Creating City Pages

[Toy2004]

Hi All,

- I am planning to create USA city pages, though I don't live in this country.
- We offer online marketing services.
- Those city pages will get rankings within Google organic search (this is NOT Google's 3 pack).
- We don't have a local USA address, but use a local USA city phone number which will forward calls of potentials clients.
- Our website is in English.
- Each city page will have unique content and at some point local reviews by our clients. Showcase work done for local clients. We try to make each city page as much local as we can. Link out to other local websites, if possible. Etc.


I am wondering if our USA city pages will get good rankings, even though we're located in another country?
What is your experience here?


Thanks!
Toy

 

[Eric Rohrback]

They do work, but there's a lot of dependencies.

Like having local pages in every other industry (or country) there is a right and wrong way to do them. The forum is full of threads about this topic, so I recommend searching around and jumping into threads that fit your situation the best.

You will be facing an uphill battle since someone searching for "marketing company {city}" will likely be looking to talk with someone local that can have face to face contact. It's going to be easier for a company established in the city to rank for the same terms you're trying to compete on. See what other companies are doing in the markets you're looking to jump into.

To answer your question, yes it is possible to rank organically. It's doable and there are plenty of ways to make it happen. It just depends what strategy/tactics you're using to get there and whether they are going to work for the specific market/location.

 

[Phil Rozek]

@Toy2004, unless those pages are for extremely niche services (e.g. "Local SEO for Taxidermists in Montana"), or unless you can get some heavy-duty links to those pages, it is unrealistic to expect them to rank.

 

[Toy2004]

Thanks Eric for your reply!

Also, I am wondering what would be best practice regarding structure of my city pages:

OPTION 1 - Let's see you want to rank for keyword 'Search Marketing New York' & our website has already a general page explaining what Search Marketing exactly is.

Example URL could be: company.com/seach-marketing/

To add the new page 'Search Marketing New York' under above mentioned category page /search-marketing/ >> For example: company.com/seach-marketing/new-york/

In this case, I could add a list with anchor texts for the Search Marketing city pages I want to target within the /search-marketing/ page itself.

OPTION 2 - Or I could create a new category page called "locations" company.com/locations/ and show on this page a list with all the city pages I am targeting. By the way, how many city pages would be the max to create to make things not too spammy?

In this case, I will create a URL something like this company.com/locations/search-marketing-new-york/ and link it from the 'locations' page.


Thanks a lot,
Toy

 

[Eric Rohrback]

As Phil said, making pages alone will not work. You need a solid strategy (onpage and offpage) to get those to work. It's not the number of pages, it's what you do with each page.

"Search Marketing New York" would be very tough. Unless you find keywords with very small search volume in underserved markets, it's going to be tough. You need a very comprehensive strategy and need to be prepared to pump a lot of money into marketing to be competitive.

The best way to learn how tough a market could be is through up front research and then live testing.

You'll need to invest in great on-page and build links for it to work.

 

[Toy2004]

Thanks for your reply Eric!

I am aware of the on-page SEO, keyword research, link building & other aspects needed in order to get good "organic" rankings (we're not speaking about the Google 3 pack here).

Regarding OPTION 1 & 2 (= site structure/architecture for Local SEO) as I mentioned in my previous post,

- What would be your pick?
- What would be best practice for Local SEO?

I am not sure if I should create a 'locations' page for the Search Marketing city pages OR to add the city pages under the existing Search Marketing category page.


Much appreciated. Thx.

 

[Toy2004]

Anyone?

 

[Phil Rozek]

@Toy2004, I would *suggest option #1. It's more logical and cleaner.

Because you don't have "locations" in those places, option #2 may confuse or mislead people.

Also, the structure will still make sense even if you decide to get rid of the "city" pages. You'll still have the "/search-marketing" page, and it will still have some functional content. Whereas if you got rid of or moved the "city" pages later, the "/locations" subdirectory wouldn't serve much of a purpose anymore.

(*Not that simply having the right page architecture will necessarily get you anywhere. As I said, this whole strategy is very unlikely to work, as you may discover soon.)

 

[keyserholiday]

Based on your search term plus city, I would advise against attempting to rank. Search Marketing plus cities is not a localized search term, I.e. Google is not showing map pack results. I’d recommend starting off with a ppc campaign to test the waters and see if you get any leads prior to attempting to rank in different locations and markets.

 

[Toy2004]

@Toy2004, I would *suggest option #1. It's more logical and cleaner.

Because you don't have "locations" in those places, option #2 may confuse or mislead people.

Also, the structure will still make sense even if you decide to get rid of the "city" pages. You'll still have the "/search-marketing" page, and it will still have some functional content. Whereas if you got rid of or moved the "city" pages later, the "/locations" subdirectory wouldn't serve much of a purpose anymore.

(*Not that simply having the right page architecture will necessarily get you anywhere. As I said, this whole strategy is very unlikely to work, as you may discover soon.)

Thanks for your answer Phil!

I did some competitor research and noticed that many other sites using this strategy successfully:

Targeting different city keyword phrases and ranking on the first page of Google (organic results). They don't have office addresses at the city they target!

I am aware keywords to target can't be too competitive & content needs to be well SEO optimized, unique compared to my other city pages, making it local as much as possible (client reviews from that particular city, showcase videos of clients who live in this city, etc.)

If needed, also link building will be part of the process to push the page up in the rankings (I guess most other sites are able to rank those city pages so high, because of link building they doing for that page or overall on their site).

 

[Toy2004]

Based on your search term plus city, I would advise against attempting to rank. Search Marketing plus cities is not a localized search term, I.e. Google is not showing map pack results. I’d recommend starting off with a ppc campaign to test the waters and see if you get any leads prior to attempting to rank in different locations and markets.

Thanks for your reply!

Not sure what you mean.

If you search for term "New York SEO" (example), there's a Google 3-pack displayed.

Anyway, I can't show up in this listing since I don't have an address there. The city pages I want to create have the purpose of getting rankings in the organic results of Google (below the 3-pack).

Doing PPC for a term like "New York SEO" could be an option for me when let see you rank already #1 organically, get also leads from this term & invest part of your revenue into PPC to make your overall power on that page stronger! Right now doing PPC is not an option for me.