Ranking improvement for states and cities

[hwade]

I am trying to improve rankings for a national website going after keywords product + state/city. It is a very competitive space and I can't figure out why our competitors are ranking above us (the ever enigmatic Google). Any suggestions for improving ranking for these kind of keywords without going black hat?

Thanks!

[Saijo.George]

You have not provided enough data to give any specific advice ( what niche, links to competitors to see what they are doing ,etc )  but

• if you are going after local I would have individual product pages targeting those location with Unique Content ( depending on the niche you could target Video, Map and other elements ) .
• Cross ink internal pages those are relevant
• Build quality links ( IF you competitors are doing it right , analize their site and try to get links from their sources )