Local Optimisation for Nearby Towns
-
Hi There,
I'm helping a friend of a friend with her business website, which is basically providing health services within a local radius of her home, so we are hoping to get her ranking for phrases such as "massage Battersea" "massage Clapham" etc. (where Battersea & Clapham are two places in London).
As i'm a bit new to local work like this my question is what is the best way to do this?
I've considered creating a page for each of these terms, however it's hard to work out how they could have unique content as a massage in Clapham is very much the same as one in Battersea, and I don't want to fill the pages with useless information about where Battersea & Clapham are because i'm sure people searching those phrases already know that!
The only other thing I can think of would be to just mention the areas on a generic massage page and hope that ranks with a bit of "massage battersea" etc. inbound anchor text.
If someone who has experience in this could offer any advice that would be great.
Many thanks,
Stuart
-
Hi Miriam,
Thanks for the tips, i'll tkae on board what you've said and speak to the client and see if she has any input on the matter, if she genuinely can't I think i'll start off with one page targeting a few locations and try and build out more as time goes on, but hopefully she will have done something worthwhile locally (or maybe I can make her!).
Many thanks,
Stuart
-
Thanks for the tips, google local is next on the list of attack, but for a number of the keywords it seems that old-school organic listings are still at the top (for the time being) so she is very interested in trying to get up there - and yes we don't want to attract people looking for the wrong kind of massage
-
Good Evening Stuart,
I agree with what was being said before, Citations and Reviews are a big part of affecting your rankings. Instead of generic text, try to create two different pages each location based. For Example; yoursite.com/batteresa-massage-therapist and yoursite.com/calpham-massage-therapist, you can include keywords along with location in your URLs, this can really help. I love that paper by David Mihm, you really should take a look at it.
As far as content, try to use completely standalone content for each page. You do not want to use generic content and just replace location names, because you will have issues with duplocate content, and this is a big problem. You may want to consider adding things like landmarks or relevant places of interest into the pages to assist with a guide to your location desitred for optimizing.
Hope this helps
Zach
-
Hi Stuart,
Because true Local results are so heavily slanted to where the business is located, as opposed to where it may serve its remote customers, your client's main efforts will have to focus on the main city of location. This typically means that visibility for secondary geo terms (like those you've mentioned) are going to have stem from your organic efforts (on-page content, off-page links, etc.).
I appreciate your high standards in not just wanting to create nonsense pages describing the regions of the city. These will be of little interest/use to humans - I agree. So, the client needs to help you brainstorm a reason to write about her involvement in those areas. For example, does she do any corporate work for business in Clapham? Could she talk on a Clapham page about how she was hired to come in once a week for a 10 minute massage for each employee as a perk that boosts company morale. Something like this? Or, does she give training workshops in Battersea? Could she write about a seminar she organized there or even just attended?
Creativity is what it's all about when it comes to writing copy that has a genuine purpose and at the same time showcases the work of the professional in various geographic regions.
If you can couple this with linkbuilding, you have a good recipe for gaining organic visibility for terms beyond the single major city term.
-
Check out Davis Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors .
The way that you're talking sounds like you're focusing on optimizing the site to show up in the regular organic listings, but when you're talking local you also want to look at factors that are unique to actual local search results. So I would start off by claiming (or creating) the Google+ Local page (aka, Google Places listing). Choose your 5 categories wisely based on some sound keyword research, but don't get spammy and and put 'massage clapham' as a category.
Two of the more important predominantly 'local' ranking factors are citations & reviews. A citation is basically a place on the internet that lists your business with its name address and phone number, so think of local directory & internet yellow pages sites for example. Other types would include BBB or local chambers of commerce. You need to ensure consistency of your name, address & phone number across the web so the search engines see that all of these different citations do indeed belong to the same business.
Reviews are also important. If the search engines see people talking about your business online, it's a signal to them that your business is an important, well-known business.
Just one more quick note on your keywords... Depending on what type of massage you're talking about here, you may want to look at keywords like 'massage therapist', 'registered massage therapist', or specific massage techniques like hot stone or swedish.
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
-
From an SEO perspective, which is preferable in the URL for a non-English site: local language or English?
