What is the best way to optimise the website of a service area business websites for local search?

[DougRoberts]

Service area businesses are a little caught in the middle when it comes to local optimisation and can really struggle to

So what approaches would your recommend for optimising a service area business:

Assuming the following, perhaps obvious, goals:

1. Make sure your site visitors can clearly understand if their location is covered by your service areas

2. Compete for search traffic for service + location searches (including those with an implided location).

One common tactic that I see being used is to generate humongous lists of locations, maybe in a footer.

Obviously the more areas you want to include the less relevant (and more spammy looking) your targetting looks. And of course, with loads of locations, you're not going to be able to get them all into your titles (even if you wanted to!)

Maybe if you've got locations that are more inportant to you you might create specific landing pages for these location?

If you've got the kind of business where the locations you target are determined by the locations you can reasonably get to during a working day it's really tough to find a realistic way to target specific location on your site.

I'd be really interested to hear how you approach these kinds of sites.

[crackingmedia]

Hi Doug, one aspect you haven't mentioned which I have found still works for a service business covering an area is to use Google Places.

Providing the business has a physical address at the centre of their 'patch' so to speak then that's a marker on the map from which the service operates in a radius.

In terms of landing pages on the site then yes do that with a clear reference to the town/city address and phone number (which will be certified by the office's corresponding Google Places page) and include on that page a list of areas covered which are geographically associated with the office location.

Peter

[DougRoberts]

Thanks Peter, yes I was assuming that Google+ Local / Places had been fully claimed/populated etc. It was really the on-site aspects I was interested in.

When you're dealing with a company you're obligated by law to put the company's registered address on the site. However, for many home-based independent traders, it can be hard to persuade them to put their home address on the site or even a local land-line number.

So I'm really talking about tradespeople who service an area around their home.

Depending on the area covered, and my understanding is that the wider the area the less specific/relevant it's going to be, the list of areas covered can be pretty long, especially if you start to include post codes etc.

IF there are key areas of interest (and you can get the site owner to look at their customer data to find out where their best clients are), then I'm also assuming it's a good idea to set up specific landing pages for that area, as long as there's a reason to do so, and include testimonials that are relevant to that area etc.

What other ways are there to get location specific signals onto the site?

[crackingmedia]

Sorry Doug, I had assumed Google Places / Google+ Local had not been set up.

I understand more now. I think it is a tricky one as without a certified address I think it's difficult to optimise web pages.  I agree, the wider the area the less specific/relevant it's going to be,

I think your strategy to set up specific landing pages for an area where the trades person works in and can publish testimonials relevant to that location is an excellent one. If they are a builder or decorator for example, then if their customer is willing, then it would be good to include a case study of the work done along with before/after photos with alt tags optimised to include the location.

There's a lady on Moz called Miriam Ellis who is really knowledgeable on Local SEO. Hopefully, she will pick up and be able to comment on this thread and give some direction. Meantime, in case you haven't seen it, she wrote a very helpful blog post: Top 20 Local Search Ranking Factors: An Illustrated Guide.

I hope that helps a little further,
Peter

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the kind mention!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Doug,

You are quite correct that Service Area Businesses (SABs) fall into their own category in many ways when it comes to local search. I'll try to provide some helpful tips here.

Tip #1 - The most important thing for SABs to understand is that Google is heavily biased toward physical location. SABs must have at least one physical location in order to seek inclusion in Google's local index. This can be a home address - that's just fine! But it cannot be a virtual address, P.O. box, etc. And it should not be shared by any other business.

Tip #2 - Because of  Google's bias towards physical location, the SAB should set the goal of ranking well in the local pack of results for the city in which they are physically located, but not in the surrounding cities they may serve. There are some exceptions to this, as in the case of highly niche business models or in rural areas wherein one business is the only one or one of very few serving a number of towns. In such instances, you might see these businesses surfacing in the local pack of results for more than one town, but this is the exception rather than the rule.

