Ranking for local searches without city specific keywords?
-
Hey guys!
I had asked this question a few months ago and now that we are seeing even more implicit information determining search results, I want to ask it again..in two parts.
-
Is is STILL best practice for on-page to add the city name to your titles, h1s, content etc? It seems that this will eventually be an outdated tactic, right?
-
If there is a decent amount of search volume without any city name in the search query (ie. "storefont signs", but no search volume for the phrase when specific cities are added (ie. "storefront signs west palm beach) is it worth trying to rank and optimize for that search term for a company in West Palm Beach?
We can assume that if there are 20,000 monthly searches for the non-location specific term that SOME of them would be fairly local, so do we optimize the page without the city name and trust Google to display results with a local intent...therefore showing our client's site in the SERPS when someone searches "sign company" and they are IN West Palm Beach?
If there is any confusion, please just ask me to clarify! I think this would be a great WhiteBoard Friday topic for Rand!
-
-
Hi Ricky,
I may not be understanding your question correctly. If a business is local and wants local traffic/business, then optimizing the website will include use of the relevant geographic terms. Regarding keyword research, while the new Google Keyword Planner tool does a better job than the old keyword research tool at indicating volume of searches based on geography, it may still not be totally accurate. You can bet that people are searching for common services in any city, whether they are simply searching from a device based in that city or are actually including the city name in their search term. Thus, inclusion of the city name is key to optimizing the site to help Google understand it is a relevant answer to these queries. Does this make sense, or did I not correctly understand your question? Please, let me know!
-
Hi there Ricky
I think you're bang on the right track with this.
Like you say, if a search term like that has 20,000 searches, some of them will be local searches. In addition, in the UK at least I've seen SERPs change from region to region, even if the search query itself has no local term attached to it. Think of a term like "junk removal" and how the results seem to be dominated by your local area, but not so from someone searching elsewhere.
So with the issue of title tags, I'd take SEO out of the equation for now. I'd rather look at whether the company explicitly wants local business only, or wouldn't mind national business. This can be quite important depending on how the company is set up.
If a company would welcome businesses nationally, or even by state, having "West Palm Beach" in the title tag might put off some prospective customers if they think it is too small, or focused too locally. In that case, it would be best to leave it out of the title, more from a conversion perspective than SEO. Converesely, if the company is just looking for that local business, which for something like a sign company or a junk removal service like I mentioned before might only be interested in, then including "West Palm Beach" not only filters out unnecessary traffic, but it would also likely boost the SEO efforts for that term - albeit very slightly. I don't think it's a huge influence, but every little helps!
And as you'll no doubt be aware, there are loads of other stuff that can help you rank locally besides the title tag. So if you choose to omit a local term in your title tag but still want to optimise for local, there's a lot you can do. Earning your local citations is very high up on my list - Both GetListed and Local Visibility provide fantastic lists of the most important citations for your country and, where applicable, your area.
Hope this helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Indexing is live what about rankings ?
I noticed that when I request indexing in the webmaster tool my new content is live within minutes. Does it take longer to update the ranking or is the ranking updated as soon as the new page has been indexed. Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Site ranks good for all keywords except the important ones
Hey guys I am the marketing manager for https://www.tadibrothers.com/, i started a year ago when the website was ranked very poorly on most keywords, I got most of our nitch keywords rank well to fist page except the most important ones. backup camera
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TadiBrothers
backup camera system
wireless backup camera system
rear view camera Our backlinks campaign is doing well 15 backlinks on average every month.
on-site optimization is also good.
Our Domain authority is better than all our competitors. Can anyone Please help me to understand why they do not rank well? Hope to hear from someone soon1 -
Keywords Dropping Out
Hi In March I've seen a lot of keywords go from being ranked, to dropping out completely. We usually get under 1000 drop in and out each month, but 2,500 dropped out this month. Some are not focus keywords I'd be concerned about, but then some are.... I am trying to work out why and could use some help. We haven't changed anything on the pages & here are some examples: http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/dollies-load-movers-door-skates - previously ranked for 'Dollies' position 6 now unranked http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/sack-trucks - ranked position 11 for 'Folding Sack Truck' now unranked http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/portable-workbenches-trestles - ranked position 7 for portable workbenches now unranked. These pages do still rank for other keywords, so aren't out of Google completely. I'm just trying to identify if we have any other issues Thank you 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Localized Domain Issue - Can I use Search Console to solve this?
Struggling through trying to resolve a complicated search issue - would appreciate any community input or suggestions. The Background Info We have several brand sites and each one has both a .ca and .com domain. For some reason, our website platform was created in a way that hundreds of pages on the .com domain have an equivalent page on the .ca domain, which are all 301'ed to the appropriate .com pages. Example below for clarity: www.domain.ca/gadget/brand - 301 Redirected to: www.domain.com/gadget/brand www.domain.ca/gadget/en/brandcanada = Proper .ca Canadian URL (where en is the language - fr exists as well) The Problem Because these .com pages exist under the .ca domain as well, they have started to outrank the correct .ca pages on Google. This has led to Canadian customers finding incorrect information, pricing, and reviews for these products - causing all sorts of customer service issues and therefore affecting our sales. I am being told that to properly fix the issue, and remove the incorrect URLs under the .ca domain would be prohibitively expensive in terms of resources, so I'm left trying to fix this via means available to me (i.e. anything but a change to how the platform is currently setup). The Attempted Fix I've submitted proper sitemaps for the .ca brand sites, and we have also created a robots.txt file to be accessed only when the site is crawled through the .ca domain. In that robots.txt, we have Disallowed crawling of any /gadget/brand/ URLs for the .ca domain. This was done a week ago and I am still seeing the .com URL show up in search results. The Question Should I be submitting any www.brand.ca/gadget/brand/ URLs to be temporarily removed from Google? Because of the 301 redirect in place from www.brand.ca/gadget/brand to www.brand.com/gadget/brand, I am hesitant to do so, as I do not want the .com URL removed. Will Google simply remove the .ca URL and not follow the 301 redirect to remove that URL as well? Any additional insight or feedback would be awesome as well.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Trevor-O0 -
Rank Without any back linking ?
Hello, I am thinking , I will rank my site without SEO . I will add quality content on my site . Will not do any backlinking ! Can anyone suggest me if it is really possible. I know some guys or some websites those are ranked without any SEO attempts. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | businessowner0 -
A Keyword Occupied Google Top 7 Ranking. Please Comment........
Hello Everyone, When the whole world is debating on EMD, whether one should use it or avoid. Many bloggers from India still crack a very good traffic from EMD only. Recently, I was researching and found a very impressive link. Keyword: " sad shayari hindi" Google India Search Top 7 position occupied by a single domain with multiple URLs. I would like to request everyone to check the screenshot and comment. VJSQkuy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pushkar630 -
Mission Possible? You have 3 hours to do Local SEO. Which top 5 sites do you go Social Bookmark, Local Search Engine Submit and Directory List.
Mission Possible? Here is a test. Suppose you had 3 hours (okay 7) to go and submit links, etc, on Social Bookmarking, Local Search Engines and Directories, which top 5 or more of each would you do? (Assuming your on-page is already sweetened). I just got 2 more clients and I need to get started on a few things for each. Thankful for all your advice.............
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | greenhornet770 -
How do you rank in the "brands for:" section in Google's search results ?
There's a "brands for:" section that appears above the first organic listing for certain search queries. For example, if you search for "dedicated servers" in Google, you will see that a "brands for:" appears. How do you get listed there? Thanks, Brian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | InMotionHosting0