How to Best Optimize for Multiple Cities and Services Areas?

[cbizzle]

A business with offices in 3 major cities and loads of service areas hired us to build its website. Here's my internal debate regarding local SEO:

1. Do I build one site with a thorough sitemap that utilizes one page per city and/or region for local SEO?

2. Do I build a primary site with a limited sitemap and a subsite for each city (e.g. companyname.com/city) that essentially replicates the sitemap from the primary site? If I go this route, the content on each page of each subsite would be unique (not copied and localized versions of the content on the primary site), but what about the keywords? For example, should each subsite use the same keywords as the primary site (e.g. companyname.com/keyword-or-phrase and companyname.com/city-name/keyword-or-phrase OR companyname.com/keyword-or-phrase and companyname.com/city-name/variation-of-keyword-or-phrase).

In the end, I suppose the question is, "Should I build one site with a more thorough sitemap and single pages for each city and/or region OR should I build a site for each city with less thorough sitemaps?" Budget constraints won't allow for option C, which is build a site for each city with a thorough sitemap for each.

Thank you guys in advance for whatever insight you're willing to give!

[MiriamEllis]

Happy New Year to you, Chad!

So, typically, here's how you do a service area business:

1. You create a set of pages for the services offered. If the business is physically located in a good city, you can incorporate this into the optimization of these pages, but the main focus of these pages is the services being offered (plumbing, HVAC, etc).

2. You create a second set of pages for the MOST important cities the business serves. You don't create a page for every possible city, but just for the ones that are really key to the business. The content on these pages can summarize the menu of services offered, but the main focus is on the company's work in that city. A good way to approach the 'meat' of this content is UGC including testimonials and reviews (including video reviews) in that city. You can also include videos of projects being accomplished in those cities, with text descriptions.

In this way, you have two distinct sets of pages (an no duplicate content) that cover all of your services and your major cities.

The main feat here is to educate the clients as to the importance of assembling enough material to make these pages really strong instead of weak. They shouldn't just be thrown together. They should be templated, carefully planned, well written and very engaging to consumers.

There are other possible approaches, but this is the one I'd typically recommend. Hope this helps!

[cbizzle]

Miriam,

Happy New Year and thanks for the post on 2017 local SEO predictions! I'm working with another client who, like the one mentioned above, serves a very large geographical area. The distinction is that he is a commercial and residential service company who provides plumbing, electrical, HVAC, handyman, generator installation, and appliance repair services. The nuance to the question I asked above is, "Which keywords do I target on those pages?" The company I mentioned above is an office furniture store and since office furniture store is a frequently searched term, it worked well to optimize primarily for "[city name] office furniture store," but no variation of "residential service company" or "commercial service company" has any substantive search volume. Since it's not feasible for an H1 tag or HTML page title, for example, to be "[city name] plumbing, heating, air conditioning, electrical, handyman, generator installation, and appliance repair service company," I'm stumped on what to do. How would you optimize those service area pages?

[MiriamEllis]

My pleasure, Chad, and I like Southern expressions So glad if my thoughts were helpful and wishing your business such good luck in the work ahead!

[cbizzle]

Miriam,

I'm so thankful for your input. I'm stunned that you took the time to check my page and respond because I know you have MUCH bigger fish to fry (pardon the Southern expression). I've made a number of changes and I'm at work now making more!

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Chad,

You've very welcome. Here's a first impression/gut reaction, and I'll be to-the-point here, while mentioning that I consider it a brave act to put up a page for public review

1. Design is visually nifty, feels professional

2. Content is thin.

3. Content in main paragraph has some grammatical oddities, particularly this sentence

"Not surprisingly, Dallas is loaded with office furniture stores, among which it’s our aim to set the bar for overall customer satisfaction."

I'd work at getting that sentence into better shape.

4. I do not understand what the links to restaurants and coffee shops, etc., have to do with this page. Are these your customers? If so, say so. If not, what was the idea with this?

5. I'm not in love with this H tag: AN EFFORT AT SETTING THE BAR. It sounds like an effort ... like a pain for someone, you know? And it's not particularly clear what it means. I'd work on that wording.

