Siloing multiple locations (nationally)

[Elliot]

I'm working with a client in the home services industry who has several locations nationwide, as far east as Georgia and as far west as Utah.

I would say there are about 4-5 main keywords in this niche (tree service industry) that could have location modifiers with it.

After investigating several big national brands, I notice most of them just have a single city page, and their services are housed under the corporate level.

e.g. Roto-Rooter has rotorooter.com/roswellga but their sewer drain cleaning is under the main domain, rotorooter.com/commercial/drain-services/sewer-drain-cleaning/

So my real question is why not target sewer drain cleaning FOR roswell, ga... and every other city they're in, as opposed to just targeting it as a national keyword? Should I just focus on the domain.com/city SEO or am I leaving a lot of low hanging fruit by not building out individual service pages for each of my location pages?

 

[JoshuaMackens]

I'm working with a client in the home services industry who has several locations nationwide, as far east as Georgia and as far west as Utah.

I would say there are about 4-5 main keywords in this niche (tree service industry) that could have location modifiers with it.

After investigating several big national brands, I notice most of them just have a single city page, and their services are housed under the corporate level.

e.g. Roto-Rooter has rotorooter.com/roswellga but their sewer drain cleaning is under the main domain, rotorooter.com/commercial/drain-services/sewer-drain-cleaning/

So my real question is why not target sewer drain cleaning FOR roswell, ga... and every other city they're in, as opposed to just targeting it as a national keyword? Should I just focus on the domain.com/city SEO or am I leaving a lot of low hanging fruit by not building out individual service pages for each of my location pages?

That would be a lot of content. If you ever build out past 5 locations that would be cumbersome to rewrite that content for all locations.

Also, you run the risk of thin content and doorway page issues.

Finally, you should just optimize the location page for all terms and let the sheer amount of backlinks generated by the brand trickle down to the landing pages. That's a national brand's power. A national brand can bring the backlink firepower but a local company can have better website optimization. Luckily for national brands, backlinks mean more.