Targeting different cities for my service - Geo landing pages
-
I am breaking my head trying to figure out the best way around this... so we have an hvac company located in nyc. We want to also target all the different boroughs.
We have a bunch of different major keywords
hvac repair + location
hvac service + location
along with keywords such as air conditioning repair + location, heating service + location , and so on.....
Should each borough + keyword have its own page? Or should we just have one page called brooklyn and in that page target all the different keywords like hvac, air conditining, and heating ?
Also does it matter how we have it laid out? Domaim/hvac-repair-brooklyn or should I add domain/service-area/hvac. .....
Some of my competitors have the same content written on each borough page just moved around a little with different city names, how are they ranking so well? Isn't that duplicate?
Would love to hear from some people with success in this local area.
Thanks!
-
For the sake of convenience, I prefer this:
/service-area/dallas-tx
Hope that helps!
-
My thought was to have a master service area page that would be at mydomain.com/service-area. That page would have a service area map or the like that would link to the service areas themselves, which would be located at /service-area/texas/dallas or /service-area/dallas-tx, and which of the two is preferable is the essence of my question. Thank you!
-
Hey Chad!
Getting to discuss these topics with the community is the highlight of my work day, every day!
In your examples, above, what is this meant to represent:
service-area
Are you saying the domains would actually say 'service-area' in them or is that filler text for something you are meaning to convey? Please clarify. Thanks!
-
Miriam, as a follow-up, do your recommendations for city pages change if a company serves a large number number of cities across several states? In particular, which of the following link structures would you recommend:
- mydomain.com/service-area/texas/dallas and mydomain.com/service-area/louisiana/shreveport
- mydomain.com/service-area/dallas-tx and mydomain.com/service-area/shreveport-la
Seriously, Miriam, this is all so helpful. Thank you for spending your time this way!
-
Hello all, I have very recently taken on a local business to manage and quite new to all of this. Your posts on the subject of multi-location have been incredibly useful and your original blogpost on Local landing pages Miriam is in my reading list and I am sure will be revisited regularly.
I have another question on this obviously complex subject, what to do about tracking your keywords in MOZ Pro? I have subscribed and set up my main keywords and linked each to the 40 different service locations for our business, which looks like its a similar set up to Chads, however this now gives me 400 keywords to track, which seems way too much and unmanageable. Can you give me some advice on how to make this much more effective?
Many thanks,
Sarah
-
Sure thing, Chad!
-
Thank you, Miriam!
-
Hi Chad!
I see. If you have just one physical location, I recommend the following structure:
-
Include your city of location on your main pages (home, about, contact and the landing page for that city).
-
Create a unique landing page for each service city. Be sure the content is of very high quality on these pages.
-
Create a set of services pages, describing each of your company's services. Optimize these for the service keywords.
#3 has some grey area. If it is most important for you to rank for your city of location, then include that city in the optimization of these pages. If the service cities are of equal importance to the city of location, then do not optimize these for the cities - just optimize them for the services.
And, of course, be sure you are not duplicating content on any page
-
-
Thanks for getting back with me so quickly! I'm asking about a business that has only one physical location, but a broad service area. Should site pages be primarily optimized for the physical location or should I leave city names out of most page titles if I'd like to rank beyond the city of my physical location. Given that I have only one physical location, but a broad service area, which option is better (or is there a third):
Option #1: Optimize Most Pages for Physical Location
- Homepage: "Company Name | HVAC | New York City"
- About Page: "About Company Name | New York City"
- Service Page 1: "Service 1 | Company Name | New York City"
- Service Page 2: "Service 2 | Company Name | New York City"
- Service City Page 1: "New York City | Company Name"
- Service City Page 2: "Albany, NY | Company Name"
- Service City Page 3: "Philadelphia, PA | Company Name"
Option #2: Optimize Only City Pages for Physical Locations
- Homepage: "Company Name | HVAC"
- About Page: "About Company Name"
- Service Page 1: "Service 1 | Company Name"
- Service Page 2: "Service 2 | Company Name"
- Service City Page 1: "New York City | Company Name"
- Service City Page 2: "Albany, NY | Company Name"
- Service City Page 3: "Philadelphia, PA | Company Name"
-
Hi Chad,
Are you asking about a multi-location business? I believe so. If no city is more important than any other, then you would likely want to focus on the brand/keywords on the homepage and focus on the various cities on the city landing pages. If there are more details you'd like to share, feel free!
-
How would you recommend optimizing the site for its physical location? Would the homepage Title, for example, be something like "Company Name | HVAC | New York City" if that's the physical location of the business or would it be better to go with "Company Name | HVAC" as not to nullify the attempts to rank well in Albany, New Brunswick, and other surrounding cities?
-
Hi Brian - Your instinct about this is correct. Spun pages tend to be of very low quality and largely duplicative. Ideally, if you have an important city/service combination, you should be investing the time it takes to create a unique page from scratch about it. If the term is worth it, the time is worth it.
