Targeting City Geo-tags/Keywords for Clients with Multiple Locations

[WhiteboardCreations]

Hey everyone! What methods are best to use for SEO campaigns working with 1 website for a company which has 2, 3, 4, or more locations in order to get keywords for their services to rank well... in all their location cities?

I feel we know the answer could be any one of the below notes, however, it's always nice to learn more about what all you other SEO's are doing or have done which saw success.

Please note:

We have heard about building microsites on sub-domains example city.domainname.com/keyword-or-service
We have heard about building sections off the root domain such as domainname.com/city/keyword-or-service
We have heard about just pushing more content to the blog which can target a wider range of keywords and cities
We have heard about building a new site for each city location replicating the main website and swapping out content for 100% originality
We have heard about just building more and more backlinks with different anchor text using the cities in the anchor text

Thanks in advance and look forward to hearing from some other experts facing these same challenges!

[BedeFahey]

Hello,

Assuming that we leave blogging out of the equation for now...

(Since you should be using a blog to provide value to readers, and will probably going for longer-tail phrases rather than things like "keyword-or-service in City")

My strong preference is building sections off the root domain rather than microsites on subdomains. You'll get more benefit from the other tactics you mentioned with this setup than you will from subdomains. You'll also have a far easier time of it trying to rank one site with multiple pages, rather than a new site for each location.

Realistically, the subdomain and new site tactics are going to be either 1) A massive amount of work to write great content or 2) Full of weak content. Using the root domain, on the other hand, allows you to rank for your keyword and location while still offering visitors great content that is more generalized (assuming that your different locations provide the same services).

Link-building wise, I'd definitely focus on building links to the location pages. I would be wary of getting too specific with your anchor text, however -- I wonder how much value there is in a link where you could get anchor text that includes both the keyword and location, and too much of it is going to look artificial very quickly. In this situation, I rely more on on-page targeting and strong local search listings for each location than I do anchor text.

I'm sure others will have more to contribute, but I hope this helps.

[WhiteboardCreations]

Great feedback about the sub-domains and microsites as yes, it would be a lot of work for the build outs and the new content. I appreciate the input!

[Francisco_Meza]

This is a tough question because we don't know the business objectives of the company or site. If it's one company and you are trying to get local listing, why not just get a Google + page and verify all your local pages via the post card Google sends through the mail.

If all locations sell different things (car parts vs women shoes), new domain or sub-domain. But if your client is selling the same thing like Starbucks, then example.com/city.

I would personally create a page with schema.org markup for addresses and link them to /city

[CleverPhD]

Howdy,

We have heard about building microsites on sub-domains example city.domainname.com/keyword-or-service

I think this was more relevant when you were wanting to get an EMD, but I think that this is now less important.

We have heard about building sections off the root domain such as domainname.com/city/keyword-or-service

We have used this and had success with it.  If you look at Yelp, this is what they do as well.  I think you can also consolidate your SEO reputation more effectively. I think the advantage to the subdomain or separate domain approach is that if you get penalized on one, it should not impact the other.  If you keep to white hat approaches this should not be an issue.

We have heard about just pushing more content to the blog which can target a wider range of keywords and cities

If you setup the two options above, you can have a wide diversity of keywords and cities.  Don't see how a blog makes it any different in being able to target more keywords. You can hang a blog off of a folder ie.  domainname.com/city/blog and you can get the same effect.

We have heard about building a new site for each city location replicating the main website and swapping out content for 100% originality

The issue with this becomes scale what if you need a large number of cities covered, can you get all the domain names.  What if you have a user that wants to look in more than one city?  Just does not scale, especially if you want to build your main brand.   Also, when you consider all the different GA and GWT etc etc accounts you would need to setup to manage, it adds a lot of overhead.

We have heard about just building more and more backlinks with different anchor text using the cities in the anchor text

This is something you would have to do regardless of all of the above techniques.  You want backlinks to any page/site/etc with the city in the anchor text but with also a diversity of anchor text.

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Bottom line, you need to consider your brand on all of this.  People go to yelp as they are a trusted source and then they rank well with local cities around the US.  Same thing with places like Angies list.  Citysearch uses the subdomain, but that is more of a legacy thing, seems like most newer sites use the a single TLD and then build out locations in different folders.   Brand is what will make you different than all the other companies that sell the same products so IMHO the use of the single domain lets you build on that.

[WhiteboardCreations]

Thanks, Francisco. I could've elaborated a bit more, you're right. We have several clients and prospective clients with multiple locations and most sell the same services/products across each location. However, some, take for example, a General Dentist we work with has 2 offices in different cities, one office does General and Cosmetic Dentistry while the other  does General Dentistry and Oral Surgery. So a little different in what we'd need to target. We always do Google+ verifications as well, so that's not an issue. However, your other points are pretty valid and we have them marked down to implement. Thank you again for your feedback!

[WhiteboardCreations]

Wonderful explanations for us to consider and work with. We assumed the domain.com/city approach would be best to get everything tagged, content relevant to the market, and links built to those inner pages. Thank you!!

[DanielFreedman]

I agree with the above and would add my own experience.

I've had good results with the format www.widgetservices.com/location 1, www.widgetservices.com/location 2 etc.... all accessible from a drop down menu entitled "Locations and Clients". Each location page talks about the people who work at the location and has some mini-case studies and testimonials. The actual product descriptions, the same in each location,  are elsewhere.

I also build links to the individual location pages. Each location page, in text and tags, is also optimized for the not only the main location but a few of the closest cities.

Note that this is a regional business with only 7 locations. YMMV.

[WhiteboardCreations]

Thanks, Daniel! We have several clients who are regional based as well with 4 locations to sell/rent equipment or dentists with 2 or 3 offices around a city like Cleveland/Akron/Canton OH, etc. I appreciate you sharing your direct experience in how you handle it and love the idea of a drop down menu!