Local Search Location Keyword Use
-
Hello.
Whats the best way to approach the use of location phrases within the page content itself?
Say your based in a large city but also work in smaller surrounding areas, would you target the main location i.e. "London" on the home page and the main product/service pages directly. Or would you leave this all to deeper pages where you can more easily add value?
I can imagine that the inclusion of the location i.e. "London" might compromise the quality of the writing. And put off the users from other locations.
For example on the Home Page if your targeting:
Keyword: Widgets
Location: LondonWidgets in London and Beyond
For the best Widgets in London come to...
And for a key product or service page if your targeting:
Keyword: Car Widgets
Location: LondonCar Widgets London and Beyond
For the best Car Widgets in London come to...
On deeper pages its going to be easier to make this work, but how would you approach it on the main pages and homepage?
Hope that all makes sense?
-
Hi Mirriam,
Makes perfect sense, that's exactly what I wanted to know.
Thanks again for your help.
Justin
-
Hi Justin,
Glad those resources helped, and your follow-up question is one I'd answer with 'it depends'. When a business' city of location is the major city (like, let's say San Francisco) then, yes, I would strongly optimize all main page elements with that city, because - hey - it's the BIG city! But, let's say the business is located in a small town outside that city (let's say Mill Valley) and there are larger cities the business serves (like San Francisco), then I might be a little more sparing in overemphasizing the small town. So, this is really a case-by-case thing. You should experiment with different forms of optimization if the physical city isn't the major city, and see how this affects conversions. Hope this helps!
-
Hi Miriam,
Thanks for the great response.
I can see from your examples how to add unique valuable content to the pages.
But would you go so far as my examples and add the location into the H1 tag of the home page and product / services pages?
Justin
-
Hey There,
Your city of physical location is your core city/core keyword, so yes, it would typically be a good strategy to use that geo term on your main pages (Home, About, Contact, etc.) and then develop city landing pages for the other cities in which you serve. This article should help:
https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages
And this one, too:
-
Hi,
I would definitely be looking at what the winners for these phrases are doing. I never advocate copying exactly what someone else is doing, but it can certainly save you many hours of head scratching and worrying.
It does sound like you need to spend some time coming up with a structure for the site that will work, but remember to make the pages as descriptive as possible, but don't stuff keywords and try not to have them sound like they were written by a robot.
You also need to be careful that you aren't creating pages that are too similar as this will also compromise your work and try not to make everything too 'boilerplate'.
-Andy
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
-
I want to rank a national home page for a local keyword phrase
Hello - We are a nationally available brand based in Denver, CO. Our home page currently ranks #8 (used to be 5) for "real estate photography in Denver" -- I want to improve this ranking, but our home page is generalized and not geared toward Denver, CO but to all of our markets. I'm trying to troubleshoot this and have a few ideas.... I would love advice on the best route, or a different route altogether: Create a Denver-specific page -- _will that page compete with my home page that is already ranked in the top ten? _ Add the keyword phrase in the image alt attribute Add keyword phrase into the content - need to make sure that viewers realize we are national I already updated the meta description to say "real estate photography in Denver and beyond"
Local Website Optimization | | virtuance_photography1 -
Best domain setup for network of locations
Hi there! I am looking for some industry expert weigh-in on best practices to how to best approach the business scenario described below to bring in some outside confirmation of our approach for a client. Tim runs a business,timsbusinesswebsite.com. Tim's business has between 15 and 30 individual locations in large cities across the United States. Unfortunately, the approach to each individual location's digital marketing has been inconsistent. Some have a unique URL for their location (e.g.timsbusinesswebsite.com/new-york-city/) Some have a subdomain (e.g.chicago.timsbusinesswebsite.com) Some have a separate domain altogether (e.g.timsbusinesswebsiitelosangeles.com) Which of these three approaches would best build the best foundation for the business in local and national rankings from an SEO standpoint and why?
Local Website Optimization | | searchcityusa0 -
Our rankings are all over the place but mostly keywords are dropping
our rankings are all over the place but mostly keywords are dropping from 2-20 to 35 and over 51. it has been happening over the past 3 weeks but don't know what to look for. any advise is appreciated. stevesautorepairva.com . our other automotive website hometownetire.com seems to be doing better but do not know why. they are 2 separate businesses. Thank you very much in advance for any help. AqDQnRx
Local Website Optimization | | ifixcars0 -
What's your opinion on stores with multiple locations around the country that sell the same products?
