Question about local SEO when you serve many more cities than you have brick and mortar locations
-
My URL is: http://www.mollysmusic.org for the record.I run a music school that serves in-home lessons to a whole slew of cities. Since I only have 3 brick-and-mortar locations, I can't make google local profiles for all the cities served, but I want to get seen by those people searching in their own cities. Right now, our biggest competitor, takelessons.com, is top ranked for every single city you can think of, because they have individual web pages for every city served. Their content is repetitive and scrapey, and to me, that says "doorway page" which supposedly can get you de-indexed. I'm reluctant to do that because I'm afraid I'll get banned, but I have to compete. I also want a strategy that can scale when we move into new areas. Is there something that makes TakeLessons's content NOT a doorway page? What's the best practice for getting ranked in multiple individual cities if you run a service? Thanks in advance.
-
Hi Molly,
Thanks:) So glad you found that article relevant. When I wrote that piece, it was because this concept of city landing pages is so important, but so little had been formally written about it. The response has been great! I'm very happy if it will help you. Good luck!
-
Miriam,
I'm usually wary of people plugging their own content, but this is totally relevant and awesome. Exactly what I'm looking for. Thanks.
-
Thanks Paul and everyone else for your excellent answers.
I think the general consensus for my strategy will include relevant city pages (maybe the top ten in each radius), that includes music venues, karaoke bars, open mic cafes and the like. Then, we'll have blog entries about relevant events in our service areas. It's a lot of work, but it's added value for our students and prospectives, so I think it's worth the fuss.
-
Gracie,
In addition to the "good content" City Pages that Miriam and William recommend, you may also want to blog about music happenings in each city. Set Google alerts for music keyword phrases associated with each city you serve and use the Alert-identified information to discuss upcoming music events and also to provide information, photos, and video for events that have taken place. Such a blogging process might help you establish yourself as a part of each music community you serve. Each blog post gives you the opportunity to focus on one aspect of the music scene of a particular city. Good luck!
-
I would create a separate page for each city instead of one page with content covering many cities.
Linking out is a good thing. Ask yourself, "Will these links improve the users experience"? If yes, then include them.
-
Hi Gracie,
William's advice is right on. Typically, when a business gets away with thin and/or duplicate landing pages like your competitor is apparently doing, it's either because a) the pages are really, really old or b) because Google doesn't have something better to display. You can provide that 'better' solution for Google.
I think you'll find my recent article on the concept of City Landing Pages to be useful. Many business owners have told me it has really helped them clarify their options.
The Nitty Gritty of City Landing Pages
http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=1403
I hope this helps!
Miriam
-
Thanks, William.
Do you have any advice on how to split up location content? Should I designate one page for each place, and then infuse that with unique content, or should I try to fit it all into one place?
The more I think about this, the more questions come to light. For instance: would making a little directory of, say, local open mic nights, karaoke bars, and venues help? Would including a bunch of outbound links to these places hinder us by giving away link juice?
-
It may be working for them now, but using the same recycled content is not a good long term strategy. Plus, if the content stinks it doesn't really matter how well they rank because people with hit the back button (and google keeps score of that).
Focus on creating content that's going to make users have a positive experience on the site. Use case studies, photos, testimonials, videos, city/town resources that are relevant.
If the site was about construction - link to official city/town page with relevant permit info, ect - things like that.
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
-
Inbound links with malicious anchor text. Negative seo attack
Hi, What to do with more than 300 links with a malicious anchor text that has nothing to do with my content. I am disavowing those links for the last 5 years. Some of them are directed to URLs that have been changed more than 8 years ago. How can I block this malicious behavior? Thanks in advance
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Arlinaite470 -
Too many links pointing to our privacy policy page: Hurting our ranking efforts of main pages?
Hi community, As per the "Links" report from GSC, there are millions of pages pointing to our privacy policy page. We can expect high number of links to this page being ours an open source product. But these links are overtaking the count of links pointing to our homepage which are very artificial from few spammy or low quality sites. "Privacy policy" anchor text is also been the top anchor text. Our homepage ranking dropped and I suspect this is the culprit. Google might be considering this is the important page being linked on top with anchor text. Shall I Disavow these sites and will this makes Google stop counting links, and the anchor text coming from these sites as well? Suggestions please. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Negative SEO yes/no?