Tip #3 - Once the business has set its goal of ranking well in the local pack of results for its city of location, there are a number of steps that can be taken. The most important is to build a really strong website with the main pages optimized for this city of location geo term. If possible, complete NAP (name, address, phone) should be included in the footer and on the contact page, preferably in Schema markup. Content should be strong and be optimized in a natural manner for the service + geo terms. You will follow this up by creating a Google+ Local page in which you will enter but hide the address to comply with Google's guidelines for SABs. Then, citations should be built in a variety of places that highlight the business.

If, for reasons of privacy, you need to hide the NAP, then you can build citations only on those directories which allow you enter but hide the address. See Phil Rozek's article on this: http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2013/04/22/private-local-citations-where-can-you-list-your-business-but-hide-your-address/ There is more you can do in this vein, such as earning reviews and links, video marketing, social outreach etc. All steps serve to build the authority of the business on the web.

Tip #4 - Do not put a list of cities served on the website in the manner you've observed. Google updated their webmaster guidelines in 2012 to specifically denounce this practice. They consider this keyword stuffing, and you can read about it here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66358?hl=en

Tip #5 - Next, the business owner will want to make every effort he can to rank well for all of his service cities. Remember, the goal here is not to get local pack rankings, because he typically won't. Instead, he can go after organic rankings by the process of creating city landing pages on his website for each city he serves. The article I've linked to describes all of the ins and outs of this. Basic rules: you must have unique, strong content on each page you create. No thin or duplicate content. The authority of these city landing pages can be built up via the usual methods (earning links, social outreach, video marketing, etc.). Your chances of outranking competitors who have physical locations in your service cities are very slim, but you can frequently earn some visibility organically and some is way better than none!

Tip #6 - You will not be building citations for your service cities, because you lack a physical location. But, you can create a content development plan via which you will be adding to the geo-specific content of your website on an on-going basis. A blog is a great way to do this, continuing to build content on your website that showcases your work in your non-physical-location service cities, as well as in your city of location.

Hope these tips set you on a good path!

[DougRoberts]

Thank you for this Miriam. That's an incredible response.

Regarding Tip 4. I think I must have had some previous awareness of this. Something just didn't feel right with the (huge) list of service areas - or course, there's a legitimate way to do this in a way to tell your visitors which areas you service without taking it too far.

Now there's still the problem of trying to get small businesses/individuals to invest some time in a blog (let alone a blog with geo-specific content!). But that's a whole different problem!

It sounds to me as if setting realistic expectations for SABs is essential.

Thanks again.

[MiriamEllis]

My pleasure, Doug. Could agree more about setting expectations correctly. It's really important to do this upfront. One thing that I've found over the years is that the smaller the business and budget, the slower the pace of work may need to be set so that they can reasonably accomplish all that they need to. Better an awesome campaign at a snail's pace than a poorly-conducted one at lightning speed, right?

[DougRoberts]

Do you have any tips for doing this? How do you get small businesses (with very limited budgets) to commit to a long-term plan...

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Doug,

In my experience, the client has to be convinced on his own that there will be value in the investment. Part of this comes from his realization that he must get this work done in order to compete and see returns from being visible on the Internet. If he is under-educated about the power of the web, he may not realize this and you have the chance to teach him. Sometimes this works out well! Sometimes, however, a potential client just doesn't grasp the value of being visible and is unwilling to commit resources to it. Often, he ends up going with some quickie/cheapie deal instead and winds up blowing what money he has on services that either won't help the business or will actually harm it. I've had small business owners come to me in a state of a disaster after going down that path. Business owners who are ready to learn and willing to rely on the expertise of the marketer are my favorites. Those who come to you with bad information they've learned elsewhere and who are not willing to learn better ways of doing things are seldom good clients.

It's quite common for Local Search Marketing contracts to cover at least a few months, sometimes even a year or more. The difference between a big budge project and a small budget one will be the amount of work you are able to do for them per month. But even the smaller amount of work will have cumulative value over time.

Bottom line: the client must believe in the value of what is happening. If he doesn't, the project will likely either not happen or will be a stressful one. You can help shore up their belief, but it's my feeling that there has to be some measure of faith on their side in the marketer they've hired that will keep them going until results start to become apparent.