How to approach location targeting for a business in the suburbs?

[webjay]

Hey everyone! I'd love to hear your thoughts on this:

If a local service area business is located outside of a large city but only serves the suburbs/smaller cities north of the city, how should they approach location targeting on the home and service pages?

For example, a plumbing business is located in Grapevine, TX (roughly 30 min north of Dallas-Fort Worth). They serve the surrounding suburbs north of Dallas-Fort Worth (Coppell, Carrollton, Keller, Irving, Lewisville, etc), but not the big cities themselves. A good chunk of customers are from Grapevine, but business is pretty spread out throughout the surrounding cities.

Should the home page target Grapevine since they're located there, or stay general like "Plumber in North DFW", with a separate service area page for Grapevine and other suburbs? Similarly, should the general service pages like Drain Cleaning, Water Heaters, etc stay broad or target Grapevine?

Although Grapevine is where they're located, the concern is around the user experience and limiting the audience if everything mentions Grapevine as opposed to the broader North DFW metro area. But, another concern is that a service area page for Grapevine wouldn't rank as highly as the home page.

Thanks!
Jay

 

[ElizabethRule]

Great question!

Do they plan to expand to more offices outside of Grapevine in the future? If yes, I would keep the homepage more general, and then have a location page for Grapevine. You can target a keyword like "North DFW" on the homepage if that gets any search volume.

Then make sure you have service area pages for every single city/town they service. These service area pages should mention all your services, as the goal is to rank those for "plumber in [city]" searches. Service Area Pages SEO: Learn How To Use Local SEO for Service Area Businesses with Examples!

As for the service pages, I would keep those general as well and maybe target "North DFW" (again if it gets search volume, if it doesn't maybe there is another term for the broader area they service you can use.)

Make sure to optimize for "near me" on every page Does Optimizing Content for "Near Me" Work for Local SEO? Sterling Sky Blog

 

[webjay]

Great question!

Do they plan to expand to more offices outside of Grapevine in the future? If yes, I would keep the homepage more general, and then have a location page for Grapevine. You can target a keyword like "North DFW" on the homepage if that gets any search volume.

Then make sure you have service area pages for every single city/town they service. These service area pages should mention all your services, as the goal is to rank those for "plumber in [city]" searches. Service Area Pages SEO: Learn How To Use Local SEO for Service Area Businesses with Examples!

As for the service pages, I would keep those general as well and maybe target "North DFW" (again if it gets search volume, if it doesn't maybe there is another term for the broader area they service you can use.)

Make sure to optimize for "near me" on every page Does Optimizing Content for "Near Me" Work for Local SEO? Sterling Sky Blog

Thank you for your answer - I appreciate it!

They do not plan on opening any new locations outside of Grapevine in the foreseeable future. They are a service area business, but choose to list their address on the website footer as of now.

Would this mean that it's worth considering targeting Grapevine on the main pages then? The part I'm caught up on is the balance between the user experience and SEO benefit. Since they service many more suburbs, some of which are just as populated, we don't want it to seem as though they are limited to just Grapevine, and then a visitor who's located 25 min away clicks off as a result. However, I know the home page has more ranking power as opposed to service area pages, so we want to give them the best chance to rank for their main location.

Curious if that changes the approach at all.

 

[ElizabethRule]

Yeah, given all that, I would stick with my original assessment still and not target Grapevine on the homepage and sitewide. Stick with a Grapevine location page to do all the heavy lifting in Grapevine - this might be all you need to rank well in that area! Then, build out comprehensive SAPs for all your other target cities/towns.

 

[webjay]

Yeah, given all that, I would stick with my original assessment still and not target Grapevine on the homepage and sitewide. Stick with a Grapevine location page to do all the heavy lifting in Grapevine - this might be all you need to rank well in that area! Then, build out comprehensive SAPs for all your other target cities/towns.

Great! That's the approach I was hoping for. Thanks again for your input on this - I appreciate it!