Strategy for [list of keywords] + hundreds of cities

[Cleanily]

Hi, hoping to get some suggestions on strategy in terms of building out my site as I'm a bit overwhelmed. We provide home services throughout hundreds of locations - some major cities, others smaller yet affluent towns where demand is sufficient, though have no physical presence in the majority. My question is really regarding ranking organically (given local listings will be so difficult). I am new to Moz and have been using the Keyword Explorer to generate a long list of keywords, which I've refined to those which offer the most opportunity. Do I simply now take this list and append [city_name] to each keyword/phrase?

If so, working in [list_of_keywords] + [city] into hundreds of location pages is surely going to be a nightmare to make unique, and most likely a horrible user experience. All my customers really want to see is: that we service their area, some info on how we operate, that we are trustworthy (reviews/site quality etc) clear pricing/information (across mobile/desktop) and an easy way of contacting us. If I was searching for a lawn care service in Manchester for example, I couldn't care less about anything else other than the above information. So is padding out pages with content like 'Things to do in Manchester' etc. really the way forward? Would I be better off focusing on building relationships/links with other local complimentary businesses/influencers rather than building out tons of content (on the assumption of course that what content is there is high quality, contains a smattering of keyword + city, and optimised very well)?

Any help hugely appreciated!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi There!

I'm hoping watching some of Rand's Whiteboard Friday's will give you a clearer sense of how to organize this, but, in brief:

1. You should never assume Google knows the location of a business, nor the locations it serves. It is up to you to point that out via content and links, but not to go overboard. There is nothing worse than reading text like this:

Our Chicago Housecleaning service help customers in Chicago keep their Chicago homes clean with good housekeeping practices special to Chicago customers.

Not saying you'd write something like that, but if you start looking at local business websites, you'll run into agonies like this one. So, the answer is, no, when writing in natural language, you're not going to append your city name to every keyword you are focusing on. Highly recommend watching those WB Fridays for more on this.

2. What you want to avoid here is unnatural links. Typically, people linking to you are not naturally going to use your preferred text. Highly recommend you read through this as you plan your link strategy: https://moz.com/blog/the-anatomy-of-a-link

3. I reached out to Dan Leibson at Local SEO Guide and he said the problem you are encountering most likely stems from not first making a copy of the sheet. You might be trying to edit the original, instead, which Dan says folks sometimes do by accident. Here are the instructions:

This tool is really simple to use:

1. Make a copy of the sheet for you to use yourself (don’t ask me for edit access, I’m not going to give it to you)
2. Put the city you want to localize for (or zip code) in cell A4
3. Put the keywords you want to localize in A10+
4. Click the “Generate Keywords” button
5. Check the new tab that has the localized versions of all your keywords

Hope this helps, and good luck!

[Cleanily]

Hi Miriam, thanks for taking the time to respond so fully - very much appreciated. Just a few questions though:

1. Lets say I am house cleaning company servicing numerous locations within London, lets say Mayfair (and have no physical location there). I will therefore wish to appear in the organic rankings for all manner of searches associated "house cleaning + Mayfair" "home cleaners + Mayfair" "domestic services + Mayfair" etc etc. There are likely to be hundreds of variations. Lets assume I get the URL structure and tech seo right, within my page content, should I be gunning for say the top 10 keywords on this list, with "Mayfair" appended, so something like _"...we offer a full range of house cleaning services in Mayfair..." _or, should I assume that Google will realise this page is clearly about Mayfair and not bother trying to add Mayfair to each keyword (just gut feel that if the word Mayfair is in title tags, meta description and H1, then peppering the page with further references to Mayfair may seem unnatural and spammy)?

2. Once I have worked out the answer as to how to structure this page content, I assume I should then focus on getting relevant high authority links to the Mayfair landing page, using natural language. If this is the case, and if some high ranking site is willing (I realise that this would be an ideal situation), might it be best to actually suggest linking text to them, so that their link to our page contains the text _house cleaning services in Mayfair _thereby targeting the exact content on our page?

By the way, I tried your tool, but couldn't work out how to actually add (using the above example) Mayfair into cell A4 and then keywords I want to localise into cell A10.

Many thanks!

[MiriamEllis]

Hey There!

Good topic! First, let me point you to this cool little tool Local SEO Guide just published: http://www.localseoguide.com/the-local-keyword-generator-tool/ It should really help with your keyword organization needs that you've mentioned.

From your post, what I understand is that your business is at a very critical moment in planning its strategy. You are so right: it is really easy to go at this wrong and end up with a redundant, duplicative site that simply doesn't do a good job of serving users. Most local businesses will need to create a strategy something like this for their website:

1. Build great basic pages (home, about, contact, testimonials, etc.)

2. Build a great page for each service the company offers.

3. Build a high quality, unique page for each city in which the business has a physical location. So, if you've got 5 physical locations, that's 5 pages.

4. Then, consider how you wish to cover all of the other cities that you serve. If you serve hundreds of cities, chances are slim that you're going to be able to create amazing content for all of them in the short term. As you've mentioned, you know you're not gunning for local pack rankings for cities in which you lack a physical location, but providing some content about them can definitely help with your organic visibility. So, typically, in this scenario, you'd be considering something along the lines of identifying maybe 10-20 most important cities where you serve but lack a physical location for, and then consider how you can create content that really shines for your work in those cities. For example, an architect physically located in San Antonio, Texas may have designed 3 building in Dallas, Texas. Even though he is not located in Dallas, he could create a wonderful page about the buildings he helped create there. In other words, you can showcase your projects in a given city, including text, photos, testimonials, links to 3rd party reviews, topical tips for that city, etc.

If a business can take this approach to its more important service cities, and then earn a few good links to those pages, they are well on their way to competing for organic visibility. They can then move out from there, perhaps mentioning some of their secondary target cities in blog posts, social media, etc.

Here are some resources I think you'll find very helpful at this critical stage of your planning:

https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages

https://moz.com/blog/local-seo-checklist

https://moz.com/blog/build-content-keyword-map-for-seo-whiteboard-friday

https://moz.com/blog/long-tail-seo-target-low-volume-keywords-whiteboard-friday

https://moz.com/blog/google-may-analyze-evaluate-quality-content-whiteboard-friday

Hope you'll enjoy these!