Well Ranked National Site - Need Local Rankings

[FidelityOne]

We are a virtual company doing business in 30 states nationwide. All our business is done via the phone, fax, email and express mail.

Back in 2008 I optimized our small 8 page website for our key terms and was able to rank the site #1 nationally for our main keywords.  (I did a 6 month consulting gig for the company). The site remained #1 in Google until last year when some serious competitors entered the space and knocked us down to the middle of page one.

Then with the Panda update #1 &  #2 we have seen our traffic drop 50% mostly due to not receiving the City + Keywords rankings any more.

I have now been hired full time to bring us back but my question is this

• Do I need to build out city specific pages on the existing website?
• Do I need to buy keyword specific domains and create microsites?
• Do a combination of both?

I would love to do both but I have to prioritize my efforts.

Any thoughts would be great.

[AlanMosley]

City domain names is a good idea, but as you say, you will be splitting you efforts, so I say no. city landing pages is a better idea, try and get the city into your link text when you get links, local directories also will help

You also have a lot of on page issues, you have a lot of images with out alt text, I mean a lot, there is a good chance to put some city names, you also have a lot of non relevant link text, “click here” I would definitely fix them

You also have a lot of soft 404s, missing pages, or in your case mostly images that give a 200 instead of a 404. this is not helping, google has made a point about this recenly

Your code includes a lot of noise to content ratio, lots of script, flash and  stuff, search engines like clean code.
How I see it a site with many violations needs many more links to rank than one that is violation free.

[FidelityOne]

In regards to the onsite optimization, I am still trying to slowly fix some of the issues. It is an old site not built well and done in tables.  Once I get a bit more money, I plan to rebuild the website in wordpress.

A follow on question from above. Although you say the long term strategy is a single site with local city pages,  which process would see quicker results? city specific domains + keyword or  state.website.com/city + keyword.html ?

Just curious what you think. thanks.

[AlanMosley]

citykeyword.com is best for quick results, a new domain can rank quicly, but as time go on the advatage is dimished when you build up other signals.

but citykeyword.domain.com keeps the link juice in your site. As long as your subdomnains are well linked to the root domain google will see it as the same site.

[FidelityOne]

That is what I thought. Thanks for the reply.  Now I need to find time to return the favor to the board.....pay it forward.