Multi Location SEO Page Structure

[CougarChemMike]

I am trying to optimize my website for multiple locations. I have setup a landing page for each location. Now I want to optimize services we offer at those locations such as floor scrubber rentals. I'm confused on the best approach for this for ranking locally.

I offer the same equipment for rent at each location. So... should I have a link on the location landing page that takes you to an individual floor scrubber rental page for each location optimized for that locations city or should I have just one floor scrubber rental page and would I optimize it for both cities or just optimize it for floor scrubber rentals in general? I have many different categories like this that are offered @ both locations.

If I do individual pages all the products and rates will be duplicate but I could change the areas we deliver to and description to be more geared towards that city.

[RobCairns]

Hi there,

Based on the information you have provided, you probably want your URL structure to look like:

www.domain.com/product/city-product

So using your example (Floor Scrubbers) and an example city (let's say Chicago and Philadelphia), it would look like:

www.domain.com/floor-scrubbers/chicago-floor-scrubbers with H1's like "Chicago Floor Scrubber Rentals"

www.domain.com/floor-scrubbers/philadelphia-floor-scrubbers with H1's like "Philadelphia Floor Scrubber Rentals"

This may depend on the search volume you see for each of your keywords in different cities, but this method gives you a bit of a ranking bonus plus it is very easy to use from a UX perspective. Consider from the visitor's perspective:

No matter where they enter your site, they can find the service they are looking for and where it is provided. That answers the majority of questions your potential customers will have, which is really the whole point of this exercise.

Just remember that your landing pages should feature custom, unique content regardless of how many cities you are represented in. So, using the example above, you will need new content both for the Chicago location and for the Philadelphia location, using different keywords and phrases if possible so you don't confuse Google.

The rates being duplicated won't hurt you - it won't help you either, but at least you won't be hit with duplicate penalties. Long story short you have a lot of content in your future.

Hope this helps and follow-up if you have any extra questions.

Cheers,

Rob

[MiriamEllis]

Hey There,

Robert is giving some good advice. I wanted to ask for a clarification. Does your business solely rent floor scrubbers, or are you saying it vends multiple products/services?

[CougarChemMike]

This is my website cougarchemical.com

We both sell and rent multiple products. Floor scrubbers, pressure washers, carpet extractors...Both of our locations, Memphis and Nashville stock for sale and rent the same products along with chemicals. I want to optimize the site to rank locally for all these products but I didn't know what google looks for. There seems to be many different opinions on the subject. I wasn't sure if google would look @ my location pages for Memphis and Nashville then see a linking page specific for pressure washer products and rank locally just off that or if I would need to have a page specific for pressure washers in Memphis and then one for Nashville to rank locally.

Thanks

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the additional details. Okay, so I now understand that you have 2 physical locations and sell/rent a menu of products.

You have 2 options.

Option 1

You create a unique, strong landing page for each of your locations. This post explains the types of content you'll want to include on these pages. These pages overview your complete service menu, but focus highly on addition information that relates specifically to that locale. You'll want testimonials/reviews (see this post) and other types of persuasive content that engender trust in what your company does in that target city.

Separately, you'll also create a set of pages for each of the services you offer. Describe each service in great detail on its own page. Link to these pages from the city landing pages and vice versa. You can mention locale on these pages, but the main focus should be on the items you rent/sell.

Be sure all of the above pages are easily accessible from a top level menu.

Continue to build out content on the site or attached blog over time.

Option 2

You create a unique page for every possible keyword combination. So, you'd have a Memphis Floor Scrubber Rental page and a Nashville Floor Scrubber Rental page, and so on.

You can take this approach, but only if you can avoid the pitfalls of redundancy/duplicate content. It's kind of old-school at this point to take this approach. Unless you can find a very strong reason to create all of the pages for the good of users, this method can be a bit of an overkill and can often result in a low quality site with a lot of thin or duplicate content instead of a high quality site with best-in-class pages.

So...

I typically prefer Option one for small-to-medium businesses, with maximum effort being put into making the smaller set of pages very high quality.

And don't forget to link all of your citations for the Nashville location to your Nashville page, and the same goes for Memphis.

Hope this helps