Would you consider this keyword spam?

[Mase]

See these pages that we've created to rank. There are 3 types:

1. Designed to be topic-specific:
   https://www.upcounsel.com/lawyers/trademark

2. Designed to be location-specific:
   https://www.upcounsel.com/lawyers/san-francisco

3. Designed to be a combo of both topic & location:
   https://www.upcounsel.com/lawyers/san-francisco-real-estate

Are the keywords at the bottom too many and considered keyword spam?

Any other SEO tips on these pages? I'm thinking about making them a bit more hierarchical, so there can be breadcrumbs and you could click back to San Francisco Lawyers from San Francisco Real Estate Lawyers.

Good examples of sites that have dome structures like this really well?

[anthonydnelson]

If each page has unique and valuable information related to the specific topic, I would absolutely not consider that to be spam. If each page is just a bunch of keyword-rich text and offers little value, then yes, I would consider it spam.

[EvolveCreative]

Spam in terms of an algorithmic penalty or manual penalty?

In terms of a manual penalty, yes. Why? Because of the first sentence of your post here:

"See these pages that we've created to rank."

It's considered spam to create pages to rank. You're supposed to create pages to be useful to users. The pages you linked have nearly identical content.

[Mase]

I'm not sure how they have "nearly identical content"

they have different attorneys showing, different copy on the right side, different titles at the top, different questions in the blue form, etc. The only thing that is the same would be links near the bottom + header/footer template things.

The rest of what you're saying makes sense. I understand how that is or can be manual spam. We have created these because they are useful to the user. It shows a segmented list of attorneys specific to your location or topic. There is information about what they can hire these lawyers for, and a form to get them started.

Yes, there are some overlapping attorneys, but not too many and as our user base grows, these people will automatically change out.

[Chris.Menke]

I'd be asking myself this: Are these pages I would expect someone to link to or share with someone else?  If your answer is no, I wouldn't waste my time worrying about whether they rank or not.  Personally, I think I've seen a gazillion of these types of pages.  The links at the bottom wouldn't mean a thing to google, one way or another, if there was  content on the page that people wanted to share and did share.

[EvolveCreative]

I apologize, semi-identical would have been a better description. To answer your question about the links at the bottom I agree with Crhis I do not think they're spammy.

[djlaidler]

Hey Mase,

Yeh I'm going to fence sit on this one, but will offer this design tweak.

I think these look spammy, but I don't necessarily think you will be penalised for it.  My suggestion would be to design this area to look less spammy. Consider a clickable drop down for each major city in the three sections of links or a show/hide section for each section etc. A comma seperated linkfest will attract a manual spam action, improve usability to prevent this .

I would also consider adding more unique content per page, because if you are having multiple pages where each listed item is shown more than once, the items content will offer little benefit.

Dan

[peterlaurent]

I worked with a similar company operating in the UK and Australia for a while, they didn't implement my advice and traffic plunged. I think the biggest issue you face is it's the same content on these pages (excerpts of profiles) as is on the individual lawyers page. Each page contributes no unique value to the consumer (searcher). There may be a whole host of canonical and sitemap challenges you are also facing.