How do Nation wide business win Local?

[BeytzNet]

Hi,

What is the methodology for a nation wide e-commerce site to win local searches?

If we take for example Flower Shops...
How do companies like 1800Flowers, ProFlowers compete locally for searches like "Flowers New York", "Flowers Boston" etc.?

Should they create a dedicated page (or pages / articles) per area ?

Thanks

[Dudy1]

Tady to mají hezky udělané  Květinářství Praha  a hlavní strana je takto  Rozvoz květin nebo jse mnašel ještě tuto stranku https://www.kup-kytici.cz/ a tady je to lokalizované na jednotlivé město rozvoz květin Praha

[Dudy1]

Můžete se také podívat zde, dělají Českou republiku a Slovensko a jsou pěkně sofistikované. Dodávají květiny i profily, ale je to místní podnik. https://www.flora-online.cz/ nebo https://www.kytice-expres.cz/ nebo https://www.kup-kytici.cz/ nebo na Slovensku https: //www.flora-online .sk / nebo https://www.kytica-expres.sk/ there are sites with a list of local cities and there is a unique text and offer on each page. Specifically, this page. https://www.flora-online.cz/kam-dorucujeme-kvetiny/ , je to správné řešení? Rozvoz květin Praha

[MiriamEllis]

Hi BeytzNet,

Typically, a national company is not going to be able to compete in the truly Local SERPs (the pack of pinned, local results). Those are generally populated with local businesses with a physical location in the city of search. For example, a search for 'send flowers nyc' returns a pack of local results like this:

https://www.google.com/search?q=sent+flowers+nyc&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#q=send+flowers+nyc&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&spell=1

The companies in those results will typically have a physical address in NYC, though the floral industry has a well-documented historical problem with spam, meaning some listings in the local results will be fake, unfortunately.

Typically, a national company without a physical location in a desired city is going to need to go after organic results rather than local ones. I've done a small amount of research of this industry in the past and what I recall seeing was either

a) A single page filled with every conceivable city name or zip code. Google states in their webmaster guidelines that they don't like this practice. Despite this, I have seen pages like this ranking, much to my surprise.

b) A set of pages for each conceivable city. Here again, I've been disappointed in the thin and duplicate content I've seen ranking with this tactic. Seems like Google's filters would catch this stuff, but I know I've seen it ranking and have been frustrated by the fact that the page I was clicking through to really had no real local component.

Is this the type of thing you're seeing, too? I'll be interested in the whole community's response on this one. You've asked a very good question.