Ranking for local searches without city specific keywords?

[RickyShockley]

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.

1. 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 It seems that this will eventually be an outdated tactic, right?

2. 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!

[MiriamEllis]

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!

[TomRayner]

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!