We receive links from fake websites, these website are copy's from real websites that link to us, but sometimes the links are changes, as for example one link is called 'tank weapon with hitler', we are a insurance comparison website (a bit of topic). The real websites that link to us are copied and placed on .ga .tk etc domains: For example: wahlrsinnsa.ga, loungihngsa.ga, pajapritosa.cf, rgeitsportsa.cf, sospesvoasa.tk I received spam links on other domains with comments spam etc, this doesnt really work, but in this case we really suffer in our rankings (from position 1 to 5 etc). Not sure if this is negative SEO and if this is really the reason we lost some rankings, but it's a bit of a coincidence the domains come in google webmaster in the same period we suffer a downgrade in our rankings. My question: Is this negative SEO, or is it something automatic. And do I need to disavow the links/domains? The real versions of the websites (on other domains with .nl) give the website autority.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | remkoallertz0 -
Which is Important? Backlinks or Internal Links? For SEO purpose.
Which is Important? Backlinks or Internal Links? For SEO purpose.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BBT-Digital0 -
Negative SEO? Or?
We had another website attacked by negative SEO, so now I'm getting a little suspicious. The website went from around 26 linking domains to 1001 links from 311 linking domains in webmaster tools. They're all in different languages, and directories. I asked everyone at the organization and they said they didn't sign up for any services. I trust them, because I know they don't have time to breath right now, with 7 product launches this month. OSE says 79 links from 26 linking domains, so the spam links must be gone now.. but the website's been wiped pretty much clean from Google.com and is just starting to slowly (very slowing) crawl back 😞 Is there anything else that could be targeting the website with hundreds of links? Anything I can do to protect it? I've disavowed the links, but they're gone now so it probably won't help. Thanks in advance for ideas 🙂 UPDATE: The website is still not recovering in Google.com. It seems to be ok in .ca, but a recent conundrum is that it's been basically wiped clean from Bing and Yahoo rankings. I've emailed Bing and the team says it is indeed indexed, and not penalized (manually anyways). OLE says the "bad links" are no longer there, but webmaster tools still lists them all (I know, they don't update that often). My latest strategy is to start building some really strong links into the website with killer content. Their products are amazing (tv lift furniture) so it shouldn't be difficult. Just time consuming! I'm also being super-active on their social media platforms, to see if this helps boost rankings in the mean time. Any further tips to recover from negative SEO?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SmartWebPros
(Note: I do not need link removal tools. We have a process that's working just fine).0 -
Vendor Descriptions for SEO... Troublesome?
Howdy! I have been tossing this idea around in my head over the weekend and I cannot decide which answer is correct, so here I am! We a retailer of products and is currently in the midst of redesigning our site-- not only design but also content. The issue that we are facing is with product descriptions from our vendors. We are able to access the product descriptions/specs from their websites and use them on ours, but my worry is that we will get tagged for duplicate content. Other retailers (as well as the vendors) are using this content as well, so I don't want this to have an adverse effect on our ranking. There are so many products that it would be a large feat to re-write unique content-- not to mention that the majority of the rhetoric would be extremely similar. What have you seen in your experiences in similar situations? Is it bad to use the descriptions? Or do we need to bite the bullet and do our best to re-write hundreds of product descriptions? Or is there a way to use the descriptions and tag it in a way that won't have Google penalize us? I originally thought that if we have enough other unique content on our site, that it shouldn't be as big of a deal, but then I realized how much of our site's structure is our actual products. Thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jpretz0 -
One Blog Comment Now on Many Pages of The Same Domain
My question is I blog commented on this site http://blogirature.com/2012/07/01/half-of-200-signals-in-googles-ranking-algorithm-revealed/#comment-272 under the name "Peter Rota". For some reason the recent comments is a site wide link so, bascially my link from my website is pretty much on each page of their site now. I also noticed that the anchor text for each one of my links says "Peter Rota". This is my concern will google think its spammy if im on a lot of pages on a same site for one blog comment, and will I be penailzied for the exact same anchor text on each page? If this is the case what could I do in trying to get the links removed? thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ilyaelbert0 -
Too many links with the same Anchor-text?
My first question at SeoMoz: Recently my gambling site has been experimenting a subtle yo-yo effect for our most sought-after keyword. A month ago we legitimately added a PR-6 inbound link with that keyword (tragamonedas) from an institutional site of our own development. We are worried that google might have regarded that move as an illegitimate link acquisition, since those apparent troubles with our keyword appear to have started right after that link was processed. Is it too late to change the anchor text, in case that action might deliver positive results? Also, we might have focused too much on the very same keyword in our link building campaign. Can a constant repetition of the same anchor harm our indexing reputation? Thank you in advance and good SEO luck, Andi.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | castano0