Ranking for local searches without city specific keywords?
-
Hey guys!
I had asked this question a few months ago and now that we are seeing even more implicit information determining search results, I want to ask it again..in two parts.
-
Is is STILL best practice for on-page to add the city name to your titles, h1s, content etc? It seems that this will eventually be an outdated tactic, right?
-
If there is a decent amount of search volume without any city name in the search query (ie. "storefont signs", but no search volume for the phrase when specific cities are added (ie. "storefront signs west palm beach) is it worth trying to rank and optimize for that search term for a company in West Palm Beach?
We can assume that if there are 20,000 monthly searches for the non-location specific term that SOME of them would be fairly local, so do we optimize the page without the city name and trust Google to display results with a local intent...therefore showing our client's site in the SERPS when someone searches "sign company" and they are IN West Palm Beach?
If there is any confusion, please just ask me to clarify! I think this would be a great WhiteBoard Friday topic for Rand!
-
-
Hi Ricky,
I may not be understanding your question correctly. If a business is local and wants local traffic/business, then optimizing the website will include use of the relevant geographic terms. Regarding keyword research, while the new Google Keyword Planner tool does a better job than the old keyword research tool at indicating volume of searches based on geography, it may still not be totally accurate. You can bet that people are searching for common services in any city, whether they are simply searching from a device based in that city or are actually including the city name in their search term. Thus, inclusion of the city name is key to optimizing the site to help Google understand it is a relevant answer to these queries. Does this make sense, or did I not correctly understand your question? Please, let me know!
-
Hi there Ricky
I think you're bang on the right track with this.
Like you say, if a search term like that has 20,000 searches, some of them will be local searches. In addition, in the UK at least I've seen SERPs change from region to region, even if the search query itself has no local term attached to it. Think of a term like "junk removal" and how the results seem to be dominated by your local area, but not so from someone searching elsewhere.
So with the issue of title tags, I'd take SEO out of the equation for now. I'd rather look at whether the company explicitly wants local business only, or wouldn't mind national business. This can be quite important depending on how the company is set up.
If a company would welcome businesses nationally, or even by state, having "West Palm Beach" in the title tag might put off some prospective customers if they think it is too small, or focused too locally. In that case, it would be best to leave it out of the title, more from a conversion perspective than SEO. Converesely, if the company is just looking for that local business, which for something like a sign company or a junk removal service like I mentioned before might only be interested in, then including "West Palm Beach" not only filters out unnecessary traffic, but it would also likely boost the SEO efforts for that term - albeit very slightly. I don't think it's a huge influence, but every little helps!
And as you'll no doubt be aware, there are loads of other stuff that can help you rank locally besides the title tag. So if you choose to omit a local term in your title tag but still want to optimise for local, there's a lot you can do. Earning your local citations is very high up on my list - Both GetListed and Local Visibility provide fantastic lists of the most important citations for your country and, where applicable, your area.
Hope this helps!
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
-
Keyword research
Do I understand it correctly ? Let's say my keyword is Piedmont bike tours. From what I understand I need to use synonyms of Piedmont bike tours that people would use to find my website such as bike trip in Piedmont or cycling vacation in Piedmont and then closely related phrases in my content which are not necessarily synonyms but that semantically related, correct ? Do I need to do that for every topic that I decide to talk about on my webpage. For example let's say another topic I have decided to talk about on my page about Piedmont bike tour is Barolo. Do I need to do the same process for Barolo ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
HUGELY different ranking for a keyword between Bing and Google. Looking for ideas.
We rank really well for a brand in Bing (#2 behind manufacturer, and it's a competitive name) but are in about 15th place in Google. Any suggestions on what could be hurting us in Google are welcome!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | absoauto1 -
Ranking strangeness
Just wondering if anyone had come across this kind of scenario which I had/have with a client. Rebuilt/revamped site that has got problems with thin content we are looking to resolve. Rankings for the main keywords were ok on page 2 or 3 and being worked on. Two weeks ago ALL main keywords disappeared from ranking (category pages). The homepage took over and ranked ALL those keywords at #1! Bang -straight to top spot. However happy I was I find this disconcerting as there is a reasonable level of competition. Today homepage rankings in the main go and directories come back into the rankings at some good positions on page one. We still need to fix thin and duplicated content! I can justify the problems and swing with the category pages but the massive cross the board top position for the homepage has been pretty bizarre. Has anyone else had the experience where the homepage suddenly 'out-performs' in a big way?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MickEdwards0 -
Search ranking crushed - due to embedding of volume of 3rd party content?
