Ranking for Regions Nearby, but not Far Away Regions

[MonsterWeb28]

Greetings Mozzers,

I'm working on a web based companies SEO where their services can be optimized for each area.  We have different pages for different keywords with a region attached to the keyword string we are going after.  For example, if the keyword is "Belts" and the regions you want to go after is New York and Miami. You are located in Miami so you have a page for "Miami Belts" and you rank well for it, but you want to start selling them online and want to rank for New York, so we have a "New York Belts" optimized web page that is completely unique content, however it isn't ranking at all.

Any thoughts? I know the address would be helping the the Miami page, but besides that why would the New York optimized page not rank? Lets say the two regions are equally competitive.

Any clarification and information is greatly appreciated.

[WhoWuddaThunk]

How many internal links are going to Miami Belts vs New York Belts?

[MonsterWeb28]

For this example, they are equal amount of external and internal links. Freshly made pages, 2 months old.  One was indexed and ranking well, the other, indexed and not ranking in the top 20 pages?

[WhoWuddaThunk]

How well is the URL optimized?  How deep is the page located?

Is it like miamibelts.com/new-york-belts or is it like belts.com/new-york/new-york-belts?

[MonsterWeb28]

Both would have similar url structures like this ->

clothing.com/belts/new-york-belts

clothing.com/belts/miami-belts

[KaneJamison]

Let's assume that all on-page factors are held equal - essentially both pages get a grade of A when you run them through the Moz campaign tool - everything on the page is dialed in. And, internal linking to each page is identical.

There are only 3 factors remaining:

1. Number of external links pointing at your page.
2. Level of competition in each SERP.
3. The fact that your business is recognized as being in Miami.

Due to the fact that these 2 pages are new, let's pretend that you haven't manually built any external links to either page.

Next factor is the level of competition in that SERP. Considering it's Miami vs. New York, I'm not surprised that New York isn't performing as well right off the bat. Build up some more internal links and do some external link building, and more long term build up your Domain Authority. You'll get there.

Final factor is the fact that the business is in MIami. That absolutely makes a difference. You're just going to have to hustle harder to get into the New York SERP without the benefit of having local signals due to the business location.