6. I like this statement very much: DALLAS OFFICE SPACE IS EXPENSIVE. LET US PUT YOURS TO WORK FOR YOU. That's a good point that should resonate with business owners. Do you feel the graphic there, as it's presented, would make customers feel the numbers shown are your pricing? Or are you trying to explain that this is average pricing but you can offer a better deal? If you can offer a better deal, absolutely say so!

7. Is something missing from the 'Getting To Know Dallas' section?

8. What I really, really want to see on this page is a section of testimonials, highly promoted. Video would be great, but text would be great, too.

9. And, my last thought is ... will all of these sections be the same on the 25 pages? Which areas will you be editing from page to page? So important that each page is unique.

Hope this helps! It's just a really quick look, Chad. I think you've made a good start, but I do see opportunity for improvement.

[cbizzle]

Miriam,

Thank you again for your help. It has been tremendous for me. I'm in process of creating 25 service area pages (there is only one physical location that has a large service area) for the company I'm serving. I've included a link to the first service area page I've created. If you're willing, would you mind telling me if I'm on the right track?

https://www.officebarn.biz/service-area/dallas-tx/

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Chad,

You're very welcome. By 'practice areas' do you mean service areas, like a plumber physically located in Dallas but who, from that office, also serves the neighboring towns of Plano, Irving and Grand Prairie? I think this is what you mean, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

For these non-physical city pages, optimization would essentially be the same as for the physical cities, with the exception that you won't have complete NAP to put at the top of the pages. As you'll already have a strong page for each service focusing on a couple of keywords (like hot water heater repair, hot water tank repair on one page, and bathroom sink repair and sink drain repair on another page) then the focus of the set of city pages should be more generic, like a top level keyword (plumbing) + the city name.

As you only have 3 physical locations, you should be fine to include all 3 in the sitewide footer, and to use Schema. If you had more than 10, I wouldn't suggest it, but just 3 should be fine. Also, be sure that all 3 are on the Contact page, too. Hope this helps!

[cbizzle]

Thanks you! If my client has numerous practice areas, how do you recommend optimizing each location page? Should I optimize for my client name and city name only?

Also, how do I handle the Schema markup for multiple locations? Do I insert Schema markup for all three locations in the footer of every page of the site or should I only place Schema markup on the location-specific pages?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Chad,

Good question. As you mention that there are budget constraints, here's what I would suggest for your initial contract with the client: build one website with a page for every physical city and a page for every service, and build the client a blog. Then, structure into the relationship with the client the option to continue to build out pages for the cities where he serves but isn't physically located, either later in the year or whenever he can afford to begin growing the site. Additionally, with the blog in place, the client can be empowered to begin blogging about their projects relating to both their physical cities and their non-physical ones.

I want to be sure to be clear ... even if the client had a huge budget, I would not recommend trying to build multiple sites, mini sites, etc. You want one, really strong domain with unique content on it for each of the different target cities so that everything the business does is working to build up his brand.

It may be that your client already has the budget to build a page for each office, plus pages for his major non-physical service cities, plus a page for each service, in which case, you can do it all at once. But, if money is a bit slim for starters, I'd go with a basic plan of 1 page per city, 1 page per service, basic standard pages like home, about, contact, testimonials + an on-site blog. This would be the basic 'package' any business should be able to budget for, with room to grow in future.

P.S. You might also like to check out this thread, on a similar topic: https://moz.com/community/q/concerned-about-cannibalization-for-local-seo-results-should-we-move-some-of-our-location-pages-to-a-subdomain

[cbizzle]

Thank you for using your time to help me. This Moz article recommends the use of subdirectories or subdomains for each location. If I understand him correctly, his argument is that the value of such a structure is that each city gains localized pages, each with its city-specific shema.org NAP info. What do you think?

https://moz.com/ugc/get-your-multilocation-business-ranking-in-multiple-cities-with-one-domain-21815

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Chad,

Option 'C' would be the wrong way of doing this, as would 'B'

You need to build the site and then have a page per location. Make the pages very specific about the location and add things in there about travel, directions from different places, landmarks, etc., as well as address and other contact details. The more specific and targeted the page, the better for your client and SEO.

-Andy