Understanding the Impact of Service Pages on Local SEO for Small Businesses
When it comes to optimizing a local business’s online presence, creating targeted service pages is often a key strategy. Recently, a friend of mine who operates a cleaning company encountered some ups and downs in his SEO efforts that raise important questions about the best practices for service pages.
Initially, his business was performing well in search engine rankings, thanks to an active Google My Business profile and a solid number of positive reviews. However, he sought to enhance his online visibility by generating service pages tailored for each nearby city. Utilizing AI tools, he developed 48 distinct service pages complete with unique content, FAQs, specific local reviews, and a detailed list of services offered.
In the early stages, the results were promising. His website climbed to the top three positions in search results shortly after publishing just ten of the new pages. However, this success was short-lived; by the third week, his rankings plummeted, and he found his website outside of the top twenty results.
This situation leads to several important considerations:
-
Overabundance of Service Pages: It’s possible that creating a high volume of service pages in a short timeframe could have had an adverse effect on rankings. Even if the content was relatively unique, there might be a threshold that triggers search engines to question the quality and relevance of the pages.
-
Potential AI Content Concerns: There is an ongoing discussion in the SEO community about whether search engines are starting to penalize content generated by AI tools. While AI can be a helpful resource, it’s crucial to ensure that the content aligns with human-level quality and engagement.
-
Balancing Quantity and Quality: The question arises: should my friend revisit these pages to improve them, or would he be better off deleting many of them and concentrating efforts on fewer, higher-quality pages? It’s generally advisable to focus on quality over quantity. A well-crafted service page tailored to target keywords and user intent will likely perform better than several lower-quality pages.
-
Time and SEO Recovery: SEO can be unpredictable, and sometimes rankings may stabilize naturally as search engines re-evaluate sites. However, depending on the situation, proactive adjustments might be necessary to regain lost visibility.
In conclusion, it may be beneficial for my friend to take a step back and assess the quality of his service pages. Updating them for better relevance, incorporating user-friendly content, and potentially consolidating pages could prove advantageous.