Unsolved Are my local pages watering down my website?
-
We operate in multiple cities, and for a number of years, have (mostly successfully) targeted each city with its own landing page. But lately Im seeing these pages drop in rankings,
If I ignored SEO tactics, and designed the site based on what I think would be most useful/helpful to people viewing the website, I would not have any location landing pages. I would have one strong page (eg, probably the home page), that says "and we operate in the following locations..." and then list them off.
The thing is, I dont really think these location specific landing pages have ever offered any real value to someone searching, other than just making it clear that we operate in their area (which doesn't need a landing page to make that clear).
They're basically variations of each other, key word adjusted for the location - done for the purpose of ranking locally. I mean, that sounds like spam.
But all the research says that I need landing pages for each location.
My question:
What would happen if I built one new page, and listed all the locations clearly on that page, and then 301 redirect the existing location landing pages to the new, single page.
Would I fall of the cliff?
-
@miriamellis my other concern with the way we're currently doing things, is that it's hard to amass reviews when we have multiple GMB listings.
Because our business is centrally organised, there is no real benefit to anyone reading a location specific review.
We're not like a pizza shop, where there's a myriad of factors specific to the location that could effect someones experience (eg, hard to get to, poor parking, oven burns the pizza, rude staff etc).
In our case, clients are basically dealing with the main location, but the equipment is dispatched locally.
-
@miriamellis For context, we do equipment rentals.
Pre-Covid, 90% of the time, we would either personally deliver, or ship the products to clients, but, they did have a option to collect from the location.
Post-Covid, with the exception of our main location, we now ship out or deliver 100%.
-
@blitzna101 Important question you are asking here. May I ask, do you have physical locations in each of the cities for which you've built a landing page and are you directly serving customers (face to face/socially distanced) or is your business model virtual, with no physical locations and no in-person customer service?
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
-
Only my homepage ranks for my keywords, should I delete my other pages?
I am an independent artist and all of my business inquiries come through my website (www.ChrisCarlsonArt.com). Over the last 6 months I have been trying to get pages other than my homepage to rank for my keywords, but I haven't made any progress. I worry that I am cannibalizing my keywords since my pages all have similar information. Should I just delete my other pages and focus on ranking my homepage? Also, if I delete my other pages will that have a negative impact on my rankings?
SEO Tactics | | PunchyMcSkeletor0 -
Premium domain name redirects
Hi, I run a tree surgery business - woodfeldertreecare.co.uk We're based in Manchester, UK. A few days ago I was called by Premium Domain Names who convinced me that buying treesurgeonsmanchester.com and treesurgerymanchester.com and redirecting them to our main site would be amazing for organic traffic. My designer and an SEO friend both reckon this was a waste of money and reckon I've been scammed. Any thoughts? Please help.
SEO Tactics | | LeoTrees0 -
How Do You Think My Local SEO Multi-location Geotargeting Strategy Will Work?
I have a question. I just got a full-time job at Zavza Seal, an upstanding insulation contractor targeting neighborhoods of Suffolk and Nassau counties in New York. I was hired as an SEO content specialist. (Thanks Rand! You're one of my mentors~!) So, they handed me a spreadsheet of pages for city-specific terms, and they had a system in place for local rankings. But I was taught to do service-specific city pages a certain way. If the search term is for people looking for a service in that town, that's what you give them. However, I was told to proofread them, and as an SEO specialist, I couldn't keep my hands off of them. The pages were skimpy. (Example: h2, paragraph, bullets, short paragraph summary, short paragraph about the city.) What threw me off is that the content, while it was service specific, it was blog topics localized. Those are great (when long enough and optimized to compete in SERPs) but I've never seen them done on service pages. (Example: Why is Mold Remediation Necessary in Baldwin?. Now, this went in two directions in my mind. (and I wanted to do the best for the company, because I'm a wicked brat for teams, AND I get commissions on leads, so that was motivation, too.) 🐷 Anyway, 1. This could be a new approach and worthy of an SEO study on my startup site, where I take on part time clients after work, because I've never seen it done before and it could, if optimized for the target service and city rank high in SERPs AND build thought leadership and authority as a local expert. (Whereas city service pages in standard format would just promote your service. ..) What do you guys think? I just put the topic up for discussion for my team, asked them about it in detail and asked if they wanted to A'/B test a few to see what get's better traction organically. Mr. Fishkin was one of my mentors. I really wish I just had his number for this one LOL.
