Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis
      Moz Pro

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Is it better to use geo-targeted keywords or add the locations as separate keywords?

    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.

    Is it better to use geo-targeted keywords or add the locations as separate keywords?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    4
    2458
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Cyclone
      Cyclone last edited by

      For example...

      state keyword (nyc real estate)

      or

      keyword, state (nyc, real estate) = 2 keywords

      Thanks in advance!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • KaneJamison
        KaneJamison @Cyclone last edited by

        Responded in the other thread per your request - hope I got all of your points from this thread:

        http://www.seomoz.org/q/is-it-better-to-have-urls-of-internal-pages-that-are-geo-targeted-or-point-geo-targeted-links-to-the-homepage#post-117343

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • Cyclone
          Cyclone @SanketPatel last edited by

          Thanks for the reply,

          Here is my issue with that scenario;

          1.  If I have 3 states and 30 towns and each has a geo targeted page on my site I will run into duplicate content issues

          2.  I will not get the link relevance from google to the main keyword "real estate" (in this scenario).

          So if I am looking to target the keyword "real estate" in general but just geo target the website I would be shooting myself in the foot here.

          The thing that I rely on is google using IPs to return relevant results to the user.  So if someone types in "real estate" and they live in NYC, they will get NYC results, not just in the maps section either but in the SERPs as well.  So seeing that google is already geo targeting via the IP address, and let's say I want to do NYC and LA at the same time, I would want to target "real estate" in general and just geo target inbound linking pages back to the root domain.  This way it makes it where I don't have to have so many pages in my site and also I am optimized for the keyword "real estate" and "location" separately, and in turn I keep the integrity of my websites national or time zone campaign approach for the keyword "real estate."  Would this not be a good approach?

          Also the other part of that, does google pick up a location in a description along with the keyword and correlate them enough to give it relevance.

          I am just playing devils advocate here because I am not sure what the right answer is.

          ***So the main thing is to not waste resources optimizing "nyc real estate" when I can be optimizing "real estate" with the location attached somewhere else and let google play with the combinations (nyc real estate, real estate nyc, etc.).

          KaneJamison 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • SanketPatel
            SanketPatel last edited by

            Hi,

            You can use keywords with your state and city, now days local SEO becomes more popular in SEO business. If you want to promote your business locally then it is best way to add city or state name into keywords. Do local Listing in your target country. If you want add multiple city then you have to create landing pages for that keywords.

            Cyclone 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            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.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • seoanalytics

              Difference LSI and and secondary related keywords

              Hi, It is confusing to me. So far what I understand is the following: LSI are synonyms of the keyword your target (the one in the H1 and title tag). For example my keyword would be  "Tuscany bike tour" and my LSI would be "Tuscany cycling vacation", "bicycle tour in Tuscany" etc... Then secondary related keyword are for me the other topics I need to cover in my content. In this case for example it would be "Florence", "Siena". But from what I understand a good writer wouldn't use "Siena" or "Florence" multiple times in it's content it would replace it by keywords that support them such as "the town of Florence", "the city of Siena"," the Palio of Siena" etc...Is my understanding correct ? If so what is the use of using those secondary related keyword, is it to rank on other keywords such as Palio of siena tuscany bike tour ? or just not to repeat a secondary keyword too many times. If i write the Palio of Siena isn't it considered as another topic that the topic siena ? Thank you,

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics
              0
            • seoanalytics

              Primary versus secondary keyword

              Hello, Can someone give a example of what primary and secondary keywords are and how to implement that in a sentence ? Thank you,

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics
              2
            • lcourse

              Replacing keywords by synonyms. Will it increase risk of google keyword stuffing penalization?

              I have a page which is ranking already pretty well for a relative competitive keyword. 
              Google also ranks us on first page for synonym of keyword we optimize the page for (even though synonym does not appear on our page). I am now considering to replace some occurences of the keyword in the page by different synonyms, in the hope that our ranking may further improve for these synonyms. 
              However I am concerned that google may penalize me for keyword stuffing if I am using a wide range of synonyms of one keyword on our page. My plan is only to replace some occurences of keyword with synonyms. I am a bit nerveous here since page is already ranking quite well in a competitive niche. Any thoughts?

