I have noticed that a really prominent contractor website design company packs their sites with city-based keywords in the footer of their sites. It got me thinking if their clients know that their sites have the potential to be flagged (and dropped in the rankings) by Google for keyword stuffing?
My solution – Location-specific landing pages
Instead of putting their clients at risk, what they should be doing (and you should to) is create location-specific landing pages. These are pages that are optimized for two things; what you do and where you do it.
Example:
Under my plan, if you were a remodeling company in Philadelphia, you would have specific pages setup on your site like so:
“Philadelphia Kitchen Remodeling”
and
“Philadelphia bathroom remodeling”
Now, I can drill down and get even more local with my landing pages. Since Philadelphia is a city and an area, there are other places (or keyword terms) I could use.
Example:
“Abington Kitchen Remodeling” get’s local coverage in a suburb of Philly, while “Frankford Kitchen Remodeling” is an area INSIDE the Philadelphia city limits, but drills down deeper into the local market.
How you use this to your advantage is by creating separate pages on your site that are searchable by the search engines (and prospects if you have a search function on your site), but that don’t appear in your site navigation bar.
Why do it this way?
1. Because these pages are purpose-built (I love when I can use construction terms) for two types of marketing.
2. Targeting those specific keywords on their own pages will make it easier to rank those specific PAGES in the search engines.
3. For PPC campaigns. For example, if you were bidding on “Abington Kitchen Remodeling” and your Adwords ad had “Abington Kitchen Remodeling” in it, and you sent the traffic from that ad to a page that talked about “Abington Kitchen Remodeling”, then you could find yourself ranking higher (and paying less per click) than the knuckleheads you compete with.
So, if you have a site that has 40 different areas that you serve stuffed into the footer, I will be waiting for your call once Google banishes your site to the virtual Botany Bay for poor website designers.
Have a question?
Have a sales or marketing question you need answered? Let me know and I will do my best to answer it on my next podcast episode. You can Email me, use the call in line at 267-482-0205 to record your question to be played on the next podcast, or just leave it in the comments below. -Darren
Photo Credit: AdamSelwood
9 responses to “Use Location Specific Landing Pages Instead of Keyword Stuffing!”
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Thanks for your invaluable tips.
I have tried this multiple landing page scenario. It seemed to work great at first, but now I think Google has shunned it. Bing and Yahoo rate it well.
I have 25 specific city pages, 12 with similar text and 13 with another.
I’ll have to do some experimentations to see if I can get back in Google’s good graces.
Darren: I just stumbled upon this post while viewing some of your other posts. Would you still recommend this strategy? I have a client, we have successfully optimized his site locally in our county and many towns but not all towns. I tried the footer with city listings, it hasn’t seemed to work, now I’m concerned about being penalized. Last week my new clients website was showing on page 1 under many keywords, today I did an analysis and we have dropped under several keywords. Any suggestions you can share?
I would absolutely recommend this. As far as your client, is it a new site as well? Did you make changes to the site? Add content? Change themes? All of those things could have an effect. Or, Google could just be switching things up a bit.
Thank you for the information. It does sound like a lot of work making location specific landing pages for all towns but I’m going to give it a try. And, yes the site is still fairly new, not yet 2 months old, and I have been adding content.
Site pulls much better for keywords on Bing and Yahoo. Google seems a bit tougher to rank on, but I think most people use Google. I’ve read several articles about Bing having the edge, I don’t see that. Maybe I’m just “old school”.
Darren, so here it is a year later, with all the Google changes, do you feel this is still a good practice? If so, how different should the pages be? Thanks
I think the basis for the article still rules. Don’t stuff keywords, use them in the proper context on the page in order to let search engines know what the page is about…but at the same time, answer a question that your best client or customer would ask.
Thanks Darren!