Should we add the city to our keywords for a site that is only local?

[RobertFisher]

This is one of those things I have done for a long time and all of a sudden asked myself was it necessary: For our local clients, we add the city name (Houston, KC, Birmingham) after each keyword. An example would be TestSite.com/big-tester-houston

A Title Tag might be Big Tester Houston | Test Site, etc.

Where appropriate we do the same with H1 or H2's and occasionally in the content we will use the city name.

The thought being that since the site is only for a given city, it will be deemed more relevant than a site from outside.( I understand there are other factors in SEO; this is a specific question around adding the city). Yes, we also optimize with local directories/citation sites.

Is this overkill, is it even worthwhile? Is there any evidence one way or another?

I would love some strong opinions backed up with something other than anecdotal evidence where possible.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Robert!

Nice to see you. I would recommend that you read this post from Mike Blumenthal from a couple of weeks ago if you haven't already:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2011/11/10/8-tips-to-maximize-your-branded-presence-in-the-google-local-search-results/

Some of Mike's readers found the advice regarding the use of geomodifiers to be controversial and this led to an extremely long discussion between Mike and readers on this topic. I think you will find it to be relevant and extremely interesting, but you'll have to make up your own mind what you think!

[APICDA]

Depending the scope and type of business the website is promoting adding the city name to your page content can be great.  I have done it with two websites and it worked quite well.

For those sites,  I placed contact info  toward the top section of the pages.

That said, some people do not like to set page content up that way..... it worked for me though.

Give it a try, it may work for you, if not, the beauty is, changes can easily be made.

Thats just my two cents... good luck! and happy holidays

[mjtaylor]

I do know that  in the past year Google has weakened the power of keywords in the domain name, however, I don't believe that applies to file names. In this video: Matt Cutts does point out that this would be a very easy thing to test.

And I believe from my personal anecdotal experience that using the name of the locality in file names is useful for SEO.

watch?v=971qGsTPs8M

[DonnieCooper]

We did this for a local client 2 years ago and had dramatic improvement. That said, we also followed it up with a link building campaign (of course). Try it for one of the pages and track any improvements, then roll it out if it works

Does this help?