Hi,
I currently run a roofing business where my website is ranked on page one for my city.
I am looking to get page 1 ranking for the surrounding areas also.
Would I be best to start over with say 4-5 new websites with SEO set up for the specific areas, or would I be better adding extra pages to my original website in order to rank in the surrounding areas?
Would I be penalized if I copied the website completely but just changed all the keywords to different cities?
If another way would be better to rank I'm all ears.
Oh and the website is wordpress.
Thanks.
The Google correct way, and the best way in my humble opinion is to add content to your website to attract those local communities. This will work with Google for up about 30 mile radius from your city, or your location if you are in a large city.
Typically, what I do is content marketing for that city or location.
G to the Census bureau and look for article fodder. As a roofer I would look for storms info, wind speed and so on, things that affect roofs.
Then in the website, write a roofing article, but mention the location spcifically.
"roofing challenges in marietta county."
Marrietta county, fl has some unique challenges when designing and installing roofs. Because it close to the coast of florida, shingles have to be double hung (or stapled, or glued or whatever) to meet hurricane standards. The harsh sun (or severe cold) in the maritta area take a a toll on inexpensite shingles so the grade of shingles must be up to the task ...bah..blah...blah...
On your home page, at the bottom of the body copy (not the footer), put a statement like this:
Bald headed roofers are proud to serve thisplace, thatplace, Mareitta county, thatotherplace and their surrounding communities.
Make this an H2 tag, and style it to size the font. This will tell Google that the locations are important to your business.
When you do your citations mention these cities in this header too,
list them in the same order as on your site.
You are always going to be better off to expand your website to make it bigger and more full of content that your competition, and doing content marketing for locales is a smart way to do that.
It also keeps your management and expenses lower.
There are times when muliple websites make sense for a local business.
When you are offiering different services from a single business for instance. (say a roofer who also installs Christmas lights. I kid you not, that actually happened, a "hang Christmas lights section" right on the roofer's home page)
If the city is further away it might make sense to build a site for it, and any city you have a storefront/address can have its own site (better to have a location page on your site if you have a storefront).
