Question about local SEO when you serve many more cities than you have brick and mortar locations
-
My URL is: http://www.mollysmusic.org for the record.I run a music school that serves in-home lessons to a whole slew of cities. Since I only have 3 brick-and-mortar locations, I can't make google local profiles for all the cities served, but I want to get seen by those people searching in their own cities. Right now, our biggest competitor, takelessons.com, is top ranked for every single city you can think of, because they have individual web pages for every city served. Their content is repetitive and scrapey, and to me, that says "doorway page" which supposedly can get you de-indexed. I'm reluctant to do that because I'm afraid I'll get banned, but I have to compete. I also want a strategy that can scale when we move into new areas. Is there something that makes TakeLessons's content NOT a doorway page? What's the best practice for getting ranked in multiple individual cities if you run a service? Thanks in advance.
-
Hi Molly,
Thanks:) So glad you found that article relevant. When I wrote that piece, it was because this concept of city landing pages is so important, but so little had been formally written about it. The response has been great! I'm very happy if it will help you. Good luck!
-
Miriam,
I'm usually wary of people plugging their own content, but this is totally relevant and awesome. Exactly what I'm looking for. Thanks.
-
Thanks Paul and everyone else for your excellent answers.
I think the general consensus for my strategy will include relevant city pages (maybe the top ten in each radius), that includes music venues, karaoke bars, open mic cafes and the like. Then, we'll have blog entries about relevant events in our service areas. It's a lot of work, but it's added value for our students and prospectives, so I think it's worth the fuss.
-
Gracie,
In addition to the "good content" City Pages that Miriam and William recommend, you may also want to blog about music happenings in each city. Set Google alerts for music keyword phrases associated with each city you serve and use the Alert-identified information to discuss upcoming music events and also to provide information, photos, and video for events that have taken place. Such a blogging process might help you establish yourself as a part of each music community you serve. Each blog post gives you the opportunity to focus on one aspect of the music scene of a particular city. Good luck!
-
I would create a separate page for each city instead of one page with content covering many cities.
Linking out is a good thing. Ask yourself, "Will these links improve the users experience"? If yes, then include them.
-
Hi Gracie,
William's advice is right on. Typically, when a business gets away with thin and/or duplicate landing pages like your competitor is apparently doing, it's either because a) the pages are really, really old or b) because Google doesn't have something better to display. You can provide that 'better' solution for Google.
I think you'll find my recent article on the concept of City Landing Pages to be useful. Many business owners have told me it has really helped them clarify their options.
The Nitty Gritty of City Landing Pages
http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=1403
I hope this helps!
Miriam
-
Thanks, William.
Do you have any advice on how to split up location content? Should I designate one page for each place, and then infuse that with unique content, or should I try to fit it all into one place?
The more I think about this, the more questions come to light. For instance: would making a little directory of, say, local open mic nights, karaoke bars, and venues help? Would including a bunch of outbound links to these places hinder us by giving away link juice?
-
It may be working for them now, but using the same recycled content is not a good long term strategy. Plus, if the content stinks it doesn't really matter how well they rank because people with hit the back button (and google keeps score of that).
Focus on creating content that's going to make users have a positive experience on the site. Use case studies, photos, testimonials, videos, city/town resources that are relevant.
If the site was about construction - link to official city/town page with relevant permit info, ect - things like that.
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
-
Canonical tag On Each Page With Same Page URL - Its Harmful For SEO or Not?
Hi. I have an e-commerce project and they have canonical code in each and every page for it's own URL. (Canonical on Original Page No duplicate page) The url of my wesite is like this: "https://www.website.com/products/produt1"
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo
and the site is having canonical code like this: " This is occurring in each and every products as well as every pages of my website. Now, my question is that "is it harmful for the SEO?" Or "should I remove this tags from all pages?" Is that any benefit for using the canonical tag for the same URL (Original URL)?0 -
Are links on sites that require PAD files good or bad for SEO?
I want to list our product on a number of sites that require PAD files such as Software Informer and Softpedia. Is this a good idea from an SEO perspective to have links on these pages?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SnapComms0 -
Question about "sneaky" vs. non-sneaky redirects?
One of my client's biggest keyword competitors is using, what I believe to be, sneaky redirects. The company is a large, international corporation that has a local office. They use a totally unrelated domain name for local press and advertising, but there is no website. The anchor text in the backlinks automatically redirects to the corporate website. Is this sneaky or not?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JCon7110 -
New Service/Product SEO and rankings
Hello, fellow MOZers. We are a web design company, and we had SEO as secondary service for years. Due to changes in the company we started pushing SEO as one of our main services about 6 monhs ago. We have separate page , targeting that service, as well as case studies, supportive information pages, even SEO Center, which is like a blog about SEO only. We are not using black hat SEO, doing honest link earning and building, don't use keyword stuffing, everything is by the book. I understand that SEO takes time, especially for a company which has a footprint as web design company, not as SEO company. We are ranking very good for web design related keyphrases, however, we don't see any improvements for SEO related keywords. It always was and is between 25-30 SERP. At the same time, competitors, who are ranking on first page for SEO related phrases are pretty bad looking. Design-wise as well as blackhat-SEO-wise. Everything is keyword stuffed, UX is horrible, prices are ridiculous. So, do you guys have any thought/advise on how we can see results / why we are not seeing results. Links: Google search result: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=seo%20houston Competitors: www.seohouston.com, www.graphicsbycindy.com Our pages: https://www.hyperlinksmedia.com/seo-houston.php, https://www.hyperlinksmedia.com/seo-houston/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seomozinator0 -
Domain name for seo
Lets say that my competitor has the domain name and website called remotecontrolcar.com , .net and .org . And he has great links and good white hat google juice. What if I get MyRemoteControlCar.com , .net, and .org domain name.. Would my domain name help me in rank against him as long as I have similar google juice? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | zsyed0 -
UK SEO Agency Recommendations
Hi, I am currently looking for a new SEO agency to manage strategies on 3 websites, budget of about £15k pm in total. Any recommendations would be really appreciated as trying to navigate through all the usual sales waffle and hollow promises of most SEO agencies is becoming rather difficult. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | cewe0 -
Negative SEO - Case Studies Prove Results. De-rank your competitors
Reading these two articles made me feel sick. People are actually offering a service to de-rank a website. I could have swore I heard Matt Cutts say this was not possible, well the results are in. This really opens up a whole new can of worms for google. http://trafficplanet.com/topic/2369-case-study-negative-seo-results/ http://trafficplanet.com/topic/2372-successful-negative-seo-case-study/ This is only going to get worse as news like this will spread like wildfire. In one sense, its good these people have done this to prove it to google its just a pity they did it on real business's that rely on traffic.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dean19860 -
Influence of users' comments on a page (on-page SEO)
Do you think when Google crawls your page, it "monitors" comments updates to use this as a ranking factor? If Google is looking for social signs, looking for comments updates might be a social sign as well (ok a lot easier to manipulate, but still social). thx
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gt30