Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Local SEO Website Structure.
-
Hi everyone,
This might be quite a long post so please bear with me.
I am currently rebuilding my website. My previous website was built by a web designer and was very basic. 5 page html site consisting of home, services, gallery, testimonials, contact pages. None of them were great - thin content, not optimised as well as could be - no h1's etc.
To be fair I knew nothing about websites and didn't bother much with the site. As a new business I used it simply as a place for people to visit for more information after receiving a leaflet and never bothered much about driving traffic to the site.
A few years down the line and I have realised I need the website to be working for me as opposed to alongside me. I am building it myself via wordpress as web designer didn't want to work in wordpress. I have done my keyword research and I'm working on pages as we speak.
Previously my homepage - around 80% of visitors landed here for my main keyword (driveway cleaning glasgow) as it was number 6 in the organic listing. With my services page appearing directly underneath in 7 for the same keyword.
I have starting building a new page for that keyword which contains (driveway-cleaning-glasgow) in the url. I have 301'd my previous services page to this url.
Now for my questions...
My 2nd keyword based on volume is driveway cleaning. How do I optimise for this or will the (driveway-cleaning-glasgow) page rank for this also as the words are contained within this page?I plan on having the same structure for the remaining services - pressure-washing-glasgow, monoblock-cleaning-glasgow etc, etc. As I am building new pages for each service with location built in, where does this leave my homepage? Should I be targeting keywords for this page? It is still my strongest page and apart from the (driveway-cleaning-glasgow) page which will get some help from the 301 these are all new pages so I would expect perhaps initially to lose some traffic. But as I am not ranking well for anything other than the main 2 keywords mentioned above it can only be beneficial long term when google recognises the specific pages for each service. And when I start using Adwords I will have a specific landing page for each service.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks
-
Hey There!
If you're just offering 1 service in 1 city, I do not see the point of having a 'driveway cleaning' page and a 'driveway cleaning glasgow' page. Rather, I'd make the homepage strong about your customers + city + service and then I'd build out content about various aspects of driveway cleaning that would also mention your geography. I'd fire up something like http://answerthepublic.com/seeds/290501 and start developing additional pages like:Should you use caustic soda for driveway cleaning?
Should driveways be cleaned with chlorine?
The pros and cons of pressure washing driveways.
Research both via online tools and direct interviews with your customers + staff to discovers what common customer questions are and start developing the best content in your city around these topics.
Highlight your trust metrics via testimonials, reviews and guarantees. Show your before-and-after work. Seek out opportunities for community involvement and publicize them.
With just one service in one city, you'll have to take a granular approach to grow beyond being a 5 page website to being the most informative and useful local brand. Hope these ideas get you going.
-
Hey Miriam,
Thanks for your response. As I don't offer lots of services/locations and I'm confident I can produce unique content for these pages so my preference would be for keywords+city.
So as I stated in my original post my 2 main search terms based on volume are:
Driveway Cleaning Glasgow - which will be directed to my /driveway-cleaning-glasgow/ page.
Driveway Cleaning - I'm not sure if this needs a page of it's own or if it will be covered by the above page as it contains the keywords and as I only operate in this city so this is my local location?What do I do with the homepage? Is it a general overview with links to service pages? Reason I ask is I have looked at a competitors website - 1 of only a few decent sites. They have a very general homepage with specific landing pages yet I was surprised to find that 8 keywords ranked (1-3) to their homepage despite having landing pages for these keywords.
Thanks
-
Hey There!
Kudos to you for revisiting how important a well-optimized web presence can be for any local business. You have 2 options here, in terms of site structure:
- Build a unique page for each service you offer, optimized for that service + build a unique page for each city you serve.
or
- Build pages for each possible combo of keywords+city
Unless you have really considerable resources, approach number 1 is typically best. I'd like to point you to 2 resources here on Moz that should be a big help both with structure and landing pages:
Check out the big graphic at the beginning of this post: https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/blog/local-seo-checklist
Then, check out this article on landing pages: https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages
Hope these will get you going with your strategy!
