Should I build a page for every location of my business?

In this week’s Office Hours we talked about locally-focused landing pages for a business with multiple locations. This is a common question with lots of challenges.

We know, from keyword research, having a local focus to a page is important. We also know that each page should have a different focus for keywords. So, how do you handle multiple locations?

There’s a lot to consider- and many things beyond SEO. Before we consider how to do this on our website, we need to ask some fundamental question about the business and it’s priority for each location and the potential for growing into additional locations.

But if, after we consider business decisions, we determine we do need a separate page for each location, we then have to write it. When it comes to writing a page for SEO, we quickly start to come into problems such as, “what do I write about?” How can you produce new and unique content for each page if each location offers the same services just for different locations? Hint: you don’t just replace one location’s name with the other and repeat the same content.

Of course, Google doesn’t like orphaned pages. They need to fit in the site structure somehow. Do you put them in the menu? If so, where? What about the homepage- if you’re building a page for each location, what does the homepage focus upon? These are all great questions that you need to consider.

Another issue we tackled involved diagnosing increasing week-to-week traffic. How can we determine why the traffic grew? Was it a fluke? Did we do something right? First of all, this is a great problem! Congratulations! Second, if we can figure out why- maybe we can sustain the growth or make it grow even more, so this is a great question, too!