Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Better to use specific cities or counties for SEO geographics?
-
Hello SEO experts!
We are encountering a difficult situation at our marketing firm with a client who wants to optimize her site for keyworks + counties, as she doesn't want to be restricted to one specific city. We have suggested alternate solutions like location pages, utilization of H2's, etc, however, she wants to know the effectiveness of using a specific city (ie: Winona, MN) vs a county (ie: Winona County, MN) for SEO purposes. The research I have conducted thus far hasn't gotten me very far, basically I'm seeing that it all comes back to what people search for (cleaning services in Winona, MN vs. cleaning services in Winona County, MN). Does anyone have any insight into this issue?
-
This is unscientific and based on the way I personally search, but I'd ask how people in the area refer to that area for some additional input. Here are some examples of the ways I have searched for locations in areas I've lived in (or had family live in).
In the SF Bay Area, I used to live in Newark. There were about 30,000 people in the city, and it was surrounded by the SF Bay on one side, and Fremont on three other sides. I would verbally tell people in the region that I lived in Fremont, and I'd search for local businesses using Fremont instead of Newark, as otherwise I'd get results for New Jersey.
I have relatives that used to live in Woodstock, VA. Everyone always thinks of Wodstock, NY, and it's hard to find local info, especially when searching from the West Coast. A lot of businesses describe themselves as in the Shenandoah Valley (and it was Shenandoah county), so I'd often search for Shenandoah, or Front Royal, which was the nearest sizable town.
Other relatives live in Battle Creek, Iowa, a town of 800 or so people. Even with adding Iowa, I get way too many results for Battle Creek, Michigan. If I need to search for something (usually on ebay, looking for memorabilia) I will search for Ida Grove or Ida County.
I know this really isn't an answer to your question, but more of some things to think about. Again, I'd ask (if you're not local to the area yourself) how people usually describe where they live, and look at search volume for that. Maybe also run some AdWords targeted to desired zip codes, and then look in the Search Query Reports in AdWords to see what cities people type in to modify their search?
-
I used to live in a town that had a couple thousand people.. It was the largest town in the county. The county was large enough that it would take 1.5 hours to drive from the northwest corner to the southeast corner - not because the distance was that great - but because there were few good roads in that direction. Many of the people lived on an unpaved road and most of the people had a well instead of water service.
In the entire county there was one tiny hospital, a few grocery stores and enough stoplights that you could count them on your fingers. But there were more campsites than residents and the population of the county would double the day before the first day of deer hunting or trout season.
If you had a healthcare emergency you better be right with God. It could be an hour before an ambulance gets to you and another hour before you get to a tiny hospital with a couple GPs and one surgeon and then transferred to the hospital of a small city another hour away.
-
I'd listen to EGOL and Kemp. Sounds like they know the rural places better than I, and these rural people don't know how to search good yet
-
Continuing on what EGOL said, we have had very good experiences with County + keyword for areas outside of Hillsborough County (outside of Tampa). You will not find Pasco + keyword or Hernando + keyword ever showing up on any mainstream keyword tool. They just don't have the search volume...however, we get conversions on those landing pages all the time.
Frankly, I don't know how you would even do county vs city research, because you (most likely) will not find search volume for counties even though conversions might be there. However, as William said, they are the same name. So, in your particular case, it really shouldn't matter.
Best,
Ruben
-
In some parts of the United States people use town and city names when they talk about where they live or where things are located or where they are going. These people usually live in towns and cities and that is how they think about places.
However, many people live in rural areas - not in any town or city. These people often use counties, instead of cities when they talk about where they live or where they are going.
The lower the population density the more likely they are going to use counties instead of towns and cities. Why? Because the tiny towns and cities where they live are unknown to most people. Everyone has heard of Pittsburgh and Cleveland but nobody has heard of Gassaway and Erbacon, yet they probably know the name of the county if they live in that region.
People who live in cities "don't get it" when they hear rural people talking about what county they are from... but people who live in rural areas understand city people talking about what city they are from. This shows that rural people are smarter when it comes to geographic locations.
-
Agree with William. Show your client the keyword search volume data on searching by city vs by county. Several of the sites I run have localized pages and we have gotten into discussions about getting more specific by using zip code or the names of neighborhood as we were well optimized for city + service. Why not zipcode + service etc.
It came down to, nobody searches for zipcode + service or neighborhood + service in the areas we focus on. Yours may be different, so look at the data first, but I bet it will hover at the city level. You can put it to your client this way, "I can spend a lot of your money on pages that are optimized at the county level and they could even rank for that search. But if no one is searching for those key terms, then I have just wasted your money and time."
Good luck!
-
Wait... the town and county have the same name? Then there's no issue.
People don't search by county and rarely put in the state when searching a city geo. Your money term is variations of, "cleaning services in Winona". Even though this phrase and others like it don't have a high search volume, experience and years of data tell me this would be the way to go. Unless you wanted to focus on carpet cleaning, which is a different ball game.
To sedate your client, maybe discuss a local SEO play with G+. Then you can define the exact area you'd like to cover, which would include both no problem.
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
-
Is .ME domain is effective in SEO ?