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What Service Page Strategy Should We Use to Target City-Specific Local Intent Service Keywords?
Hey guys! We are targeting a number of cities in the Nassau and Suffolk County areas for foundation repair, insulation, and mold remediation keywords, and we were debating on creating city-specific pages for each location and service, or creating one service page for each type of service that contains all of the services and solutions within that service category for each city. Example: City-Specific Pages for Each Service: One page for say foundation repair, one page for foundation crack repair, one page for foundation problems, etc. (for each target city) Service Category Pages for Each City: One page for foundation contractors that lists all services on one page in sections. Which one do you think is better for local SEO and rankings? Both seem to have their advantages and disadvantages to me. Just to throw a couple out there, the category pages may not rank as high as the city pages for each individual service if our competitors have a whole page designed for that service and we only have a part of a page covering the topic. At the same time, they would save labor hours, technical issues would be less, and they would be condensed, and we would have WAY less mess on the backend. I appreciate your expert opinion on this one. The site is www. zavzaseal.com in case you want to check us out.
Local SEO | | everysecond0 -
Unsolved GMB Local SEO question
I am trying to diagnose how one particular competitor is smoking us in local rankings. I came across a text field “Service Details' within Google My Business Services. This allows me to put in a brief description of each service we offer. My thought is that this could be a good place for keywords. That said, the descriptions are not public facing (or to the best of my knowledge) so I am reluctant to do all the work for nothing. I am wondering if anyone has filled these out and if there were any noticeable results. Any insight is appreciated
Local SEO | | jorda0910 -
How to speed a website which government demands a popup of age restriction to display
Hi team, Im running a website, which is related to Online Vape shop and I have some confusion regarding the core web vital algorithm. However, the Government of the USA is very strict for this kind of topic and we should have to display the age restriction popup for those new users who enter the website: https://ashvapesmoke.com/ Can anyone tell me how to speed up the website, as if the website has this kind of popup mandatory guidelines from the government. Google is launching a new core update related to speed in the may 2021 right? So if we add this kind of banner popup and all In the website, how we can get away from the issues. Please clarify to me, anyone, ASAP.
Local SEO | | hopseq0 -
Does having a subdomains UK affect SEO in UK google results?
For exemple we set a UK subdomaine for : www.igomorocco.com www.uk.igomorocco.com Does having a subdomains UK affect SEO in UK google results? How this should be set up correctly?
Local SEO | | mounirigomorocco0 -
International Versus Local Backlinks?
I'm running a dentist's website and I've been wondering if there is any additional benefit to achieving local backlinks from other medical sites versus larger international ones? For example, if I had a blog article that I wanted another site to link to, would you choose the local medical website within the same city or the international one that has more viewers?
Local SEO | | Undergrnd0 -
Spaces between Letters and Numbers SEO question
This is a fun one - Example: Mercedes Benz is pushing to have all of there vehicle models to coincide with the world branding such as the "C300" is supposed to be "C 300" and the "E300" is supposed to be "E 300"... I have a few issues here as when I use Voice Search for "Mercedes Benz C 300" there is no way (that I know of) to add a space between the number and letter. In addition, when searching for the "C 300 for sale" Google corrects the text with "Did you mean: C300 for sale". I am seeking a way to accommodate both versions of the models WITHOUT adding the both C300 and C 300...etc. to the text on web pages. OR will Google eventually change the model names over time as Mercedes-Benz regulates the new U.S. naming convention. Tough question - any thoughts? Thank you for your help -
Local SEO | | MBS-MBA0 -
Two websites, same business name, same NAP
Hi, A client of mine offers loft conversions and wants to make a go of it. So he has a website dedicated to loft conversions. He is also a joiner/carpenter and has another old website which offers general joinery work and insurance work. Both websites have the same business name and same address and phone number. There is only one Google place page for the loft conversions website. The loft conversions website is not ranking as well as we would like locally. Could it be due to the same NAP? What are the best options? Redirect the old website to the loft conversions one (he might not like that idea) Change the address and phone number on one website?(and all subsequent citations?) Would love some help on this!
Local SEO | | AL123al0