City Pages and Local SEO

[antropy]

We provide mostly OpenCart web development services to build and fix OpenCart online shops ...

We work for clients all over the world, but have a few local ones too and recently have been considering adding some "City Pages" as described at these links:
https://bippermedia.com/city-pages-seo/
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-target-multiple-cities/383000/

The second link suggests that after Google's "Panda" update, Google will penalise sites doing it unless each City page is very different.

We focus on the technical aspects of web development but don't get too involved with SEO so we'd like to hear everyone's thoughts on creating lots of pages for local towns and cities (especially @WebshopMechanic as his posts are always awesome!) ... thanks all!

 

[UKSBD]

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't

Sometimes it will work for a while then suddenly stop working

Sometimes the wrong City page will come up when people search for the city

Google is a lot smarter than it used to be.
Ask yourself, if someone is looking for x in a city and there are 5 good x in that city why would Google rank someone pretending to be x in that city?

For it to work you generally need good quality content on the pages

Don't be greedy when doing it, it's easy to have dozens of pages ranking well for nearby locations, push it too far and the whole lot can get dumped in to supplemental

It's a bit like gambling, I do it on my own sites, wouldn't do it on others (unless making them 100% clear of the risks)

It can be frustrating when people see others getting away with it and ask shall I do that?

 

[fisicx]

Case studies, reviews and testimonials!

Write a report about the project you did in X city. Link to the testimonial from the client in X city. Now do this for all the other projects. Mention the name of the city, locale, postcode even the road if appropriate.

Won't take long before you have a good corpus of highly relevant and non-spammy posts all properly categories, cross linked and supported with testimonials and reviews.

Job done.

 

[WebshopMechanic]

Hi @antropy, appreciate you asking for my opinion.

These are called 'Doorway' pages. They are kind of frowned upon by Google but that doesn't stop people from creating them. They also work. Of course, you will always get some idiots who abuse the opportunity with 1,000 local pages. These are the people that will be penalised.

As long as your pages are relevant and 'add value' to the user then you will be ok but you do need to make them as unique as possible.

Many SEO companies just replicate a set of landing pages and just change the keyword in the meta titles, meta descriptions, page headings and alt tags. I’m not saying this doesn’t work but it will most likely have a limited life span.

I like to approach these things with a straight-shooting strategy where you put in the hard yards and don’t give Google any reason to penalise you. This builds stronger foundations in the longer term that very few companies can or will want to bother replicating.

Of course, you can still use the same template or structure but the content should be tailored to the location. I also like to make sure the page is comprehensive in terms of content. More comprehensive than all the pages on page 1.

Your page must be better!

You are looking to build authority for a particular service or area. You also want to target a number of target keywords and phrases on a single page.

Key point is that you make the user experience a priority. If it’s a local service then it’s likely they will be visiting the page primarily on mobile so you need to adhere to Google's ‘Core Web Vitals’ rules as much as possible.

For example:

A local doorway page structure for a Security Company might be as follows:

Optimised Meta Title (Target phrase with town name positioned at the front)
Optimised Meta Description (Target phrase with town name positioned at the front)


Main Heading (H1 Target phrase and town in the title)
Body text that is focused around your target phrase. Within your body text you want to position the problem, the solution and why they should do business with you. WHY? WHAT? HOW?

Sub Headings (H2 with town in the title) - This could be each service with key USPs in each

Additional topics you can cover on that page with a heading, that is tailored to the town could be:

• Our Security Clients in <insert town> include: (insert a range customer logo using the name and town in the file name and alt tag)
• Overview of the crime stats in the area
• Client case studies (As @fisicx said)
• Customer testimonials (As @fisicx said)
• Talk about your team who works in that town
• Areas we cover + map
• A list of job types with pricing + call out charges for specific areas in that town
• Latest news in that area for your business - New starters, New offices, Partners, Charity events, etc.

Effective little SEO strategy - FAQs

Something that I’d found moves the needle in terms of content quality on local listings is placing FAQs at the bottom of the page in an accordion format. This enables you to get more relevant content on a page with headings and all without damaging the user experience.

Works a treat!

Most people ask Google questions so this helps to build authority when you are answering questions related to the service and local area.


The REAL Authority Builder

Finally, you want to use these pages as content hubs (a.k.a money pages) and then build other pages that feed into them. This will create a local network of authority and help you to build your local footprint.

Examples of content that can be turned into local spoke pages (Again, as @fisicx suggested, include:

• Case Studies
• Client Wins
• Product launches
• Interview with a staff member
• Charity Partnership
• Local Opinion Piece
• Local Events
• Anything press-worthy

Inbound links from businesses in that area (Partners, Charities, etc) will also help to increase your ranking authority. Joint partnership blog posts are a neat way to do that. I often create case studies about what I’ve done with my clients and partners to push ‘link juice’ to their site from my own.