For example, the article is titled ' गर्मी में त्वचा की देखभाल कुछ यूँ करें' (English Meaning: Skin Care Tips for Summer), which one of these three URLs is best for SEO purpose? 1. example.com/ गर्मी-में-त्वचा-की-देखभाल/ (URL in local language, Hindi in this case) 2. example.com/summer-skin-care-tips/ (URL uses English words with English translation) 3. example.com/garmi-mein-twacha-ki-dekhbhaal/ (Hindi words, but written in Roman English) A response will be much appreciated, Amit
On-Page Optimization | | DusBus0 -
Which is better? One dynamically optimised page, or lots of optimised pages?
For the purpose of simplicity, we have 5 main categories in the site - let's call them A, B, C, D, E. Each of these categories have sub-category pages e.g. A1, A2, A3. The main area of the site consists of these category and sub-category pages. But as each product comes in different woods, it's useful for customers to see all the product that come in a particular wood, e.g. walnut. So many years ago we created 'woods' pages. These pages replicate the categories & sub-categories but only show what is available in that particular wood. And of course - they're optimised much better for that wood. All well and good, until recently, these specialist page seem to have dropped through the floor in Google. Could be temporary, I don't know, and it's only a fortnight - but I'm worried. Now, because the site is dynamic, we could do things differently. We could still have landing pages for each wood, but of spinning off to their own optimised specific wood sub-category page, they could instead link to the primary sub-category page with a ?search filter in the URL. This way, the customer is still getting to see what they want. Which is better? One page per sub-category? Dynamically filtered by search. Or lots of specific sub-category pages? I guess at the heart of this question is? Does having lots of specific sub-category pages lead to a large overlap of duplicate content, and is it better keeping that authority juice on a single page? Even if the URL changes (with a query in the URL) to enable whatever filtering we need to do.
On-Page Optimization | | pulcinella2uk0 -
How to force a refresh after on-page optimisation update
After updating areas highlighted in the On-Page Optimization report even after clicking the [Grade My On-page Optimization] the results don't refresh or reflect the changes eg The h1 tag does include the exact search term and there is bolded examples of the keyword phrase but report says not! Is there a way to force an update or is it a time related issue?
On-Page Optimization | | RobWillox0 -
Local SEO Two Locations - Should I have a web page for each address?
Hi I have a business that has two offices each servicing a different local area. On my website I have both address locations on one page. www.company.com/contact
On-Page Optimization | | VivaArturo
Is it better to have each office on a separate page for local seo www.company.com/location1 and www.company.com/location2 Thanks Arthur0 -
On Page Optimisation Reports
Firstly sorry if this has already been answered - I did look I promise.
On-Page Optimization | | Jock
Secondly sorry if the answer to this is blatently obvious! In the process of trying to optimise my landing pages, I am using On Page Optimisation reports. I have several (ok lots) with F grades which is not surprising as the landing page is not the landing page optimised for a certain keyword. If I change the landing page to the one that I have for a certain keyword then hey presto A or B grade (clever me)! Now here's the thing - presumably the landing page that is listed by default is the one that Google "sees" for a particular keyword. How do I change this if I can or do I have to be patient or am I just being plain daft?! Many thanks0 -
How can I get a website to show up in local search in a major city when it is in the suburbs
We did a website for a local landscape company.they are in the outskirts of a major city of Dayton. Most people search landscape company Dayton area. I'm finding landscape companies coming up with lower moz trust and moz ranking. Some of them had no keywords or page titles. I am signing up on all of the local directories. the site is www.scarffs.com
On-Page Optimization | | MarkBolin0 -
Optimise duplicate products or canonical link
We exist in a niche market with a good % of products that sell well at specific times of the year. Lets say for example a red cup can be sold as a christmas red cup and a valentine red cup or just a red cup. Would we be best to optimize each specific product specifically for those seasons/events on different pages or keep google pointed to just one page using a canonical link.
On-Page Optimization | | LadyApollo0 -
Should I include location in title tag to rank higher in local search
I'm working on a site for a small guest house (http://www.tommysonthebeach.com). I have created a Google Place page (Bing and Yahoo Local) as well and I have the address in the footer on every page. I have the location (Indian Rocks Beach) at the beginning of most titles tags because that is how people tend to search, e.g. "Indian Rocks Beach vacation rental." In theory I would think that I don't need location in the title tag because Google knows the location, and I could use the real estate for other keywords suchs as "pet friendly" or "beach hotel," etc. But when I look at the SERPS, those ranking highly all seem to have the location at the beginning of the title tag. Thanks. P.S. The site is currently not showing up in Google local search apparently because Google thinks it's a vacation rental agency, which are not allowed in local search. I'm trying to get that fixed.
On-Page Optimization | | bvalentine0