Local Service Pages

[allenrocks]

We've all been here before if you do local. What type of content should go on a local service page when dealing with multiple service locations?

You could:

• Describe Services
• List Local News Articles
• List staff in that location (although I would prefer in the staff page for that city)
• Testimonials from that location or service

But what happens when you are describing something that needs no explanation. Or a medical procedure that requires no localization and altering the wording can actually cause legal problems if misstated.

Matt Cuts recommends a few sentences to a paragraph to describe a service, but my experience hasn't found this to hold up locally.

Any ideas or suggestions about how this could be remedied?

[irvingw]

google maps or directions

address

nearby towns services

nearby counties serviced

I'm sure you can figure a clever way to write a paragraph or two about a service available in that town or area.

I wouldn't link out to news articles unless it's an article about your comapny, keep the PR and users flowing on your site.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi AllenRocks,

I want to be sure I'm understanding the structure of your website. Do you have:

A set of service pages

and

A set of city landing pages

or only one or the other?

In most cases, you should have a fantastic page for each main service you provide, optimized for your city of location. Then, if you want to build out city landing pages, come up with new types of content to make those pages have a point and be interesting and worthwhile.

Something that might help:

The Nitty Gritty of City Landing Pages for Local Businesses

http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=1403

I have had a ton of people tell me that this post really helped them and I think it might be a good read for you.

Feel free to provide additional details if I haven't gotten to the root of your question.

[allenrocks]

At the present we have a set of service landing pages under a city page not intended as a landing page. I am going to read that article to get some more insight and appreciate your time posting it.

I would say some of my frustration is building a general service page, then extending it to multiple sub-services. Often times I feel as though the general service page more than covers the sub-services. The only reason to create the sub-service page would be to target another keyword.

I have no issue writing a service page for one city but get exhausted thinking about how it could be done for smaller cities nearby. I certainly feel guilty building animations and great language for one city, and directing a tiny city to a city page with only a little information. Particularly when the visiting user will likely expect me to just duplicate the service offering for their city. I suppose the solution is to become more creative about rewriting the same services.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Allenrocks,

You write:

I suppose the solution is to become more creative about rewriting the same services.

Yep, that's pretty much the solution. I know, for some industries, this is really challenging. For others, it's easier. Try to get the client involved as much as possible to discover ideas. Good luck!