SEO for Company with Broad Service Area

[Local Web Strategies]

So I have a dilemma... Client has a broad service area that includes 5 major cities, 3 phone numbers (each has different area code), one physical address, and Google My Business + all citiations built for one address.

I have some idea about what needs to be done, but what would you do? Any tips? Just wanna see if I'm on the right track.

TIA

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Hi Tia,

What are your ideas? Would be curious to hear those.

I wouldn't expect the GMB page to rank in all five of those cities. It can be next to impossible to rank for any cities outside of the actual city that the business is located in.

Focus on organic traffic for the other cities. Create optimized pages for each city.

And invest in some Adwords as well.

 

[Local Web Strategies]

Hi Tia,

What are your ideas? Would be curious to hear those.

I wouldn't expect the GMB page to rank in all five of those cities. It can be next to impossible to rank for any cities outside of the actual city that the business is located in.

Focus on organic traffic for the other cities. Create optimized pages for each city.

And invest in some Adwords as well.

Yep, I totally agree. I think it will be impossible to rank all the other cities with the one GMB listing. So the plan is to get addresses for each city and create separate GMB listings. Right now all three phone number are on the header, do you think this is confusing GMB since there is only one listing associated with one phone number right now?

Already have custom pages for each city established. And already running Adwords.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

So the plan is to get addresses for each city and create separate GMB listings.

I personally wouldn't advise this as a strategy. It's not a sustainable approach and with the current iteration of the GMB guidelines would lead to those listings being deleted/suspended.

Here's the guidelines.

Service-area businesses
Service-area businesses--business that serve customers at their locations--should have one page for the central office or location and designate a service area from that point.

 

[Local Web Strategies]

Hmmm... Thanks for this!

 

[Colan Nielsen]

You're welcome. Glad I could help.

 

[Over The Top SEO]

Hey Tia,

We have several clients with the exact same situation,
The most important thing like Mr. Colan suggested is that you distinguish the difference between each service area.

That can be done by adding local area pages within your client's website, refining your home page to interlink to those pages, easy access to those areas anywhere within the website, and if you want to go and take it a step further, develop the website so it can identify the visitor by their IP address and localize it to the destination in the website, for example if the client is from Seattle and their IP address the website will automatically push that visitor to see the content for the Service Area page.

In terms of rankings and GMB, the citations needs to be created PER page (PER AREA) with unique NAP for each, preferably LOCAL CITATIONS either from the same city or from local website.

Just a few suggestions, hope this helps a bit.