How to optimise a page for a regional search without it looking clumsy?
-
What's is the best way to go about optimising a page for a regional search phrase. E.g. 'Physiotherapy CITY' and keep the text looking natural and not manipulated?
Previously I've added the search phrase 'Physiotherapy CITY' to TITLE and H1 but this can look clumsy when used in the H1 tag.
If I grade a page using MOZ on-page optimisation it will suggest I add the search phrase to the H1.
What the recommended way of doing regional on-page optimisation?
-
Thank you Miriam. Yes those posts did help and have set me straight on H1 tags.
-
Hi Again,
For more opinions on header tags, you might like to check out:
http://moz.com/blog/some-opinions-on-the-seo-myths-realities-fight
http://moz.com/community/q/are-h1-tags-important-or-influential
http://moz.com/community/q/h1-tag-proper-uses
Hope these help!
-
Thanks MiriamEllis
I've had two quite different comments on this and I think the key bit is your point about bots not caring so much about H1 tag. How much don't they care? I thought H1 and TITLE still were of high importance. If my goal is to get best rank for a client and MOZ page optimiser gives me a better grade with an exact keyword H1, I'm feeling more inclined to go with it and as David-Kley says above...
"If people are looking for PLACE, in CITY, and the first thing they see when they hit the page is PLACE serving CITY, state...might be that they say "This is just what I was looking for""
Well this does make good sense. I search for something and the website instantly tells me I've found what I was looking for.
So I've actually decided to go with "Boston Physiotherapy" although I do think a more sales and customer focused H1 would look less manipulated. It's a difficult one.
-
Hi Benners,
Good question. The H1 tag is majorly important to customers and much less so to bots, so I would always recommend going with natural language over strictly optimized language. In other words, I would recommend:
Receive Compassionate Physiotherapy in Our Relaxing Boston Office
as opposed to
Physiotherapy Boston Is Our Specialty ... or something like that.
Sometimes, you can strike a balance between the two, though, along the lines of:
For Caring Physiotherapy, Boston Patients Have A Compassionate Option Here at GreenTree
I would advise taking this approach not just with onpage tags, but also with title tags, too, due to their prominence in the SERPs. My bias is definitely toward natural in everything:)
-
If the majority of your page and back end seo is optimized around the subject and the area, I doubt changing the header tag to look more natural would hurt your seo. I understand what you mean, as we have done local pages for the majority of our clients. It is difficult to make it not appear to be what it is: a page designed around ranking for a local area.
On a sidenote, this may not be such a bad thing. If people are looking for PLACE, in CITY, and the first thing they see when they hit the page is PLACE serving CITY, state...might be that they say "This is just what I was looking for"
As an seo, its hard for us to understand what a consumer expects to see when they get to a webpage since we are so involved in the process of making it. I dont think most consumers don't look into it that far, and simply see a page on a site that offers what they searched for. This could change based upon your target audience, and intelligence level.
The MOZ tools are just that, tools. They offer a way for people to see basic optimization tips for ways their site can be improved. Don't take everything they say to heart, since they are just a guideline. We have pages that are a perfect A+ super 100% in MOZ tools that dont rank on page one. For more advanced seo practices, you could potentially hurt your ranking by changing certain things, based upon what you said your target keywords were.
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
-
Combining products - edit existing product page or 301 redirect to new page?
We want to combine existing products - e.g. 'hand lotion' and 'body lotion' will become 'hand & body lotion'. As such, we'll need to combine the two product pages into one. What would be the best route to take in terms of SEO to do this? My initial reaction is to create a new product page and then 301 or 302 redirect the old products to the new product page depending on if the change is permanent or temporary. Would you agree? Or am I missing something?
On-Page Optimization | | SwankyApple1 -
Webs Pages not correct
First of all I am a beginner but that will show with this question. I have moved my website from Wix to Web.com. I had the dns I think that is correct re-direct my site to web.com. Since then some of the pages from wix still show up even though they are no long apart of my site. Secondly when I go to google and type in cestoday.com some of the pages gives me a 401 or 404 error code, and others do not link to the proper page on my website. They go to my web-site but not the correct page. What do I do. Thank you Dave
On-Page Optimization | | redsman944
cesyes@hotmail.com In reference to my last question about moz not being able to see my pages and giving me an "F" I thought you might find it interesting to know that that same page once moved got an A amazing.0 -
Contact pages coming up for keywords above landing pages
I have two examples of contact pages coming up over designated landing pages Keyword: Nickel Alloys for www.neonickel.com Keyword: Artificial Grass for www.artificialgrass4u.co.uk Is there anyway I can stop this happening?
On-Page Optimization | | icansee0 -
Form Only Pages Considered No Content/Duplicate Pages
We have a lot of WordPress sites with pages that contain only a form. The header, sidebar and footer content is the same as what's one other pages throughout the site. Each form page has a unique page title, meta description, form title and questions but the form title, description and questions add up to probably less than 100 words. Are these form pages negatively affecting the rankings of our landing pages or being viewed as duplicate or no content pages?
On-Page Optimization | | projectassistant0 -
Too Many On-Page Links
Hi, I did a SEOmoz campaign and got results today, One of the results is Too "Many On-Page Links" when i am drilling down, i see that that's include inside links. for example, i sale food, i have my main department window - inside i have 30 products - each product is linked to a detailed page about the product. so automatically i have 30 links - not including all the others in this page, and i easily get over 100 and even sometimes 200 is this a big issue? does it damages my SEO? If yes, is there a way to write the HTML in a way that internal links like that wont be counted? Thank you SEOWiseUs
On-Page Optimization | | iivgi0 -
Changing the url of a page
Hello. I would like to change the url of a page. It currently has very few inbound links. I would set up a 301 redirect to the new url. Is there anything else I should take into account before changing the url? Is there a downside to changing a url? Do inbound links carry the same value when a 301 redirect is involved? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | nyc-seo0 -
URL for location pages
Hello all We would like to create clean, easy URLs for our large list of Location pages. If there are a few URLs for each of the pages, am I right when I'm saying we would like this to be the canonical? Right now we would like the URL to be: For example
On-Page Optimization | | Ferguson
Domain.com/locations/Columbus I have found some instances where there might be 2,3 or more locations in the same city,zip. My conclusion for these would be: adding their Branch id's on to the URL
Domain.com/locations/Columbus/0304 Is this an okay approach? We are unsure if the URL should have city,State,zip for SEO purposes?
The pages will have all of this info in it's content
BUT what would be best for SEO and ranking for a given location? Thank you for any info!0 -
Why has only one page been crawled?
I went over the list of possible reasons, but I don't think any of them apply to the site in question: sarahhueniken.com. Any other reasons only one page would be crawled?
On-Page Optimization | | scottsemple0