Location vs Service Area vs Geo Pages?

[Jessica C]

Hello! I am a photographer located in Los Angeles, CA serving clients at my home studio. I use a service area on my GMP, no physical address. I offer 4 types of photography: maternity, newborn, baby and family. All at my one home studio- I do not travel to clients or meet them at other locations. All clients come to my home studio.

While "Los Angeles" is my biggest city and my home page targets "Los Angeles", I would also like to target 14 additional smaller cities around me, as these cities are where many of our clients come from. I assumed I would add additional pages to my website to cover each of these cities. BUT what type of page, I am not clear on.

When researching the best approach for this, I'm not entirely sure whether I should focus on best practices for location pages, service area pages, or geo pages—since, to be honest, they all seem pretty similar to me!

Should I be creating a page for EACH smaller city + type of photography service? That would be 4 (types of photography) x14 (cities)= 56 pages!

I am clear that each city page should have unique and local content and I have read all of these articles:
https://www.sterlingsky.ca/how-to-create-unique-and-helpful-service-area-pages-for-local-businesses/
https://www.sterlingsky.ca/service-area-pages-duplicate-content/
https://www.sterlingsky.ca/service-area-pages-duplicate-content/

Do you have any insight on the additional page structures I want to add or examples of successful website structures from a similar business standpoint- one physical home location but service area on GMP, clients come to you only, but want to target other cities around you?

thank you!

 

[fisicx]

Each time you take some pictures upload to a blog post with some details about the session. The key element will be the location of the client. You then create categories for each location. Google will soon pick these up and rank you accordingly.

If you can include the customer testimonial on the post so much the better.

And you also add in related posts (eg: clients in the same location).

What you don't need a location pages. These fell out of favour with Google many years ago. But Google lurves categories. Even better when you have a good description at the top of the page.

The homepage of your site would display your recent photography sessions. This will give Google a good route to all your shiny new content.

 

[Jessica C]

Each time you take some pictures upload to a blog post with some details about the session. The key element will be the location of the client. You then create categories for each location. Google will soon pick these up and rank you accordingly.

If you can include the customer testimonial on the post so much the better.

And you also add in related posts (eg: clients in the same location).

What you don't need a location pages. These fell out of favour with Google many years ago. But Google lurves categories. Even better when you have a good description at the top of the page.

The homepage of your site would display your recent photography sessions. This will give Google a good route to all your shiny new content.

thank you very very much. there is alot of information out there on location pages, service pages, geo pages- gets overwhelming.

so you are saying, for my business situation, that I do NOT need additional location pages?
For example: domain.com/newborn-photography-monrovia

I thought that would help. I have seen some competitors rank well with what looks like a multi service location page, example url: competitor.com/maternity-newborn-baby-family-photography- arcadia

 

[fisicx]

so you are saying, for my business situation, that I do NOT need additional location pages?
For example: domain.com/newborn-photography-monrovia

No you don't. What you need is proof that you deliver services to clients in that area. Hence writing all the blog posts.

I helped out a wedding photographer in the UK who posted portfolios for each wedding location. Brides would be searching for locations and see his blog posts for that location. It worked really well.

In your case someone looking for newborn photographers in their area would see your blog posts for that area.

Remember, nobody cares about you. What they want are the pictures of their rugrat. So show them lots of pictures you took in an Anne Geddes style or whatever. If the new parents like the pictures they will then pick up the phone and call.