What is the best way to format Service Area Pages?

[jonthefellow]

As I understand it, in order to rank locally, service area pages on the website are an important component. I already have started writing separate pages for the services I provide (construction business), as well as project case studies with city names in the title. For service area pages, it seems some businesses are writing these pages:

Service A in Area 1
Service A in Area 2
Service A in Area 3
...
Service B in Area 1
Service B in Area 2
Service B in Area 3
etc etc.

For the sake of my sanity, I'd rather have pages for services and service areas separate, ie:

Service A
Service B
...
Area 1
Area 2

Is it clear whether the former strategy works better than the latter?
thanks in advance.
jon

 

[JoyHawkins]

Provided the services are very different I have found the former approach to work better.

 

[beisbol16]

Provided the services are very different I have found the former approach to work better.

Hi Joy,
I would like to rank (or at least mention on my website) for about 25 towns. I can’t imagine having separate area pages for all 25 towns. That seems bloated, especially if I put them all in a big long drop-down. Any best practices on this?

I own a pressure washing biz. So the page structure would be:

Service 1
Service 2
Service 3
Etc

Can I/should I just mention all 25 towns within each service page? Any tips on this would be greatly appreciated!

 

[JoyHawkins]

It depends on how much search volume each of the services has and if it justifies having its own page. This isn't a question I can really answer without spending a bunch of time analyzing the keywords + search results. I would start by seeing what you're competing against and if any of your pages currently rank for those terms. That will give you an idea of where you should go.