Geotargeting our widgets... adding individual states?

[dooberry]

Hi there,

After months of declining traffic, we've decided to start targeting more specific regions for our widgets. In the past these regions have just been things like "West Coast" and "East Coast", but we're now thinking of targetting individual states. Which brings me to our problem...

My "Blue Widgets on the East Coast" page already ranks very well for New York and Connecticut search terms, but not for states like Delaware or New Jersey. Does that mean if we bring in new targeted pages for New York and Connecticut that it will potentially harm our rankings as these pages will be fighting against each other for rankings?

Any help most appreciated!

[Robert Charlton]

Is there actual geo-differentiation in your widgets or their supply sources? Are you dealing in actual brick and mortar outlets, and how distinct are these outlets apart from location?

Or, are you wanting to do this simply to take advantage of the extra keyword space that the extra "placename widget" vocabulary provides?

Google favors actual local presence, except for a limited number of 800-lb gorilla national directories, so expanding the number of targeted pages simply to pick up more search targets can often turn out to be counterproductive.

[dooberry]

It is indeed brick and mortar outlets and they are all independent, therefore geo-differentiation is extremely important. The only reason we have not done this before is because the site started pretty small so a page-per-state would not have feasible.