Any insight on optimizing a single URL for locations in different states?

[AdamThompson]

What good/bad experiences have people had trying to optimize a single URL for multiple locations in different states? eg optimizing a page of the site for "dentist atlanta", "dentist orlando", and "dentist miami" (the client has offices in all these locations).

Has anyone found that Google has an algorithm that get's suspicious if you try to optimize a given URL for either too many locations and/or for locations that are too far apart?

[LauraSultan]

You'll be fighting a steep uphill battle if you try to optimize one URL for all three. You should, of course, mention that you have offices in all three cities on your home page, but why not create local landing pages for each city?

I don't mean that you should create one page, copy it, and replace the city name. That would be bad.

Each city page should have unique content with a local focus. In addition to contact information and directions, there's probably plenty of ways to add unique content to each local page. Highlight key staff members for each location, add location photos (inside and out), add customer testimonials, etc.

More about location pages:

• https://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide
• http://niftymarketing.com/optimal-local-landing-page-infographic/

[AdamThompson]

Thanks for the reply. Why do you say "You'll be fighting a steep uphill battle if you try to optimize one URL for all three."?

That's what I tend to think also, but to my knowledge Google hasn't ever discouraged this, and I've seen this approach work pretty well for two different websites.

[LauraSultan]

Yes, I have seen that work as well. I'm not saying that you can't do it. but those are highly competitive keywords in large metropolitan areas. It will take longer to see results. Local landing pages will work to build authority for the entire domain for those locations. I have seen this happen many times with our clients. Both the optimized local page and the site's home page can end up ranking well for geo-targeted keywords.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Adam,

Excellent advice from Laura. While Google has never taken a stance that I know of against putting all of your locations on a single page (and you'd be doing so on the Contact Us page, of course), it's considered a better practice in Local SEO to develop a unique, high quality landing page for each physical location for the following reasons:

1. Ranking a page that's clearly focused on a single city is going to be easier that ranking it for three different cities. You'll be sending a clearer signal to both humans and bots that 'dentist orlando' is a primary topic for the business than you would be if you're diluting the focus of the page with multiple cities.

2. It's very likely that your competitors will be making use of the practice of developing these landing pages, and you want to be able to compete with that.

3. Establishing a unique page for each office will enable you to link from all of the citations you build to a dedicated page on the website for each. Historically, this has been viewed as helpful in preventing against accidental merges of your Google+ Local pages, though there seems to be fewer cases of this in recent times. Regardless, it's very clear to be able to link your Orlando Google+ Local page and other citations to your Orlando page on your website, where the first thing one encounters in the compete NAP for the business, identically matching the NAP on the citations. It lessens the potential for error.

The prerequisite for developing these types of landing pages will be the willingness of the business owner to invest the necessary time/funding to creating high quality pages with unique content on them. If this is lacking, then it's better to wait until the owner is ready to devote the necessary resources to the project so that the pages are an asset rather than a liability.