I am always listening about TLD. com. org .net but what about the .me domain. Can this will be effective in SEO. Can i able to beat down my competitors, if i choose .me . I also have a .com or other TLD option but if i am making my name than .me is for me but i need your suggestion for the seo purpose. Is there really domain affective in term of SEO.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pnb5670 -
Is CloudFlare bad for SEO?
I have been hit by DDoS attacks lately...not on a huge scale, but probably done by some "script kiddies" or competitors of mine. Still, I need to take some action in order to protect my server and my site against all of this spam traffic that is being sent to it. In the process of researching the tools available for defending a website from a DDoS attack, I came across the service offered by CloudFlare.com. According to the CloudFlare website, they protect your site against a DDoS attack by showing users/visitors they find suspicious an interstitial that asks them if they are a real user or a bot...this interstitial contains a Captcha that suspicious users are asked to enter in order to visit the site. I'm just wondering what kind of an effect such an interstitial could have on my Google rankings...I can imagine that such a thing could add to increased click-backs to the SERPs and, if Google detects this, to lower rankings. Has anyone had experience with the DDoS protection services offered by CloudFlare, who can say a word or two regarding any effects this may have on SEO? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | masterfish1 -
Server Migration, Does it effect SEO?
About to go through a server migration. My intitial thought is that a change in servers shouldn't really change my rankings. But I've heard rumors... Can a server migration change rankings? Why?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Thos0030 -
Do I need to use canonicals if I will be using 301's?
I just took a job about three months and one of the first things I wanted to do was restructure the site. The current structure is solution based but I am moving it toward a product focus. The problem I'm having is the CMS I'm using isn't the greatest (and yes I've brought this up to my CMS provider). It creates multiple URL's for the same page. For example, these two urls are the same page: (note: these aren't the actual urls, I just made them up for demonstration purposes) http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Omnipress
http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/bossman.cmsx (I know this is terrible, and once our contract is up we'll be looking at a different provider) So clearly I need to set up canonical tags for the last two pages that look like this: http://www.omnipress.com/boss-man" /> With the new site restructure, do I need to put a canonical tag on the second page to tell the search engine that it's the same as the first, since I'll be changing the category it's in? For Example: http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/ will become http://www.website.com/home/MEET-OUR-TEAM/team-leaders/boss-man My overall question is, do I need to spend the time to run through our entire site and do canonical tags AND 301 redirects to the new page, or can I just simply redirect both of them to the new page? I hope this makes sense. Your help is greatly appreciated!!0 -
When using ALT tags - are spaces, hyphens or underscores preferred by Google when using multiple words?
when plugging ALT tags into images, does Google prefer spaces, hyphens, or underscores? I know with filenames, hyphens or underscores are preferred and spaces are replaced with %20. Thoughts? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrooklynCruiser3 -
How do you implement dynamic SEO-friendly URLs using Ajax without using hashbangs?
We're building a new website platform and are using Ajax as the method for allowing users to select from filters. We want to dynamically insert elements into the URL as the filters are selected so that search engines will index multiple combinations of filters. We're struggling to see how this is possible using symfony framework. We've used www.gizmodo.com as an example of how to achieve SEO and user-friendly URLs but this is only an example of achieving this for static content. We would prefer to go down a route that didn't involve hashbangs if possible. Does anyone have any experience using hashbangs and how it affected their site? Any advice on the above would be gratefully received.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sayers1 -
Link Age as SEO factor?
Hi Guys
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VividLime
I have a client who ranks well within a competitive sector of the travel industry. They are planning CMS move which will involve changing from .cfm to .aspx We will be doing the standard redirects etc However Matt's statement here on 301 redirects got me thinking
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW5UL3lzBOA&t=0m24s He says that basically you loose a bit of page rank when you do a 301 redirect. Now, we will be potentially redirecting 1000s of links and my thinking is 'a lot of a little, adds up to a lot' In other words, 1000s of redirects may have a big enough impact to loose some rankings in a very competitive and aggressive space. So recommended that we contact the sites who has the link highest value and ask them to manually change the links from cfm to aspx. This will then mean that there are no loss value as with a 301 redirect. -But now I have another dilemma which I'm unsure about. So the main question:
Is link age factor in rankings ? If I update any links, this will make said link new to Google, so if link age is a factor, would this also lessen the value passed initially?0 -
Ranking A Website For Mulitiple Counties, Cities And Towns
Hello All, I am optimizing three websites for a services based company in the South Jersey Area. Of course within South Jersey there are certain counties, cities and towns I would like to show up for. For example- Pool Cleaning South Jersey Pool Cleaning Cherry Hill NJ Pool Cleaning Burlington County NJ Pool Cleaning Voorhies NJ Pool Cleaning. Do I need to create a page on my websites for every possible county, city and town I want to rank for? This would entail creating thousands of pages targeting these geographic keywords. I have seen other similar sites just list all the counties, cities and towns they service in the footer and it seems to work. Of course this would be beneficial for any business who is looking to not only rank in their home base but a predetermined radius around their home base as well. Thanks so much, Bill
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wparlaman0