Ranking for a service website that offers to a large geographic region. Micro sites, one site, google ads, etc?

[swagseo]

Hi there I currently have a client that has a service that offers to a wide metropolitan geographic region. Currently we offer location detection when they hit the site. I'm curious what the best method going forward would be. This client is coming from a PPC initially but I've sold them on a longer term goal with organic SEO (local) .

So my question is what is the best method for ground up web creation when offering a service that services multiple areas within the same metropolitan region?

Bonus questions anyone using Flat CMS's?

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Swagseo,

Want to be sure I understand the business model. Is this a business with a physical location that serves customers face-to-face in this geographic region?

[swagseo]

Yes this business has ONE physical location but serves multiple areas B to C (face to face)

[hipnaware]

I'm wondering how many locations (towns/cities) you have identified for this client?

Is there content that's specific to these areas?

[swagseo]

No there is no content for each serviced area. Just a contact form that auto detects location in order to generate location specific leads.

[MiriamEllis]

Thanks for the helpful answer. While I apologize for not having any experience with Flat CMS, here's what I can tell you about Local:

You'll need to break this down for the client into 3 interrelated components: local, local-organic and (possibly) PPC.

On the Local Front - you'll want to be sure the website is properly optimized with the client's contact info in their city of location (header/footer, contact us page, in-text mentions etc), you'll want to build citations for the physical location and manage their accuracy/quality, and you'll want to earn and manage reviews on all citations that included a review component. The goal here is to show up well in Google's local results and organic results for terms relating to the city of location as well as being present across the major citation platforms.

On the Local Organic Front - The most typical thing to do would be to develop additional content for customers located in cities B and C, be sure these pages are internally linked to well from the navigation and elsewhere within the site, and then earn/build links to those pages. This part of the project should only be undertaken if the client can commit sufficient resources to developing really good landing pages. There must be a reason for these pages to exist beyond impressing search engines - they must contain unique content that truly helps customers from the targeted location. The goal here is rank in the organic SERPs for terms relating to the service cities.

On the PPC Front - Much can be done with the above 2 components, but where there are gaps in visibility, a supplemental PPC strategy targeting the service cities (or even the city of location) may remain a requirement, depending on the competitiveness of the client's unique geo-industry situation.

Hope this helps!

P.S. You might want to check out Moz Local for the citation component of this, and you might also like a recent post by Phil Rozek that outlines some of these components of work: http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2017/01/27/relationship-between-local-and-organic-seo-a-simple-diagram/