Multiple location pages are they bad?

[donsilvernail]

Hello all,

I am research some competitors of a client of mine. My client specializes in H.P. printer repair and over the last 8 years has lost market shares to the competition. I want to reclaim market share.

As I was searching some of the service companies many have page that list multiple towns that they service.

here is an example. http://printerrepairservice.com/locations-we-service/

Should I be recommending this to my client? To me it seems like a spam keyword process. I know an employee of this particular company and he say their online business is booming. I want my clients to boom too!

What are your thoughts on these location type pages?

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Donald!Great topic. Building city landing pages is a common best practice for service area businesses with staff who travel to clients to serve them in a variety of towns beyond the town in which the company is physically located. Does your client go to clients' homes/businesses, or do his clients come to him? If the latter, then city landing pages are unlikely to be a good fit, but if the former, here's how you evaluate this:

Bad City Landing Pages:

• Have duplicate content

• Have thin or poorly-written content

• Have no reason, beyond a grab for rankings, to exist

• Are buried somewhere deep in the architecture of the site instead of in a high level menu

• Contain large blocks of zip codes or similar spammy stuff

• Contain fake or virtual addresses for the purpose of trying to appear to have a physical location where none exists

Good City Landing Pages:

• Have the absolute best content you are capable of creating, including text, videos, photos, testimonials and anything else you can think of to make these pages terrific

• Do not duplicate one another in any way

• Actually serve customers, rather than simply grabbing for rankings

• Are linked to from a high level menu

• Cover a reasonable number of cities for the business

The challenge facing any service area business when embracing the creation of city landing pages is to make them as interesting, unique and helpful as possible. This can be a challenge when you essentially offer the same service in each location, so this is where your marketing smarts can help.

For example, you might have the client take a camera along to do video documentary of his projects in each given city. Or, you might ask 5 really happy customers to allow you to do a shoot of a video testimonial for each of the given cities. Or, you might be running a geo-sensitive business in which advice for customers in one city might be different than advice for customers in a different city (not likely in your client's industry, but applicable when it comes to things like terrain, weather, laws or other micro conditions).

As the marketer, you can be a huge help in assisting the client in a brainstorming session that will surface different topics and media that can make each city landing page different and useful for customers. If the marketer or the business owner are not up to the task, my advice is always going to be not to undertake the project. This really requires the best effort both can make, and it can be a truly fun and educational undertaking for both the owner and his marketer.

Hope this helps!

[Ohmichael]

Mirium responded to a similar question. What she says below is spot on.

I really like this link that she shared with me.  https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages