Should I mention locations in service-specific landing pages?
-
I'm writing new landing page copy for a client in the HVAC industry. The client has one office, but its service area includes several cities in a metropolitan area.
I'm writing two types of pages:
- Service-specific landing pages (e.g. "Air Conditioner Repair," "Furnace Inspections")
- Location-specific pages (e.g. "Dallas Heating & Air Services," "Plano Heating & Air Services")
My question is whether I should also include specific locations within the service-specific pages if I'm already doing the location-specific pages as well. For example, would it make sense to do a page on AC repair with title/H1 elements like "Dallas Air Conditioner Repair Service" or "Air Conditioner Repair in Plano and Dallas" in light of the fact that there will already be 10-12 location-specific pages?
My preference is to NOT include location-specific stuff in the service landing pages except for maybe a passing reference to something like "...need HVAC services for your Dallas-area home" or similar. It just seems more natural that way. Thoughts?
-
Hey James,
Just want to offer a proviso here: the fact that Google localizes results automatically for queries they feel have a local intent does not mean that the optimization of the local business website can simply overlook local keywords. In fact, it's fundamentally important that each page you create targeting a specific city/neighborhood includes those city terms. Not only does this optimization signal to Google what your page is attempting to be relevant to, but it's also so important that human users know that your Sugarland page is for them in Sugarland, or that your Dallas page is for them in Dallas.
I can see why Google's automatic localization of results might cause people to think they can overlook geographic optimization of the website, but to do so would be to fail to send the clearest possible signals of relevance to specific geographic intents or users-as-centroids.
-
Hey There!
Yes, the strategy you're mentioning is a good one. In your scenario, I recommend:
-
A set of city landing pages
-
A set of service pages
It just gets too confusing if you try to mix the two up. *Just be sure each page you get is of very high quality and non-dupicative. This article might help:
https://mza.seotoolninja.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages
As might this one, though it's 3 years old now:
https://mza.seotoolninja.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide
Good luck with the project. The more you can involve the owner/expert staff at the business in this phase of content development, the better
-
-
So I'm glad you mentioned this because I'm also curious as to whether it makes sense to do the location-specific pages at all.
What is the general consensus in the SEO world these days about location-specific landing pages to cover various parts of a business's service area? If it's clear that the business is in, say... Dallas or Phoenix or wherever, do we no longer have to worry about not appearing in search results for nearby cities and towns that have a different name than the city in which the biz's office is located but are still within the biz's service area?
-
Thanks, Sally. I think I'll just stick to doing service landing pages and location landing pages and keep it at that. It makes the most sense to me and makes for more natural-sounding copy.
If I included the locations in the service pages, I wasn't planning to do a location-specific page for every service. With 10-12 locations and 20ish services, this would make for an untenable experience for visitors!
-
Hi Green Web,
I tend to agree with you of not putting the location in the header of the service page. I do recommend linking to your location-specific pages somewhere either in the menu or in the content if it is relevant. Good internal linking is going to be a good bet.
If you were to include locations in each service page would you be creating a page specific for each service and location? If so this could end up with an issue of having competing content across the site. Especially because it would be difficult to create really different content.
If you want to further target specific services and a location. Something that works well for me is to set up a blog that covers case studys. This allows them to provide a honest experience that includes your select long tail keywords.
Hope that helps a little
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
-
Content Page URL Question
Our main website is geared toward the city where we are located and includes the city name in content page URLs. We also have separate websites for three surrounding cities; these websites have duplicate content except the city name: MainWebsite.com
Local Website Optimization | | sharon75025
City2-MainWebsite.com
City3-MainWebsite.com
City4-MainWebsite.com We're restructuring to eliminate the location websites and only use the main website. The new site will have city pages. We have well established Google business locations for all four cities. We will keep all locations, replacing the location website with the main website. Should we remove City-IL from all content page URLs in the new site? We don't want to lose traffic/ranking for City2 or City3 because the content pages have City1 in the URL. Page URLs are currently formatted as follows: www.MainWebsite.com/Service-1-City1-IL.html
www.MainWebsite.com/Service-2-City1-IL.html
www.MainWebsite.com/Service-3-City1-IL.html
www.MainWebsite.com/Service-4-City1-IL.html Thanks!0 -
Best domain setup for network of locations
Hi there! I am looking for some industry expert weigh-in on best practices to how to best approach the business scenario described below to bring in some outside confirmation of our approach for a client. Tim runs a business,timsbusinesswebsite.com. Tim's business has between 15 and 30 individual locations in large cities across the United States. Unfortunately, the approach to each individual location's digital marketing has been inconsistent. Some have a unique URL for their location (e.g.timsbusinesswebsite.com/new-york-city/) Some have a subdomain (e.g.chicago.timsbusinesswebsite.com) Some have a separate domain altogether (e.g.timsbusinesswebsiitelosangeles.com) Which of these three approaches would best build the best foundation for the business in local and national rankings from an SEO standpoint and why?
Local Website Optimization | | searchcityusa0 -
On what pages of my site should I put schema.org structured markup for an Aggregate Review of a Concrete Construction Contractors work?