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
              0
            • Caro-O

              Using hreflang for international pages - is this how you do it?

              My client is trying to achieve a global presence in select countries, and then track traffic from their international pages in Google Analytics. The content for the international pages is pretty much the same as for USA pages, but the form and a few other details are different due to how product licensing has to be set up. I don’t want to risk losing ranking for existing USA pages due to issues like duplicate content etc. What is the best way to approach this? This is my first foray into this and I’ve been scanning the MOZ topics but a number of the conversations are going over my head,so suggestions will need to be pretty simple 🙂 Is it a case of adding hreflang code to each page and creating different URLs for tracking. For example:
              URL for USA: https://company.com/en-US/products/product-name/
              URL for Canada: https://company.com/en-ca/products/product-name /
              URL for German Language Content: https://company.com/de/products/product-name /
              URL for rest of the world: https://company.com/en/products/product-name /

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caro-O
              1
            • WeAreDigital_BE

              Geo-Redirect: good idea or not?

              Hi Mozzers, The background: I have this very corporate .com domain which is used worldwide. Next to that, we have another .com domain which is specifically created for the US visitors. Within the organic rankings, we notice that our corporate domain is ranking much better in the US. Many visitors are arriving on this domain. As it is a corporate domain being used worldwide, they get lost. My questions: I know there are ways to redirect by location. Would it be smart to automatically redirect US visitors for the corporate domain to the commercial US-specific domain? Is it possible to only redirect US visitors and leave the website as it is for visitors from other countries. Won't this harm the corporate website (organically) worldwide? If this would be a good idea, any recommended plugins or concrete procedures? Thank you so much for helping me out!
              Sander

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WeAreDigital_BE
              0
            • emarketer

              Why my website disappears for the keywords ranked, then reappears and so on?

              Hello to everyone. In the last 2 weeks my website emorroidi.imieirimedinaturali.it has a strange behavior in SERP: it disappears for the keywords ranked and then reappears, and so on. Here's the chronicle of the last days: 12/6: message in GWT: Improvement of the visibility of the website in search. 12/6 the website disappears for all the keywords ranked 16/6 the website reappears for all the keywords ranked with some keywords higher in ranking 18/6 the website disappears for all the keywords ranked 22/6 the website reappears for all the keywords ranked 24/6 the website disappears for all the keywords ranked... I can't explain this situation. Could it be a penalty? What Kind? Thank you.

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | emarketer
              0
            • AxialDev

              How do I geo-target continents & avoid duplicate content?

              Hi everyone, We have a website which will have content tailored for a few locations: USA: www.site.com
              Europe EN: www.site.com/eu
              Canada FR: www.site.com/fr-ca Link hreflang and  the GWT option are designed for countries. I expect a fair amount of duplicate content; the only differences will be in product selection and prices. What are my options to tell Google that it should serve www.site.com/eu in Europe instead of www.site.com? We are not targeting a particular country on that continent. Thanks!

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AxialDev
              0
            • rahul11

              How to do geo targeting for domain and sub directories in Webmaster tool?

              Hello All, How can i do geo targeting in multiple countries on my ** root domain and sub **directories in Webmaster tool. My domain is "abc.com" and i want to target three countries UAE , Kuwait, Saudi arabia. So, Can i assign geo targeting in Webmaster tool ,  Root domain for UAE country and make other two sub directories for Kuwait and saudi ? abc.com - UAE (geo targeting) abc.com/kw - Kuwait (geo targeting) abc.com/sa - Saudi  (geo targeting) Or Root doamain should be not assign for any country and Make three sub directories for UAE, Kuwait , and saudi and targeting them there geo locations. abc.com - Unlisted (geo targeting) abc.com/uae/ - UAE (geo targeting) abc.com/kw/ - Kuwait (geo targeting) abc.com/sa/ - Saudi  (geo targeting)

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rahul11
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            • Digital Marketers
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.