How many different location pages is allowed?

[mikepcservice]

Here in NY I would like to target 4 Boroughs [Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Bronx] and thinking of creating a separate page for each, is this allowed and if yes, any rule by google showing max amount of location pages please?

 

[Tony Wang]

I think those 4 location pages would be fine, there's no rule about how many you can have. Just make sure they are good quality pages, not just cut and paste with city/name change.

On the other hand, in such a densely populated area as NY, I would think competition is so high you might not get much traction, so you may not want to invest time into creating 4 great pages, maybe start with one or two and see how it goes.

 

[mikepcservice]

Every Marketer I have ever spoken to have told me that you would need to have a physical location in another area outside of yours in order to dedicate a page to it to stay within Google's rules, this is my query.

I had a Construction guy contact me years ago asking if I can rank him in all Boroughs and I told him no. He had said he could not get anyone to do it for him.

 

[studentoflife]

There is no limit at all. Some people will say that city based landing pages are doorway pages and against Google guidelines. But the truth is that they work well. You need to make sure that they are full of unique content, essentially a homepage for that area.

The issue is when you have the same exact page copied 15 (or 150) times on the website and the only thing that is changed is the name of the town.

If you make different pages filled with different content and focus on a town, that’s not against Google’s guidelines.

I’m right across the river from you and I have landing pages for a bunch of different small towns that I work in. They rank very well and I get a lot of calls from these pages.

Your construction guy friend probably couldn’t get his page to rank due to the super high competition in New York City. Plus he might not have been using a high-level SEO Pro.

 

[mikepcservice]

Ok, very well put, thank you very much! Instead of focusing on "towns" of which there are hundreds in NYC, I will create pages for the 4 boroughs using your guidelines.

What about Long Island? I have customers from LI who find me from google search and Craigslist. I am bordered by Brooklyn on one side and Valley Stream Long Island on the other side, can I create pages "legally" for LI too please since LI is not one of the 5 Boroughs of NYC?

 

[Yan Gilbert]

There are no limits to what web pages you can create on your site. If you want to create a page that is optimized for Valley Stream, then go for it. Whether it ranks or not is another matter, but there won't be a penalty by doing so.

 

[mikepcservice]

Thanks. So the idea would be simply to create fresh content around the kw's adding that Borough's name to each kw and that would be it?

 

[studentoflife]

That is a good start, but that’s not it.

The population of New York City is over 8 million people, then another 8 million people in Long Island. My entire state only has 8 million people.

The point I’m trying to make is that your competition is super high, and some area/borough based landing pages aren’t going to do much on their own. You’re going to have to get some good links going to them.

 

[mikepcservice]

Got it, thanks! One last thing on this please, NY has 4 Boroughs should need only 4 pages, in the case of Long Island since there are many "towns", what's the best way I can target them since it won't be realistic to create a page for each town?

 

[studentoflife]

Maybe one of the pros who is more familiar with New York can step in. I’m not sure, but I would think advertising to an entire borough or all of Long Island is a bit too general and not going to get you much traction.

 

[Yan Gilbert]

Always start with the keyword research and trying to match how people search. In the case of Valley Stream, it's big enough that people would search for 'service + Valley Stream'.

However, for example (since I am from the area), there are a bunch of smaller towns nearby (Lawrence, Cedarhurst, Woodmere, Hewlett and Inwood) which locals collectively call the 'the five towns', so instead of a page for each of those towns, you could create one page targeting The Five Towns + service and make sure you mention all the towns on that page.

 

[mikepcservice]

Thanks, yes Five Towns is close by too. I had wanted to target all towns through which the LIRR runs as that's where people come to me from, even from out in Suffolk too.

@studentoflife
I am considering that but no way around this as Queens alone has 39 Cities/Towns.

 

[Tony Wang]

@mikepcservice I think the point we're making is that the area is so densely populated, the competition will be massive. It's highly unlikely you'll get on the first page of all those locations for good kw's. Do some competitor research first, to see what you're up against.

And it will probably require a LOT more than just a page focused on the kw with the town/borough name sprinkled in. I recall Phil Rozek did a post on his blog some years ago about city pages, probably still has some good points.

As for all those marketing people that said you need a physical address in each location you're targeting, they're probably referring to the local pack, not the pure organic results.

 

[mikepcservice]

I think the main issue here guys would be since I cannot target every town in each borough so would only be able to use the Borough name, would it be worth it to create separate pages for Queens, Brooklyn, Bronx, Manhattan and Long Island?

If not, as in the case of the Construction mentioned, for the pure organic results is there anything at all which any Marketer can do to target customers in each borough please?

 

[studentoflife]

You can make a borough page for each borough and then get really good links to each one of the borough pages.

On-page SEO alone is not going to be enough in such a high competition area.

 

[mikepcservice]

Thanks, of course, I would create manual backlinks for each borough.

 

[Tony Wang]

Personally, I think you have no chance of ranking in so many places in NY. If you can find any business that ranks all over NY for any type of decent kw, it's because they're a pretty good sized business that invested quite a bit of money in SEO.

As I said, do a competitor analysis in all the areas you want to target and focus on the one you think you can most easily rank in. Work on that and see what happens before investing time/money in the whole city.