Multiple Location Pages and Duplicate/Thin Content

[djreich]

I have a client who has 10 locations throughout Colorado. Each has it's own claimed Google Places profile. I know that Google is encouraging a unqiue page on your site for each individual office location, and then aligning each location's page with it's Google Places profile.

Could this create a duplicate content or thin content issue though?

Each location's page on the site would have essentially the same or similar content -- just with a unique address and phone number. They're a law firm, so the company information is the same across all locations, other than the address and phone number.

We could re-write the content so it's not completely the same, but for 10 locations that gets a little crazy, and still doesn't create truly unique/original content.

If we get too creative with the content on each page, it would be counterproductive because these are landing pages so i want them to have the firm's major selling points to help convert.

Also, the firm is ranking very well in organic and blended/local search for Colorado terms and all individual locations EXCEPT Denver, the biggest and most important market by far. Trying to move from page 3 to page 1 in Denver is important enough to warrant making the necessary changes. I just don't want to damage all the progress we've already made.

I look forward to your feedback!

Thanks!

[Francisco_Meza]

Google will display Google Place for any term "layer + city". I would create 10 locations within the Google Places Profile and get local citations to the website AND to the Google Places page.

There was an excellent presentation at Mozcon about this. You can view it http://www.seomoz.org/videos/turning-google-places-pain-into-gain, but you have to pay the $300.

Maybe this webinar will help: http://www.seomoz.org/webinars/content-for-local-sites-and-local-search

[djreich]

Thanks for the response Francisco. I've actually noticed that Google does not always display places/blended results for terms that include a city -- usually, but not always.

We have Google Places profiles for all the office locations. My main concern is, what's the best way to create 10 location pages on the firm's website...without creating duplicate or thin content?

Or, is it OK if the 10 location pages are relatively thin if we have a ton of new blog content published elsewhere on the site every day?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi David,

Nice to see you again! I want to be sure to link to a 2009 interview of Carter Maslan that covered this very topic. Though Carter's advice was meant to be taken as opinion rather than facts straight from Google, his remarks are really relevant to what you are asking about:

http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-carter-maslan-032710.shtml

This is the part of the interview I'm referencing:

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Eric Enge: Let’s say you have more than one location, 100 for example. In your view, is it helpful to have individual pages on the website for all of the locations? Also, is it helpful to have the Google local business center linked to each of those individual pages rather than having 100 locations that point to a single web address?

Carter Maslan: I can tell you what I think the ideal end state is, and there are various levels of getting there. Ultimately, we would like to have the store-specific page known so that people can just click through and see today's specials and any kind of adjustments for that particular day. We would love to have all of that information on a direct click to the most specific page for that location.

That’s what we encourage, but there are still a lot of chains and things that just link to their top-level domain. I guess it's a split answer. We want to get to a store specific page, but we are not uniformly there across all of the businesses.

Eric Enge: Could that potentially be encouraged by making it a ranking factor, for example?

Carter Maslan: Yes. I guess there are two sides to it. If you create a store-specific page that really just has an address, it wouldn't be as helpful as having some genuinely good content on the page that the user would really appreciate having as the first click-through experience. That’s what I think we need to work through.

We don't want to arbitrarily tell people that they must create a store-specific page, because we are really just trying to find the most useful page for that business. That’s why I am not so definitive on the store-specific page or not. I really just want what’s best for the retailer, store or businesses, first and foremost giving the user what he would want to see when he clicks on that business.

Eric Enge: Say you have a store-specific page that lists specific and individual things about just one store location. Depending on the kind of business that could be an inventory list that shows you've got extra stock?

Carter Maslan: There is a chain of stores that carries yoga equipment that my wife really likes. They have special yoga instruction, carry special brands, and host lectures on some special days. There are all kinds of things that the retailer does that relate to that specific store location, and there is also a general corporate catalogue page. So this is not black and white, and even though we want to encourage it, it's not that there is a definitive guidance saying companies need to have that page.

Eric Enge: Obviously it’s good if there is a quality page with information unique and specific to each location.

Carter Maslan: Yes, that's great. If we know that there’s good information about that page, then that helps on search and the snippets that we can show on the search results, because we know that the page is referencing that place. It does help even if it ends up not being the page that you list as your primary homepage. If there is good content that we know is content about that place, then it helps us do a better job with query results.

If a company has a page that's store-specific and talks about its class schedule, and there is one that says its holding Tai Chi class tonight and someone is searching for places to do Tai Chi, then that helps us to score it. If a lot of people have found that page helpful about the Tai Chi class, then when people search for Tai Chi we would know that that location has something to do with Tai Chi.

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In your shoes, my advice to this client would be this:

1. Keep the basic contact information on the landing pages front and center. Put the complete NAP (name-address-phone number) first on the page in hCard. Follow this up with whatever the pitch is.

2. Hire a good copywriter to write 3 -5 paragraphs of unique text for each of the 10 pages.

3. Hire either a designer or video specialist to create a unique chart of statistics or a great video for each of the 10 locations. In addition to displaying this media, describe it in text.

With these steps, the pages will be rich enough and different enough so that they don't simply come across as cut-and-paste jobs. Whatever is created should be specific to the town being targeted - whether this is a description of the location, the building, the office, crime statistics or what have you.

Yes, this takes effort, but every website owner has decided to opt into the publishing business and this is their time to get publishing!

Hope this helps!

Miriam