Homepage ranking for one location - how to expand to another city?

[leadjoint]

I have a client who is high authority for their location. We have been optimizing his website for more than two years for Location 1. Now he wishes to expand to Location 2.

The challenge I see is this: The entire website (including the homepage) is optimized for Location 1. Ideally, now that we have two locations, we need to have two pages targeted at the two locations and have a generic homepage that talks about both the locations.

But doing so could possibly cost me my ranking for Location 1.

What I have in mind is this:

1. Do not make any change to the homepage or any other section.
2. Create a new page for Location 2 and try optimizing this page for the keywords related to Location 2.

But this is clumsy and not user-friendly at all since the homepage will continue to talk about Location 1 while Location 2 is showcased as a separate page.

How do you think I should handle this? Any best practices you could share?

 

[JacobMaslow]

Don't sacrifice useability for SEO especially on the home page.

You should be able to make minor changes without sacrificing SEO.

You can also put banner ads or images about the new location on the home page. If it is word press site, I am sure there are plug ins that can do a "hello bar" on the top of the page.

If you don't touch the Home page but have a big banner or something calling attention to the change, you don't have to immediately make edits.

I have a client who is high authority for their location. We have been optimizing his website for more than two years for Location 1. Now he wishes to expand to
Location 2.

The challenge I see is this: The entire website (including the homepage) is optimized for Location 1. Ideally, now that we have two locations, we need to have two pages targeted at the two locations and have a generic homepage that talks about both the locations.

But doing so could possibly cost me my ranking for Location 1.

What I have in mind is this:

1. Do not make any change to the homepage or any other section.
2. Create a new page for Location 2 and try optimizing this page for the keywords related to Location 2.

But this is clumsy and not user-friendly at all since the homepage will continue to talk about Location 1 while Location 2 is showcased as a separate page.

How do you think I should handle this? Any best practices you could share?

 

[leadjoint]

Thanks Jacob, this is the strategy I am planning to go with. Anybody got ideas on how to make this better or do you think this could affect the rankings for the site?

Current status : Ranking for CITY A with all pages targeted to CITY A.

Step 1 : Create separate pages for CITY A and CITY B - include separate phone numbers, areas served, map, address in each of these two CITY pages.

Step 2 : Modify the content on homepage to talk about both CITY A and CITY B (right now, it only contains information about CITY A)

Step 3 : After the two new pages have been indexed, modify the title of the homepage to include both CITY A and CITY B

This seems straight forward. Is there something else you would have done differently?