I run a job site - www.hawaiijobengine.com. Last week I incorporated jobs from Indeed.com (in order to make money every time a user clicks on Indeed jobs). Before, I had around 1200 jobs posted directly on my site and with Indeed's jobs I probably have around 4,000 jobs. When users click on the Indeed jobs they are taken to the employers website, application portal or other job board. Question: is there a good chance Google will have crushed me on my rankings due to the ratio of unique content on my site now having dropped massive with the Indeed jobs incorporated? Is there a chance Google is just temporarily dropping me due to this and in 1 weeks time the algorithm will probably have worked out what is happening and get more back to my previous rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen0 -
Why is google ranking me higher for pages that aren't optimised for keywords those that are?
I am finding that our homepage and other pages are being ranked higher against keywords that we have optimised other pages for. e.g Keyword: Luxury Towels Google Ranks our homepage http://www.towelsrus.co.uk at 20 for this and the page I am trying to rank for it is nowhere to be seen http://www.towelsrus.co.uk/sport-spa/luxury-towels/catlist_fnct498.htm Why is this and is this why our position for certain keywords fluctuates? How do I remedy this problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus0 -
My site rank is not consistent. Once it at first page , then for the next week it is not found in top 100 position. Again two/ three weeks later it ranked automatically without any work. Why this is happening?
Here's the following are available in my site: robot.txt file is included sitemap available Natural link building going on. in a week total 100 links we are creating. 30 social bookmarks, 30 directory submission, 20 blog comments, 20 forum links All the blog and forum links are from relevant sources. Please help me ..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | coldfireinc0 -
My ranking on some keywords is getting better . Now what about geography!
Hi, I finally got a better result on my ranking on specific keyword. Now, here is what I need to do. Just to place you in context, we have acquired 2 companies in Europe since last year ( One in the UK and one in France ) and our head office is in North America. Since our servers are located in NA, I realize the ranking will be better here on specific keywords than it is in the UK and France. I actually managed to get on the first page on google North America, but I am till very var in ranking in France and the UK. Where should I start to get a worldwide ranking ? I could start on the 2 geography mentionned but is there a strategy to get ranked worldwide ? Any help would be appreciated. Best regards,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | processia0 -
Why did my rankings drop?
Hi all, In July I started to re-energise my link building efforts by getting a proper campaign together to build links. Despite building about 20 new links my traffic has actually fallen. Here a a breakdown of what happen: 1)Late June I noticed my toolbar page rank up at about PR4 which, despite only being a small part of the algo, was nice to see. Early July I started my link building campaign by getting together a massive list of potential link partners by using Open Site Explorer on my competitors sites. 3)Because I'm a bit pressed for time I decided to go for the easier links first. I sorted my link list by Domain Authority and started to list on high DA directories used by my competitors. I listed on about 20 of these directories. I also livened up an old links page I'd previously hidden from the SE's because I was planning to do a bit of Link exchanging too. A few days after I started building links from these directories I noticed my traffic start to drop off gradually. I also noticed the toolbar PR go down to PR3. I decided to stop at 20 submissions because it looked like this was effecting traffic. I also removed the links page I'd livened up which produced a temporary improvement in traffic but it's since gone on to get a bit worse. Traffic is now down by about 10% on when I started buying submissions to directories. I must add that during this period we have also been taking on new clients which, as a a real estate listing site, means we put loads of content on our site for the client. That content is also on the clients website and on other competitors sites. So there would be lot's of a content that appears elsewhere on the net. Not really sure which of the two has caused the problem and not really sure how to progress. Do I remove the links on the directories? Do I wait for this newly added content to bed down so that new fresh can take it's place in our results which we rank from? Any help would be appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mulith0