SEO GUYS! - Geo targeting landing pages, quick question
 

somewhat new to this so looking for a little feedback... i'm playing with a plumbing website and am interested in geo targeting specific landing pages

for instance, i want to use:

"san jose" water heater installation
"oakland" water heater installation

as opposed to a broader term like:

"bay area" water heater installation

if i was to create multiple pages where the city / geo area is different where appropriate for SEO, but all of the rest of the text is the same... could this cause problems because of the redundant body / filler text?

like plumbingsite.com/%city%_water_heater_installation.html

oh yeah and of course occurances of %city% within the actual html doc itself :)

First of all, If the list of areas, you want to target, is not in hundreds I'd suggest you to create separate static landing pages. Do not use script for auto-creation or on the fly creation of pages.

Secondly and most important thing is, content on all of the landing pages should not be too similar, otherwise they will be marked as Supplement Results in Google. So, best thing is to try keeping content on all pages as unique as possible, do not only change the city (area) name but also other text should be different.

Third, change your URL format to:

plumbingsite.com/san-jose-water-heater-installation/

plumbingsite.com/oakland-water-heater-installation/

I suggest you to use hyphens (-) instead of underscores ( _ ); even though search engines, today, are smart enough to parse different words in URLs even without these separators, but I personally have seen better results with hyphens. You might need to read Dashes vs. Underscore by Matt Cutts, a Google engineer.

Also, always try to keep the different files in separate folders, and use keyword in folder name instead of file name. I mean instead of domain.com/keyword-here.html .. you should use domain.com/keyword-here/

Advantage? The biggest advantage comes when you want to change the technology used to develop site. For example, later, if you want to switch to .asp or .php instead of .html ... you will need to change the files names and you will loose the PR and ranking (if any lol) .. you may be able to use 301 redirect at that time but its not a perfect solution, you will still experience the fall in hard earned ranking.

But in case you are using folders, you can put index file with any extension in the folder and you will never need to worry about fall of PR or ranking.

And to me, folder names looks tidier than the file names, because of the damn extension in them.

Hope it helps. :thumbsup

One Hell of a response :thumbsup

Really good answer thanks a lot for your post.

Very important point by Vicki, it should have been bolded:

If you are planning a lot of these pages (I'd say keep it less than 50 to be more safe), mix up the page/folder names so they don't all have the same keywords. This is a sure sign to Google you've been optimizing.

You can build landing pages and use temp 302 redirects, you do not have to hide it like this. It's allowed. The title and desc should change, the page text should change 30%. They shouldn't cross link each other but all link into the main page. Setup a sitemap, value the main page 1, value the landing pages .7

Get the landing pages listings, google will rank the tour for the landing page terms. It's not cheating Google - it's how you target google local.

Wow man, thanks a ton for this awesome response.

This was probably the most informative answer to any question I've ever asked on GFY in the last 3-4 years :thumbsup

Great info on this topic!

Now, my :2 cents:

ON THE POSITIVE SIDE
REDUCE YOUR KEYWORDS per page! The more focused, and symantically similar the page is, the more likely it will receive favorable indexing from Google (and the others). For example, i would reduce my keywords to 10 per page and have them be as similar but different as possible. When optimizing for a city - and a specific service, its more tricky to do. You will find it difficult to rank well with one site offering plumbing services to 50 different cities.

Good example of meta keywords: "pets,dogs,cats,turtles,fish,leashes,food,grooming ,vet,shots".

The first keyword "pets" should be the most saturated keyword on the page, dogs the 2nd most and so on down the line. Be sure to use these words and know phrases (i.e. "dogs" and 'mans best friend") in the body of the page. You should strive to a minimum of 300 words in body text. You will also want to put your #1 keyword in an Hx tag, but be careful not to overuse. Also, boold, underline & italics are great ways to add emphasis to a particular keyword in the body text.

I would not bother with ALT tags.. as they are not used by google.. but if you ALT tagged every image with the same tag - it could hurt you.

Make sure that your keywords to non-keywords ratio is at least 5 or 6 to 1. But never less than 20 to 1. Make sure your top keyword(s) are in the title tag, and the URL route (see posts above). Be sure to include KEYWORDS in the text linking that goes to other pages.

ON THE NEGATIVE SIDE...
STAY AWAY FROM LINK FARMS. While back-linking is still very important, do not share links with link farms or FFA's in any way.
DO NOT use immediate re-directs.
DO NOT use ANY duplicate copy. DO NOT COPY from any other sites.
DO NOT use SINGLE PIXEL links

Thats all for now, dont want to entirely give away the farm...:1orglaugh

damn i got here too late...you guys are right on the money with your answers.

Great info as well, wow! Gfy on fire today

Can't let the best thread of the year fall off yet... :thumbsup

Great info!

ticalsux

Couldn't agree more with everything written above! As for file names I somehow experienced better rankings with "static" pages(filenames), redirected via mod_rewrite to .html not folders.

Search engines do not care what extension is being used, all they care about the html output generated by our server.

May be the better ranking you experienced, while using filenames, was due to something else. :2 cents:

okay, how about this one guys...

which would be better (if any) and why?

plumbingsite.com/plumbing-services/oakland/water-heater-installation

or

plumbingsite.com/plumbing-services-oakland/water-heater-installation

(notice the different "directories")

would either of these have a more positive effect?

Good Job :thumbsup Man!

When it comes to SEO both are quite similar, you can use any.

But second one is generally better because it will help you to make /plumbing-services/ more organized into different areas where you provide those services.

PS: Make habit of using trailing slash. Don't it make URL tidier? lol

:thumbsup

OMFG! A bookmarkable thread on GFY! Thanks everyone :)