All this being said, the opportunity needs to be worth it to put the work in. PPC can be expensive for some local services so it often is.

Hope that helps.

Matt

 

[Fagin2021]

Good stuff @fisicx and @WebshopMechanic . This thread should be pinned.

 

[antropy]

Google is a lot smarter than it used to be.
Ask yourself, if someone is looking for x in a city and there are 5 good x in that city why would Google rank someone pretending to be x in that city?

So basically don't just create a page "Locations" and then automatically list 100 cities with content on each page like "We do great work for clients in {city name} ..."

Instead chose between 5 and 10 cities to write good unique content about e.g. case studies of clients in those areas?

 

[antropy]

Write a report about the project you did in X city. Link to the testimonial from the client in X city. Now do this for all the other projects. Mention the name of the city, locale, postcode even the road if appropriate.

That's a really good idea, we'd never thought of categorising our portfolio by location before - thanks!

 

[fisicx]

So basically don't just create a page "Locations" and then automatically list 100 cities with content on each page like "We do great work for clients in {city name} ..."

Instead chose between 5 and 10 cities to write good unique content about e.g. case studies of clients in those areas?

Exactly. Show Google you are worthy of local ranking.

 

[antropy]

Examples of content that can be turned into local spoke pages (Again, as @fisicx suggested, include:

• Case Studies
• Client Wins
• Product launches
• Interview with a staff member
• Charity Partnership
• Local Opinion Piece
• Local Events
• Anything press-worthy

Definitely worth us looking at this then, it's a bit difficult because as we offer a digital service it's not really tied to any location, so the only thing we can really use to tie us to a location is a client/project in that area, and there's not too much we can say about the area itself - other than how it benefits our client's business perhaps.

All this being said, the opportunity needs to be worth it to put the work in. PPC can be expensive for some local services so it often is.

We do use PPC and get a good return, but we haven't dabbled with doing that locally yet so perhaps we will.

Thanks again for another extremely detailed post, and thanks everyone else too!

 

[UKSBD]

So basically don't just create a page "Locations" and then automatically list 100 cities with content on each page like "We do great work for clients in {city name} ..."

Instead chose between 5 and 10 cities to write good unique content about e.g. case studies of clients in those areas?

The "We do great work for clients in {city name} ..." with 100's of areas used to work but Google got smart to it

Annoying thing is you still see sites getting away with it so when someone says "they do it, why shouldn't we" it can be hard to give an answer.

Even choosing 5 and 10 cities to write good unique content about can be pointless if there are a number of genuine good businesses who are actually located in the areas.

If some is looking for "xxx in city" chances are they are looking for "xxx in city" not a business 100 miles away who has created pages for "xxx in city" it p*** people off and Google are getting smart enough that if pages p*** people off it won't rank them.

Obviously it depends on what the service or product is though but you need to think about what you are trying to achieve. You don't really want to be tricking people in to thinking you are in the location if you are not, so it need clever wording as to providing the service in the location.

it's almost a chicken an egg though, you ideally need the examples, testimonials to build the pages, but if you haven't done anything in the location you haven't got them.

Again, Google are smart about this, a genuine business proving a service in the location will outrank the ones who haven't provided the service in the location.

 

[antropy]

it's almost a chicken an egg though, you ideally need the examples, testimonials to build the pages, but if you haven't done anything in the location you haven't got them.

It sounds like rather than us choosing locations and then looking to write pages about them, we should approach it from the other direction and look at where existing clients are based and write pages about those locations with testimonials and projects we did for those clients.

We could make a pretty cool Google Map with a pin for the location of each client and then clicking the pin would take you to a page about them that features the work, a testimonial, and a bit about their location perhaps with the City keyword in the right places as the Webshop Mechanic describes above.

It sounds like the sort of link we could put in our footer and call it something like "Areas We Serve"(?) but we might not want it in the header nav on our site?

 

[UKSBD]

It sounds like rather than us choosing locations and then looking to write pages about them, we should approach it from the other direction and look at where existing clients are based and write pages about those locations with testimonials and projects we did for those clients.

Yes, and better still you get the existing clients to do it for you

Let your clients know what you are doing and get them to send the content about themselves and their location which you can use on the pages you create.
Edit it slightly though so it is unique.

My directory was brilliant a few years ago and it was all based on the person adding the listing doing the work for me.

 

[fisicx]

Why is it so important to rank for services in a location?

Adding a page that you did a website for Dennis in Durham isn’t going to add anything useful. If you had 100 case studies for Durham then Google might take notice.

 

[antropy]

Let your clients know what you are doing and get them to send the content about themselves

Some might, if there was something in it for them!

Paul.

 

[antropy]

Why is it so important to rank for services in a location?

We've just noticed that some clients like to work with companies that are near them, even if they never visit for a meeting even once!

Paul.