-
Sorry to revive an older post (I'll delete this if necessary), but I had one quick addition/question about this. I'm going to assume that using spinning software to cover the various city/service combos is out of the question, right? That it'd be better to simply not have a page devoted to a specific combination than to have a spun page?
Thanks!
-
Hey Jamie,
Well, in my suggested structure, the city landing pages wouldn't just say 'New York' on them in the titles,(by which I believe you're intending New York City, right?). They would likely include whatever the overall keyword is for the company...which would be HVAC if that is the category this company is in. What I wouldn't do, though, unless you do have the resources to create an enormous number of pages for all individual service/city combos, would be to have NYC+Heater Repair, NYC+Air Conditioner Repair, Brooklyn+Heater Repair, Brooklyn+Air Condition Repair, etc. On a limited budget/with limited resources, I think the structure I've suggested above would be the best way to convey all cities and services without repetition and without the risk of creating thin or duplicative content.
-
Miriam,
When structuring the pages as one for each domain.com/service and another for domain.com/city
would you still show up in the google search if someone was searching for the city and service?
Example new york hvac company
I found that when I used the keyword example new york hvac company in my title, page keyword, content I ranked relatively high. Thoughts as to the differences?
Thanks in advance!
-
Hi Raymond,
If I were building this from scratch, and you only served one city, I would likely recommend:
domain.com/air-conditioning-repair-brooklyn
domain.com/air-conditioning-service-brooklyn
domain.com/hvac-installation-brooklyn
domain.com/hvac-repair-brooklyn
etc.
But, if you are working with more than one city, I would have a set of pages like this:
etc.
And another set of pages like this:
etc.
So, 1 set of pages for the cities and another set for the services. How to structure this sensibly really depends on the business model (single city vs. multi-city). Most service area businesses I've worked with serve multiple cities, so I've found the above works well and keeps things simple.
-
Miriam,
I read the article, great post by the way! So in otherwords you are saying to do the following
domain.com/service-area/brooklyn/hvac-repair
domain.com/service-area/brooklyn/hvac-service
domain.com/service-area/brooklyn/hvac-installations
domain.com/service-area/brooklyn/air-conditioning-repair
domain.com/service-area/brooklyn/air-conditioning-service
domain.com/service-area/brooklyn/air-conditioning-installations
Or should all HVAC related keywords just be one page? Something along the lines of domain.com/service-area/brooklyn/hvac-repair-service-installation
thanks in advance!
-
Hey Raymond!
Jim has linked you to my great big post on the art of local landing pages. Hopefully, you can read it and identify a sensible strategy there.
Now, I'm not a New Yorker, and so this business of boroughs has always been a bit of mystery to me, but one thing that I will add to what you'll read in my post is how clearly hyper-local sensitivity is ramping up in search. My honest preference for structuring local websites is:
-
one page per city
-
one page per service
I totally understand that every local business owner worth his salt wants to rank for every possible combination of service/geo-term. Of course! But the only time I feel this landing page strategy should be undertaken to represent every possible combo is if the business owner has considerable creative or financial resources to devote to make a potentially enormous number of pages of a very high quality. Clearly - your competitors aren't hearing this advice if they're just spinning thin/duplicative content to cover the waterfront.
Now, all this being said, with Google become more and more intelligent about neighborhoods, and the mobile (and desktop) user becoming the new 'centroid', my take on this is that neighborhood (borough?) names are only going to become more important in signifying that a business is physically close to a given user. So, if I were consulting with a small HVAC company without endless funds, I'd probably suggest something like this strategy:
-
one page per city
-
one page per service
-
frequent but gentle mention of boroughs/neighborhoods throughout the website, as appropiate
-
hyperlocal blogging on an ongoing basis that emphasizes these boroughs, if the company or copywriter can swing something authentic and good to write about
I think frequent content of this sort could make phones ring. Hope these are helpful ideas!
-
-
Here's the iconic post on just that area - http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide - from Miram who's on staff here at Moz.com...
And she addresses that too....well worth the click/thru eh!
-
Hi Raymond,
You can create few pages like a/c to service area and then use the keywords for each service area page.
Also, domain/service-area/hvac url structure is good for your business
Kind Regards!
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
-
International SEO: reposting my own posts to different ccTLDs versions of my website
Hello there Moz community! Moz has been super helpful for me and the team, keep up the good work! I have searched online for answers regarding my specific situation, but I haven't found any. I'm asking my fellow Moz users in hopes of an answer. Maybe this thread will help others too. I currently have this domain: https://eco-reusable.com/ I would like to target Ireland and the UK with my keywords so I have just bought eco-reusable**.IE** and eco-reusable**.CO.UK** My questions are: 1. In order to rank as high as possible for Ireland, do I create a new website for eco-reusable.ie using the same pages but changing all the content slightly so it is not duplicate content OR do I point the eco-reusable.ie domain to eco-reusable.com? By having two sites, we will add more hours but we don't mind if that will be of benefit in the longrun for ranking high in Ireland. I have the same question for eco-reusable.co.uk
Local Website Optimization | | Gael_Regnault
If we have to create three websites and make similar content (not duplicate), we will if it will be better for ranking high in ireland for .ie, in the UK for .co.uk and for the rest of the world for .com 2. If we create three websites, can I safely "copy/paste" my blog posts without being punished by Google for duplicate content? If so, how much variation do we have to have for each of the three sites if we are writing blogs that are the same context. Thank you in advance! 🙂0 -
Matching page for keyword doesn't show in search
Hello! I'm having an issue with my website Rooms Index, the website is in Hebrew so I'll provide examples in English for better understandings. When I'm searching Rooms by Hour in Haifa, google doesn't show the intended category page which is this, instead it shows my homepage in the results, this happens only for certain areas, while other areas are working well such as Tel aviv. For example if I searched day use in Las Vegas it'd show me the Las Vegas page dayuse.com/las-vegas, but searching for Brooklyn I'd only see dayuse.com. the pages are indexed and I can find them if I search site:roomsindex.co.il what could cause such problem?
