Help with local SEO strategy for service industries
-
Here is the scenario I often wonder about:
My client's tree removal service is ranking in #1 in local search for
"tree removal town state." His Google Places account is set for a 30 mile radius. He has lots of directory listings and positive reviews. Some inbound links as well.The same client is ranking #1 in organic listing for "tree removal county state" ...I chose to target the county for organic listings because the client was dominating local search for the town.
My reasoning: I thought, Google local search would bring all of the local specific searches for "tree removal town state" and organic listings would bring the broader searches for "tree removal county state." That is exactly what's happening and stats show there are some visitors coming to the site searching with the county name. Not a ton of traffic but a lot of keyword variations using the county name. The bulk of the traffic comes from the his Google Places listing for the town the business is located in which is great.
Dilemma: My client is not ranking in local search results for neighboring towns just a few miles away and certainly not ranking in organic listings for neighboring towns either because we are targeting the county. He has a long list of town names he services in the footer area and this does seem to help for organic search in neighboring towns with little competition.
Broad Question: How can I optimize pages for the same services in neighboring towns without duplicating content. For example, the home page title tag and H1 reads:
Tree Removal, Tree Trimming, Stump Removal, County StateIt would be very easy to create identical pages with title tags and page headings for the different towns but that would undoubtedly create duplicate content and would look weird to someone browsing the site.
Specific Questions:
-
Should I put the town name where the business is located in the title tag even though the site already ranks #1 for that town in local search, without having the town in the title tag? Why not use this importunity for an area that we are not ranking for?
-
Do I nix the county and state and try to insert another town or two in the title and H1?
Ideally I would like to have this site rank well in local search for all of the neighboring towns.
This may be too broad of a post, (it is my first one) but perhaps there are a few of you out there that can outline strategies that work for service industries like, lawn care, tree removal, landscaping, etc.
Thanks for reading.
-
-
Greetings, MozMan2,
As you know, Google's take on local is that it is address-based. Thus, if you have an office in San Francisco, you can create a Google Place Page and shoot for rankings in San Francisco, but not in neighboring Oakland, Berkeley, San Jose etc. Google's picture of Local has proved problematic for all go-to-client businesses (lawn care, tree removal, nannies, chimney sweeps etc.) because there is a genuine bias towards those businesses which at least operate out of their own storefront or at least within their own town. Service area businesses receive less specific solutions from Google Places.
So, what can a business like your client's do? You are on the right track with creating landing pages for the cities/counties/neighborhoods/regions in which you client serves, but you have to take the creative route with this. Don't simply duplicate content from page to page, and definitely don't just stuff a bunch of keywords in the footer. Make these pages interesting for your clients (and for the bots) by making each one a profile of the work the company does in that location. Tell stories, use photos, videos, talk about special concerns for that region (floods, droughts, watering, laws, maintenance). By taking this approach, you will be creating legitimate content that showcases what the client does in the areas where he serves.
You cannot count on this content enabling you to outrank competitors who have physical locations in the neighboring cities, but it is the strongest move you can make towards improved visibility for these secondary terms. After this, all traditional off-page SEO tactics apply (linkbuilding, Social Media, etc.)
Hope these thoughts are helpful!
-
I heard you get a better effect by not stating a radius.
*edit: 2 downvotes, so I'll add: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/018216.html says no less then 20 miles. I still don't think you should specify a radius, let Google decide.
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
-
Help on how to test the DA, PA of the website
Please help me. How to check the DA, PA of the website https://toolaim.com/ . I want to know any quality website to take care of it more. But at present I do not know any forum quality is good and trust. Thank you
Reporting & Analytics | | gogoanimetp0 -
Been stuck on seo duplication issues shopify
hey there we have been working on some of our webshops and recently started with analytics/moz,but we have basicly hit a brick wall when it comes to www.krawattenwelt.de since we have had 5k high priority issues (duplicate content) and 20k medium priority issues now i have tried a large amount of solutions regarding the duplicate content issues but it didnt work so we basicly reverted it back to for now and i have the feeling i am really running out of options is there anyone who has an idea on how to do this? duplicate content issues are as follows example:http://krawattenwelt.de/collections/budget-9-15 issues with:http://krawattenwelt.de/collections/budget-9-15/modell_normal and with:http://krawattenwelt.de/collections/budget-9-15/modell_normal?page=1
Reporting & Analytics | | WebMaster2050 -
Reach local driving up bounce rate...
Hi all! I have a new client that I did a website for. After a month, looking at the analytics, it shows that while the site visits from reach local is more than the organic google, the reachlocal traffic is bouncing, causing the overall website bounce rate to skyrocket. Organic bounce rate is 47.62% and the reachlocal is at 84.25% driving the overall bounce rate to 68! Duration of the reachlocal traffic is at :56 vs 3:41 for organic. (SEE ATTACHED IMAGE) I'm guessing this all means that the reachlocal traffic is obviously not quality, so does that mean they are targeting non-relevant keywords? I don't have any experience dealing with reachlocal. Should I recommend my client to drop it? And if so, how to stop that traffic from coming to the site? I'm sure this is an easy one for you pros! Thanks! ~BB MUW959h.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | BBuck0 -
Newsletter Campaign Need HELP to Create a Custom Report in Google Analytics
I have this newsletter send using Mailchimp. This campaign is link to G.A. How can I create custom report for me online store about this campaign? For example: I have 2 Goals Completion Location setup in G.A. they are: /checkout.php and /finishorder.php Is there a way to find out how many visitors from my campaign reach the /finishorder.php vs. /checkout.php Reason, about 50% are reaching /finishorder.php Maybe I need to creat a "How to redeem you coupon code" video to included in the newsletter to HELP customers complet there order process. Thank you, BigBlaze
Reporting & Analytics | | BigBlaze2050 -
Major practices which helps to index pages by google.
Actually, We have submitted more than 100 pages in to google through xml sitemap. But, we see in that 75% of the pages where indexed by google. Note : Excluding the duplicate pages
Reporting & Analytics | | Webworld_Norway0 -
GA Regex Help Needed!
Hi mozzers, I am just discovering the RegEx world so I need your help. I would like to create an advanced segment to track 40 specific pages that have very different URIs from each other. Can you tell me how using RegEx? The dimension would be "landing pages" then not sure... Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
SEO Moz Errors
We have SEO Moz Errors and warnings showing up, yet we have cleaned them
Reporting & Analytics | | RNK
up. The same errors were showing up in Google's Webmaster tools but after we corrected them they do not show up as crawl errors in Webmaster tools.
Why is SEO Moz different and why does it continue to show corrections already made.0 -
Can someone clarify the importance of Scribe SEO?
Hi guys, I was reading The Beginner's Guide to SEO and was confused about the importance of keyword density. As I see it, the main purpose of tools like Scribe SEO revolve around analyzing keyword density, however, Chapter 9 of "The Beginner's Guide to SEO" seems to downplay its importance and says "Despite being proven untrue time and again, this myth has legs. Many SEO tools still feed on the concept that keyword density is an important metric. It's not." If this is true, what is the real value of tools like Scribe SEO? Currently, I follow keyword analysis tools very closely, and try to get the recommended density in my articles to help build back links. Should I be focusing heavily on the density and prominence of keywords like I am in the picture below, or is there another way you suggest I go about using these tools? PhJnV PhJnV
Reporting & Analytics | | samersultan10