What Are Your Thoughts On Location Targeted Pages?

[netviper]

I have a client that wants to rank for a bunch of locations around his primary location. Say 30 minutes away.  So we created a bunch of pages for cities around his location.  So far it seems to be working pretty well.  That said, I heard from someone else that Google really doesn't like these type of pages anymore and that we are better off with just one location page and list the areas we server on it.

What are your thoughts and experiences?

[RobertFisher]

Netviper

I would first offer a simple suggestion whenever someone says, Google doesn't or Google does... Ask them where they read it or saw it. (Obviously, hearing it is not very beneficial.) That said, I politely disagree with whomever said that.

We have clients that are service area businesses and they have a need to be present when someone looks for example for a plumber. So, Houston Plumber and neighborhood A, B, C, D.... What you must do, is be careful regarding local and how you set it up. Do not go out and get UPS addresses, virtual addresses, etc. for these communities. You should have one location for each real address that is a business address that your client has. If they only have one in the city, that is it. Make sure that Name, Address, and Phone is always the same. IF you are going to want to use a different phone number for a given community (typically for tracking purposes), make sure you do it as an image on the web page, no HTML and no alt text with number, etc. Forever (or until things change) you will have the same NAP for the entire city unless it is a tracking number that is not crawled.

For every page you create for a community I suggest the following. Go shoot some photos or have them shot, etc. using a camera or phone with GPS and use one or two of those on your page. Talk about that area and the business and as best possible, try not to make every page the same. Find ways to add a paragraph or two that are real differentiators for that locale.

Doing this, you should have some success with meeting the needs of your client.

Best

Robert

[David-Kley]

"I would first offer a simple suggestion whenever someone says, Google doesn't or Google does... Ask them where they read it or saw it."

I agree with Robert here. Chances are the person you heard it from tried it and did not implement it correctly, and therefore because it didnt work for them, means it wont work for you. Lol.

"City" pages are one of the most effective ways to drive traffic for additional service areas. We have used these multiple times with great success. Having individual location pages with a exclusive URL, page title, content, meta description and links can help you rank in areas outside your major competitive areas. For example:

Lawn care guy serves St Louis. We set up pages for surrounding areas. Focus on St Louis for main site content, while mentioning the other areas. For the city pages, we only focus on that one area. All content is unique for each page (important) and we see how we can include certain details that are specific to that one area. Images, links, alt text are all named appropriately to that location. You can always include wiki info, maps, images or other media to help a user (and search engine) immediately understand what the page is about. Set up a variety of tracking methods as Robert stated to further help users decide that the service provider is "local". People will be more likely to call a local number for service showing their area code than a 800 or 855. Tossible digits has them for cheap, or you can use Google voice. As stated before DO NOT USE VIRTUAL ADDRESSES, or a UPS suite. You want to add to the value of your site, not hurt it.

[netviper]

Thanks for the responses guys.  Sounds like you both think using location pages is still a good way to go as long as you are not trying to fake having a location where you do not.