How Google Deals with States and State Abbreviations
-
I am in the process of doing research on building content for some state to state transactions. Through our PPC ad history I can see people have searched relatively evenly for full state names versus state abbreviations. Texas vs TX or California vs. CA. If I do a google search for one of our key terms with the state abbreviation, it seems that google returns results with the full state name and bolds the full state name in the meta description even though only the abbreviation, and not the full state name was part of the search. I guess I'm trying to figure out if its worth me building out and targeting two sets of content...one around the full state names and one around the state abbreviations.
Any advice?
-
Hi Chris
I generally agree with "xvp's" answer. Google for the most part can pick up the distinction between the state and abbreviation. What you can do is check search volume (if there is any) for each - optimize for the one most searched for in key places like the title tag, but just make sure to include variations within the content if possible. Like include the abbreviation in the meta description if you've written it out in the title tag. But you definitely don't need to create separate pieces of content or anything just to target one or the other.
-Dan
-
Hi Chris,
Google recognizes both, and will show results for both on a search for one (either abbreviation or full name), but they are still working out this kinks. Issues like Google not being able to distinguish between words with more than one meaning like "OH" as the state abbreviation and as the expression, "IN", "OR" etc. They also still treat key phrases as separate in some cases, so if the phrase is searched I would target both. If you must choose, go for the full name.
Hope this makes sense.
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
-
Javascript content not being indexed by Google
I thought Google has gotten better at picking up unique content from javascript. I'm not seeing it with our site. We rate beauty and skincare products using our algorithms. Here is an example of a product -- https://www.skinsafeproducts.com/tide-free-gentle-he-liquid-laundry-detergent-100-fl-oz When you look at the cache page (text) from google none of the core ratings (badges like fragrance free, top free and so forth) are being picked up for ranking. Any idea what we could do to have the rating incorporated in the indexation.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | akih0 -
Structural data in google webmaster tools
Hey, During the year I have done everything in my power to please Google with my website. Instead of building links towards the page I have focused on content, content and content. In addition I have worked with https and page speed. Today my site is faster than 98% of all tested sites in Pingdom tools and have 94/83 in Google insights. Of course we have had to build some links as well, perhaps 50 links in 8 months. At the same time we have built 700 pages of text. The total amount of links build is 180 over 20 months. On Thursday last week it looks like the site was penalized by Google. I still believe that we can do something about it and get the site back on track again. Hence we have been looking at technical things on the site, if there is anything Google don't like. One thing that I have found is structural data. For some reason this has dropped from 875 a month ago to 3 today. I have no clue why. Does anyone know how structural data works and what can have caused this problem. Would it be possible that we in our attempt to optimize the site might have done something that may affect the structural data? http://imgur.com/a/vurB1 In that case, what affect might this drop in structural data mean for SEO. Could that be a reason for the total drop in ranking? (we have basically been wiped on all our keywords) What I can see in Google webmaster tool about 975 pages are still indexed in Google which has been stable for a long time. Does anyone know more about structural data and what I can do about this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Enigma123
Thanks in advance! /A vurB10 -
How to leverage Google Images?
My Google search rankings are improving rapidly at the moment, but a lot of my rankings are for images (presume that means the images are appearing near the top in Google Images). How do I capitalise on that? It's not really much help to me that my images are popular unless it results in traffic to the pages where those images are used. I am running Wordpress so I have the option to have images embed as "no link", "link to attachment page", "link to original image", etc. Is there any advantage of using one of these over the other? I'd really like to set it up so that when a Google Images user clicks "View Image" it loads the attachment page or the host content page rather than the image. Bad SEO? I'm not sure if the fact that I'm using Jetpack Photon CDN image hosting will make this more complicated or not. Tony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gavin.Atkinson0 -
Is WordPress a Blog in the eyes of Google?
Hi, My online Shop is based on WordPress with the WooCommerce plugin. Now, I have met a SEO guy who told me that's bad in the eyes of Google: Because Google apparently sees my website as a blog and not as a E-Commerce site. Wow, this statement really confused my, since I am working so hard on content and good rankings. Any opinions on this would be appreciated. Best, Robin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | soralsokal0 -
Why is this site not indexed by Google?
Hi all and thanks for your help in advance. I've been asked to take a look at a site, http://www.yourdairygold.ie as it currently does not appear for its brand name, Your Dairygold on Google Ireland even though it's been live for a few months now. I've checked all the usual issues such as robots.txt (doesn't have one) and the robots meta tag (doesn't have them). The even stranger thing is that the site does rank on Yahoo! and Bing. Google Webmaster Tools shows that Googlebot is crawling around 150 pages a day but the total number of pages indexed is zero. It does appear if you carry out a site: search on Google however. The site is very poorly optimised in terms of title tags, unnecessary redirects etc which I'm working on now but I wondered if you guys had any further insights. Thanks again for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iProspect-Ireland0 -
How do you find synonyms for a word in Google?
Hi, How would you go about finding a connection between words in the eyes of Google? So for example if I enter ~shoes -shoes I get a few things turn up in bold. Boots is one which makes sense and I would assume Google makes a connection between the words so using both in content would help semantically. BUT the other word it bolds is Store - this is where I get lost why would it make this connection unless Google is taking actual query data from users and making a different type of connection between words. How do you find a solid connection between words?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bondara0 -
Google+ Pages on Google SERP
Do you think that a Google+ Page (not profile) could appear on the Google SERP as a Rich Snippet Author? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | overalia0 -
Remove www. in google webmaster
Hi. My baseball blog (mopupduty.com) shows up as www.mopupduty.com in Google Webmaster tools. This is an issue for me, as my Wordpress plug-in sitemap will only show up on http://mopupduty.com/sitemap.xml , not the www. version Is there any way in changing the www. in webmaster tools without deleting my existing index. The website currently has sitelinks in search results, and I'm not too keen in giving them up via deletion. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mkoster0