What strategies can you use when you're optimizing for 10 locations x 20+ services?

[AdamThompson]

We have a client site (a dentist) that has 10 locations and 20+ services (braces, teeth whitening, cosmetic dentistry, etc, etc.). We're trying to figure out the ideal approach to optimally cover all their locations and services, but each option we consider has drawbacks:

1. Optimize service pages for service name + each location name (or at least the biggest location names), with service name and location names in the title tag. That results in a too long title tag, plus possible user confusion, since they are searching for "braces richmond" but the title tag lists other cities, some of which are in a different state.
2. Optimize service pages for service name + each location name, but don't include the locations in the page title. This is the current option being used, but it appears to be hurting the rankings at least a bit not having the location name in the page title.
3. Create a page for each service + location combo. That will be 200+ pages, which will mean the pages will be deeper in the site, with less link juice.
4. Create new domains for each location/state covered. But then we have to start over building link juice.

How have other sites dealt with this? What has worked best and what hasn't worked?

[GoogleDowner]

Since nobody has responded I'll share what we are currently doing with only two locations and multiple services. It's number 3 on your list. The caveat here is that we're still implementing this so the final results are not in. Here is what we're doing:

1. Make sure you have a Google+ business page for each physical location to make sure that Google knows you're "local" and you can pop-up on their location snippet (hopefully!).
2. On the contact us page or locations page (not sure what you have), we list each location with the physical/mailing address, phone number and a link that says "Directions" that navigates to the "city-office" page (or however you want to name it... atlanta-office for example).
3. On the city-office page we have a nice write-up about this city and the office. We also include a google map of the location, full address, phone numbers, email, and the associated Google+ profile link for that specific location. Now here is the magic: Below that we have a list that has a heading of "Local [city] Services" that has list of of each service that links to an optimized page for that city and service. For your client the heading might be "Local Atlanta Dental Services" for example. You want each service listed to have the appropriate keywords/phrases in the anchor text.
4. Create each services page per location and optimize it like a pro. WARNING: this method will run the risk of duplicate content when you start having multiple cities with similar pages. It is therefore imperative that you make sure that each page contains unique content. The "Atlanta Teeth Whitening" page, although identical in nature with the "L.A. Teeth Whitening" page, must have content unique to their respective cities. This is where the opportunity presents itself to create 10x content for each city (https://moz.com/blog/why-good-unique-content-needs-to-die-whiteboard-friday)

I suggest you start with one major city at a time, measure results, make any necessary adjustments and move on to the next city. The key here is that the content is unique for each service in each city. Sure, they can follow the same format, however make sure you put in the time to make each services page somewhat unique to that city. It may seem like a bit of a gray line that we're walking but, in my opinion, it's logical for expansion. Again the big risk is duplicate content but that can be avoided if done correctly.

Hopefully this helps! I would love to see others chime in on this and give feedback as I'm sure we're not the only ones in the world with this problem.

Cheers!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Adam,

My short and sweet answer to this scenario is:

A page for every city and a page for every service

So, you'd have a total of 30 pages to budget and plan for (one for each of the 10 cities and one for each of the 20 services).

Most small local businesses are not going to have the funding for developing 200 exceptional pages ... what I've seen when small businesses try to go this route of developing a page for every possible service/city combo is that they end up with a collection of so-so pages at best and at worst, thin or duplicate pages.

So, for a client like a dental practice, I believe that a sterling quality page for every city and for every service tends to be an achievable goal if structured over a reasonable time frame contract.

I definitely do not recommend developing a different website for each city. Build a powerhouse and keep working on improving it for the life of the business. Hope this helps!