Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Local SEO - Adding the location to the URL
-
Hi there,
My client has a product URL: www.company.com/product. They are only serving one state in the US. The existing URL is ranking in a position between 8-15 at the moment for local searches. Would it be interesting to add the location to the URL in order to get a higher position or is it dangerous as we have our rankings at the moment. Is it really giving you an advantage that is worth the risk?
Thank you for your opinions!
Sander -
Oops, above post was from me
Sorry, I was logged into a different account when responding. -
Hi Sander,
You are mentioning Local, but are also saying you serve a state. Local is city-related, not state-related, so I want to be sure I'm fully understanding your scenario. Are you saying:
-
Yours is a local business with a physical location in a specific city or multiple cities and in-person contact with customers?
-
Or, yours is a virtual business with no in-person contact, offering a product to an entire state?
-
You have one product featured on a single page and you want to add a city name (or a state name?) to that product page URL?
-
You have one product and are thinking of building multiple pages to cover multiple cities, adding them to the URLs for all cities in which you offer this product?
Some clarification would help, for sure!
-
-
Hey Sander,
Anders hit the nail on the head - but I felt I needed to add a bit of information. Be careful how you decide to add location to your URLs, as it could potentially hurt your rankings. There is much more involved in local search relevance than just a city or state name being included in a URL.
Also, it could seem "spammy" if your website becomes overrun with local tags. I would suggest setting up a structured URL, for exampls "www.company.com/Nevada/Las-Vegas/Products"
This way your URLs are serving 2 purposes - thoughtful organization and helping out with your keyword strategy.
Best,
Christopher
-
Hi Sander!
According to https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors it could be of some value to have some sort of geographic keyword in the URL, but I guess it would also be of value to have this as part of the onpage copy, in the title, meta description etc if it is possible to add i a ntural way, without making it look spammy.
If you have some contact information on the page, it could also be valueable to mark it up according to schema.org (same goes for the product information if not already done).
If you are changing the URL, also make sure to 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one.
My 2 cents. Hope this helps
Anders
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
-
Should I avoid duplicate url keywords?
I'm curious to know Can having a keyword repeat in the URL cause any penalties ? For example xyzroofing.com xyzroofing.com/commercial-roofing xyzroofing.com/roofing-repairs My competitors with the highest rankings seem to be doing it without any trouble but I'm wondering if there is a better way. Also One of the problems I've noticed is that my /commercial-roofing page outranks my homepage for both residential and commercial search inquiries. How can this be straightened out?
Local Website Optimization | | Lyontups0 -
Local SEO Over Optimization
We are targeting a bunch of services for our local business that works in and around their location. I'm concerned about over optimization and need some guidance on whether these points should be resolved. The company is based in a city and works mostly in the city but also in the surrounding areas. Currently, the site has 6 services pages (accessible via main nav) targeting the same location i.e. “Made Up Service London”, “Imaginary Service London” (with URLs and H1 tags etc. in place containing this location). However this is soon going to become 9 services pages, I am concerned that the repetition of this one location is starting to look spammy, especially as its where the company is based. Initially, I also wanted pages targeting the same services in other nearby areas. For example “Made Up Service Surrey”, “Imaginary Service Essex”. This has not happened as the info available has been too sporadic. I was going to add links to relevant case studies into these pages to beef up the content and add interest. To that end, we came up with case studies, but after a while, I noticed that these are also largely focused on the primary location. So out of 32 case studies, we have 19 focused on the primary location again with URL’s and H1 tags etc containing the location keyword. So in total, we have 25 pages optimized for the location (soon to be 28 and more if further case studies are added). My initial feeling was that the inclusion of pages targeting services in other locations would legitimize what we have done with the main pages. But obviously we have not got these pages in place and I question whether we ever will. What is my best course of action moving forward?
Local Website Optimization | | GrouchyKids1 -
Local Business Schema Image requirement
Hello, I work exclusively with Dentists and we have been putting our json schema in the footer for a while now. Just recently they made 'image' a requirement for the Dentist category. We already use the logo in our schema and that is an image. Since the schema is in the footer, it is on every page, and the only image on every page is the logo. Does the image we add to our schema need to be on the actual web page or could it be anything related to the business, like an image of the practice or the dentist? Would it hurt to have the logo listed twice in the schema - once as the logo and once as the image? Trying to figure out what the best thing to do is for the required 'image' field for a dentist. Thanks! Angela
Local Website Optimization | | tntdental0 -
More pages on website better for SEO?
