For a URL, is it better to have Keyword +City?

[netviper]

I am working on some landing pages and trying to do well in Local areas.

Is it better to have my landing pages set as mysite.com/keyword+location or mysite.com/Location+keyword.  or does it even matter anymore?

So for a plumber selling water heater services.  is it better to be:

site/hot-water-heaters-jacksonville-fl or site/jacksonville-fl-hot-water-heaters?

I normally do keyword+city.

[DarinPirkey]

Keyword planner tool within the Google AdWords console added nine new features today.

The new features include:

• Specify a time period for keyword data
• Compare time periods over time
• View absolute and relative changes for each ad group and keyword’s volume comparing two periods
• Visualizing mobile trends
• See breakdowns by device and targeted locations
• Flexible time periods
• Device segmentation and bid adjustments
• Location breakdowns for sub-geos of your targeted location
• Visualizations and estimates for sub-geos

http://www.phillymarketinglabs.com/9-awesome-additions-to-googles-keyword-planner/

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Dave,

Unfortunately, I find Google's KP tool to be next to useless unless the client is in a really major city. Basically, we're back to the old advice of researching keywords and adding geography through common sense. If anyone has a different take on this, please let me know, but local keyword research has never been very satisfactory and Google seems to return zeros or unbelievably low numbers for most US towns.

[DonnaDuncan]

Yes. It seems in this instance there's not a big difference, if any difference at all, between search volumes for "Jacksonville water heaters" and "water heaters Jacksonville". And as vzPro points out, with Hummingbird, Google will find you anyway.

[netviper]

Hi Donna,

Taking your example:

" plugging "water heaters Jacksonville" turned up 0 searches a month. Plugging in "water heaters" and then targeting Jacksonville FL only turned up 40 searches a month."

Would you not still craft your page to be url/water-heaters-jacksonville and also your title tag to be water heaters jacksonville?

[DonnaDuncan]

I agree with VzPro, it's at least an indication.

I also do things like search for "keyword+location" and then just "keyword", but using the targeting and location options on the left to select Jacksonville FL only (vs the entire US).

So in your example, plugging "water heaters Jacksonville" turned up 0 searches a month. Plugging in "water heaters" and then targeting Jacksonville FL only turned up 40 searches a month.

[DarinPirkey]

It depends on how you use it.  Even if the numbers are 10 to 12 that can still be an indication.  I generally try to stick to larger areas for search.  If you look in Mayport you will probably only show a few searches.  Remember, these are showing actual searches from those exact locations.  My assumption (purely an assumption) that these smaller volume searches get "lumped together" with other search queries.  Ie. Plumber Jacksonville, plumbers Jacksonville, Jacksonville plumbers, etc.

If you are doing landing pages per area, I find the keyword planner very helpful for improving my QA score in AdWords.

[netviper]

Do you guys actually find keyword planner useful?  I find for 99% of the things i look at on a local level the volume is either blank or so low it doesn't really mater.  Like 10 vs 12 a month.

[DarinPirkey]

I agree with Donna's take.  I have a dozen or so plumber and ac repair clients and that has been a constant struggle to talk to owners about. They see a competitor ranking for ac repair Jacksonville FL but our page is /air-conditioning-repair-jacksonville.  I also use the keyword planner to help decide this.  What I do is search for "hot water heaters" and localize the setting to your search area and get the recommendations there.  Let's say there are 150 searches for the FL version of a search and 60 for the non FL version.  I'll generally check to see the competition level of each search.  If one is medium and the other is high, I'll usually take the medium competition one and shoot to rank for that one.  Wven if it has the lower search volume.  This also works if you are setting up AdWords campaigns for these pages.  I would try to mix up the h2 tags with the non primary version too.  That has worked for us in organic results.

All that being said, the Hummingbird algo is meant to help googlebots understand long tail searches like this and is trying to make the difference between keywords + city and city + keyword a mute point.  If you just do a regular search you'll see the SERP displaying both results.

[DonnaDuncan]

Hi Dave,

I think the sequencing of words in the URL is less important than the sequencing of words in the title tag. That said, if I were you I'd look up "keyword+location" and "location+keyword" in Google Planner and make my choice based on what I learn there. Which version gets the most searches? Which is harder to rank for? And which looks like it might have the better commercial value?

The length of the URL is going to be the same either way, so err on the side of the sequencing that best fits your overall ranking objectives.