National v Local SEO

[S Isaac]

How does (or should) a national company work to have good local SEO?

For arguments sake, let's say a national network of PAT testers around the UK, mostly small one man bands who the work is subbed to. Without using the subbie's addresses for local SEO citations etc, how can a national company look to achieve a local presence in a lot of cities nationally.

Without just repeating the same content within the pages and mentioning the areas, what would be the most (white hate) effective way to do this?

I'd also be interested in the best black hat way to do this, as it may be worth having a churn & burn site to do black hat work on, whilst slowly working on and improving the main site.

 

[UKSBD]

Think like a franchise.

Give all the subbies a website, provide them with instructions of how to use it and have a central manager who keeps them all updating their sites.

National company retains ownership of websites, has all rights to anything the subbies upload to website and have main admin access to all sites.

Get the subbies treating them as their own sites, maintaining them, uploading info on jobs, testimonials, etc. and you soon have a nice network of sites all round the country.

 

[S Isaac]

Thought of that, and was told by other SEO's that you're better of putting all the effort into one site. Cheaper and easier to do. But by the sounds of it, not as effective.

Problem there is also the cost, you're looking at buying/renewing and maintaining hundreds, if not thousands of site.

 

[CWT2k1]

It's much better putting all efforts into one site and maintaining corporately. You can lose some power when you have a bunch of satellite sites for franchises. The best thing is to do a local google listing for each location and then make sure each location on the main site has the name in there. Google will pickup the names, but take the power of the one dedicated site.

 

[neils3]

I would also go with one site and sub domains for each franchise. That way you can keep control over the site, content and overall brand. Plus, it's simply less work.

You will need to setup each location in Google Business and then link it to your sub domain. Your sub domains should be optimised for local search, so include business name, address, contact details, business hours, etc.

This should help you out - https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/give-each-store-a-url/

 

[S Isaac]

And in both cases, either one site each, or one url for each city/town but on one site the next problem is content. What else can you really say that you've not already said in terms of quality content. Also if all the URL is really doing is acting as a location page for citations there is local SEO benefit, but duplicate content many times over.

 

[UKSBD]

You get the person in each location running it as though it is their own.
Their own about sections, galleries, tips, reviews, etc.

Be it all on one site or on separate ones.

Completely separate sites, the right people doing them (or steered right) and you have more chance of them doing a good job.

Just make sure it's in the contract somewhere that they are your sites.

 

[S Isaac]

Doubt the subbies would allow a citation using their address. Nor would I let them have any control of any sites/pages.