Ranking a Website that Services Multiple Cities
-
We have a website that offers services to various cities in a state. However, since we don't want to do keyword stuffing, how do we rank this website for all of these cities when it comes to the **title tags? **For example, how do we optimize the homepage title tag? Obviously I know we can't put all the cities into it, so how do we choose which city to use?
I know we can add city/local pages and optimize them for those locations, but I'm referring specifically to the homepage and other main pages of the website. How do you determine which cities to use in those title tags?
-
Hi Deedra,
Are you saying you have multiple physical locations from which you are serving multiple cities, or just one physical location from which you are serving multiple cities? And, also, are you meeting with clients face-to-face or is this a virtual business model? These nuances are important.
-
We're currently building a similar strategy. I would go for the towns that have the highest population and are most likely to want your services.
I would avoid using this kind of strategy on a national level, because you'd obviously end up with thousands of duplicate pages and likely be deindexed.
I also agree with the above points, don't just have a bunch of duplicate pages with different titles, keyword replacement, it's likely to work in the short-term but result in penalties later on.
-
Thank you Bryan. This was very helpful
-
Generally speaking, if a page's content isn't specific to one location, I'd advise against putting location information in the title of that page. You mentioned that you're aware of the option to make pages specifically for locations - that's really a much better solution than to stuff your title tags with city names. Rather than the title tags, however, maybe you could add content that specifically targets some or all of those locations (depending on quantity of course).
You could also add a footer section that links to each location page. The point is that there are many ways to up your rank in different cities. Using title tags on general pages may not be the best option, though. I realize this doesn't directly answer your question, but it's what I'd advise a client if they were to ask the same thing.
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
-
Local Strategy for Multiple Domain Integration
Hello, We are a locally driven business with two locations. Currently, each location has its own local site and are linked to from our central domain (3 domains total). We are discussing whether we should integrate the local sites into location pages on our core domain. However, we would also prefer to keep the ‘local’ domains live. Is this a viable strategy and what would we need to do to ensure the local sites won’t cannibalize our efforts with the main domain? Also, should we remove the contact information on those local sites to avoid NAP issues? The other option would be to build out the local domains but that could raise concerns over budget and potentially expanding into the future. And we would like the main domain to take presendence. A few additional notes on this: Each location has its own brand name and contact information. Traffic across all 3 sites is about the same. We are also considering using silos with sub-folders to build out local service pages. We understand how to set up location pages but are asking more in terms of overall strategy and ideal way to position all 3 sites. Any help or insight would be very appreciated. Thank you in advance.
Local Website Optimization | | Ben-R
Best,0 -
Getting the Proper CCTLDs & Subdomains to Rank in the Proper Countries
We seem to be having a really difficult time getting Google to do what we want in regards to getting proper domains indexed in the proper countries. In regards to English language, we tend to see a tremendous amount of crossover between .com, .in, and .co.uk. And yes international targeting is put in place. For example, both our .com and co.uk websites are in english and when someone enters a search query for one of our particular products, the .com website shows up to users in the UK. The countries with the hardest time are as follows and typically find them competing primarily with .com, but others can interlope as well. **All primarily in English: ** Canada UK India Australia Any ideas on how we can get this aligned correctly to where we can get the proper CCTLD to show up in the correct country instead of the .com?
Local Website Optimization | | GregLB0 -
More pages on website better for SEO?
Hi all, Is creating more pages better for SEO? Of course the pages being valuable content. Is this because you want the user to spend as much time as possible on your site. A lot of my competitors websites seem to have more pages than mine and their domain authorities are higher, for example the services we provide are all on one page and for my competitors each services as its own page. Kind Regards, Aqib
Local Website Optimization | | SMCCoachHire0 -
Copying a Website For Better Rankings in a Specific Country
I've got a blog with some tools and business directories (https://www.webhostinghero.com). Actually my website is in English and is hosted in the US since its biggest source of traffic is from there. My second biggest traffic source is India. The issue is that while my website is really well optimized (in terms of speed), it is still slow for visitors from India. So my question is: Would it be possible to have a copy of my website on a web server located in India and use a sub-domain (ie.: in.webhostinghero.com) to access it without being penalized by Google? Would that be considered duplicate content? What would be the HREF LANG tag set to for India (EN-US, EN-GB... EN-IN??) I thought that having a sub-domain for a specific country could also help its rankings. Thanks in advance for your inputs. P.S. Sorry my english sucks.
Local Website Optimization | | sbrault740 -
Weird: Local Landing Page Not Showing In "City + Brand" Search Query
Hi Mozzers, I've noticed something strange that I can't quite wrap my head around. I'm hoping it's an easy fix and I'm just overlooking something. Backstory: I'm managing all things digital for a local flooring retailer that has 6 showrooms in the region. I've done basic local SEO - local landing pages with proper markup, GMB set up and verification, Moz Local scores are in the 80% range for each location and improving steadily, etc. However, one of my locations is way behind all of the others in both organic searches and the map. Recently, I did a search for "city + brand" for this particular location in an incognito window and the page came up on the 4th page. When I perform the same search for any of the other locations, the respective landing page come up 1st or 2nd along with the homepage. I even searched using the title tag as well as a few more specific searches and still nothing on the first page. This is weird, right? Has anyone experienced this before? Search Console came back perfect, so no penalties and it's definitely being indexed. For reference, the page I am referring to is http://www.nextdayfloors.net/locations/columbia/ and the location query I am using is "Columbia, MD" Any help is much appreciated! Thanks! Tim
Local Website Optimization | | AinsleyAgency0 -
Query results being indexed and providing no value to real estate website - best course of action?
Hi friends, I have a real estate website that has thousands of these type of query results pages indexed - http://search.myrealestatewebsite.com/l/43453/New_York_City_Rentals?per=100&start=159 What would be the best course of action to ensure those do not get indexed, as most provide no value whatsoever. 1. I'm limited to what I can do in the IDX, but I do believe I can modify the URL parameters for the website in Webmaster tools? Would this be correct? What would my parameter look like? 2. I have a webmaster tools for the website, then also the subdomain, which one would I submit the url parameter, or both?
Local Website Optimization | | JustinMurray0 -
International SEO - How to rank similar keys for differents countries
Hello MOZ friends.
Local Website Optimization | | NachoRetta
I work in an digital marketing agency in Argentina and since we have a lot of traffic from other Spanish-speaking countries like Mexico and Spain, we want to rank specific keywords for these countries.
We were thinking of putting new versions of the homepage in subfolders, for example /es/ for Spain, /mx/ to Mexico, etc. In these new subfolders we would place a very similar version of the homepage with a few minor modifications to work specific keywords in each country. For example, in Spain it is more searched "marketing online", and "marketing digital" is more used in Mexico and Argentina.
I have understood that to implement this we would be to place a label hrflang on the homepage directing visitors and crawlers to the correct version of each country. Is it ok?
Another concern is, whether they are very similar pages, Google does not take it as duplicate content ..
I read this:
https://moz.com/blog/the-international-seo-checklist
And i am not completely sure about using subfolders for each country, but i dont know how to position diferents keywords for diferent countries.
Regards,
Juan Ignacio Retta0 -
How can I do a Geo-targeted SEO for a lawncare services client?
Hi All! I am managing an SEO project for a new client, http://1800lawncaredallas.com and the optimization is yet to begin. It is a brand new website. The client serves only in particular locations in Texas. How can I optimize the site for these cities without making it look spammy or over-optimized? Is there a checklist that I can follow to optimize these pages? Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | wealthyminds
Rk0