Will having a big list of cities for areas a client services help or damage SEO on a page?

[Highforge]

We have a client we inherited that has flat text list of all the cities and counties they service on their contact page.

They service the entire southeast so the list just looks crazy ridiculous.

--------- Example: ----

South Carolina:

Abbeville, Aiken, Allendale, Anderson, Bamberg, Barnwell, Beaufort, Berkeley, Calhoun, Charleston, Cherokee, etc etc

------ end example ------

The question is, will this help or hinder their seo for their very specific niche industry?  Is this key word spamming?   It has an end-user purpose so it technically isn't spam, but perhaps the engines may look at it otherwise.  I couldn't find a definitive answer to the question, any help would be appreciated.

[LoganYard]

I would create a page called "Service Area" and put an unordered list (ul) may look nicer, and is less spammy. Without knowing the product or service, I'm not sure if that will work for you.

Ex:

South Carolina

• Abbeville
• Aiken
• Allendale
• Anderson
• etc.

Georgia

• Atlanta
• Blah
• Clah
• Dlah

Most importantly - DO NOT post that list in the footer or sidebar of every page. It will significantly dilute the effectiveness. Containing this information on a single page, and peppering the rest of the site with some of your larger markets will be likely most effective for you.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Christopher,

Yes, I'd say that would end up looking pretty spammy if they've got a list like this for every state in the South East on their contact page. For the same reason that an e-commerce website wouldn't list all 1000 items they carry on a single page, this is not something I'd recommend.

What's the business model? Virtual or Local? If local, a more natural approach to this would be to have unique pages for each of their physical offices. I very much doubt they have an office in every one of those cities in South Carolina, right? But, perhaps they have 10 offices throughout the South East and could have a unique page for each of them?

Maybe you could share a few more details about the type of business this is?

[Highforge]

Good answers.  They do some seriously technical stuff with broken engines. They only have one location, but because it's so niche and there are so few competitors they have clients all over the country that ship their engines to the client in Florida for repairs.

It certainly looks spammy design wise (and we'll find ways to rectify that with some jquery drops), but I'm more concerned with any potential penalty this might cause, if any.

[MiriamEllis]

While I can't say this would results in an actual penalty, as you say, it looks spammy, so anything like that is kind of shaky ground.

Have you considered making a service area map instead, showing all of the client's service states/cities?

If he services every city in every state of the South East, I simply cannot find a logical justification for listing them all. A map would send the same message, but in a logical, visual manner.

[Highforge]

That certainly solves the design problem, but would not help someone in in Abbeville, South Carolina find the business (and the business certainly won't have a unique landing page for such a small city).  Decisions, decisions. Thanks for the suggestions.

[MiriamEllis]

Scott,

Curious if the business in question has a blog? Could he blog about 'an engine I fixed for a client in Abbeville, SC', and put a content strategy in place to start blogging about his projects in his major cities?  Maybe just start with the top 10 cities from which he gets orders for engine repair? Craft writeups of each project he accomplishes for a unique client in each city and make it a blog post. Then, move onto the 10 next-most-important cities. So, maybe he would be starting with the capitols of South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and then moving on to other busy cities.

Eventually, you could have a page on the site (or a menu area) designated Successful Project Showcase that would link permanently to these posts.

My goal here would be to find an authentic and natural approach for showcasing his work in a way that adds great content to the site and doesn't simply list every city in the South East. This strategy, in combination with his service area map, could work well, I believe.

[Highforge]

Excellent suggestion.  Slow and steady wins the race.

[MiriamEllis]

Right on! It worked for the tortoise.