Local Versions of Pages

[nusani]

I have a site that offers services across two states and was wondering if I would see any benefit from creating pages such as:

SERVICE in CITY, TX

Would I need to change the content on the pages completely or could I simply swap out the city/state if I have roughly 3-5 combos I want target?

[RobertFisher]

Do not swap out city state as it will still be duplicate content. Take the time to do it right and it won't take long at all.

The question is are you physically located in say Tyler and Shreveport? If so, do local in both first. Then have pages that are city specific, but with different content. Not spun, different.

You will be glad you did. I would suggest minimally acquiring phone numbers that are specific to the cities you serve from the pov of user interaction with search.

Hope it helps.

Robert

[nusani]

Thanks I was wondering about the duplicate content issue, just seen so many cases where people have done this and wasn't sure if it actually works.I will definitely look into doing custom content for each page.

We're unfortunately not physically located in either, most of our services get handled over phone, email, and screen sharing. I know this keeps us off of google local for these, we're mainly hoping to catch any local searches that may happen.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Terry, As Robert has correctly stated, if you're going to take this approach, it's critical to take the time to do it right. Adding city landing pages to your site could potentially drive a small amount of organic traffic your way, but adding duplicate pages will only harm you. So, the task at hand becomes to figure out whether you've got something distinct to say about the services you offer in each of the target cities. The creativity of your thinking and approach will be so important here! Depending on the competitiveness of your niche and the locales you are targeting, organic SEO (like linkbuilding) may be able to take you to a certain point in the SERPs with these pages, though as you have noted, you cannot really hope to compete with true local businesses with real, physical locations.

[RobertFisher]

Nice add Miriam,

As always!

Best

[MiriamEllis]

Thanks, Robert. Hope business is going good for you this fall!