In Matt Cutts’ latest blog post covering SEO advice, he recommends creating a unique page with a navigable URL for each location of a multi-location business. He is most correct in recommending this, but he gives only a partial explanation of why this is a good idea. In fairness he is speaking to a fairly knowledgeable audience.
So why is this a good idea?
To add to Matt’s point that this will help the search engines find your pages more readily, from a strategic point of view, the idea behind this would be to promote what is known in the industry as ‘local search’. Local search refers to terms that include local identifiers. Local search is an increasingly important segment of the search market. To take Matt’s example further, these local store pages would be more likely to appear in the search results for a term like “San Jose frozen yogurt”.
My main point here is that a local search strategy is an important consideration in contemporary search marketing strategies. Matt’s tactic fits in perfectly with a local search strategy. Not only will this generate more search traffic to your site, but this traffic will be more likely to drive business growth / convert traffic to customers.
Happy Hunting!