Is it OK to include name of your town to the title tag or H1 tag on a blog to enhance local search results

[wianno168]

I recently attended a webinar by ETNA Interactive on local search SEO. The presenter recommended including the name of your town in the title of the blog to increase local search SEO.

Is this OK? Ive always been concerned that it is such an obvious attempt to rank locally that Google would consider it "spammy" ? black hat, "sketchy" or otherwise manipulative.

Have the rules changed? Is it OK to do?

Brooke

[wianno168]

Thank you very much

[wianno168]

Thank you very much

[Travis_Bailey]

As The Chris Menke has stated, there's no problem with including the city and state in your meta data or on-page markup. It's actually an advantage of sorts.

There are nearly one dozen cities named Dallas in the US. Say you were located in Dallas, TX. What would separate you from Dallas, OR? There would be citations, if you're doing what you need to do for a local business. But I've found that on-page is getting a bit more weight, and it's increasing.

Not sure yet? You can verify a Google My Business listing via Google Webmaster Tools for an indeterminate amount of business categories. If that's not a sign that on-page is gaining weight in the local search scene - I don't know what is.

In fact, the Google Local team has stated that the business's domain is the strongest factor. Would you not like to possibly give them a few more signals, easily? They are the donkey, you have the carrot.

But I would suppose your question arises from an objection to writing; "Profession/Service City, State". There are ways you can do that, and it will still look alright. In fact, wouldn't you want someone to know that they came to the right place immediately, even though it sounds generic?

People don't have time. You have to show them they came to the right place immediately. Title and header markup are excellent ways to do so.

[Chris.Menke]

Brooke,

There's nothing wrong with including place names in your title, in fact, it is a best practice in many instances.  Be strategic about doing so, though.  Adding the name of your city to every blog post will seem spammy (but won't get you penalized) and probably isn't necessary.  Typically, if your services are location specific, you should include your place name in the title, description, and body.  It will usually help with organic ranking  and click through on product/services pages when searchers are looking locally for your offerings.