How best to do Location Specific Pages for Eccomerce Post Panda Update..

[SarahCollins]

Hi ,

We have an eCommerce site and currently we have a problem with duplicate content.

We created Location specific landing pages for our product categories which initially did very well until the recent Google Panda update caused a big drop in ranking and traffic.

example

http://xxx.co.uk/rent/lawn-mower/London/100

http://.xxx.co.uk/rent/lawn-mower/Manchester/100

Much of the content on these location pages is the same or very similar apart from different H1 tag, title tag  and in some cases slight variations on the on page content but given that these items can be hired from 200 locations it would take years to have unique content for every location for each category...

We did this originally in April as we can't compete nationally but we found it was easier to compete locally ,hence the creation of the location pages and it did do well for us until now.

My question is , since  the last Google Panda  update, our traffic has dropped 40% , and rankings have gone through the floor and we are stuck with this mess

Should we get rid off (301 ) all of the location specific pages for each of the categories ot just keep say 10 locations per cities as the most popular ones and either do No follow no index the other locations or 301's or what would people recommend ?

The only examples I can see on the internet that others do with multiple locations is to have a store finder type thing... but you cant' rank for the individual product /category doing it that way...

If anyone has any advice or good examples of sites I could see that employ a good location url specific method, please let me know.

thanks

Sarah

[Matt-Williamson]

Hi Sarah

If you can’t create unique content yourself have you thought about ways in which you could have unique content created quickly and easily so it doesn’t take years? How about encouraging customers to review the service that they have got and their experience in the location they hired from? You could do this by opening up a discount on your next hire or probably more practically a free entry into a prize draw for something that will tempt them to create a review?

This is a tricky one if you want to keep ranking for all your locations but I think it is possible and something that is worth giving time to in order to experience results you have previously...