Page Titles For Local - Help on URL Structure

[Czubmeister]

Trying to figure out the best way to construct localized  urls for the dental website.

For example, If I have the URL:
http://www.kooskidental.com/services/cosmetic-dentistry/  
and If I want to make it local to the city I would use:

http://www.kooskidental.com/services/richardson-tx-cosmetic-dentistry/

But what happens is that I have other options off the menu like:

http://www.koooskidental.com/services/richardson-tx-cosmetic-dentistry/teeth-whitening/

But if I am trying to rank for richardson tx teeth whitening, I would have to do

http://www.koooskidental.com/services/richardson-tx-cosmetic-dentistry/richardson-tx-teeth-whitening/

But that's pretty long and ugly and I don't think I need richardson-tx in their twice.

If I am trying to rank for richardson tx cosmetic dentistry and richardson tx teeth whitening, what would be the best structure for the url's?

[Czubmeister]

Ok, thanks, I appreciate the suggestion. I have 17 dental websites I want to change and I would rather not do this exercise twice through all of them! I'll try this on 5-10 pages of the 35 pages I have and see what happens.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Bob,

My take on this is that the part that needs to disappear from the various service pages is the 'richardson-tx-cosmetic-dentistry', but, I will beg to gently differ regarding total removal of the city names. I would recommend URLs like this:

http://koooskidental.com/teeth-whitening-richardson-tx

http:/kooskidental.com/invisalign-richardson-tx

http://kooskidental.com/dental-implants-richardson-tx

etc.

Those URLs aren't too long they are highly localized, which I feel is totally the way to go for a local business website.

[KyleJack]

Hi Bob,

I have to agree with Ian. Unless your business has multiple locations I wouldn't feature the location within the URL.

Instead, focus on your on-page signals. In addition, make sure you claim your business on Google+ Local and link it with your website.

K

[itrogers]

If I were you, I would completely get rid of the richardson-tx out of your URLs. The only reason why you would do this is for Google. It makes no sense for the user to have this in the URL, so you should get rid of it.

I would keep your URLs short:

/services/cosmetic-dentistry

/services/cosmetic-dentistry/teeth-whitening

There are local signals that you can do on page besides your URL that will benefit Google and users. For example:

• Name, Address, and Phone number in Schema markup on every page
• Well written titles and meta descriptions
• Proper use of keywords in the headings (h1, h2, etc) and in the paragraph/body content

These will get you further down the local path than manipulating your URLs to contain many keywords, which doesn't make sense for the users.