Is there a way to capture local SEO traffic by only having one website/page for our product pages or do we have to have a website for each location even though the content is identical? We do have a location finder where we list each location. But we want to generate local traffic in the cities we are in to our product pages through SEO, but it's difficult because they all sell the exact same product. We know Google doesn't like duplicate content.
Local Website Optimization | | GrowBrilliant0 -
Listing bundle info on site and on local SEO page.
We just finished a new telecom site, and like all telecom sites (think AT&T, Verizon, Suddenlink, etc.), we allow people to put their location in and find internet and phone service packages (what we call bundles) unique to their area. This page also has contact information for the local sales team and some unique content. However, we're about to start putting up smaller, satellite pages for our local SEO initiative. Of course, these pages will have unique content as well, but it will have some of the same content as what's on the individual bundle page, such as package offerings, NAP, etc. Currently this is the URL structure for the bundles: domain.com/bundles/town-name/ This is what I'm planning for the local SEO pages: domain.com/location/town-name-state/ All local FB pages, Google listings, etc. will like to these location pages, rather than the bundle pages. Is this okay or should I consolidate them into one?
Local Website Optimization | | AMATechTel0 -
2 Relevant local websites but closing one and redirecting it to an older site
We have 2 websites, 1 domain is about 10 years old and another is about 4 years old, the 4 yr old domain we are thinking of shutting down since its the same type of service we run but it was a 'keyword domain' that used to rank on 1st page but now its 4th page back. If we put the blog posts and other content + setup re-directs from the 4yr old domain to the 10 yr old domain, would this help the 10 yr old domain with more link juice that it might need for the extra boost? There isnt really any point having both websites up since both are about the same content and targeting the same local market.
Local Website Optimization | | surfsup0 -
Launching Hundreds of Local Pages At Once or Tiered? If Tiered, In What Intervals Would You Recommend?
Greeting Mozzers, This is a long question, so please bare with me 🙂 We are an IT and management training company that offers over 180 courses on a wide array of topics. We have multiple methods that our students can attend these courses, either in person or remotely via a technology called AnyWare. We've also opened AnyWare centers in which you can physically go a particular location near you, and log into a LIVE course that might be hosted in say, New York, even if you're in say, LA. You get all the in class benefits and interaction with all the students and the instructor as if you're in the classroom. Recently, we've opened 43 AnyWare centers giving way to excellent localization search opportunities to our website (e.g. think sharepoint training in new york or "whatever city we are located in). Each location has a physical address, phone number, and employee working there so we pass those standards for existence on Google Places (which I've set up). So, why all this background? Well, we'd like to start getting as much visibility for queries that follow the format of "course topic area that we offered" followed by "city we offer it in." We offer 22 course topic areas and, as I mentioned, 43 locations across the US. Our IS team has created custom pages for each city and course topic area using a UI. I won't get into detailed specifics, but doing some simple math (22 topic areas multiplied by 43 location) we get over 800 new pages that need to eventually be crawled and added to our site. As a test, we launched the pages 3 months ago for DC and New York and have experienced great increases in visibility. For example, here are the two pages for SharePoint training in DC and NY (total of 44 local pages live right now). http://www2.learningtree.com/htfu/usdc01/washington/sharepoint-training
Local Website Optimization | | CSawatzky
http://www2.learningtree.com/htfu/usny27/new-york/sharepoint-training So, now that we've seen the desired results, my next question is, how do we launch the rest of the hundreds of pages in a "white hat" manner? I'm a big fan of white hat techniques and not pissing off Google. Given the degree of the project, we also did our best to make the content unique as possible. Yes there are many similarities but courses do differ as well as addresses from location to location. After watching Matt Cutt's video here: http://searchengineland.com/google-adding-too-many-pages-too-quickly-may-flag-a-site-to-be-reviewed-manually-156058 about adding too man pages at once, I'd prefer to proceed cautiously, even if the example he uses in the video has to do with tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of pages. We truly aim to deliver the right content to those searching in their area, so I aim no black hat about it 🙂 But, still don't want to be reviewed manually lol. So, in what interval should we launch the remaining pages in a quick manner to raise any red flags? For example, should we launch 2 cities a week? 4 cities a month? I'm assuming the slower the better of course, but I have some antsy managers I'm accountable to and even with this type of warning and research, I need to proceed somehow the right way. Thanks again and sorry for the detailed message!0