Question/Problem - Trying to rank one landing page in multiple cities

[chadisa]

Hey guys - I hope I am posting this in the correct section.

I have been out of the local SEO game for awhile and now I am drawing a blank on the correct strategy I need to use and I was hoping someone could point me in the right direction.

So I have a client that has a physical location in City A, but they also want to show up organically for the surrounding cities B,C and D. I know that the Google My Business profile "should" take care of the ranking in City A part but my problem is with ranking for the other cities as well.

To make things worse I am pretty sure I am only going to get one landing page to try and rank for all 3 cities. So my question(s) are 1) can you even do that, specifically using on landing page instead of specific ones for each city? 2)If you can, what are the best practices and 3) What sort of anchor text should I use for the backlinks going to that landing page?

The anchor text part of the question is probably an entirely different conversation but I guess I want to know if I need to have anchor text that is focusing on just the niche or do I still need to create anchor text like "city B + niche" or "niche City C"?

I hope that all makes sense and I really appreciate any insight you might have.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Hey guys - I hope I am posting this in the correct section.

I have been out of the local SEO game for awhile and now I am drawing a blank on the correct strategy I need to use and I was hoping someone could point me in the right direction.

So I have a client that has a physical location in City A, but they also want to show up organically for the surrounding cities B,C and D. I know that the Google My Business profile "should" take care of the ranking in City A part but my problem is with ranking for the other cities as well.

To make things worse I am pretty sure I am only going to get one landing page to try and rank for all 3 cities. So my question(s) are 1) can you even do that, specifically using on landing page instead of specific ones for each city? 2)If you can, what are the best practices and 3) What sort of anchor text should I use for the backlinks going to that landing page?

The anchor text part of the question is probably an entirely different conversation but I guess I want to know if I need to have anchor text that is focusing on just the niche or do I still need to create anchor text like "city B + niche" or "niche City C"?

I hope that all makes sense and I really appreciate any insight you might have.

1) You can if the surrounding cities have low competition. If they are high competition then you would be using 1 landing page with many cities targeted (effectively splitting your keyword concentration) vs competition potentially using their homepage (more powerful than a landing page) with total keyword concentration on one of the ancillary cities.

2) If you can only use one landing page? Using the city in the text somewhere is about all you can do onpage wise. Ideally, you'd like a landing page for each city.

3) Be careful with the anchor text. Maybe use one as an exact match but it needs to be watered down with our backlinks that vary anchor text wildly. Cities in the anchor text are best.

 

[chadisa]

yeah its definitely not the most ideal situation. I am going to see if I can get a landing page created that covers as many surrounding cities without being obnoxious.

 

[Kladproraba]

Hi I will tell you how you can bring the business in different cities in the first position: use subdomains, this works well. A bit difficult, it takes time, but it will be a good solution.

 

[Linda Buquet]

The way the local algo works, it's really tough to rank in cities you aren't located in, depending on the niche and competition as Joshua said. So be sure your efforts to rank in multiple cities does not water down your ability to rank well for the city they are actually in. And like he said, home page usually ranks better than a landing page.

 

[James Watt]

What everyone else said, especially that you should expect to need multiple landing pages for multiple cities unless they're very low competition. If you haven't seen it yet, there was a great thread about a year ago with a lot of local landing page examples, it might be a good place to start brainstorming what you can suggest to your client if you decided to go the multiple page route.

 

[Kladproraba]

James correctly says, use the landing pages as templates, to save money - use subdomains. On one domain you can create many subdomains for free with the consoles need cities, this approach will allow you to promote resources in different cities and regions, you will be able to rank high in the search engines leading the way. One more thing: for greater savings, you can use as a template - one template, but do not forget that the descriptions need a bit of to do unique to each city. A lot of work to do. With this approach - you will succeed. Good luck

 

[JoshuaMackens]

I would encourage you to use subfolders instead of subdomains. There is still some debate on which to use but after Moz's study on their blog and the massive increase they saw from moving the blog from the subdomain to a subfolder, I'm sold on subfolders, at least until someone comes out with a new study proving otherwise

 

[James Watt]

I'm with Joshua. I've heard from Google themselves that it shouldn't matter, but I've seen a lot from the actual SEO trenches to show that subdomains are not the way to go. For local landing pages and city silos especially, I think you're always better off with subfolders.

Here's a whiteboard friday from last year where Randy goes over his reasons for choosing subfolders over subdomains. That said, Klad, I'm always interested in learning something new. If you have some studies to back up subdomains being better, I'd be interested in seeing them. Я могу читать по-русски, if that helps.

 

[Kladproraba]

Welcome James just 2 months ago, I gave you the examples from your online store, but I was forced to close his online store, now I redid it just in the website services, simply "hide" the store on the website. I decided to leave, I just got tired of it, I decided to learn programming. Here is my website [removed]. I worked in the English-speaking market with the primary domain. But then I decided URL to create separate stores on subdomains, here's an example of my subdomains: ru.mysite.com (Russia) and ua.mysite.com (Ukraine). I created subdomains for different countries. And this method worked! I took this idea from Russian experts search Yandex, studied the lessons. In these lessons, they told how you can create subdomains for different cities and regions. Now, I'm here to give you a link to lessons like those that I studied, if you would be interested, you can look for more lessons on YouTube. I wish you success and good luck

 

[James Watt]

Ah, I see. Subdomains for local cities are a very different beast than what you're describing. For different languages, you're absolutely right, subdomains are the best approach. For a local small businesses looking to rank in new cities though (like the OP in this thread) subfolders are what you should use instead. After all, local landing pages are going to be clusters of 2 or 3 pages at most, it doesn't make a lot of sense to put that on a whole subdomain, especially with a fair bit of evidence that it can hurt rankings. You might still be able to make it work, but it's much easier to just use subfolders. In your case though, with a whole online store in different countries and languages, subdomains are definitely what you should be using. I hope that makes sense.

Thanks for the link, Спасибо!