Hi all, Is creating more pages better for SEO? Of course the pages being valuable content. Is this because you want the user to spend as much time as possible on your site. A lot of my competitors websites seem to have more pages than mine and their domain authorities are higher, for example the services we provide are all on one page and for my competitors each services as its own page. Kind Regards, Aqib
Local Website Optimization | | SMCCoachHire0 -
One locations page, or multiple pages?
Hi, I represent a franchisor who does all marketing- including local seo- for our franchisees. I've read a lot about local SEO and understand the basics, but have some remaining questions. 1- If our typical territories are quite large and encompass more than one major city, should we create multiple location pages for the same franchise owner? I believe the answer should be yes from an SEO stand point, but the problem is that most of our franchisees naturally just have one business address (their home). Since PO boxes and virtual offices aren't the way to go, what's the best course of action? And when I say major cities, I'm really talking about major cities (and not just small towns/boroughs). Can they just use a friend's/relative's address? 2- There's a lot of info out there about "locations pages," but it's not really clear whether or not you should really just have ONE page for each location, or several pages with different content? For instance, it looks like a lot of businesses are creating just one, "home-page" looking landing page for their individual locations, with everything from services to testimonials on just that one page. Is this preferred over creating several different local pages for that one location? The latter is what we currently do. From the user stand-point, it looks like each franchise location has it's own "mini website" on our main website. For instance, a landing page optimized for the local business name, a local services page, a project/photo gallery page, local review page, etc. It seems like a lot less work just building one landing page for each location, but is the payoff the same? I'm torn between the two strategies- is it really worth the extra work (in terms of traffic + local ranking) to build out the individual pages for the one location? Thanks Moz Community!
Local Website Optimization | | kimberleymeloserpa0 -
Call Tracking, DNI Script & Local SEO
Hi Moz! I've been reading about this a lot more lately - and it doesn't seem like there's exactly a method that Google (or other search engines) would consider to be "best practices". The closest I've come to getting some clarity are these Blumenthals articles - http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/05/14/a-guide-to-call-tracking-and-local/ & the follow-up piece from CallRail - http://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/11/25/guide-to-using-call-tracking-for-local-search/. Assuming a similar goal of using an existing phone number with a solid foundation in the local search ecosystem, and to create the ability to track how many calls are coming organically (not PPC or other paid platform) to the business directly from the website for an average SMB. For now, let's also assume we're also not interested in screening the calls, or evaluating customer interaction with the staff - I would love to hear from anyone who has implemented the DNI call tracking info for a website. Were there negative effects on Local SEO? Did the value of the information (# of calls/month) outweigh any local search conflicts? If I was deploying this today, it seems like the blueprint for including DNI script, while mitigating risk for losing local search visibility might go something like this: Hire reputable call-tracking service, ensure DNI will match geographic area-code & be "clean" numbers Insert DNI script on key pages on site Maintain original phone number (non-DNI) on footer, within Schema & on Contact page of the site ?? Profit Ok, those last 2 bullet points aren't as important, but I would be curious where other marketers land on this issue, as I think there's not a general consensus at this point. Thanks everyone!
Local Website Optimization | | Etna1 -
Local SEO: City & County Pages
I'm working on developing some local pages for an HVAC company. They cover two counties, so I was planning on having two county pages, then linking them to individual city pages to keep the menu simpler and not cluttering it up with a couple dozen city pages for people to slog through. Has anybody ever done county pages before for local SEO? Or at least seen them? Just curious to see if there's any real benefit overall for have separate county pages, or if I should just stick to city pages.
Local Website Optimization | | ChaseMG0 -
Does building multiple websites hurt you seo wise? Good or bad strategy?
HI,rategy. So I spoke to a local Colorado seo company and they suggested to find whatever keywords is the most searched under my GWT's and put .com behind it and build other sites for other keywords. I was curious about this type of strategy. Does this work? This seo guy said I could just get a DBA bank account and such for each domain name etc. I am not wanting to mislead anyone, but I am curious if for the sake of promoting other services, if creating other websites with partial and EMD's are worthwhile? Another issue I worry about is if I put my companies phone number, then next thing you know there is 3 or 4 sites that use that same phone number. To me this does not build trust with Google. But being I am learning, maybe this is a common strategy, or doomed from the start. Just curious what you think. Would you build other sites to try and rank for other services? Or keep one sites and maximize it? Thank you for your thoughts. I just do not want to pay $3000 per site if it will hurt not help.
Local Website Optimization | | Berner0