Services + Suburbs Silo Structure

[flyingfox82]

Hi Everyone.

I've been doing SEO for about 10 years and I'm wanting to run a bit of an experiment now. I run a computer repairs service in Sydney and I have had a few of my websites where I have a home page for a city such as Sydney but then I create individual pages for the suburb with the URL computerrepairssydney.com.au/computer-repairs-sunnybank for example and it seems as though I rank for the less competitive suburbs. Previously I would include the suburb list on the home page without a page for that suburb and that did not ranked very badly - so it would appear that a page for a suburb is a much better technique.

What is everyone's thoughts for the following;

1. If I offer Virus removal, Laptop Services, and Computer Services - would it be better to have all those pages separately for that suburb and have them all link up together.

2. Could I offer all these services on one central page to avoid creating multiple pages

2. Should I have a main page for that suburb (Without any services talk - more generic stuff about that suburb) but then have links to virus removal and laptop services and computer services from that page

3. I've seen a new trend where instead of just /computer-repairs-suburb people are now starting to do /sydney/northern-beaches/computer-repairs-suburb
Does anyone have any info on if this works better than just the services name + suburb (it probably is better to google as google know's where it is as opposed to just a keyword)

So just after people's thoughts about create these type of Silos. The frustrating thing is if you have so many suburb pages, updating them can be a pain in the ass. Ideally I would just like to have a page on all the services that I offer (about 5) but then somehow get these services rankings for these suburbs.

I've got about 5 new sites that I'm wanting to test on different ways to do this. Would love anyone's feedback or if anyone is aware of other posts talking about these silo type jobs, I would love to see that, but have already done some searching. Happy if someone is willing to help me, I can share the results with them as well.

Thanks so much.

 

[PatrickP]

I've worked on a number of sites that use the same structure you've outlined. I'm sure other users on the forum have as well. Some answers to your questions + additional thoughts:

1. The short answer is that you will generally rank better for service + city queries if you have an individual page for each service + city combination.

2, Whether you create individual service + suburb pages or not, you should have a central page for each suburb, with the following format:

• The central page should target the main keyword or set of keywords that you use for your business (so "computer repairs" and variants thereof).
• The central page should mention the core services you offer in that city. This could be a bullet point list of core services. Alternatively, you could create subsections on the page for service categories like "Desktop Computer Repairs", "Laptop Repairs," etc. with a short section of descriptive content.
• If you create individual service + suburb pages, the central page should then link out to those pages (and vice versa).

3. I usually use the following structure for URLs in suburb silos if a business is targeting a single metro area on their website:

• Central suburb page: /suburb/
• Service + suburb page: /suburb/service-keyword/

Sometimes I'll use a slightly different structure for businesses targeting multiple cities, but I always set up the individual service pages as child pages of the main suburb page. That helps Google understand the relationship between the pages, and it makes it easier to filter pages when analyzing data.

4. This type of structure will improve rankings for individual service + suburb keywords, but there are some big caveats to keep in mind:

• These pages will improve rankings in organic search, but they will have minimal impact on rankings in local search. On these types of queries, most of the traffic goes to local search. Because of this, suburb landing pages don't always generate a lot of traffic, even if they rank well.
• As you mentioned, creating unique pages for individual service + suburb combinations requires a lot of content. The content needs to be unique on each page for these pages to rank well, which can make them resource intensive to create. And, as you mentioned, it makes it harder to maintain content.
• In this situation, I would advise a pilot project on one of your websites where you add content for 3 to 5 suburbs. Once those pages are live, track rankings and traffic for the next 3 months. That should give you a sense of (a) whether the content you're producing is strong enough to rank for these keywords; (b) what kind of traffic these rankings are generating; and (c) whether it's worth investing in additional content for other suburbs.