Miriam,

Thanks again for the thoughtful response! I think we've just about talked this one to death (sorry!), but I do have one more question. Per your comment:

"Once you've got pages you're proud of, I don't think you'll have any qualms about giving them their own tab in the main menu. Putting them anyplace else (like in an unexpected place like the about tab) is going to risk that they're not being found, which would then negatively impact the conversions they might otherwise generate."

Are you suggesting that the only detrimental effect would be people not finding the local landing pages by browsing our site via the main navigation? The only reason we were planning to publish the local landing pages was for organic search traffic – not for people who arrived to the site via some other path (a blog? a service-specific landing page?) who happen to be noodling around in our menus. We have already designed an experience that we think best suits our users and feel that adding location pages to the main navigation would actually NOT serve them well, even if those pages are of an incredibly high quality. For our area, a single "Service Area" page with a brief outline of the area the company services is much simpler for the user, easier to understand, and cleaner.

I guess this is what I'm getting at: If adding local landing pages somewhere other than the main navigation is only detrimental in terms of people not finding the location pages in the menus, that's not a huge concern. HOWEVER, if putting them somewhere other than the main navigation is somehow detrimental for organic search traffic, that would be a concern.

I'm also not really seeing how something like "About > Service Areas > [name of city]" is unexpected or confusing to the user. I mean... I'm not hitting the streets doing user research or anything (the only way to really be sure what users want!), but this sort of content hierarchy actually seems super intuitive and natural to me. Is there any reason to think search engines would not like us if I organized local landing pages this way? Would they not want to display my local landing page to a searcher with a relevant query due to the overall organization/placement of the pages within the site architecture?

Miriam,

Thank you for the thorough and thoughtful response! It is gratifying to receive guidance from the person who actually wrote the closest thing I can find to a definitive guide on local landing pages.

For what it's worth, I used Beverly Hills/Los Angeles as a stand-in for my client's actual metropolitan area because I figured the example would be something more participants/respondents/lurkers would be familiar with. The point still stands, though. The client has a 15 to 20-mile service area, and pretty much anybody in a nearby municipality – and yes, they're actual cities distinct from the primary one in which my client is based (so the West Hollywood vs. Los Angeles analogy is comparable) – will know that the company serves their area without landing pages, paid ads, city-specific blogging, or city-specific social media outreach.

Even so, I totally get that it's the "right" thing to do from an SEO standpoint to include these local landing pages. With that in mind, let me narrow down this discussion to two questions:

1. Your response states that...

Google sees these as totally distinct user bases, and if a searcher located in Beverly Hills or Los Angeles just searches for "plumber", they are going to see these totally different results, localized to their location at the time they search.

The real-world effect of this, therefore, is that someone in Beverly Hills will first see plumbers with: a). Beverly Hills addresses and b). Beverly Hills-specific content (like a landing page) before they see the LA plumber _if they don't happen to be searching for "los angeles plumbers" themselves. _If they search for "los angeles plumbers," they'll be more likely to see the L.A. results even though they are physically located in Beverly Hills, right?

This matters to my situation because it's highly unlikely that all of the people in my client's service area will be using the name of their actual city when they search. Some will. Some won't. I suppose only keyword research can confirm this to be true for sure, but that's my feeling given my knowledge of this area. (bracing for commentary along the lines of, "do the research, don't assume")

2. How horrible would it be to make the "Cities we serve" or "Service area" section of the site not be a top-level navigation item? What if it was nested within, say... the "About Us" dropdown? I think this would be better from a UX perspective because it will help us avoid looking goofy for putting a list of city-level pages at the very top of the site. I'm just not confident we can make these city-level pages super duper compelling and interesting and valuable. The region I'm in has several different distinct cities, but they all bleed into one another and don't really have any identity.

Honestly, from a pure UX perspective, it seems much simpler and better to just throw a map up there with the service areas colored a different color from the rest of the map. Done. No noodling around on our website required.

I'm familiar with the SAB best practices outlined here.

Here's my issue: Doing local landing pages as described here might not be ideal from a user experience point of view. Having a "Cities We Serve" or "Service Areas" link in the main navigation isn't necessarily valuable to the user when the city-specific landing pages are all places within a 15-mile radius of the SAB's headquarters.

It would just look like the company did it for SEO. It wouldn't look natural.

Seriously, it feels like best practices are totally at odds with user experience here. If I absolutely must create location pages for 10 or so municipalities within my client's service area, I'd rather NOT put the service areas as a primary navigation item. It is not useful to the user. Anyone who sees that the company provides services in the [name of city] metropolitan area will already understand that the company can service their town that is 5 miles away. It is self-evident. For example**, who would wonder whether a plumbing company with a Los Angeles address also services Beverly Hills?** It's just... silly.

But the Moz guide says I've got to do those location pages! And that I've got to put them high up in the navigation!

This is a problem because we've got to do local SEO, but we also have to provide an ideal experience.

Thoughts?

I've linked to some screenshots so that it what I'm talking about makes more sense.

Sometimes, when I perform a search, I see an article with the correct article title listed as the page title in the SERPs. Other times, I see the wrong page title – it's a generic somethin' or other done by my client's web design company with a bunch of keywords thrown in. The latter (not the correct article title) also appears at the top of the browser tab for every article on my client's site.

I know this is bad, but what can be done about it? This would never happen if my client used Wordpress or some easily modifiable CMS, but they're using a proprietary one maintained by the group that designed the website.

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I'm familiar with the SAB best practices outlined here.

Here's my issue: Doing local landing pages as described here might not be ideal from a user experience point of view. Having a "Cities We Serve" or "Service Areas" link in the main navigation isn't necessarily valuable to the user when the city-specific landing pages are all places within a 15-mile radius of the SAB's headquarters.

It would just look like the company did it for SEO. It wouldn't look natural.

Seriously, it feels like best practices are totally at odds with user experience here. If I absolutely must create location pages for 10 or so municipalities within my client's service area, I'd rather NOT put the service areas as a primary navigation item. It is not useful to the user. Anyone who sees that the company provides services in the [name of city] metropolitan area will already understand that the company can service their town that is 5 miles away. It is self-evident. For example**, who would wonder whether a plumbing company with a Los Angeles address also services Beverly Hills?** It's just... silly.

But the Moz guide says I've got to do those location pages! And that I've got to put them high up in the navigation!

This is a problem because we've got to do local SEO, but we also have to provide an ideal experience.

Thoughts?