How to avoid duplicate pages??

[Zwielicht]

If you have a parent company that offers two unrelated services in multiple cities, you should build a website for each service, and put a page or two in the site about those locations.

You cannot rank a business site easily when you have two unrelated services, any more than you can rank a site in regular SEO about 2 different niches.

In google's eyes, any legitimate small business offers one thing, and they specialize in that one thing. If you have a sign company, and a patio building firm, you are running two hobbies as far as google is concerned, or you are an entrepreneur.

Google HATES entrepreneurs in the local space because so many small business owners complained about these companies taking their local work. That is in fact why the local algorithm as born.

If the services are related, that is different. BUT WAIT, there is more:

Google considers something related if it is common to see the item in question on similar sites.

For instance, Google considers "carpet cleaning" and "tile and grout cleaning" as related (many companies offer both services) but do not consider carpeting and hardwood floor refinishing as related because while the human brain immediately sees that these are both related by being floor coverings, Google see's very few hardwood floor companies that do carpet cleaning. (anyone doing both will migrate to hardwoods in time because it is more lucrative and less competitive).

Don't apply rational human thinking to what google does. Do research. Generally, if you have similar things on your site that your number one competitor has, you should rank better. Google considers those things related.

Watch the grouping in keyword planner too.

That's pretty interesting. I offer 2 different services on my business website: Internet marketing and Photoshopping. Both of those services has a several sub-services (although not all of them have their own page) that are related, for example:

• Internet marketing- PPC, SEO, Keyword Research.
• Photoshopping (which includes Illustrator)- photo retouching, photo restoration, logo restoration, logo design.

I actually avoided offering multiple services on my business beta-website and instead offered only my Internet marketing services. What's pecuilar about that was that I was receiving a lot of Photoshopping requests at the same time (e.g one client wanted me to 'optimise' her photos, and by optimise, she wanted them retouched that way they complimented her website). Eventually, I just added multiple services to my beta-website, and then when I redesigned my entire website, I cut back the services to 2 main services.

Despite me doing that, I still think it's a bad practice in general not only for the reasons you stated, but because it usually makes the company offering the services look confused most of the time (ike a plumber offering a logo design service). I may eventually cut back the services to just 1 Internet marketing/SEO package service that will include everything I mentioned before.

 

[Izaguf]

It isn't a problem if content on the pages isn't the same. And it works. I worked with the game site, and one game usually have a lot of platforms available. And I used unique title, text, images and it worked. Good luck!

 

[dinos]

i would rather have a pluggin which can located the visitors ip address and show them the content "the page which is targeting them " and have one page with different version i can do it with MSv but not sure how it can be done in wordpress

I really like that idea to create one page template to each service we offer and change the city name keyword by a WP plugin or something, I will look into that if anyone know good pluggin that do that I will appreciate recommendations.

Also http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/members/244729-techxan.html, Thank you for the advice, We do offer two different services something like the carpet cleaning and hardwood you mention but I still have to make one site for both, mostly because the local listings and for the return clients.

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/members/701565-zwielicht.html thank you I do have a EMD, I think it will be better then the PMD.

 

[Zwielicht]

I really like that idea to create one page template to each service we offer and change the city name keyword by a WP plugin or something, I will look into that if anyone know good pluggin that do that I will appreciate recommendations.

Also Techxan, Thank you for the advice, We do offer two different services something like the carpet cleaning and hardwood you mention but I still have to make one site for both, mostly because the local listings and for the return clients.

Zwielicht thank you I do have a EMD, I think it will be better then the PMD.

You're welcome, but when I said they only helped rank a little better, I really did mean a little better, as in the boost they give is usually pretty negligible.

 

[SpookSEO]

Why not use this:

city1.service.com
city2.service.com

You can easily manage this with a WP plugin

 

[gorankmedia]

Basically Google doesn't not crawl links by any Form submission to reach. You could have prebuilt pages searchable by a seperate search page. Include Rss feed with unique recepies etc.. so that google would have them indexed.