NAP question about wider service area

[schitz011]

My business is based in Suffolk, UK, but I serve an area that includes Essex, Cambs, Herts and Norfolk.

I've been making an effort to include a constant NAP across all my local citations for Suffolk in an effort to rank better in local search.
However, what effect does this have on pages when trying to rank for searches for areas where I have no physical location? If my entire site has NAP across it referencing Suffolk, does this impact the ability to rank organically for areas outside Suffolk?

If so, what would be the best practice for increasing organic rank in these areas?

[WesleySmits]

If you only have a physical location in Suffold than your local search result efforts will be focussed on Suffold and the immediate area through your citations, reviews etcetera.

This does not mean that you can not rank in the normal search results for queries about other areas such as Cambs and Herts. Your website could state that these areas are part of your service area as well.

[jbbattag]

I just made a similar response here.

http://moz.com/community/q/localize-homepage-or-service-pages

You do not need a physical location to rank but it helps. You can rank for location keywords like Essex or Cambs. There is no easy way to do this if you want to keep it legit.

Things you can do.. Get a business location in the locations specified, tie them into separate parts of your site dedicated to that area.

Widen your service area on google places to cover all these areas specified. Make your places account keyword rich and you will start to come up. With a good amount of reviews, people call even if you are far away.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Alex,

Good question! Google's bias toward physical location has built into local search a specific way of handling website optimization for service area businesses like yours. Typically this looks like this:

1. You optimize the overall website for your city of location, meaning that you put your complete NAP on the contact page and in the sitewide footer. You also typically optimize your core pages (home, about, service pages) for this city of location as well. You develop your Google+ Local page and your citations to reflect the NAP of your city of location, as well. You work on earning reviews on these profiles, as well as social mentions and links. The goal of all of this work is to achieve high local pack rankings for your business for queries that either contain your city of location or that stem from devices based in your city of location.

2. For your service cities where you have no physical location, you don't have NAP. But, you do have the ability to build a unique landing page on the website for each of your major service cities. Be sure that the content is unique and terrific for each page you create and then link to these pages from a top level menu under a heading of something like "Cities We Serve'. Work to earn social mentions and links to these pages. You can also work to add on-page testimonials from clients in these service cities to the respective city landing pages. Do not put the business' NAP on these pages, because it does not apply. The goal of this work is to earn secondary organic rankings for these service cities, because it is highly unlikely that you will earn local pack rankings for any city in which you're not physically located.

Having NAP on the rest of the website will not harm your ability to rank organically for your other service cities, but you have to go into this with the understanding that you're aiming for local rankings for your city of location and organic rankings for your location-less cities.

Hope this helps!

[schitz011]

Miriam,

Thanks for that response.

One clarification:
You can also work to add on-page testimonials from clients in these service cities to the respective city landing pages

I'm assuming you mean links from clients websites in these areas to the respective pages on my site.

If I do a search for my service without any location modifier, all the results in the local pack are for a city 30 miles away where I have no physical presence. I appreciate that this local pack will change dependent on my/the searchers actual location, but it seems a bit off that 'out of the box' Google is suggesting businesses in a city 30 miles away. Does it default to the nearest city? Or does it look at a density of related businesses and assume that area should be shown? If so, how does one compete? Organic SERP for that particular city? If we add a county modifier the local pack results are now a little bit more widespread. Ideally this is where I'd like to place for local pack rankings.I've been working on gaining local citations and going back through old NAP mentions and having them updated. What else could I do to to improve those county level local pack results?

If I add my local town modifier to the search my site appears in the local pack at #4.  So Google seems to be picking up some of my info.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Alex,

Regarding testimonials - no, I am not referencing testimonials from websites. I'm talking about getting written testimonials from your customers (either on paper or via email) and uploading them yourself using Schema review markup to the respective city landing page on your own website. These on-page testimonials can be a powerful way to add unique content to your city landings pages, and they also sometimes show up in the SERPs with stars (though Google's display of this keeps changing).

As to why Google is showing you results for a city 30 miles away when you're not adding a geo-modifier, I'm not sure. Could it be that there is something about that city that is particularly relevant, or, could your location possibly be set to this city in Google, causing Google to show you results for that city? Have you tried checking from other computers located in your town? Clearly, you're doing pretty well for your own local city, and this is where you can expect to rank in the local pack (not in a city where you're not physically located) so if pursuing rankings in other cities is important, they will almost certainly have to be organic rankings, not local ones.