Local SEO | | ThisTimeWereOn0 -
Unsolved SEO Tracking Tools Local Search Results (Affordable!)
Are there any tools that would help our agency track hundreds of websites against specific local search terms affordably.
Moz Local | | woshea0 -
Footer backlink for/to Web Design Agency
I read some old (10+ years) information on whether footer backlinks from the websites that design agencies build are seen as spammy and potentially cause a negative effect. We have over 150 websites that we have built over the last few years, all with sitewide footer backlinks back to our homepage (designed and managed by COMPANY NAME). Semrush flags some of the links as potential spammy links. What are the current thoughts on this type of footer backlink? Are we better to have 1 dofollow backlink and the rest of the website nofollow from each domain?
Link Building | | MultiAdE1 -
Multiple URLs from One Domain on Page 1
Is it possible (and if it is possible, how difficult is it) to get multiple URLs from the same domain name to be indexed on the first page of Google for the same keyword or phrase? Assuming each URL has significantly different content of course... Context: A large real estate brand has 6 franchise offices in the same city. Each office has its own listing/landing page on the parent brand website. Each franchise owner wants their page on the website to rank for the term 'Christchurch real estate'. The homepage of the parent brand website currently ranks on the first page of Google for this search term, but none of the franchisee pages do. So my question is: with the right unique content on each franchisee page, supported by quality backlinks to each of the different offices, is it possible to get multiple franchisees listed on the first page of Google given that ultimately the 6 URLs are all attached to the same domain name? (And, if so, do you have any hot tips you can share to assist me on this uphill battle?)
SEO Tactics | | BeKonstructive0 -
Shopify SEO - Collection or Blog post for ecomm seo?
Hi Moz folks, would love your thoughts on benefits of Shopify collection pages v blog posts for ranking secondary shopping keywords not suitable for existing shop pages - all help gratefully received, we are going down a rabbit hole on this one and need some sanity! So, we’re updating our site which already has a reasonable seo foundation and are looking to rank better for key shopping search keywords in our space (d2c sports nutrition). My question is should we prioritise store collection pages (category pages in Shopify terms) or blog posts for some of the main keywords not already covered by our core in-store collections/categories? Priority keywords already covered are things like protein powders, protein bars, energy drinks, etc. As context, we have a small product catalogue (10 products) and for easy navigation on site have these grouped into 7 collections/categories in the main menu and available from the homepage. All are quality high volume and high intent shopping keywords for our business. The secondary terms we are now looking to add content for are things like marathon nutrition, vegan sports nutrition, etc so now need to choose if we create product collection pages for these, or use blog posts to do the work. The advantage of collections, we believe, is that Google is likely to prioritise these in search. The disadvantage from a UX point of view is that more categories in store could make our simple and clear product range (10 products only) look complex or repetitive. Conversely, a blog post removes any UX confusion with too many categories, but we have a conversion rate issue with our blog. It performs well in search, but conversions are poor. We have addressed this with a new keyword targeting strategy and blog customisation, but we have yet to test this so while in theory it should work well, we do not know for certain. In summary: we want to rank key shopping keywords beyond our core ones we have - would you advise we use blog posts or product collection pages? All help gratefully received - thanks! Warren
SEO Tactics | | WP330 -
Will amp be effective in 2022?
Will AMP be effective in 2022? I am thinking of using AMP on my website since Core Web Vitals has become a ranking factor. For mobile devices, I guess AMP would be a good option to align with the Core Web Vital update.
Algorithm Updates | | Yash20020