Site structure and blog tags for local with five locations

[Ron_McCabe]

I have a client who has five locations.  Their current web site was structured very well for the pre-penguin and Panda world. However it does not seem to do as well after these changes.  I believe it would serve them both with their customers as well as on Google if they localized the site for each location.

Currently all the content on the site if focused on one location that is in the largest metro.  On the content side we have a plan to produce local content and blogs for each location.  My questions are how to go about structuring the site map and blogs to provide the most local juice.  I was also wondering how to properly mark up a site with a main trunk  and five local branches.  I am also trying to figure out how to structure the tags on the blog.

On the site map itself I was planning on maintaining all the content as well as the older blogs in the main trunk of the web site.  Under this trunk there is a locations page that currently goes to five pages that simply have an address as well as a bulletin board of upcoming events. The blog is directly off the main page with no tie to any location.

Here are my thoughts on what I think we should do:

1. I believe we should create a mini web site starting at the location page that has specific content and navigation related to each location.  That the content should focus on the specifics of that area and what would serve that clientele the best. We should add to each branch location based on the key words and competition in that area.

2. The blog off the main web site should continue to house the general categories that are already there as well as any other general posts. I think we should add a link to each store page with a location specific blog in each mini location site.

3. Each mini location site should have it's own blog with specific blogs targeted towards the local market. This local blog would also feed in the general blogs from the "trunk" as they are posted.

Relating back to my original questions:

1. is what I outlined the right approach or is there a more effective way to do this?

2. Is there any special mark up I should do to tell the directories what to do?

3. How do I structure the tags for the blog?  I was thinking of a structure like this:

General blog/category/subject

under the main structure : local blog/category/subject

Any ideas of input on this?

Ron

[vmialik]

It will help if each other location has a local physical location that you can walk in and create a Google Local page and a Google+ page.  This will really help in terms of getting that local search rankings.

Let me know if this helps!

[Ron_McCabe]

@ Vadim I forgot to share that I have already set up each location with all the standard local directories including Google and Bing Local, Yelp, Yext, Dex, etc. etc.  We have also inspected the competitions in bound links for each location and added any local directories that are not part of the standard list.

What I am really focused on is the general content structure as well as the blog structure that will get the most local juice. This content strategy is part of the larger local and standard SEO strategy that includes reviews, social media, link building etc...

[David-Mihm]

Ron, this is exactly how I'd set up the site:

"I believe we should create a mini web site starting at the location page that has specific content and navigation related to each location.  That the content should focus on the specifics of that area and what would serve that clientele the best. We should add to each branch location based on the key words and competition in that area. "

I'd surface blog articles tagged with each location in their corresponding sections here, but wouldn't worry so much about the structure of the blog per se.

[vmialik]

Hi Ron,

Structure might not be as important in terms of what to tag.  Mark up for different posts yes, its encouraged to have the appropriate one for each page post or otherwise: http://schema.org/LocalBusiness I am not sure if you were looking for anything more special than this but this is as special as it gets in terms of local seo markup

Hope this helps