Hey There!

For searches within the U.S., go to Google and make your search. Then from the horizontal menu under the search bar, click 'Search Tools'. This will bring up the option to change your city and will reorder the SERPs based on what you input. However, if you are in the US, this only works for cities in the US - not for international cities.

Sounds like the name change might be a good suggestion, Robert, given this scenario. Good luck with this!

Hello There!

Earlier this year, we had a good discussion about Cornerstone Content (a term that is widely used by Yoast though not by everyone else) here on the forum. You might like to take a look: https://moz.com/community/q/are-core-pages-considered-cornerstones.

Yoast is a very respected company, and they've created some classic products. That being said, I personally question advice like this being given on their blog:

"You’ll need to write an article of at least 900 words."

_900 words _sounds to me more like a public school writing assignment than criteria for a professional writer or publisher. Let's talk about this.

Wordstream has been kind enough to cite Moz's Beginner's Guide to SEO as a good example of cornerstone content. I've contributed to that guide along with other staff here, and can attest that a specific number of words was nowhere in the plan for contributing. Instead, the plan is to cover the topic at hand thoroughly, and this is what all good writing, both on and off the web, does. Because of this, while I can appreciate that there is a desire to know if there's a word count that impresses Google, I don't think it's a good way to think about writing or publishing. If it takes 500 words to explain something, write them. If it takes 10,000 words, write them. The point is to explain a topic to a reader in a way that engages them and results in them feeling fully informed.

My best guess is that a company like Yoast is striving to offer some general guidelines for strong, lucrative publishing strategies, but when people start throwing set numbers around, it doesn't match my concept of building authority as a publication. I would rather that publishers focus on quality than word counts. The only time I can see the necessity of counting words is in offline publications that have limited paper space for an article. On the web, they sky's the limit, and the quality of what you publish is what wins readers.

Great discussion here, guys!

Just thought I'd pop in to add my 2 cents.

Having a phone number in the title tag will not 'hurt' the business in any way, and is a not uncommon practice in Local SEO. The only possible negative to doing this would be that you would have less characters to devote to words as they are being devoted to the digits of the phone number. So, that's about the only downside of doing this. Just remember, the client should be putting a unique title tag on every page, so some of his pages might have a phone number in the title tag, but don't use it on every page. Be creative, varied and informative in each tag and you should not expect any negative outcomes.

Hi Jim,

You've done a good job phrasing the details of your question, but this is one of those situations in which it may actually not be possible to advise you well without assessing your unique website/industry/geography/scenario. Businesses that operate in a non-competitive niche or geography often do rank for other cities beyond their city of location, simply because Google doesn't have much data to go on. For example, if you're the only tow truck company servicing a 50 mile radius in rural Kansas, you might very well show up for a variety of mobile and desktop searches for users who aren't located in your city or who are adding these other city names to your query. If, however, you are an attorney in Los Angeles, you are in a completely different situation and the fight for any kind of ranking is a tough one.

Are you familiar with the concept of developing high quality local landing pages for the various cities in which you serve? This is a common, effective strategy for service area businesses of all kinds. You can delve into this topic here:

http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide

The development of unique local landing pages for each service city is going to be a more common strategical move than simply altering the title tag of your home page to reflect a bunch of other cities. Not sure if your rankings can be explained by having added 'near me' to a single title tag, but again, it would be easy to give inaccurate advice to you without actually auditing the website and its competition. This might be one of those situations in which you'd be best off hiring a pro and using a non-disclosure agreement if you're concerned about privacy. Alternatively, you can share your website address and further details here to get more on-target feedback from the community.

Hi Jim,

Well, from a Local SEO perspective, I wouldn't advise putting content on a local business website that reflects anything other than your own city or location and service area, due to confusion this could cause on the part of your customers and Google, but lead gen is not an area of expertise for me. I'm going to ask our staff for additional input on your question. It's a good one, for sure!

Hi Michael,

You've gotten some excellent replies. I share Chris' sentiment about firing this client if they are telling you - their SEO - how to do SEO. As members have explained here, it has been many years since Google devalued the meta keywords tag, specifically because people were using it in the spammy way your client wants to. In fact, I would let your client know that not only will this tactic not help him, it could very likely hurt him.

Last year, Google updated their Webmaster Quality Guidlelines (share this link with your client: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66358) to speak against keyword stuffing of this kind anywhere on a page. The language reads:

"Keyword stuffing" refers to the practice of loading a webpage with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate a site's ranking in Google search results. Often these keywords appear in a list or group, or out of context (not as natural prose). Filling pages with keywords or numbers results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site's ranking. Focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context.

Examples of keyword stuffing include:

• Lists of phone numbers without substantial added value
• Blocks of text listing cities and states a webpage is trying to rank for
• Repeating the same words or phrases so often that it sounds unnatural, for example:
  We sell custom cigar humidors. Our custom cigar humidors are handmade. If you’re thinking of buying a custom cigar humidor, please contact our custom cigar humidor specialists at custom.cigar.humidors@example.com.

*emphasis in bold mine

When Google makes a point of saying, "don't do this," and website owners ignore the warning, they are courting a penalty.

Share this information with the client and at the same time, lay out a proper Local SEO plan if they are, in fact, a Local business. Hopefully, this session of education will bring them up-to-date on best practices, but if they persist in insisting on spammy practices, tell them you can't serve them. You don't want spammy clients, believe me.

Hope this helps!