Local SEO Website Structure.

[sfrediktru8]

Hi everyone,

This might be quite a long post so please bear with me.

I am currently rebuilding my website.  My previous website was built by a web designer and was very basic.  5 page html site consisting of home, services, gallery, testimonials, contact pages.  None of them were great - thin content, not optimised as well as could be - no h1's etc.

To be fair I knew nothing about websites and didn't bother much with the site.  As a new business I used it simply as a place for people to visit for more information after receiving a leaflet and never bothered much about driving traffic to the site.

A few years down the line and I have realised I need the website to be working for me as opposed to alongside me.  I am building it myself via wordpress as web designer didn't want to work in wordpress.  I have done my keyword research and I'm working on pages as we speak.

Previously my homepage - around 80% of visitors landed here for my main keyword (driveway cleaning glasgow) as it was number 6 in the organic listing.  With my services page appearing directly underneath in 7 for the same keyword.

I have starting building a new page for that keyword which contains (driveway-cleaning-glasgow) in the url. I have 301'd my previous services page to this url.

Now for my questions...
My 2nd keyword based on volume is driveway cleaning.  How do I optimise for this or will the (driveway-cleaning-glasgow) page rank for this also as the words are contained within this page?

I plan on having the same structure for the remaining services - pressure-washing-glasgow, monoblock-cleaning-glasgow etc, etc.   As I am building new pages for each service with location built in, where does this leave my homepage?  Should I be targeting keywords for this page?  It is still my strongest page and apart from the (driveway-cleaning-glasgow) page which will get some help from the 301 these are all new pages so I would expect perhaps initially to lose some traffic.  But as I am not ranking well for anything other than the main 2 keywords mentioned above it can only be beneficial long term when google recognises the specific pages for each service.  And when I start using Adwords I will have a specific landing page for each service.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

[MiriamEllis]

Hey There!

Kudos to you for revisiting how important a well-optimized web presence can be for any local business. You have 2 options here, in terms of site structure:

1. Build a unique page for each service you offer, optimized for that service + build a unique page for each city you serve.

or

2. Build pages for each possible combo of keywords+city

Unless you have really considerable resources, approach number 1 is typically best. I'd like to point you to 2 resources here on Moz that should be a big help both with structure and landing pages:

Check out the big graphic at the beginning of this post: https://moz.com/blog/local-seo-checklist

Then, check out this article on landing pages: https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages

Hope these will get you going with your strategy!

[sfrediktru8]

Hey Miriam,

Thanks for your response.  As I don't offer lots of services/locations and I'm confident I can produce unique content for these pages so my preference would be for keywords+city.

So as I stated in my original post my 2 main search terms based on volume are:
Driveway Cleaning Glasgow - which will be directed to my /driveway-cleaning-glasgow/ page.
Driveway Cleaning -  I'm not sure if this needs a page of it's own or if it will be covered by the above page as it contains the keywords and as I only operate in this city so this is my local  location?

What do I do with the homepage?  Is it a general overview with links to service pages?  Reason I ask is I have looked at a competitors website - 1 of only a few decent sites.  They have a very general homepage with specific landing pages yet I was surprised to find that 8 keywords ranked (1-3) to their homepage despite having landing pages for these keywords.

Thanks

[MiriamEllis]

Hey There!
If you're just offering 1 service in 1 city, I do not see the point of having a 'driveway cleaning' page and a 'driveway cleaning glasgow' page. Rather, I'd make the homepage strong about your customers + city + service and then I'd build out content about various aspects of driveway cleaning that would also mention your geography. I'd fire up something like http://answerthepublic.com/seeds/290501 and start developing additional pages like:

Should you use caustic soda for driveway cleaning?

Should driveways be cleaned with chlorine?

The pros and cons of pressure washing driveways.

Research both via online tools and direct interviews with your customers + staff to discovers what common customer questions are and start developing the best content in your city around these topics.

Highlight your trust metrics via testimonials, reviews and guarantees. Show your before-and-after work. Seek out opportunities for community involvement and publicize them.

With just one service in one city, you'll have to take a granular approach to grow beyond being a 5 page website to being the most informative and useful local brand. Hope these ideas get you going.