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
-
Do we get de-indexed for changing some content and tags frequently? What is the scope in 2017?
Hi all, We are making some changes in our website content at some paragraphs and tags with our main keywords. I'm just wondering if this is going to make us de indexed from Google? Because we recently dropped in rankings when we added some new content; so I am worried whether there are any chances it will turn more risky when we try to make anymore changes like changing the content. There are actually many reasons a website gets de indexed from Google but we don't employ any such black hat techniques. Our website got a reputation with thousands of direct traffic and organic search. However I am curious to know what are the chances of getting de indexed as per the new trends at Google? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
I'm changing title tags and meta tags, url, will i loose my ranking?
Hi Guys QUESTION: I'm currently going through a re-design for my new website that was published in November 2014 - since launching we found there were many things we needed to change, our pages were content thin being one of the biggest. I had industry experts that came in and made comments on the title tags lacking relevance for eg: our title tag for our home page is currently "Psychic Advice" most ideal customers don't search "Psychic Advice" they search more like "Online Psychic Reading" or Psychic Readings" I noticed alot of my competitors also were using title tags such as Online Psychic Readings, Free Psychic Readings etc so it brings me to my question of "changing the title tags around. The issue is, im ranking for two keywords in my industry, online psychics and online psychic readings in NZ. 1. Our home page and category pages are content thin.... so hoping that adding the changes will create perhaps some consistency also with the added unique and quality content. Here is the current website: zenory. co.nz and the new one is www.ew-zenory.herokuapp.com which is currently in development I have 3 top level domains com,com.au, and co.nz Is there anyone that can give me an idea if I were to change my home page title tag to **ZENORY | Online Psychic Readings | Live Psychic Phone and Chat ** If this will push my rankings down though this page will have alot more valuable content etc? For obvious reasons im going to guess it will make drop, I'm wondering though if it is worth changing the title tags and meta descriptions around or leaving it as is if its already doing well? How much of a difference do title tags and meta descriptions really make? Any insight into this would be great! Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may1 -
Pointless Wordpress Tagging: Keep or unindex?
Simple as that. Pointless random tags that are serving no purpose other than adding apparent bulk to a website. They are just showing duplicate content and literally are random keywords that serve almost no purpose. And the tags, for the most part are only used on one page. If I remove them however, they will probably drop our site from around 650 pages to 450 (assuming I keep any tags that were used more than once). I have read through some of the other posts on here and I know that Google will do some work as far as duplicate content is concerned. Now as far as UX is concerned, all these tags are worthless. Thoughts?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HashtagHustler0 -
Is anyone witnessed complete or partial recovery from Penguin 2.1 yet?
Hello Everyone, I am analyzing and working on recovery of some sites that were hit by Penguin 2.1 on 4th Oct, 2013. I have done almost all fixes including Anchor Variations Social Sharing Local Links Diversity in Back-links but still not witnessed any real recovery. Is anyone witnessed Partial or Complete Recovery From Penguin 2.1? Thanks for your feedback in advance! Regards
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Asjad0 -
2 Questions about 301 Redirects
So I have a couple of questions about 301 redirects: Do Google penalties EVER pass through a 301? I've done 20+ domain 301s in the last year and have yet to see it happen, but the other day I read a an article (or maybe it was a QA post?) that suggested doing 302s to avoid transferring penalties. Has anyone seen any authoritative information regarding this? I 301'd a domain in February that another SEO firm had built a lot of spammy links and I began building contextual links for it at a very slow rate (like 10 or so a month). Within a month, my domain authority was a 26 on the new domain and my inbound links were non existent. By month 2, my links were 70k and domain authority was 34. By month 3, down to 25k inbound links and domain authority of 29, where it has settled for the last 3 months despite some really high quality links. My question (don't worry it's coming), is does anyone have any clue why my links shot up so quickly and then dropped? I'm assuming the 301 links kicked in and then only about 45% ended up 'sticking'?? Thanks in advance
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BrianJGomez0 -
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 -
Img alt tags and creating a small image in the background ? New Golf Clothing Company.
On a page I am trying to make it have a better on page analysis for a keyword. Is it worth creating a small image that you cant see in the background 5 pixels by 5 pixels with the keyword img alt, or does google see this negatively? I know they say to create good content for the reader / viewer but an image wouldnt be suitable as it is a category page within my ecommerce website. http://www.funktiongolf.co.uk/mens-golf-clothing-21-c.asp e.g Mens golf Clothing category
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | funktiongolf0