Multiple Location Pages and Duplicate/Thin Content
-
I have a client who has 10 locations throughout Colorado. Each has it's own claimed Google Places profile. I know that Google is encouraging a unqiue page on your site for each individual office location, and then aligning each location's page with it's Google Places profile.
Could this create a duplicate content or thin content issue though?
Each location's page on the site would have essentially the same or similar content -- just with a unique address and phone number. They're a law firm, so the company information is the same across all locations, other than the address and phone number.
We could re-write the content so it's not completely the same, but for 10 locations that gets a little crazy, and still doesn't create truly unique/original content.
If we get too creative with the content on each page, it would be counterproductive because these are landing pages so i want them to have the firm's major selling points to help convert.
Also, the firm is ranking very well in organic and blended/local search for Colorado terms and all individual locations EXCEPT Denver, the biggest and most important market by far. Trying to move from page 3 to page 1 in Denver is important enough to warrant making the necessary changes. I just don't want to damage all the progress we've already made.
I look forward to your feedback!
Thanks!
-
Hi David,
Nice to see you again! I want to be sure to link to a 2009 interview of Carter Maslan that covered this very topic. Though Carter's advice was meant to be taken as opinion rather than facts straight from Google, his remarks are really relevant to what you are asking about:
http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-carter-maslan-032710.shtml
This is the part of the interview I'm referencing:
Eric Enge: Let’s say you have more than one location, 100 for example. In your view, is it helpful to have individual pages on the website for all of the locations? Also, is it helpful to have the Google local business center linked to each of those individual pages rather than having 100 locations that point to a single web address?
Carter Maslan: I can tell you what I think the ideal end state is, and there are various levels of getting there. Ultimately, we would like to have the store-specific page known so that people can just click through and see today's specials and any kind of adjustments for that particular day. We would love to have all of that information on a direct click to the most specific page for that location.
That’s what we encourage, but there are still a lot of chains and things that just link to their top-level domain. I guess it's a split answer. We want to get to a store specific page, but we are not uniformly there across all of the businesses.
Eric Enge: Could that potentially be encouraged by making it a ranking factor, for example?
Carter Maslan: Yes. I guess there are two sides to it. If you create a store-specific page that really just has an address, it wouldn't be as helpful as having some genuinely good content on the page that the user would really appreciate having as the first click-through experience. That’s what I think we need to work through.
We don't want to arbitrarily tell people that they must create a store-specific page, because we are really just trying to find the most useful page for that business. That’s why I am not so definitive on the store-specific page or not. I really just want what’s best for the retailer, store or businesses, first and foremost giving the user what he would want to see when he clicks on that business.
Eric Enge: Say you have a store-specific page that lists specific and individual things about just one store location. Depending on the kind of business that could be an inventory list that shows you've got extra stock?
Carter Maslan: There is a chain of stores that carries yoga equipment that my wife really likes. They have special yoga instruction, carry special brands, and host lectures on some special days. There are all kinds of things that the retailer does that relate to that specific store location, and there is also a general corporate catalogue page. So this is not black and white, and even though we want to encourage it, it's not that there is a definitive guidance saying companies need to have that page.
Eric Enge: Obviously it’s good if there is a quality page with information unique and specific to each location.
Carter Maslan: Yes, that's great. If we know that there’s good information about that page, then that helps on search and the snippets that we can show on the search results, because we know that the page is referencing that place. It does help even if it ends up not being the page that you list as your primary homepage. If there is good content that we know is content about that place, then it helps us do a better job with query results.
If a company has a page that's store-specific and talks about its class schedule, and there is one that says its holding Tai Chi class tonight and someone is searching for places to do Tai Chi, then that helps us to score it. If a lot of people have found that page helpful about the Tai Chi class, then when people search for Tai Chi we would know that that location has something to do with Tai Chi.
In your shoes, my advice to this client would be this:
-
Keep the basic contact information on the landing pages front and center. Put the complete NAP (name-address-phone number) first on the page in hCard. Follow this up with whatever the pitch is.
-
Hire a good copywriter to write 3 -5 paragraphs of unique text for each of the 10 pages.
-
Hire either a designer or video specialist to create a unique chart of statistics or a great video for each of the 10 locations. In addition to displaying this media, describe it in text.
With these steps, the pages will be rich enough and different enough so that they don't simply come across as cut-and-paste jobs. Whatever is created should be specific to the town being targeted - whether this is a description of the location, the building, the office, crime statistics or what have you.
Yes, this takes effort, but every website owner has decided to opt into the publishing business and this is their time to get publishing!
