Local search traffictwo locations

[AL123al]

Hello,

Can I ask for some advice? A client of mine is located in two cities. The first one was his original city and he has lots of traffic for various search terms and is very happy. He then expanded and has a branch in a second city. We created a unique landing page for it and a Google My Business page, built citations and it is ranking quite well (on first page for the two keywords that we targeted). But traffic is not great as city 1.

His main navigation has a list of services and also a locations tab which has the two locations. The services pages are all unique and target specific keywords and I added location to the end of them - :

e.g. **SERVICE KEYWORD CITY 1, CITY 2. **

A search for  SERVICE KEYWORD + CITY 1 is on first page and lots of traffic.

For SERVICE KEYWORD + CITY 2 it is on page 2.

How would we increase the traffic to the second city? Should we create sub pages of the services he provides with the location set as city2 only (and keep the original ones only as city 1)? These would kind of duplicate the services pages we already have so we would have the problem that we might be duplicating stuff.

Since SERVICE KEYWORD CITY 1 are doing really well (he's either first or second) I am loathe to change it too much but not sure how to get more keywords for city 2 without duplication the services pages.

Any advice?

[TapGoods]

We are focusing on a few specific cities as well.  I have created a list of sites that are both specific to that city AND rank high using the Moz Domain Authority tool.  I put the list in Google Sheets to keep track and then have systematically gone down and reached out to various people at these sites to try to get articles or mentions, etc from them.  This does two things.  First you get exposure from relatively high volume sites in that area.  Two, I think it helps to get backlinks that focus on regions or concepts.  This way I can do both.  Before I reached out to them, I wrote a draft of the article.  We are working on a sharing economy concept so we wrote about the sharing economy in general (instead of just writing about us) to make it more compelling for their audience.  That has done fantastic for us.

In terms of where to look, traditional media like print newspapers, magazines, radio almost always have a site with a news/blog section.  Also, you can use something like the Follow Wonk tool to find Twitter accounts for people that blog in the area.  This is often easier than the media sites.  Some of the media sites will do it but are uber expensive.  Also, many cities have a Reddit sub for that city.  Be careful.  If it feels to ad like, people on that city will butcher you.  Sometimes you can get on the sidebar of that sub and that will be the gift that keeps on giving.

To see an example of what we did, check this out.  The site is only for Dallas.

[MiriamEllis]

Great question! And one that is built into the scenario of a single location business expanding to new locations.

There are typically 2 routes local multi-location businesses can take.

1. Build a single set of service description pages + a unique page for each location.

2. Build pages for every possible keyword/city combo + a unique page for each location.

Benefits of route one: by focusing your resources on this more limited set of pages, you may find you've got what it takes to build the BEST page on, for example, native plant landscaping in the industry and the BEST page about your location in San Francisco.

Drawbacks tend to relate to how to optimize major pages of the website (homepage, about). With just 2 locations, you can likely include some optimization for both cities on these pages, but if you start opening numerous locations, this can become untenable. After all, Whole Foods does not list hundreds of cities on its homepage ;). And, once you've got these two sets of pages built, you can turn focus in all kinds of exciting directions, creating all kinds of new content that continues to build your brand and increase conversions.

Benefits of route two: If you have the resources to do this well, you can end up with some very thorough keyword coverage. However, it may or may not be great for human users. Will users genuinely be helped in some unique way by the presence of your page on 'native landcaping san franciso' and your page on 'native landscaping oakland', describing the exact same service twice? In some cases, yes, but in others, no. So, make a wise choice here. Does a set of pages covering every possible service/city combo exist for users, or because you're crossing your fingers search engines will take note?

Drawbacks become quickly apparent where resources are lacking. Thin, duplicate content can easily result from this route, weakening your website instead of strengthening it. With proper resources, this doesn't have to be the case, but if you suspect it might be tough to pull off dozens of truly top quality pages with the route 2 approach, I'd advise sticking with route one.

Hope this helps, and Rand's most recent Whiteboard Friday might help with organization of the work ahead of you: https://moz.com/blog/build-content-keyword-map-for-seo-whiteboard-friday

[WaterGuy]

Great article just posted on Search Engine Land - How to solve duplicate content local SEO issues for multi-location businesses. http://searchengineland.com/solve-duplicate-content-local-seo-issues-multi-location-businesses-255509

[AL123al]

Some good ideas here. Thank you all.