How do we better optimize a site to show the correct domain in organic search results for the location the user is searching in?

[aelite]

For example, chicago-company.com has the same content as springfield-company.com and I am searching for a general non-brand term (i.e. utility bill pay) and am located in Chicago. How can we optimize the chicago-company.com to ensure that chicago's site results are in top positions over springfields site?

[MoosaHemani]

Let’s go basic for a while!

If two website have the similar content, Google is going to consider both website as duplicate content. If I would be at your place, I would have created separate content for both websites so that Google consider as unique content.

If they contain two different locations, most probably you would have different physical locations as well, why not include your physical locations on the website and add business listings in Google local. Once you do that, chances are you will start ranking for the right kind of audience.

Hope this helps!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Amanda,

What Moosa has explained is super important. Duplicating content across 2 different domains is putting the business at risk for duplicate content filters. General best practice for a mutli-location business is to build a single domain featuring all of your data and include in it a page for each physical location or each major city you serve. This post should help you plan a better marketing strategy:

https://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide

Hope this helps.