Targeting multiple cities

Hi,

I will open a web design business soon and I've some doubts about targeting multiple cities. I live in a city that is not very big and the keywords for that city doesn't have a lot of searches so I don't know if it will be profitable for me. So, I want to also target other cities in my country.

I know the best method is to make a specific page for every city and target keywords related to that city. But, I don't want to make unique content for every city I want to target. I 've a main section that offers "web design", then, I want to target for example:

web design in "my city"
web design in "city 2"
web design in "city 3"

What I want to do is copy my main page that talks about "web design" and then use the same page for the other cities (only changing some text, but most of the text will be the same).

Do you think I will get a penalty for duplicate content?
Should I make unique pages for every city?
Maybe there is any way to avoid this, maybe canonical tags?

Hope someone helps me.

Thanks!

Your question is answered here

http://localsearchforum.catalystema...ll-local-search-engine-optimization-pros.html

Click to expand...

I think I will opt for making a tab in my website called "Locations" or something similar and then, create unique landing pages for each city I want to rank.

Creating a link from the home page called "locations" is a good idea because it will pass link juice to those cities. Like I said in the other thread unique URL's for each city is fine but make sure to have unique content also.

MarioCimmino said:

Creating a link from the home page called "locations" is a good idea because it will pass link juice to those cities. Like I said in the other thread unique URL's for each city is fine but make sure to have unique content also.

Click to expand...

Could not agree more everyone should have unique content on every different page goes without saying

Adrianx said:

Do you think I will get a penalty for duplicate content?
Should I make unique pages for every city?
Maybe there is any way to avoid this, maybe canonical tags?

Click to expand...

1. Maybe
2. Yes
3. I don't think so.

you can use RSS feed on each city page with some news on that city that will help with the unique content on each city, plus you will have it fresh every few hours.

The best choice is a landing page for each city, and if possible on each page add examples of work by companies that city. Or other content to help you differentiate each landing page to avoid duplicate content.

Use H1, H2, H3 for targeted location, you should get good response from search engines, content always required unique, if you are posting duplicate content then may be it crawl but no guarantee about penalizing.