TOPIC: Search area

I am in the process of setting up a form of city pages within my site.

I was wondering how you would go about setting up a search area that would allow a user to look for locations within 25 miles of target, or locations within XYZ zipcode.

Hi John,

I'm a bit confused as to the purpose of the search. Wouldn't all results return you?

It's much better to directly list the pages as links from your home page and other pages, as Google can't follow results from a form.

Let me know if this makes sense. Check out www.owlhomeinspections.com and scroll to the bottom and check our Schuamburg or Vernon Hills. Google either and you'll see Rick comes up #1 for both.

Dominic

I checked out OwlHomeInspections and that is the concept that Im building off of but I guess Im always looking to go further. I want all the information on my site rather than always pointing to another site.

What Im thinking of is a city page like this
Omaha Home Inspector
Providing Home Inspection Services throughout the greater Omaha area

County: Douglas
Founded: 1854
Incorporated: 1857

Government
Mayor:
City Council:
Other Officials:

Population (2008 Census)
City: 438,646
Density: 3,370.7/sqmi
Metro: 837,925

Official Website:

Company messages about services and inspection company

Useful Links

Educational
School District (when clicked on will bring up another page of public school locations)
Daycare Services (When clicked on will bring up list of daycare centers)

I would like the list to be searchable by location, zip code, something that will allow people to locate services within the area that they are moving to

Places of Interest
Dining (list of restaurants, cafes)
Parks
Shopping Centers
Entertainment

Home Items
Water Department
Electric Department
Gas Company
Phone Company
Cable

Not sure if this clears up any confusion as to what Im trying to acomplish.

His current page www.owlhomeinspections.com/schaumburg-illinois-home-inspector has some info and links out. The more info you put on the page , the better you'll be. Everywhere that you list that city on your site, link back to the page. Also, note the URL of the page I just linked, it has the city and home inspector in there as well. This is key, along with matching keywords and page title & descriptions to get city pages to improve your rank.

I would list all the cities. If you make something that can only be access by people entering in a zip code, the search engines can't find it and your site rank won't go up. You don't need to link out for school district and daycare centers, just list them right on the page. I'm sure you could find a plugin that would give you services within the area, but it won't be actual content on your page.

I see what you are saying, Just in the Omaha Metro Area there will be close to 300 schools listed.
I guess what i was looking for is both ways.

1. On the city page there will be a link to Omaha Schools
This will take you to a page on my site that has a list of all schools and their contact information. It will be sorted alphabetically and by type of school Elementary, Middle, High, College.
2. On the School listing page a search function that can bring up a selection of schools based on location, this would be so that people would not need to scroll through the list if they dont want to.

In Conclusion I will be building the pages as you have suggested, but would also like to find something like the Plugin that you made mention of just to try and make the information more user friendly as well.

Somebody posted a tip a few days ago in the tip section that listed all info about a zip code. That should assist you. Let me know if you can't find it. I think John Sopher or Drew Levy posted it.

There's no way to make a search function that would do a proximity search based on zip code without paying for a service to get the geo data and write a custom program. I'm actually doing something similar right now for the find an inspector database and the bank inspections, and it's not easy!