16 Tips for Creating UNIQUE City Landing Page Content

[Linda Buquet]

As you know, in competitive markets you'll typically only rank in the city you are located in - in the pack. So if you want to rank in the surrounding cities you serve, you need to focus on organic search.
That means tight city-focused pages with unique content.

Phil Rozek offers some dynamite tips.

16 Ways to Create Unique “Local” Content for Cities Where You Want to Rank
LocalVisibilitySystem.com

Are you creating pages on your site that target specific cities where you want to rank well in the organic search results for local businesses?

If so, you’d be crazy not to spend a little time making those pages unique – that is, clearly and substantially different from each other.

I’m going to show you a bunch of ways to make your “city pages” unique. As opposed to having a page for “city1 + keyword,” another page for “city2 + keyword,” etc.

Differentiating your pages will help you avoid (1) possibly being penalized by Google and (2) annoying and repelling your potential customers.

I wanted to expand a bit on Phil's tip #6. Google lives and breathes links. Google follows links.
So those well chosen outbound links can be golden and help her see this page is locally focused.

Depending on the niche you could have a small paragraph of local resources or tourist attractions. Or you could mention a couple local points of interest "We are conveniently located 2 miles from the Santa Monica South mall and just down the road from the Santa Monica Pier".

Or here's another idea - you could link to other complimentary businesses in that particular city. For instance a Dentist could say. "Looking for other ways to look and feel your best? Consider Dr John Smith for Cosmetic Surgery, Anna's Salon for a make-over or Tranquil Day Spa for a rejuvenating massage.
(You never know, they may even give you a link back some day.)

Any other ideas for local content?

 

[Phil Rozek]

Landmarks in the anchor text? Great call, Linda!

 

[iggypop]

Thanks for providing that information it is very useful thanks again.

 

[Phil Rozek]

No problem! BTW, great name (I love Iggy Pop).

 

[Thos003]

Multiple locations businesses should absolutely have a unique landing page for each of their locations.

Further, creating pages with additional GEO content is a great tactic. At Bulwark we created local resource pages that have helped in the past. But we watch them as well to see if these pages get traffic. If the page doesn't get traffic then it's probably not the quality content that Google is looking for. In which case we scrap the page.

 

[Phil Rozek]

Good thinking, Thomas.

 

[Laustin1878]

Phil, thank you for sharing some tips. How do you typically cover a wider area with your geo-targeted pages? Say for an area outside of the one a business occupies, where there are many smaller towns nestled in. Do you resort to county geo-targeting or city limit type targeting?

The geo-graphical areas I'm looking to target have many, many smaller cities/villages that fit inside of a county. The county geo-terms are fairly saturated. Just curious if you found a successful way to target more areas than 1 city at a time.

I've been able to get client contact sheets and build local content from them. It has the city, information about what they are looking for/type of service and what the end result was. I have been successful in getting some smaller towns to rank well but they don't deliver much traffic. I assume it's because they are very targeted but should someone hit the page, it should convert. These have worked very well in the past. Just another idea to help find easy content ideas.

 

[Phil Rozek]

Good question, but it just depends on the specific local market.

 

[Marcel Bagrin]

Great content!

What about using a script to create different variations of keywords and cities with the purpose of building a separate landing page for the city with the specific keyword.

Let's say we have:

location 1
location 2
location 3

and:

serivce 1
service 2
service 3

In the end, there should be 9 combinations created, like this:

location 1 service 1, location 1 service 2, location 1 service 3, location 2 service 1...

, with totally unique content for each page as the script supports spin format which can be used not only for regular text but also for html.

There is actually a plugin in Wordpress named Local Page Ninja which now operates under the name of SERPShaker and I've heard people use it with success.

Anyways, question is: does anyone of you have had any success using this method?
I will surely do an experiment myself but wanted to hear your oppinion on that as you have a bit of background in this field.

Cheers.

 

[bczubiak]

If I was Google and detected a plugin on your site called local page ninja or serp whacker or Fool Google Now Pro, I would send your rankings so far down under ground that you would need a plugin called " I apologize Google For Trying To Trick You" to maybe get you back in the game.

 

[Marcel Bagrin]

Either way, this can be done manually too but will be time consuming. I would like your oppinion on the whole concept of creating specific landing pages for each location and each keyword (service) and ranking them organically.

 

[Linda Buquet]

If I was Google and detected a plugin on your site called local page ninja or serp whacker or Fool Google Now Pro, I would send your rankings so far down under ground that you would need a plugin called " I apologize Google For Trying To Trick You" to maybe get you back in the game.

ROFLMAO.

I could not have said that better myself Bob!

 

[Phil Rozek]

@Marcel

I would not suggest creating pages for all the location-keyword combinations. Sure, create a page for each specific service you offer, and possibly a page for each town you serve. But don't do all the permutations. They're not even likely to rank well, especially in competitive markets. (And why should they? To Google and certainly to would-be customers, there's nothing special about stamped-out content.)