Business location in small town - How to target meta title?
-
So it's common practice to include the city/state in page titles and within the content. However let's say that a business is located in a small town, but serves customers in surrounding, larger towns. You might say that it's not worth mentioning the small town because there would be few searchers in that area.
However, does Google take into account the distance a searcher is from the business location, in relation to the page title, as well as the Google my Business page? Obviously you can't go stuffing all of the surrounding towns into your homepage or main service pages. Is there any value in mentioning the small town, or is it fine to leave it out too?
What has been your experience?
-
Hi Oliver,
It might help to think of it this way. Whatever your town is (small or large) that is your local home base. This is the address you'll be using in all of your citation building, the footer and contact page of your website, and in at least some of your website content and optimization, all for the purposes of ranking locally.
For any other locations you serve, but where you lack a physical location, you'll be aiming at organic (not local pack) rankings. So, this will have nothing to do with your citations. It will all have to do with service city content you build on the website + additional outreach in the form of social and paid promotions.
So, even if your town is small, it's the anchor that proves you to be a local, physical business. It's what proves your eligibility to be included in Google My Business and other citation platforms. It's your best hope of local pack rankings.
Everything beyond your city of location is for organic outreach.
As for how Google will handle all this, given the user-as-centroid phenomenon, Google will customize local results for the searcher based on his physical location at the time of search. So, you do want to be sure you're making it clear that your physical location is at 'X' so that Google is convinced searchers near there are close to you.
Hope this helps, and might like this for further reading: https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages
-
Hi Oliver!
Mike's answer is spot on.
In reference to your question about Google taking the searcher's distance from the business into account I would like to provide some insight. Organic listing will not have as much to do with location to the search, but the results in the local pack do. Three important factors to keep in mind when trying to rank in the Local Pack:
- Relevance
- Distance
- Prominence
Relevance is impacted by the information in your profile relating to the searcher’s query. Ensure your profile is completely filled out with valid information, hours, photos, etc. Google will show results calculated by the user’s location in order to display business closest to them. Lastly, how prominent your business is within the industry is important. Prominence refers to offline factors (links, articles, directories), as well as positive reviews and SERP positions.
Hope this helps!
-
Oliver,
We serve the DC market with a commercial print shop in Waldorf, MD (15 miles outside DC) and I've focused all my SEO efforts on DC. We've had success with this strategy along with the convenience of lower manufacturing costs, as well as maintaining our Super-Fast expedited services model. We've done it and you may as well.
KJr
-
Fantastic answer Mike!
I would also add to look into services like Moz Local, Whitespark, or Yext, to get more relevant listings that help Google and other search engines verify your information and help you appear for searches related to your industry and service area.
Don't forget also that Moz has a great local SEO audit resource.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
Patrick -
In a situation like this, I would turn to your Google My Business page and make sure that the locations or distance that you serve is set properly in order to reach all of the surrounding towns that you do, in fact, serve. It doesn't necessarily hurt to include your small town name in the meta title. While that will help with more immediate local traffic, Google does change titles and descriptions in the SERPs for certain terms they feel the page is relevant for but do not feel your other info adequately expresses. Google will take into account the location of your business but if your GMB page shows that you service a nearby area, they won't just discount you because you're in nearby small town instead of Big Town. In cases like that, you may find that Google alters the page title in the SERPs to show the name of the bigger town or completely remove mention of any town. So just because your title and description don't perfectly reflect every single area you might work in, that doesn't mean you can't show up for those local searchers.
It can also be useful to make pages on your site specifically talking about the services available to those bigger surrounding towns. So even if your homepage is more targeted to Small Town, you can have an organic landing page devoted to Big Town A and Big Town B with all your info, service information, a blurb about the town and how your business interacts with that area, and a nice call to action and/or contact form for that town. Just make sure not to copy/paste to create tons of targeted pages like that. You want everything to be nice and unique so there are no duplication issues.
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
-
Meta descriptions in other languages than the page's content?
Hi guys, I need an opinion on the optimization of meta descriptions for a website available in 6 languages that faces the following situation: Main pages are translated in 6 languages, English being primary >> all clear here. BUT The News section includes articles only in English, that are displayed as such on all other language versions of the website. Example:
Local Website Optimization | | Andreea-M
website.com/en/news/article 1
website.com/de/neues/article 1
website.com/fr/nouvelles/article 1
etc. Because we don't have the budget right now to translate all content, I was wondering if I could add only the Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions in the specific languages (using Google Translate), while the content to remain in English. Would this be accepted as reasonable enough for Google, or would it affect the website ranking?
I'd like to avoid major mistakes, so I'm hoping someone here on this forum has a better idea of how to proceed in this case.0 -
Store Locator Apps - Which Do You Use?
