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.
Should I include location in title tag to rank higher in local search
-
I'm working on a site for a small guest house (http://www.tommysonthebeach.com). I have created a Google Place page (Bing and Yahoo Local) as well and I have the address in the footer on every page.
I have the location (Indian Rocks Beach) at the beginning of most titles tags because that is how people tend to search, e.g. "Indian Rocks Beach vacation rental."
In theory I would think that I don't need location in the title tag because Google knows the location, and I could use the real estate for other keywords suchs as "pet friendly" or "beach hotel," etc. But when I look at the SERPS, those ranking highly all seem to have the location at the beginning of the title tag.
Thanks.
P.S. The site is currently not showing up in Google local search apparently because Google thinks it's a vacation rental agency, which are not allowed in local search. I'm trying to get that fixed.
-
About relevancy yes, you should include some variations of with Location Title Tags.
- topic:timeago_earlier,2 years
-
I also agree on using it, and yes will sure do it more for relevacy because that is how people search, also I would suggest not to add keywords that might be targeted on other pages, if you have a page about how your hotel is pet friendly, that is where you should put it.
-
Exactly. It sounds more natural and its "Guest House" closer to the beginning, that is important in Title optimization.
-
Thank you for your response.
Could you explain the reasoning behind the title tag change. Is it to make it more like a complete a real sentence?
Your other suggestions are valuable, too.
-
I use it, indenpendently of local search, in order to rank for organic search too. What i do not suggest is to use the location in Google Places profile Title, as it is considered somehow a "spam" tactic.
More over, I would try to better optimize your Title tag (now "Indian Rocks Beach | Clearwater Beach | "Old Florida" Guest House") and make it more like: "Indian Rocks Beach Guest House. Live your holidays in Clearwater Beach".
About the address on the footer, if it is possible show also the local contact number. And in your "direction" page I would change the actual map with a Google Map based one.
-
I include location in my local listings as a matter of habit. Have not dropped it to test and see if it has any effect. Keep in mind that there are other signals Google uses to work out the relevance of a local listing: Location (proximity, completness of the profile / information, outside references in directories, mentions of numbers...etc). I read a really interesting article about this recently here: http://ontolo.com/blog/phone-number-co-citation-analysis-local-link-builders
-
If its relevant yes get it in there and try moving the address from the footer this is something I'm playing with due to it being a less important area
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
-
Brand name in title?
Hi all, I have noticed that a lot of companies put there brand/company name at the end of their page title. To me, that seems like a huge sacrifice of your limited 60 characters. Wouldn't it be better to use characters for words that people might actually be searching for?
On-Page Optimization | Jun 11, 2024, 6:50 PM | RaoulWB0 -
SEO Location Pages - ALT Image Tag Question
Hello Guru's, I have a Hire Website whereby you can rent products online. I have created different Location pages for these which are in essence the same pages page but with different location specific urls, title tags , on page content etc etc. This helps me to rank for local search. These location pages also display 20 products per page. My question is Should I make the ALT IMAGE TEXT location specific for each of the 20 products . Example - Steam Cleaner Rental in "location" or should I only amend a few of the Atl Image Texts to be location specific. I don't want to come accross as spammy in google eyes but I also don't want to be seen as having duplicate content , images etc etc What do you think ? thanks Sarah.
On-Page Optimization | Feb 22, 2013, 3:27 PM | SarahCollins0 -
Prices in title tag
At our ecommerce site adwords ads generally perform a lot better when the product price is included in the ad title. Does anyone here have any experience and data on CTR with including product prices in title tags of product / category pages?
On-Page Optimization | Jan 25, 2013, 6:28 PM | ese0 -
Why I am ranking for irrelevant keywords
My website is e-commerce and used to rank for all industry related keywords like buy widgets, cheap widgets, online widgets in top10. And suddenly my website was hacked and to resolve this hacking issue i have re-write all my dynamic urls into static pages after that new pages are indexed and ranking well. But after few months i have notice few changes in keywords ranking going down. But suddenly after Google Algo (EMD/Panda) update on Sept 27 i lost all my positions. And then according to Google guidelines i have worked on over optimization and low quality pages. I have removed all tones of low quality pages from SERP and simultaneously worked on url re-write. But i have notice small percent of changes in keyword positions like when Google Algo (EMD/Panda) is rolled out i lost my keyword positions from 1st page to 200 page and after working on over optimization and low quality pages the keywords are came back to 100 pages. Recently i have notice that my web pages ranking for irrelevant keywords. For example, let's say i used to rank for home page for these keywords; buy widgets, cheap widgets, online widgets but now am ranking for different inner pages say (guide pages). Can any one suggest me whats wrong..
On-Page Optimization | Jan 22, 2013, 5:40 AM | BipSum0 -
Rel canonical tag back to the same page the tag is on?
Very simple, Why would a website (and I have seen tons doing this) link the rel canonical tag back to the same page the tag is on? Example: somepage.htm has a canonical tag linking to somepage.htm I thought the idea of this tag was to tell google if 2 pages are similar, this page is the original, and it's this page which should be indexed and the page with the tag on should pass all PR to the original. Maybe im wrong and someone can help me out to understand this.
On-Page Optimization | Jan 3, 2013, 6:31 PM | activitysuper0 -
Does Title Tag have to be in the HEAD tag?
We are using templates that load the same header for every page. I'd like to just include a different title tag in the "body" template of each page. If I was to do this, does it affect SEO at all?
On-Page Optimization | Dec 11, 2012, 8:41 AM | moziodavid0 -
Title and Heading Tags
Firstly I would like to comment on how helpful this site is. I haven't posted much before but have been reading tonnes of answers for many months now and have been finding it really useful. I used the SEOmoz scanner and the main problem highlighted was duplicate content so I started to add 'customer product reviews' I had received and unique 'further information' to each page (hopefully this was the right thing to do to solve duplicate content! : ) ) Then I looked at heading and title tags. Currently I set title tags for each product page to be "Brand Name- Product Name" but after doing some research we are thinking of putting Keyword Description of Product | Product Name | Brand Name (around 60 characters long). So is this the advised thing to do and create unique titles that are relevant to each specific product page for over 200 pages we have? In addition, any advice on setting optimum tags would be great. We keep reading varying tips online. I gather ideally h1 needs to be a shorter keyword rich version of the title tag? Many Thanks
On-Page Optimization | Nov 2, 2011, 3:09 PM | jannkuzel0 -
Alt tag matching product titles - e-commerce
Hey all, Just wondering if it is ok to match the alt tag to product titles. Imagine an e-commerce site that lists a whole lot of products on any one page for any one category. Each product listing has a thumbnail image beside it. The easiest way to implement this dynamically is to use the product title for the alt tag. Anyone had any experience with this? Is it overkill / spam of keywords - given that the product title is repeated. Our current situation is that our alt tags are simply blank or say 'photo' which is no good, and we have hundreds of thousands of pages. Cheers, Croozie
On-Page Optimization | May 22, 2011, 9:56 PM | sichristie0