Narrowing keywords or build more pages - Startup

[dwallner]

I provide local services to a number of small cities and am trying to decide the best way to attack local keywords.   I need to decide if I should target all 4 cities or narrow it down to 1 or 2.   I used the google keyword tool and none of my keywords have enough results to show data so I am left guessing by using the nearest major city and population sizes.

Anyway, I have read over and over about how keywords in the title / description are imperative.  Well, thats tough to accomplish without being spammy when you offer two services for four cities.   I don't think lakeville snow removal, apple valley snow removal, eagan snow removal makes for a good title of a page.   Also, it's not an easy task to get any kind of keyword density in the content as well.  So how do you recommend I attack this?

I have seen sites that create a page for each keyword with basically the same content excpet replacing city x with city y and they do well.  I find this spammy and hope that eventually they get penalized for it.   I guess I would be willing to do it, but would prefer a more natural solution.

One more question, if I do keyword a single city, say Lakeville, what is the prefered way to keyword the home page compared to the service pages.  Example, I have a snow removal page that the keywords would be lakeville snow removal and a lawn care page with the same.. So what is the target for the home page?

Here is the results of my keyword research.

** Monthy Google Searches** Minneapolis lawn care - 880 Minneapolis lawn service - 590 Minneapolis lawn mowing - 260

Minneapolis Snow Removal - 590 Minneapolis Snow Plowing - 320 Minneapolis Snow Removal services - 58

Service Area Data (Minni has Pop of 385K)

Lakeville - Pop;56K Income;86K Apple Valley - Pop;49K Income;74K Burnsville - Pop;60K Income;60K Eagan - Pop;64K Income;74K Northfield - Pop;20K Income;62K

[AlanBleiweiss]

This is the point where SEO becomes as much art-form as science.  Creative implementation is the challenge you're talking about and there is no single "right" answer.

I can tell you that in some niche's and some cities I have seen sites that go the spammy route penalized over time, though yes, it is still possible to get away with it in some situations. personally I don't encourage it because all that effort could not only be lost overnight, but recovery could then be more challenging afterward.

Single Town approach:

Minneapolis lawn care - 880 Minneapolis lawn service - 590 Minneapolis lawn mowing - 260

Page Title:  Minneapolis Lawn Care | Lawn Service Minneapolis

H1 tag: Minneapolis Lawn Care & Mowing Service

("Minneapolis lawn mowing" being the third phrase you'd want to integrate)

Minneapolis Snow Removal - 590 Minneapolis Snow Plowing - 320 Minneapolis Snow Removal services - 58

Page Title: Snow Removal Services Minneapolis | Snow Plowing

H1 tag: Minneapolis Snow Removal & Plowing Services

Multi-town approach:

This is more challenging given the ability to only go so far to integrate phrase variations.  Just one consideration might be:

Page Title: Minneapolis Lawn Care | Lawn Service | Lakeville | Apple Valley
H1: Lawn Care & Mowing Service covering Minneapolis, Lakeville, Apple Valley & surrounding areas

Page Title: Snow Removal Minneapolis | Snow Plowing | Lakeville | Apple Valley

H1: Snow Removal & Plowing covering Minneapolis, Lakeville, Apple Valley & surrounding areas

In both of these examples, I ensured to keep the Page Title within reasonable length for viewing in Google results, opting to cut out a 2nd tier word in exchange for additional town references.

NOTE: I would not attempt to optimize more than that on any single page - that's the upper limit because it could get stupid, dilute SEO, and annoy prospective readers.