Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Local SEO
    4. Local Website Optimization
    5. One locations page, or multiple pages?

    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.

    One locations page, or multiple pages?

    Local Website Optimization
    4
    6
    2471
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • kimberleymeloserpa
      kimberleymeloserpa last edited by

      Hi,

      I represent a franchisor who does all marketing- including local seo- for our franchisees. I've read a lot about local SEO and understand the basics, but have some remaining questions.

      1- If our typical territories are quite large and encompass more than one major city, should we create multiple location pages for the same franchise owner? I believe the answer should be yes from an SEO stand point, but the problem is that most of our franchisees naturally just have one business address (their home). Since PO boxes and virtual offices aren't the way to go, what's the best course of action? And when I say major cities, I'm really talking about major cities (and not just small towns/boroughs). Can they just use a friend's/relative's address?

      2- There's a lot of info out there about "locations pages," but it's not really clear whether or not you should really just have ONE page for each location, or several pages with different content? For instance, it looks like a lot of businesses are creating just one, "home-page" looking landing page for their individual locations, with everything from services to testimonials on just that one page. Is this preferred over creating several different local pages for that one location? The latter is what we currently do. From the user stand-point, it looks like each franchise location has it's own "mini website" on our main website. For instance, a landing page optimized for the local business name, a local services page, a project/photo gallery page, local review page, etc. It seems like a lot less work just building one landing page for each location, but is the payoff the same?

      I'm torn between the two strategies- is it really worth the extra work (in terms of traffic + local ranking) to build out the individual pages for the one location?

      Thanks Moz Community!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • kimberleymeloserpa
        kimberleymeloserpa last edited by

        Makes sense and this clears up a lot of our questions. Thanks Miriam!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • kimberleymeloserpa
          kimberleymeloserpa @DonnaDuncan last edited by

          Thanks for the response Donna! This helps!

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • MiriamEllis
            MiriamEllis Subject Expert last edited by

            Nice responses from both Donna and Joy here. Thanks, ladies 🙂

            Kimberly, definitely pay attention to Joy's advice regarding using friend's houses for this. It's a definite no-no. Review Google's Guidelines to know how to play by the rules and avoid disaster.

            I recommend reading the following:

            This one is now 3 years old, so there might be a few old terms in it, but it should help you define your business model:

            https://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide

            And this one should help you with your approach to creating these landing pages:

            https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages

            Finally, I'm going to raise the issue of RankBrain here and link you to Rand's WB Friday on this:

            https://moz.com/blog/optimizing-for-rankbrain-whiteboard-friday

            Please take a few minutes to watch this to help you determine whether multiple pages for the sake of keyword breadth or a single, really comprehensive page for each theme/topic will serve you better. SEO is changing and that goes for both local and virtual businesses.

            I hope these resources will help you skill up to develop a really smart and modern strategy for marketing your business!

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
            • JoyHawkins
              JoyHawkins last edited by

              There isn't anything wrong with creating multiple "city-pages" on your website targeting different city names.  Just be careful, because if there isn't enough unique content on them that is valuable to the user, they could be labeled as Doorway Pages, which are against Google's guidelines.  Phil Rozek has a great guide full of ideas for content for these pages.

              What is not allowed is creating multiple listings for the same business in Google My Business. Google will remove the listings if they catch them and can possibly suspend the user's account as well.  Using addresses of relatives to create these listings would also be against Google's guidelines and would be defined as a fake listing.

              I would only suggest creating multiple subpages for the location if they are targeting different keywords (products/services).  For example, if you have a location for an insurance agent then it might make sense to have 2 subpages, one targeting auto insurance and another targeting home insurance.  However, if the location just really offers one service, like a hotel, then it doesn't make sense.  I've seen chains do this and often Google only ever ranks the main location page and not the subpage because they are all targeting the exact same thing and the content is almost the same.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • DonnaDuncan
                DonnaDuncan last edited by

                Hi Kimberley,

                1- Should we create multiple location pages for the same franchise owner?

                You're right, the answer is "yes" but the objective of creating a single page per location is not so your franchisee shows up in local search results (on Google Maps), but so they show up in organic search results.

                Can they just use a friend's/relative's address?

                You need a unique mailing address for each location you want to show up in maps. A place where someone will answer the phone during business hours with a typical business greeting like "XYZ Business. How can I help you." I don't recommend using friends/relatives addresses for lots of reasons including the fact that friends and relatives move and you'd still have to incur the cost of getting a unique phone number and optimizing a business listing for each location.

                2. It seems like a lot less work just building one landing page for each location, but is the payoff the same?

                More is better. Google favors fresh, active, and growing websites. Many businesses build a one-page-fits-all solution due to budget constraints. That can work in niche / non-competitive markets, but rarely does otherwise. You should assess your budget, resources, and competition and then decide on an approach.

                kimberleymeloserpa 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • 1 / 1
                • First post
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                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.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • Hanuman88

                  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 | | Hanuman88
                  1
                • hristina-m

                  Can I use Schema zip code markup that includes multiple zip codes but no actual address?

                  The company doesn't have physical locations but offers services in multiple cities and states across the US. We want to develop a better hyperlocal SEO strategy and implement schema but the only address information available is zip codes, names of cities and state. Can we omit the actual street address in the formatting but add multiple zipcodes?

                  Local Website Optimization | | hristina-m
                  0
                • BrianAlpert78

                  Are core pages considered "cornerstones"?

                  To check that I understand the terminology, "cornerstone articles" are posts (or pages) that have some extensive, detailed, important information about a subject that other blog posts and articles can link to in reference, right? For example, a website for an auto repair shop might have a blog post about what cold weather does to a car's transmission and that post could link to a cornerstone "explainer" article that goes into more detail explaining to car-dummies like me what a transmission even DOES. But are core pages also in this category of cornerstone content? Or are they something entirely different and should be constructed accordingly? By "core pages", I mean the base-level pages about what your business is and does. For the repair shop example, I mean things like an "About Us" page or a "Services" page*. *or broken up into individual pages listing the services related to brakes, engine, wheels, etc. Thanks!

                  Local Website Optimization | | BrianAlpert78
                  0
                • SwanseaMedicine

                  Page optimisation score = 93, but rank on 2nd page?

                  So, one of my pages has an optimisation score of 93. The DA of the website is 74 and is lower than many of our competitors, but to rank 12th? Anyway, does anyone have any suggestions? All the images are under 100kb, but the page speed isn't great (not something I'm currently able to change). All alt tags are using variations of our keywords.

                  Local Website Optimization | | SwanseaMedicine
                  0
                • Michael.Leonard

                  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.Leonard
                  0
                • PeteC12

                  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

                  Local Website Optimization | | PeteC12
                  0
                • MiriamEllis

                  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 | | MiriamEllis
                  9
                • DanielBernhardt

                  Does the Location of my Server effect my SEO?

                  Does the geographic Location of my Server effect my SEO? HELP US! We are arguing for 3 weeks already. My partner has mentioned multiple times in the past that  "since 2013 google does not require your server to be in the country you are targeting for seo"
                  And that actually all they care about is if its a good and fast server - not where its physically located in the world. I am a strong believer that the geographic location of your server directly effects your SEO ranking... lets say if you want to target www.google.ru for your seo, best you have a server located in Russia for hosting your website.. WHO IS RIGHT? Choose the winner and base the facts.
                  If anybody has the correct answer and information to base it on it will help us alot - and maybe even spare some unnecessary violent between us two! we found some articles across the web, sadly they are all dated back to 2012.... Thanks in Advance for all the help guys!

                  Local Website Optimization | | DanielBernhardt
                  0

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                • Digital Marketers
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.