have the correct game plan here. Postal code may or may not help unless it is specifically searched for.
-
Unique content is the name of the game, each neighborhood/area will have their own unique elements you can write about in your content and this will engage the user and bring familiarity and will rank better, and this solves duplicate issues.
-
Greater area reach is hard unless you are dominating with reviews or other local listing factors. The goal is having a physical location close to your area of intent.
"product is expensive so this justifies" - does this justify potentially opening another physical location to be closer to the searcher?
Also how is the current showroom main location doing, with search and its response? Is it in the target area, is it reaching customers well?
-
-
Hi
You have to be careful creating city pages. make sure they are as unique as you can make them and add some local content. Treat them like you would any other page when SEO'ing them.
Ensure correct and on a one page one theme basis - forget the greater area and concentrate on the town/village. if you try and hoof the local area in as well you will destroy them all, especially if the local area has its own page.
Title
Description
H1
Alts
Local contentmake sure it is in the form
City - Service - Company name
and not service first.
More here: https://moz.com/blog/do-you-need-local-pages
I hope that help
Nigel
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 Do You Think My Local SEO Multi-location Geotargeting Strategy Will Work?
I have a question. I just got a full-time job at Zavza Seal, an upstanding insulation contractor targeting neighborhoods of Suffolk and Nassau counties in New York. I was hired as an SEO content specialist. (Thanks Rand! You're one of my mentors~!) So, they handed me a spreadsheet of pages for city-specific terms, and they had a system in place for local rankings. But I was taught to do service-specific city pages a certain way. If the search term is for people looking for a service in that town, that's what you give them. However, I was told to proofread them, and as an SEO specialist, I couldn't keep my hands off of them. The pages were skimpy. (Example: h2, paragraph, bullets, short paragraph summary, short paragraph about the city.) What threw me off is that the content, while it was service specific, it was blog topics localized. Those are great (when long enough and optimized to compete in SERPs) but I've never seen them done on service pages. (Example: Why is Mold Remediation Necessary in Baldwin?. Now, this went in two directions in my mind. (and I wanted to do the best for the company, because I'm a wicked brat for teams, AND I get commissions on leads, so that was motivation, too.) 🐷 Anyway, 1. This could be a new approach and worthy of an SEO study on my startup site, where I take on part time clients after work, because I've never seen it done before and it could, if optimized for the target service and city rank high in SERPs AND build thought leadership and authority as a local expert. (Whereas city service pages in standard format would just promote your service. ..) What do you guys think? I just put the topic up for discussion for my team, asked them about it in detail and asked if they wanted to A'/B test a few to see what get's better traction organically. Mr. Fishkin was one of my mentors. I really wish I just had his number for this one LOL.
Local SEO | | ThisTimeWereOn0 -
Why no backlinks from popular local news portals?
Hi friends. I build link portfolio for local businesses and found out that publishing payed news articles in biggest local news portals we never see backlinks coming from these portals. Interesting is that these articles even appears in google search. Backlinks is correct with anchor text. How is it even possible? For example latest article https://www.delfi.lv/bizness/komerczinas/kravu-parvadajumi-ar-temperaturas-rezimu-lielakie-izaicinajumi.d?id=52924741 or this https://www.tvnet.lv/7092731/es-ierobezojumu-ietekme-uz-kravu-parvadajumiem Stuff swears there is no restrictions. They even asked extra money for google indexing. You can see there is correct link in article. Any suggestion or idea how is this possible would be highly appreciated.
Local SEO | | netcomsia0 -
Opinion on stripping down homepage to two navigational links for SEO
I am in the process of restructuring a clients site who offers two niches. One is an event venue and the other is private dining. We have struggled in the past with ranking for either one since google sees restaurant and event venue as two distinct businesses. So on the homepage I would like to essentially 'divide' the site into two sections - Weddings and events, and Dining. From there people can choose which part of the website they would be directed to. (There are other things we will do as well, like up content etc. but this is the start) So my question is this - from an SEO standpoint should I do away with a menu on the home page and only have two links there and have the site hierarchy go down from there, does this give more 'juice' to the two categories? or will it hurt the site since there is no about, contact, etc page link on the home page? thanks for any opinions on this!
Local SEO | | Jenn_E0 -
Best approach for international multi country SEO
Hi all We're working with a client that is in the travel industry and they already have a relatively new site (setup in September 2014) which is on a .com domain We've completed a digital strategy for them and have identified 12 key markets within Europe, North America, South America and the Asia Pacific region. We have suggested an approach of setting up individual local websites for these countries and for countries in the same region sharing a common language (like USA & Canada) we're thinking to use a subdomain on the existing .com (eg. amaricas.clientdomain.com) Does this sound like a solid approach? thanks
Local SEO | | seobackbone0 -
Franchise Business: In competition with... itself!
I manage SEO for a franchise business that has multi-point markets like Toronto, where several locations are competing with one another for visibility. Assuming Google wants to give preferential treatment to businesses that are putting effort and energy into their unique website landing pages and their Google My Business pages, the exercise is like whack-a-mole. Put effort into giving visibility and ranking priority to one, another one gets upset. Also, it just so happens that the business is a competitive market (automotive repair) and so Google wants to show variety in search results; i.e. multiple businesses offering repair services in a given area. It tends to select one of four locations for a given multi-point market for the brand, which makes three out of four franchise owners upset. Anyone run into this before? I'm just trying to balance out the effort so that each of the locations gets equal visibility, but alas I have no control over what Google decides to display as the authoritative result for the geographical area. Looking for suggestions on how to manage client expectations and explain this issue properly. Anything I am missing?
Local SEO | | Treefrog_SEO0 -
Google My Business Locations Query- Do I need unqiue Picture File Names for every location
Hello All, I am just in the process of updating all my google business locations for each of my depots. I have been uploading photos but I am wondering if the file names of the photo's need to be unique for every location ? I know I need to describe the picture in the filename so it's good use of keywords but I am wondering if google will see it as spaming if I upload the same product pictures etc to ever google business location ? thanks Pete
Local SEO | | PeteC120 -
SEO for a web based company with no physical presence.
Hi I only have experience working in Local SEO and now Im facing the challenge of 1 clients which is based in Australia and wants to sell in Australia (protein bars) but the company doesn't have a physical presence. What do you think would be a good strategy? Do you think I still need to create NAP citations (if so that would probably benefit the SEO for one city and leave the others with less SEO influence?). Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Nico
Local SEO | | niclaus780 -
Local SEO?
Hello everyone, I've just been through the Moz Local learning area, which is pretty informative. However, a lot of it seems like good practice for general online marketing (mobile friendly websites, goals per page...). I'm new to all this - am I missing the point? William
Local SEO | | Seabrook0