Hey Everybody! I'd so appreciate feedback from our web developers and Local SEO wizards here regarding store locator apps (you know - type in a city/zip and get shown the stores nearest you). There are a number of different paid options out there on the market, and a couple of free ones. If you are managing the websites/SEO for multi-location clients, would you share with me which store locator app you chose, why you chose it and how you like it? I am particularly interested in two things about these: Does you app allow you to build a permanent landing page for each store location, including the ability to fully customize the content on that page? In terms of ensuring that these landing pages get crawled, have you used an html sitemap, some type of directory page with crawlable links or some other feature that allows bots to reach the landing pages? Or, if you're not doing any of that, do you believe Google is crawling javascript/ajax/something else to get through your store locator widget to the landing pages? Thanks, in advance, for helping me with my research on this topic!
Local Website Optimization | | MiriamEllis0 -
Listing multiple schema Things (e.g. Organization, LocalBusiness, Telephone, Locations, Place, etc)
Greetings All, My law office features many pages with what are essentially directory listings (names, addresses, and phone numbers of places, agencies, organizations that clients might find helpful). Am I correct in assuming that using schema for each of these listings might cause confusion for search engines? In other words, are search engines looking for schema on pages or sites to tell them only about the company running that page or site, or do search engines appreciate schema markup to tell them about all the pieces of content on the pages or that site?
Local Website Optimization | | micromano0 -
Internationalization: 2 Websites in English for different location?
Hi guys, My customer is already well established in France. They have a good Domain Authority and a lot of Inbound Links. They're doing very well in France. They're now looking at entering the US market, however, their trademark is already registered within the US. They therefore decided to go with a new name. Basically: They open an english-only website for the US presence They add English as a language on their French website for their European presence They'll therefore have two domains: aaa.com: US Presence bbb.com: European Presence; 2 languages: French & English My main reaction was that: since the content on aaa.com and bbb.com/english/ will be the same, they'll necessarily have Duplicate Content issue. How would you look at this? What would be the best alternative for them? Thank you
Local Website Optimization | | PierreLechelle0 -
Target broad keywords for local or broad keywords+local city?
Hi, Is it better to target broad keywords in a local market or target 'broad keywords + local city'? Or both? The sites I'm working with currently have landing pages for each 'local city/town + keyword' ... they each have about 5 services they offer and about 7 or more nearby towns they service. This means I'm tracking about 35+ keywords per client. That seems to be a bit much. Am I wrong? Would it be just as effective to target broad keywords and track them locally being that the local market isn't very competitive. Of course the broad keywords yield more search volume according to google keyword tool. However, the current setup is sending a worthwhile traffic volume to the site. According to Miriam's article http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide I'm working with a business model 2 - single brick and mortar location servicing many areas nearby. Thanks, Chris
Local Website Optimization | | LinkPoint0 -
Google Panda 4.0 update - Good for Small businesses?
Hi guys, We recently did a post on Google Panda 4.0 release. Check this here. Have you seen any notable changes in rankings for your website? Do you think that this update will benefit small businesses/websites? Looking forward to your comments.
Local Website Optimization | | FRL2 -
How to get facebook likes, for a business that no one would like?
Ok so a crazy title, but please hear me out. I have a construction website. It's a small business. It serves people one time, we get the job done right the first time, and usually never go back. A lot of our clients are older, some who have a rotary phone still. So for the sake of social seo, how do you get people to like a company on facebook, when its a local business who basically gets in and gets out. I read somewhere to place ads with poll type pictures. For an example say, Like us if you like a clean bath tube. It sounds weird, but it seems to help some. It gives you a like, and they all add up. So for a business who is trying to get likes, without buying them, how do you approach it? Thank you Chris
Local Website Optimization | | asbchris0 -
Local Business Schema Markup on every page?
Hello, I have two questions..if someone could shed some light on the topic, I would be so very grateful! 1. I am still making my way through how schema is employed, and as I can tell, it is much more specific (and therefore relevant) in its details than using the data highlighter tool. Is this true? 2. Most of my clients' sites have a footer with the local business info included on every page of their site (address and phone). This said, I have been using the structured data markup helper to add local business schema to home page, and then including the footer markup in the footer file so that every page benefits from the local business markup. Is this incorrect to use it for every page? Also, I noticed that by just using the footer markup for the rest of the pages in the site, I am missing data that was included when I manually went through the index page (i.e. image, url, name of business). Could someone tell me if it is advisable and worth it to manually markup every page for the local business schema or if that should just be used for certain pages such as location, contact us, and/or index? Any tips or help would be greatly appreciated!!! Thanks
Local Website Optimization | | lfrazer0