Different page for each service at each location? Where does it end!

[RickyShockley]

If we have 15 different locations and 10 different services, do we need to make keyword targeted landing pages for each combination? Is that actually the best method or is there some alternative?

For example, if we are a law office specializing in slip and falls and car accidents, do we need a page for EACH location for each service (ie. Miami Car Accident Lawyer, Miami Slip and Fall Lawyer, Orlando Slip and Fall Lawyer, Orlando Car Accident Lawyer) etc. to maximize our ranking potential in each location?

Is there a better way or are we left with this until Google gets "smarter"?

[Ray-pp]

I would suggest building a page for each location and service, as long as you can create value-added content for each topic.

The major issue here is, if you do not do it then a competitor will and I would bet on the unique pages with deep content ranking higher.

[Travis_Bailey]

Ah, you've found forthepeople.com. Yeah, I don't envy your task. They're a pretty big deal and more than likely spend to get the results they have. I've watched them 'grow up' over the last five years.

Notice how they're very careful not to cannibalize Orlando Personal Injury Attorney? The domain was created in 1996. There's been steady improvement in ranking/traffic over the last five years. The last three years have been the most effective. Though there was a pretty good dip around the last Penguin update. They appear to have more or less recovered.

Your client may be a little newer. Your client may not have a domain of that age. Your client may not have the same budget right now. Morgan and Morgan has the budget and they've been around forever.

There's hardly anything in the PI space that isn't competitive. Specialization, differentiation and branding will be invaluable when faced with entrenched competition. What does the attorney or firm particularly specialize in?

• Wrongful Death
• Premise Liability (Slip & Fall)
• Workers Comp

You can focus on bolt holes within the personal injury niche, especially if the client doesn't have the budget of a larger firm. From there, you can set out milestones and spend. The Morgan & Morgan site wasn't built overnight. Notice how they kept tweaking it and adding to the site?

So no, don't go after every page under the sun just because a successful competitor has X amount of pages about X amount of topics. That's the road to disappointment.

"If you ever teach a yodeling class, probably the hardest thing is to keep the students from just trying to yodel right off. You see, we build to that." - Jack Handy

[Laurean]

This is one of my biggest challenges too!

I'm sending you a response privately, because I don't want the answer publicized.

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Ricky,

Such a good question. As you can probably guess, the proviso here is that you can build all of these pages ... if they have genuine value. To be honest, most sites you see taking this approach are building pages that don't really have a purpose other than attempting to gain rankings for a laundry list of terms, right? After all, having a slip and fall accident in Miami isn't really much different than having one in Orlando. In the real world - it isn't different. But trying to please the bots can cause business owners and marketers to get into some pretty complicated contortions.

My honest preference is to have 1 page per service and 1 page per location and depend on building the authority of the brand so that the site is strong enough to rank for many terms. I think the Moz blog is an awfully good example of this. Search for a topic, and up comes a Moz blog post, and not because we've got "For Seattle, For San Francisco, For Boston" in the titles. The strength of the site, overall, helps with ranking for topics. True, Moz is not a local business, but the concept is the same to me - building the kind of authority that makes whatever you publish on your site seem important/relevant to Google for its topic. So, like I've said, 1 page per service and 1 per location would be my ideal preference.

That being said, the legal industry is cutthroat in major cities, and sometimes a Local SEO will find himself doing things that may not seem very sensible, just trying to keep ahead of the competition. If, in auditing your unique competitive scenario, you do feel you have to build a page for every service/city combo, I guess the best you can do is to try to make those pages as unique and helpful as possible. If you're the copywriter, I don't envy you, but it can be done with enough resources and creativity.