Many Regional Pages: Bad for SEO?

[Web3Marketing87]

Hello Moz-folks

We are relatively well listed for "Edmonton web design." - the city we work out of. As an effort to reach out new clients, we created about 15 new pages targeting other cites in Alberta, BC and Saskatchewan. Although we began to show up quite well in some of these regions, we have recently seen our rankings in Edmonton drop by a few spots. I'm wondering if setting up regional pages that have lots of keywords for that region can be detrimental to our overall rankings.Here is one example of a regional page:

http://www.web3.ca/red-deer-web-design

Thanks,

Anton TWeb3 Marketing Inc.

[KempRugeLawGroup]

If you created quality pages, I don't know why it would have hurt your Edmonton pages. Did you check your domain authority to see if dropped? Also, did you run a comparison against the people who are now ahead of you? Did they get new links or improve in some way to jump you?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Anton,

This is a good question. On visiting your Red Deer example page, a few concerns come up:

1. The text content is quite thin on this page. If it's this thin on the other pages, yes, that could be a problem.

2. If the text on the other pages is a duplicate or near-duplicate of the Red Deer page, then that is definitely a problem.

3. The optimization of the Red Deer page seems a bit awkward to me. 'Red Deer' just feels like it has been dropped into the text in a manner that doesn't read very naturally.

4. The text on the Red Deer page needs some TLC. Your major call to action contains an error in word choice:

Call 1-780-760-3333 for a free consolation.

These 4 elements do give some cause for concern that these pages may have been published without a lot of planning or effort going into them. Poorly planned and executed pages with thin or duplicate content can definitely water down the strength of your website. My view is that you need to find a reason for these landing pages to exist; a user-centric reason. What can you tell Red Deer customers about your work for Red Deer businesses that is unique? How does this differ from your Edmonton work?

I think a natural fit for website design firms taking the approach you would like to is to showcase their local clients in each chosen locale. Do awesome project writeups, case studies, infographics about the community, stat sharing, etc., to make each page unique and worth visiting. Never take a cookie cutter approach, or I think it will be readily apparent to Google and humans that you aren't making the most awesome effort you could to be the best possible answer for related queries. Hope this helps!