Better to use specific cities or counties for SEO geographics?

[MLTGroup]

Hello SEO experts!

We are encountering a difficult situation at our marketing firm with a client who wants to optimize her site for keyworks + counties, as she doesn't want to be restricted to one specific city. We have suggested alternate solutions like location pages, utilization of H2's, etc, however, she wants to know the effectiveness of using a specific city (ie: Winona, MN) vs a county (ie: Winona County, MN) for SEO purposes. The research I have conducted thus far hasn't gotten me very far, basically I'm seeing that it all comes back to what people search for (cleaning services in Winona, MN vs. cleaning services in Winona County, MN). Does anyone have any insight into this issue?

[KeriMorgret]

This is unscientific and based on the way I personally search, but I'd ask how people in the area refer to that area for some additional input. Here are some examples of the ways I have searched for locations in areas I've lived in (or had family live in).

In the SF Bay Area, I used to live in Newark. There were about 30,000 people in the city, and it was surrounded by the SF Bay on one side, and Fremont on three other sides. I would verbally tell people in the region that I lived in Fremont, and I'd search for local businesses using Fremont instead of Newark, as otherwise I'd get results for New Jersey.

I have relatives that used to live in Woodstock, VA. Everyone always thinks of Wodstock, NY, and it's hard to find local info, especially when searching from the West Coast. A lot of businesses describe themselves as in the Shenandoah Valley (and it was Shenandoah county), so I'd often search for Shenandoah, or Front Royal, which was the nearest sizable town.

Other relatives live in Battle Creek, Iowa, a town of 800 or so people. Even with adding Iowa, I get way too many results for Battle Creek, Michigan. If I need to search for something (usually on ebay, looking for memorabilia) I will search for Ida Grove or Ida County.

I know this really isn't an answer to your question, but more of some things to think about. Again, I'd ask (if you're not local to the area yourself) how people usually describe where they live, and look at search volume for that. Maybe also run some AdWords targeted to desired zip codes, and then look in the Search Query Reports in AdWords to see what cities people type in to modify their search?

[EGOL]

I used to live in a town that had a couple thousand people..  It was the largest town in the county.  The county was large enough that it would take 1.5 hours to drive from the northwest corner to the southeast corner - not because the distance was that great - but because there were few good roads in that direction.  Many of the people lived on an unpaved road and most of the people had a well instead of water service.

In the entire county there was one tiny hospital, a few grocery stores and enough stoplights that you could count them on your fingers.  But there were more campsites than residents and the population of the county would double the day before the first day of deer hunting or trout season.

If you had a healthcare emergency you better be right with God.  It could be an hour before an ambulance gets to you and another hour before you get to a tiny hospital with a couple GPs and one surgeon and then transferred to the hospital of a small city another hour away.

[WilliamKammer]

I'd listen to EGOL and Kemp. Sounds like they know the rural places better than I, and these rural people don't know how to search good yet

[KempRugeLawGroup]

Continuing on what EGOL said, we have had very good experiences with County + keyword for areas outside of Hillsborough County (outside of Tampa). You will not find Pasco + keyword or Hernando + keyword ever showing up on any mainstream keyword tool. They just don't have the search volume...however, we get conversions on those landing pages all the time.

Frankly, I don't know how you would even do county vs city research, because you (most likely) will not find search volume for counties even though conversions might be there. However, as William said, they are the same name. So, in your particular case, it really shouldn't matter.

Best,

Ruben

[EGOL]

In some parts of the United States people use town and city names when they talk about where they live or where things are located or where they are going.  These people usually live in towns and cities and that is how they think about places.

However, many people live in rural areas - not in any town or city.  These people often use counties, instead of cities when they talk about where they live or where they are going.

The lower the population density the more likely they are going to use counties instead of towns and cities.  Why?  Because the tiny towns and cities where they live are unknown to most people.  Everyone has heard of Pittsburgh and Cleveland but nobody has heard of Gassaway and Erbacon, yet they probably know the name of the county if they live in that region.

People who live in cities "don't get it" when they hear rural people talking about what county they are from... but people who live in rural areas understand city people talking about what city they are from.  This shows that rural people are smarter when it comes to geographic locations. 

[CleverPhD]

Agree with William.  Show your client the keyword search volume data on searching by city vs by county.   Several of the sites I run have localized pages and we have gotten into discussions about getting more specific by using zip code or the names of neighborhood as we were well optimized for city + service.  Why not  zipcode + service  etc.

It came down to, nobody searches for zipcode + service or neighborhood + service in the areas we focus on.  Yours may be different, so look at the data first, but I bet it will hover at the city level.  You can put it to your client this way, "I can spend a lot of your money on pages that are optimized at the county level and they could even rank for that search.   But if no one is searching for those key terms, then I have just wasted your money and time."

Good luck!

[WilliamKammer]

Wait... the town and county have the same name? Then there's no issue.

People don't search by county and rarely put in the state when searching a city geo. Your money term is variations of, "cleaning services in Winona". Even though this phrase and others like it don't have a high search volume, experience and years of data tell me this would be the way to go. Unless you wanted to focus on carpet cleaning, which is a different ball game.

To sedate your client, maybe discuss a local SEO play with G+. Then you can define the exact area you'd like to cover, which would include both no problem.