SEO and IP based content

[ebk]

Hello,

We are building a guide/directory that will service multiple cities across Canada.  Currently, our home page will detect your IP, and display local content on the home page.  Although we feel this is incredibly useful to the end user, we are worried about how search engines will interpret our home page.

In addition to our home page, should we have landing pages for each city that we are in?

and should we follow site structure like this? www.thesite.com/vancouver

So if a user from Vancouver goes to our home page, they will see Vancouver related content, but how would a search engine see the home page?

We would like to know the best approach to placing well for searches in different Canadian cities.

Most of our searches will be city specific: Calgary widgets, Vancouver widgets, etc.

Thanks

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Hi Eric,

I don't have many specifics on what the search engines specifically think about this, but I won't stay away from personalising your home page based on the data you have on a user as it's mostly likely that the user has some impact on what he wants to see. In our case as well we have to show different ad servers for different countries which will change the experience of the user based on certain countries. That shouldn't be an issue for the user but also not for the search engines as they must have the feeling that a user is being taken care off.

Hope this helps!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Eric,

Local SEO is my area of skill, and what I can tell you from that perspective is that a directory like yours will not actually be able to achieve local pack rankings in Google, because those are entirely based on physical address, not on content. So, rather, what your goal should be would be to rank well organically beneath the local packs for your core searches. You will be competing against the likes of YP and Yelp and can use their structure as a guide for how to build a directory like theirs. But, beyond this, we get outside of my area of knowledge and so I hope you'll receive some more traditional SEO advice, vs. Local SEO advice.

[RuthBurrReedy]

Since most of your searches will be city specific, I would definitely recommend having landing pages for each city. There, you can go into more detail about the specific widgets for each city and what makes them unique.

It's fine to have some localized content served up on your home page, but I would recommend having some static, non-dynamic content there as well. Spend some time thinking about what the "default" version of the page would be. A good question to try to answer is: what should a user see if they're coming to the site from an IP you don't have content for, or even an IP outside of Canada? A home page is a great place to show who you are in a broader sense, and give users and search engines an idea of what you're about and why they should trust you. You can include that information along with a modicum of local-focused content that appears based on the user's IP address, that encourages them to click through to the local-specific landing page where they can get more in-depth information. I hope that helps!