In (or In-between) 2 cities - and mentioning both cities in title tags
-
Hi, just wondering what your thoughts are on this one - several businesses I work for are located in in-between places.
For example, one is in one city for its address, but in another city's council (/state) area. Another is in a rural area, almost exactly the same distance between 2 cities (about 10 miles either way).
Both businesses mention both cities on several pages of their websites, including in title tags (including homepage title tags), and it seems to be working OK in terms of rankings (ie they're ranking well for keyphrases for both cities).
Is it acceptable practice to mention both cities in a single title tag though? That's my question.
(some of this confusion dates back to UK local authority boundary/name changes, in 2009)
-
Thanks guys - appreciated.
-
Robert has pretty much covered it here.
I would say it depends on the level of competition. If the competition is low you could probably have one page focused on both locations, but if it's high you may need to consider having a targeted page for each "page + location".
The homepage is the only tricky one. Obviously with this generally being the strongest page on the site, splitting this may result in one high strength page (homepage) and a low one (newpage).
-
Hello Luke,
I would approach it like this. FIrst, ask the question: What is the best way to maximize the locations I want given I am between two distinct geographic areas? If you want to insure you are hitting both, what is at your disposal?
For Google + you will have the choice of one or the other and I go with which is most important first. Then, mention the other. In search, someone searching for city A is going to pull geographically (given all other things are equal) from city center point out. If you are center of city A that is great, if you are halfway out, you will be in the search, etc. But, then make sure you have other indicators like your title tags. If each city is important I would have two pages (one on each city with differing content). That is better than a single page of content and title tags as you have them.
If, your only other option is to use the title tags with both, keep them at 70 characters and have a go at it. You won't hurt anything, but it is not the highest value approach.
Hope this helps you out,
Robert
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
-
Direct To Site Traffic Decline 2
This is an update on a post I made a few weeks ago. I notice a siginicant drop in direct traffic this year specifically from Chrome 43.0. I wanted to include data to get a deeper perspective. I have included data on the first 15 weeks of 2016 and 2017. It seems like a spam bot but I would like to hear other opinions. Thank you! pvg7ZPQ AleBZY9
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JMSCC0 -
Difference between anchor text pointing to an article in our section pages and the title of our article
My concern is described more in details in the following hypothetic scenario(basically this is the same method that CNN site applies to its site): In one page i have a specific anchor text e.g. "A firefighter rescued a young boy" and this one is linked to an article which if you enter you will see that it has a different title than the anchor text/short title that i mentioned above. So the internal titlte of the article is "A firefighte rescued a young boy in Philippines while it was rainy". I want to know whether this is a good SEO practice or not. Regards, Christos
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DPG_Media0 -
Unique meta descriptions for 2/3 of it, but then identical ending?
I'm working on an eCommerce site and had a question about my meta descriptions. I'm creating unique meta descriptions for each category and subcategory, but I'm thinking of adding the same ending to it. For example: "Unique descriptions, blah blah blah. Free Overnight Shipping..". So the "Free Overnight Shipping..." ending would be on all the categories. It's an ongoing promo so I feel it's important to add and attract buyers, but don't want to screw up with duplicate content. Any suggestions? Thanks for your feedback!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jeffbstratton0 -
Is this traffic drop do to cutting backlinks or Penguin 2.0 (Graphs attached)
I've attached both graphs of the traffic drop. Our website rankings have been steadily declining since May of 2013. We have mostly return customers or our drop would have been much more severe. There's never been any warnings in GWT We cut a bunch (but not all) of our paid links in May of 2013. We didn't have a manual penalty or anything, we just wanted to see what happened if we moved towards being white hat. When our rankings plumited, we quit cutting links. We currently have about 30% paid links. Penguin 2.0 was May 22, 2013 In looking at these graphs, was it our cutting links that caused the traffic drop, or was it Penguin 2.0? I'm looking for people who have experience in diagnosing a "Unique Visits" Google analytics graph for Penguin and have experience with what happens when you cut links. It looks like, in viewing the graphs, that May 23 was more the day that the big drop happened, but you guys have more experience with this than me. Thank you. ga.png ga2.png
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Blackhat Winners after Penguin 2.0
I know I'm not the only one that's seen this. After Penguin 2.0 some obvious blackhat SEOed sites flew up in the rankings. There's obviously a hole that hasn't been closed. I'm surprised it's been a month and that hole still hasn't been patched. I have no problem with other legit companies out ranking ours for various keywords. In that case I can feel alright knowing it's just something they were able to do that I wasn't but when I see complete blackhat sites ranking that's a whole different story. Estimated traffic before and after Penguin 2.0: http://goo.gl/gurXt What are they doing that's blackhat? Hidden text - compare the cached version vs. the live http://goo.gl/YYGDK 301ing lots of domains, many irrelevant. http://goo.gl/RjOJu Using a trade marked brand (steelers) - not SEO related but I'm sure the NFL wouldn't be happy. Linking between other domains they own. Notice how spammy these sites are. http://pittsburghwebdevelopment.org/2013/06/23/website-development-firm-website-design-pittsburgh/ http://seoinpgh.com/2013/06/23/website-designer-pittsburgh-affordable-web-design-in-pittsburgh-pa/ They were inflating their social presence. Wanted to show you but looks like twitter already took care of them https://twitter.com/seopittsburgh . Also making client sites link to them . http://pittsburghpaplumbing.com/2013/06/19/pittsburgh-plumbersplumbers-in-pittsburgh-paplumber-pittsburgh/ I've talked to other people and they've seen similar things. Thoughts, opinions? Can you find one good reason why this site would rank well for a competitive phrase?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | eyeflow0 -
Does the proximity to the center of the city have anything to do with higher rankings in local results ?
Does the proximity to the center of the city have anything to do with higher rankings in local results ?? If yes then how ?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mnkpso0 -
What's the right way to gain the benefits of an EMD but avoid cramming the title?
Hi Guys, Say I'm (completely hypothetically) building weddingvenuesnewyork.com and right now I'm organizing the tags for each page. What's the best layout so that I can optimize for "wedding venues new york" as much as possible without it becoming spammy. Right now I'm looking at something like "Wedding Venues New York: Wedding Receptions and Ceremony Venues" for the title.. To get other strong keywords in there too. Is there a better layout/structure?.. And is having the first words of the title on the homepage the same as the domain name going to strengthen the ranking for that term, or look spammy to Google and be a bad move? This is a new site being built
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | xcyte0 -
Is domain name or page title "safe" as anchor text?
I am aware of the dangers of excessively optimized anchor text I have seen some suggestions that as long as your anchor text is either the URL or the page title that this will be OK, no matter how many links come in with that anchor text. Does anyone have an opinion, or even any hard data on this? Thx Paul
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | diogenes0