Hope this helps!
Miriam
-
-
Thanks for the response Francisco. I've actually noticed that Google does not always display places/blended results for terms that include a city -- usually, but not always.
We have Google Places profiles for all the office locations. My main concern is, what's the best way to create 10 location pages on the firm's website...without creating duplicate or thin content?
Or, is it OK if the 10 location pages are relatively thin if we have a ton of new blog content published elsewhere on the site every day?
-
Google will display Google Place for any term "layer + city". I would create 10 locations within the Google Places Profile and get local citations to the website AND to the Google Places page.
There was an excellent presentation at Mozcon about this. You can view it http://www.seomoz.org/videos/turning-google-places-pain-into-gain, but you have to pay the $300.
Maybe this webinar will help: http://www.seomoz.org/webinars/content-for-local-sites-and-local-search
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
-
Does google places mind listing cities on the home page
Hello, A site in our industry is listing a bunch of cities on their home page and ranking for them. Like "Our dog training facility provides services to dogs in city1,city2,city3,city4,city5,city6 state" where the cities and states are relatively in their area. It's working organically, will this confuse google places? Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Google+ Local Page Wrong Categories
The "new" Google+ Local page for one of my clients is not showing the correct Business Categories. Seems like it reverted to an old Category before we revised. I looked in my Google Places dashboard and the correct Categories are there. They do not have a Google+ Profile yet. Any suggestions? They also seem to have disappeared for those categories we used to rank in the top three in Google Places results.
Image & Video Optimization | | Reportcard0 -
How to Fix Duplicate Item Error in Google Merchant Center?
I have set schedules upload of Test Data Feed in Google Merchant Center. Today, I have found duplicate item error in test feed status summary! There are 2697 error for duplicate item. But, my http://www.vistastores.com/feed/test_data_feed.txt does not contain any duplicate item. I have checked test feed twice before raise this question. How can I fix this issue?
Image & Video Optimization | | CommercePundit0 -
Would 2 Google Places locations help my Google Places ranking?
Hi. Our agency office is located in a "bad" zip code relevant to active businesses who would need our agency services. In a nutshell, we get really bad inquiries who can never afford our services...and it's coming directly from the Google geolocation function. We plan to relocate our offices within 1 year. Would it help us in Google Places if we created a "new" physical office location to cover up the "bad" one we are currently in? We could use a paid location like a UPS Mail Center physical address that is located within a more desiring zip code. Thanks for any input. Jay
Image & Video Optimization | | theideapeople0 -
Hosting All Content Images On Flickr For Blog - What are SEO implications?
Hi, I am starting a travel blog and thought of the idea of hosting all the content images over at Flickr and just calling them into my blog content when needed. Benefits: push traffic over to my Flickr account pull traffic from Flickr to my blog However, I was just wondering about any SEO implications of having 3-4 links per post pointing to Flickr. Is this spammy? Will I lose my juice? Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.
Image & Video Optimization | | DigitalLeaf0 -
How can we geo-target our website optimization for cities besides our physical location?
We have a client that is a solar energy installation & leasing company in Austin, TX that wants to target the Houston and Dallas markets. We can do a Place Page for their physical offices in Austin and San Antonio to drive traffic for those cities. But we’re not sure the best way to help them rank for Houston and Dallas, where they don't have a physical address. We’re considering a separate landing page for each city, optimized for the geo-term. Will that help them to rank in the 7Pack in Houston and Dallas, if there’s no Place Page? Will it help them rank in the organic listings for that region? Can you offer any other suggestions for how to help them rank in 2 cities where they don’t have physical offices?
Image & Video Optimization | | DenisL0 -
Does the location of a citation on a page have any relivance?
We have been working on local SEO quite a lot for our small business, trying to understand why we are consistantly outranked by our competators. I understand there are many factors at play here. I realize that DA & PA, Places page optimization, and on page optimization also play a role, but for the purpose of this question i would like to focus on just one factor: citations. From your experiance with local SEO do you find that a citation that is located closer to the top of the page holds more weight than a citation buried further down a page? Here is an example:
Image & Video Optimization | | adriandg
http://www.yellowpages.ca/search/si/1/Storage-Self+Service/Toronto+ON/ in this case the people paying for the priority positions on that page are right at the top of the page, rather than buried 5 pages into the results. in fact they are right at the top of each page of the results, so over and over again they are above the free listings. I have heard that google considers the value of a link based on its position on the page. So would it be safe to assume that google also considers the value of a citation based on its position on the page? Thank you for your time,
Storwell0