I have a concrete contractor that I do a site for. He has many reviews from Home Advisor. So I created a Structured Data Markup using HTML5\. I put the the AggregateReview near the bottom of the About Us page at [http://www.skv-construction.com/about-us.html](http://www.skv-construction.com/about-us.html). Question 1: Should I also put the AggregateReview on the home page, or on specific project pages. Question 2: How will Google use the data now if the About page is NOT searched or displayed in SERPs. Does Google display this markup when and where they want to? Question 3: Siince this is a Local Business, should I embed the AggregateReview within the LocalSearch tag. I passed the Google test as it is for the Aggregate Review! But I have the review wrapped in the HomeAndConstructionBusiness tag. Here is the code: "http://schema.org/HomeAndConstructionBusiness"> # Quality Workmanship w 50 Yrs Experience "http://schema.org/AggregateRating"> 4.37 stars-based on 54 reviews at ["http://www.homeadvisor.com/rated.SKVConstruction.18028291.html"](<a) target="_blank">Home Advisor "http://schema.org/PostalAddress"> 10005 Fair Lane <spam itemprop="addresslocality" union=""></spam> IL 60180 (847) 364 0161 ["http://www.skv-construction.com/contact-us.html"](<a)>Contact Us Price Range: All Jobs Custom; Call for Quote or Visit Web Site Would appreciate any help. This markup is so vague, I can see why few people are using it. Maybe you should do a Video training or extended training on how to's. Vernon Wanner 815-332-8062
Local Website Optimization | | VernonWanner0 -
Structuring URLs of profile pages
First of all, I want to thank everyone for the feedback that I received on the first question. My next question has to do with the URL structure of personal trainer profiles pages on www.rightfitpersonaltraining.com. Currently, the structure of each trainer profile page is "www.rightfitpersonaltraining.com/personal-trainers/trainer/" and at the end I manually add the trainer's "city-firstname-lastinitial". Would it be to my benefit to have the developers change the structure so that the trainer profile URLs are "www.rightfitpersonaltraining.com/city-personal-trainers/trainername"? That way, each trainer profile would link directly to the trainer's city page as opposed to the general "personal-trainers" page. I don't mind paying a little extra to go back into the site to make these changes, as I think they would benefit the search ranking for each city page.
Local Website Optimization | | mkornbl20 -
Landing pages of web pages for multiple cities served
I have a customer that services literally hundreds of towns. I'm trying to figure out the best way rank in each town. Should I create a landing page or a webpage for each city and optimize for each particular town ( facts/information about the town. SEO titles H1, H2 and alt tags? Thank you!
Local Website Optimization | | Miles230 -
Is my competitor doing something blackhat? - Cannot only access pages via serps , not from website navigation /search
Hi Mozzers, One of my competitors uses a trick whereby they have a number of different sitemaps containing location specific urls for their most popular categories on their eCommerce store. It's quite obvious that they are trying to rank for keyword <location>and from what I am see, you cant to any of these pages from their website navigation or search , so it's like these pages are separated from the main site in terms of accessing them but you can access the main website pages/navigation the other way round (i.e if you select one of the pages from finding it in serps) </location> I know that google doesn't really like anything you can't access from the main website but would you class this as blackhat ? / cheating etc ... They do tend to rank quite well for these alot of the pages and it hasn't seem to have affected pages on their main website in terms of rankings. I am just wondering , if it's worth us doing similar as google hasn't penalised them by the looks of things.. thanks Pete
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC120 -
Local SEO + Best Practice for locations
Hi All, Based on a hypothetical scenario, lets say you are a plumber. You live and operate within Chelsea in London. You have established a Google places profile and incorporated schema data to tell Google your fixed place location. In addition you operate in several nearby towns with no fixed location presence. i.e Brentford, Bromley, Catford, Cheswick and Tottenham. I create a feature rich page on 'How to find a quality plumber'. Within the page I incorporate the following description: blah blah, as a quality plumber serving the community of Chelsea, we also offer our services to nearby towns of Brentford, Bromley, Catford, Cheswick and Tottenham. I create hyperlinks for the towns (Brentford, Bromley, Catford, Cheswick and Tottenham) that allow the user see in details a full list of services, operation hours, etc. Naturally all towns will have there own unique content (no duplication). Question
Local Website Optimization | | Mark_Ch
Is the above scenario the correct way to provide local seo or is this approach considered spammy to Google? Thanks Mark0 -
Separate Domains for Different Locations (in Different Cities)
We are in the process of building a new website for a client with locations in Tucson and Phoenix. Currently, they have one website that encompasses all locations, however, we are going to build them location specific websites (as many of the services are different between locations). Now my question is, as far as SEO goes, which one of these options would be the best? Option 1: Have separate domain names for each location. For example, StevesPetTucson.com and StevesPetPhoenix.com. _Pros: Easy to target specific, local keywords. Better looking domains. _ _Cons: Splits backlinks between two domains. _ Option 2: Setup StevesPet.com/Phoenix and StevesPet.com/Tucson. Pros: Keeps all backlinks pointing to one root domain. Note: We are going to use seperate WordPress installs for both websites, regardless of how we setup the domains. As we will be using different templates, menus and so on, we found this to be the best option. Thanks for any advice!
Local Website Optimization | | McFaddenGavender1