Best way to link to multiple location pages
-
I am a Magician and have multiple location pages for each county I cover.
I currently have them linked off the menu under locations/ <county>and also in the footer</county>
However I have heard that a link from the page is much stronger, so I am experimenting with removing the Menu & Footer link and just linking to these pages from within the content.
It's not really a navigation item and most people come in through search to the right page.
Am I diluting the link by having it in the Menu/Page and Footer?
I read a long time ago that Google only considers the first link to a page and ignores the rest - is that the case?
Thanks
Roger
-
Look at how starbucks does theirs in the states. Make it a locatoin info page. Pictures, address, contact info, ratings, reviews, descriton of the area (historical, new, corporate) and anything else like menus, services , valet, and etc.
-
You're welcome!
I think it's really important to keep in mind that, while you have one end goal of having these pages rank well in Google's results, the guiding force for creating them should be to convert human visitors into customers.
Service Area Business like yours (or like house painters, visiting home help, etc.) don't have branches that serve as the purpose for creating landing pages. Obviously, when a brick-and-mortar business has multiple locations (like a restaurant franchise) it makes total sense to create a unique page for each branch so that the customer can see the info they need about each branch. But when the business has an SAB model like yours, you want to be very careful that any landing pages you create have the purpose of serving people, rather than simply serving search engines.
This means making any locale-oriented landing page very specific to the locale it represents. For a business like yours, showcasing the parties you've done in X county would be a natural way to do this, along with testimonials/reviews from clients in that area. Any other approach risks watering down the quality of your website. You're lucky to have a fun industry that should easily lend itself to great, unique content!
-
Thank you for your reply.
I have tried to make the pages unique but it's very difficult when a search for magician <county>is very much the same as another county </county>
I will add more references to venues I have performed at in each landing page -
I have previously created a blog page for a venue and then pointed a link to
Will include the venues on the landing page now
-
Hi Roger!
Thank you for bringing your question to the community. You can have both - links in a menu and internal links from your homepage and other pages of your website. There is not reason not to have both if the links in your content make sense.
One thing I would warn against after taking a quick look at your website: beware of duplicate content and over-optimization. You are styling these pages as "locations", but they are, in fact, areas where you offer your services. In order to make sense of creating landing pages for these locales, you should be using these pages to showcase events you've done in each locale. Right now, just at a glance, the pages look very similar to one another, rather than unique, and this could be a quality concern. Also, the language of your subheadings is not very natural. Check both these headings and the text of the pages for uniqueness and naturalness. If how you write isn't how you speak, Google could view the quality of the content as low.
Hope this helps.
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
-
What's the best way for users to upload their images to my wordpress site to promote UGC
I have looked at lots of different plugins and wanted a recommendation for an easy way for patients of ours to upload pictures of them out partying and having fun and looking beautiful so future users can see the final results instead of sometimes gory or difficult to understand before and after images. I'd like to give them the opportunity to write captions (like facebook or insta posts and would offer them incentives to do so. I don't want it to be too complicated for them or have too many steps or barriers but I do want it to look nice and slick and modern. Also do you think this would have a positive impact on SEO? I was also thinking of a Q&A app where dentists could get Q&A emails and respond - i've been doing AMA sessions and they've been really successful and I would like to bring it into out site and make it native. Thanks in advance 🙂
Technical SEO | | Smileworks_Liverpool1 -
"One Page With Two Links To Same Page; We Counted The First Link" Is this true?
I read this to day http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-one-page-two-links-page-counted-first-link-192718 I thought to myself, yep, thats what I been reading in Moz for years ( pitty Matt could not confirm that still the case for 2014) But reading though the comments Michael Martinez of http://www.seo-theory.com/ pointed out that Mat says "...the last time I checked, was 2009, and back then -- uh, we might, for example, only have selected one of the links from a given page."
Technical SEO | | PaddyDisplays
Which would imply that is does not not mean it always the first link. Michael goes on to say "Back in 2008 when Rand WRONGLY claimed that Google was only counting the first link (I shared results of a test where it passed anchor text from TWO links on the same page)" then goes on to say " In practice the search engine sometimes skipped over links and took anchor text from a second or third link down the page." For me this is significant. I know people that have had "SEO experts" recommend that they should have a blog attached to there e-commence site and post blog posts (with no real interest for readers) with anchor text links to you landing pages. I thought that posting blog post just for anchor text link was a waste of time if you are already linking to the landing page with in a main navigation as google would see that link first. But if Michael is correct then these type of blog posts anchor text link blog posts would have value But who is' right Rand or Michael?0 -
What is the best way to handle links that lead to a 404 page
Hi Team Moz, I am working through a site cutover with an entirely new URL structure and have a bunch of pages that could not, would not or just plain don't redirect to new pages. Steps I have taken: Multiple new sitemaps submitted with new URLs and the indexing looks solid used webmasters to remove urls with natural result listings that did not redirect and produce urls Completely built out new ppc campaigns with new URL structures contacted few major link partners Now here is my question: I have a pages that produce 404s that are linked to in forums, slick deals and stuff like that which will not be redirected. Is disavowing these links the correct thing to do?
Technical SEO | | mm9161570 -
Switchboard Tags - Multiple desktop pages pointing to one mobile page
I have recently started to implement switchboard tags to connect our mobile and desktop pages, and to ensure that our mobile pages show up in rankings for mobile users. Because our desktop site is much deeper in content than our mobile site, there are a number of desktop pages we would like to have point to one mobile page. However, with the switchboard tags, this poses a problem because it requires multiple rel=canonical tags to be placed on the one mobile page. I'm assuming this will either confuse the search engines, or they will choose to ignore the rel=canonical tag altogether. Any ideas on how to approach this situation other than creating an equivalent mobile version of every desktop page or implementing a user agent detection redirect?
Technical SEO | | JBlank0 -
Pages Linking to Sites that Return 404 Error
We have just a few 404 errors on our site. Is there any way to figure out which pages are linking to the pages that create 404 errors? I would rather fix the links than create new 301 redirects. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | jsillay0 -
Is it better to delete web pages that I don't want anymore or should I 301 redirect all of the pages I delete to the homepage or another live page?
Is it better for SEO to delete web pages that I don't want anymore or should I 301 redirect all of the pages I delete to the homepage or another live page?
Technical SEO | | CustomOnlineMarketing0 -
What are the best Free Press release sites to gain free links
Hi I am trying to find some good free press release sites that allow you to have a link with your press release to help drive traffic to your site but all the ones that i have found do not have links within them. The only ones i can find where you can have links in them are paid ones. Does anyone use press release sites to gain links to their sites and if so could you let me know which ones they are please and how important you feel they are.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Discrepency between # of pages and # of pages indexed
Here is some background: The site in question has approximately 10,000 pages and Google Webmaster shows that 10,000 urls(pages were submitted) 2) Only 5,500 pages appear in the Google index 3) Webmaster shows that approximately 200 pages could not be crawled for various reasons 4) SEOMOZ shows about 1,000 pages that have long URL's or Page Titles (which we are correcting) 5) No other errors are being reported in either Webmaster or SEO MOZ 6) This is a new site launched six weeks ago. Within two weeks of launching, Google had indexed all 10,000 pages and showed 9,800 in the index but over the last few weeks, the number of pages in the index kept dropping until it reached 5,500 where it has been stable for two weeks. Any ideas of what the issue might be? Also, is there a way to download all of the pages that are being included in that index as this might help troubleshoot?
Technical SEO | | Mont0