SEO best practices for store locator and local pages - 301 or not?

[devonkrusich]

I have been struggling to answer this on my own and now throwing up for the Moz community for a life line.

Our company has several location across 6 states.  We have local pages that we are working to improve with better content.  We also have a store locator that will list the stores but the pages are not the same. See below example.  I can't help but feel like I am splitting juice and traffic that should be combined to one page for each location.

Any ideas or advice on how we can best combine/funnel the traffic to one optimized page?

Here is an example:

State local page - http://www.jakesfireworks.com/michigan/

Locator page for state - http://www.jakesfireworks.com/locator/?state=MI

City local page - http://www.jakesfireworks.com/michigan/grand_rapids

City Locator page - http://www.jakesfireworks.com/locator/?id=183&state=MI

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Devon,

Looking at your site, this is what I see...

When you click on the store locator in the menu, you are taken here http://www.jakesfireworks.com/locator/

From there, you can click on one of the state links or search. If you click on a link, you are taken here, for example:

http://www.jakesfireworks.com/locator/?state=AR

But, if you choose the state from the drop down, you are are taken here http://www.jakesfireworks.com/arkansas/ Am I right in thinking that the pages like this are being done just for SEO purposes? You also seem to have different location landing pages, depending on the route you take. Is this what you want to combine?

How do you rank for local results right now? Does each location have its own Goole Local page?

I would be very tempted to 301 one page to another or at least set a canonical tag pointing to your preferred page, but I certainly wouldn't leave it in its current state.

-Andy

[devonkrusich]

Andy- you are correct.  They question is how to best merge these 2 pages.  I am not sure if the store locator will allow a custom link to the state or store pages.  I would like the traffic to go through the pages like /michigan and /michigan/grand-rapids versus the longer locator url.  I was thinking of using 301 re-direct but unsure if that is the best method?

Our local search rankings are good now but have room to improve.  We did have Google Local pages for each but they have been suspended by Google.  They will not say exactly why but all the evidence suggests that it is due to our category of fireworks and Google's policy where fireworks are categorized with weapons and explosives.

This was frustrating since we spent 2 weeks back and forth with the Google Local team getting these locations set up and verified only to have them overruled a couple weeks later and the accounts suspended.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Redirecting via a 301 is always the preferred method of pointing one page to another Devon. Just from what I have seen, I can't see a reason why this should cause you any issue. Just have the location pages follow a preferred route and stick with that. Take all of the non-preferred pages and 301 these to the ones you wish to use.

You should be fine and avoid any issue of duplication.

-Andy