Local Website Optimization | | AviramAdar0 -
Hreflang | Should I implement hreflang for regional targeted but - different content of websites?
Hello, I'm implementing hreflang for my e-commerce websites which have different languages and do serve different content based on location. Currently, I'm only using hreflang for for alternate language (fr-fr, fr-be, fr-ma, ...). I wonder if it might be better or if I am allowed to add other version of my websites (IT, ES, DE,... ) even if those version are serving specific content for these specific location. So, the content (products) of Germany is different of the product of the other countries. Here is an example : www.mywebsite.com/apple-phone (selling apple phone for US with product avalaible only in US). www.mywebsite.de/apple-phone (selling apple phone for Germany with product avalaible only in Germany, the available models might be different from US and other websites). www.mywebsite.it/apple-phone (selling apple phone for Italy with product avalaible only in Italy, the available models might be different from US and other websites). www.mywebsite.es/apple-phone (selling apple phone for Spain with product avalaible only in Spain, the available models might be different from US and other websites). www.mywebsite.pt/apple-phone (selling apple phone for Portugal with product avalaible only in Portugal, the available models might be different from US and other websites).
Local Website Optimization | | manoman880 -
One locations page, or multiple pages?
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!
Local Website Optimization | | kimberleymeloserpa0 -
Will hreflang eliminate duplicate content issues for a corporate marketing site on 2 different domains?
Basically, I have 2 company websites running. The first resides on a .com and the second resides on a .co.uk domain. The content is simply localized for the UK audience, not necessarily 100% original for the UK. The main website is the .com website but we expanded into the UK, IE and AU markets. However, the .co.uk domain is targeting UK, IE and AU. I am using the hreflang tag for the pages. Will this prevent duplicate content issues? Or should I use 100% new content for the .co.uk website?
Local Website Optimization | | QuickToImpress0 -
How to approach SEO for a national website that has multiple chapter/location websites all under different URLs
We are currently working with a client who has one national site - let's call it CompanyName.net, and multiple, independent chapter sites listed under different URLs that are structured, for example, as CompanyNamechicago.org, and sometimes specific to neighborhoods, as in CompanyNamechicago.org/lakeview.org. The national umbrella site is .net, while all others are .orgs. These are not subdomains or subfolders, as far as we can tell. You can use a search function on the .net site to find a location near you and click to that specific local website. They are looking for help optimizing and increasing traffic to certain landing pages on the .net site...but similar landing pages also exist on a local level, which appear to be competing with the national site. (Example: there is a landing page on the national .net umbrella site for a "dog safety" campaign they are doing, but also that campaign has led to a landing page created independently on the local CompanyNameChicago.org website, which seems to get higher ranking due to a user looking for this info while located in Chicago.) We are wondering if our hands are tied here since they appear to be competing for traffic with all their localized sites, or if there are best practices to handle a situation like this. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | timfrick0 -
Search Result Brings Up Home Page
Hi all, I've been looking at some SEO work on our new CMS site that's been up for a few months now and when doing a search for a particular page which I know has good SEO and received a 'B' rating on the MOZ on page grader, our home page shows up and not our relevant page. I don't exactly want to worsen the SEO on our home page so that it doesn't show up, but why would my home page which is fairly generic and covers a large area of the business show up rather than the specific page which I am searching with exact keywords for? For example: If I was searching for 'bananas' my home page for fruits would show up rather than my bananas page which has been tailored around those keywords. Thanks
Local Website Optimization | | HB170 -
Do more page links work against a Google SEO ranking when there is only 1 url that other sites will link to?
Say I have a coupon site in a major city and assume there are 20 main locations regions (suburb cities) in that city. Assume that all external links to my site will be to only the home page. www.site.com Assume also that my website business has no physical location. Which scenario is better? 1. One home page that serves up dynamic results based on the user cookie location, but mentions all 20 locations in the content. Google indexes 1 page only, and all external links are to it. 2. One home page that redirects to the user region (one of 20 pages), and therefore will have 20 pages--one for each region that is optimized for that region. Google indexes 20 pages and there will be internal links to the other 19 pages, BUT all external links are still only to the main home page. Thanks.
Local Website Optimization | | couponguy0