Best Approach to Rank For Multiple Locations With Similar Targeted Keywords

[shaycw]

I'm trying to determine the best way to set up a website to rank for a similar set of keyword phrases in three different cities. The keyword phrases I want to rank for are all pretty much the same with the only difference being the city associated with the keyword phrase. For example, "Austin water restoration" vs "San Antonio water restoration" vs "Houston water restoration". Each city needs about 7 or 8 pages of unique content to accurately target the group of keywords I'm trying to rank for.

My initial thought was to write up unique content for each city and have each city act a site within the main site. For example, the main navigation for xyz.com/austin would be Austin specific, so when you land on xyz.com/austin and go to Services - Water Restoration, it would be all Austin specific content. The same would be true for San Antonio and Houston.

The only problem with this approach is that I have to build up the page authority for a lot of different pages. It would be much easier to build up the page authority for one Water Restoration page and just insert a little "Areas we serve" on the page that includes "Austin, San Antonio, and Houston" and maybe work the coverage area in again at the bottom of the page somewhere. However, it would be much more difficult to work "Austin, San Antonio, and Houston" into the title tags and H1s though, and I couldn't logically work the cities into the content as much either. That would be a downside to this approach.

Any thoughts on this? Wondering how large companies with hundreds of locations typically approach this? I'd really appreciate your input.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Shaycw,

Sounds good to me...just make sure the font is a regular size (not too small!). So glad to have helped.

[shaycw]

I really like this approach Miriam. Thanks so much for the suggestion. I think maybe on the services pages I will include a "serving Austin, San Antonio, and Houston" in a small font just below the main page heading. The heading would be "Water Restoration" for example, and I can get my cities just below the main keyword phrase so that they are associated with it. That's what I'm thinking anyways.

I really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts and insights on this Miriam. Very nice of you

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Shaycw,

Thanks for the further clarification. With a client like this, I like to group my page types into 3 different categories:

1. City pages

2. Service pages

3. Future pages

To start with, I create the first two sets of pages. So, in your case, you would be building an Austin page, a San Antonio page and a Houston page. These pages would open with the complete NAP of the business at the top, encoded in Schema and would feature unique content about the unique locations. These pages would be optimized for the respective city and the MAIN service term. The second set of pages would be the service pages. You would build one for each unique service, and while the content of the page could reflect the three cities, your main optimization would center on the service, itself.

At this point, once I've got the basic pages created, I like to develop a blog for the client so that he can begin writing up his projects in the various cities. His blog posts will be titled things like 'A Tough Water Restoration Job In Houston, TX - Before And After'. When you've got 8 different services in 3 different cities to cover, the combination of possibilities really adds up, and I've found that a blog is the best way to begin tacking content development for all possible keyword combinations, while also accomplishing the task of adding fresh content to the site on a regular basis.

This is the method I've found works best. You may come up with some other way that works best for your clients, but I hope my explanation of how I do this makes good sense.

Remember, too, that because the client has 3 legit physical locations and phone numbers, a big part of your marketing will revolve around building unique citations for each location in a number of places. Coupled with a good content development strategy, you should be able to earn a lot of visibility for the client.

[shaycw]

Hi Miriam,

Thanks for the response back. We do have 3 actual physical locations with a unique address and phone number in each city.

I really appreciate your willingness to provide your input on this question!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Shaycw,

Does your business have three physical locations or one physical location from which you serve three cities? Please, describe as fully as you can. I'll be happy to come back and read your answer.

[KeriMorgret]

Your answer doesn't make too much sense here. At one point you talk about pages on a domain, and another point you refer to the same thing as sites. Please make sure that you have knowledge of the topic before responding, and that you leave a logical answer. Thanks!

[seom2014]

I read and understand it, for your solution you must register a domain and make just three pages like

• site.com/Austin-water-restoration
• site.com/San-Antonio-water-restoration
• site.com/Houston-water-restoration

Then next you are asking for internal city 7 to 8 pages, then i suggest you to make total of 10 pages and link them to all of these 3 sites, You pages looks like to cover the all three cities.

Now you have to only make authority and powerful links to only 3 pages of above that i ask, just list the title of homepage website, like Water Restoration Services - Sitename and once you got good quality of these pages link your internal cities pages to them and they also rank once they connected to better authority pages.

If you want to increase your business to many cities, then you have to make individual pages for every city, its little bit tough but not impossible. ...