Thoughts on adding "near me" to title tag for local SEO?
-
I want to lean out my title tags and will most likely be doing an A/B test. They currently have the "Near Me" modifier in there, which I believe Google can distinguish local SEO without it.
Thoughts?
-
@NickW816 I strongly agree with you. If you add "Near me " to the title google may randomly show the results based on your title and users search history, no matter he location.. If you really want to rank for a particular location I believe "keyword + Location would be the best idea to rank for (Even in near me searches to your location).
Google is smart enough to show the results based on location. It doesn't makes sense to add "near me" to the title. -
Good morning!
Great question, and a little history on this may be helpful.
In 2015, Google drew attention to the fact that users were increasingly using "near me" as a modifier for searches, and in an effort to prompt local results. According to Google the use of such terms as "near me" and "nearby" had doubled within the foregoing year. As a result of this, the use of "near me" terms became the subject of optimization experiments.
However, fast forward a couple of years, and Google came out with an update on this topic, which you can read in full here: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/consumer-insights/local-search-mobile-search-micro-moments/ To sum up, these near-type searches had begun to subside. The obvious answer to the "why" of this is that users are becoming increasingly aware of that fact that Google will automatically localize a huge variety of searches to which they assign a local intent, without the user having to modify their search at all, with "near me" or even with a city name. You look up "pizza" on your phone in downtown San Francisco and you can be pretty sure Google is going to show you pizza places nearest you without you having to add a modifier of any kind.
So, does this mean that brands should no longer be including terms like "near me" in their website optimization? No, it doesn't mean that, as, according to Google, people are still searching this way. It's just that fewer of them are, so whereas in 2015 SEOs might have advised quite a good sprinkling of near-type language in a website's tags and text, in 2018, the recommended sprinkling would likely be quite a bit less. And I'll add an it-depends on this, too. There could be some demographics, perhaps by region, or age, or level of technological sophistication, or even business type where use of "near me" could still be quite prevalent. And let's not forget about voice search, and whether more natural language patterns might be leading folks to be asking their assistants, "Where's the best pizza near me?" instead of just saying "pizza".
Which brings me to why I'm voting in major favor of your A/B testing! It will help you identify which language best matches your customers' style of search. It would be really nice if, after your test, you might come back to this thread and let the community know how it went. Good luck!
-
I would for sure experiment with this, I'm working an industry where 'near me' keywords are incredibly popular. We've even created specific landing pages for them so we can target people with a specific question. Usually you won't be able to rank product or category pages just with these keywords on the page. They'll need to be specific to answer the user intent.
In regards to Nicholas, yes they'll understand the location and can use that. But it doesn't mean certain pages are the right ones to rank for that query. The question remains then if just adding it to the title will help enough.
-
While I agree with what Nicholas said, I've seen more and more instances of "near me" in titles when I search for something near me.
Check out the SERP for your queries in your area and see if others use it. -
In my experience adding "Near Me" is a waste of space in a Title Tag. Google knows where the user is and can identify the intent behind the words "near me" when in a search query, and when it comes to local searches it not needed in the title. I think it would be an interesting test/case study, but I believe it is best to use those 7 characters for something else in your meta title.
Check out this awesome WBF from Cyrus Shepard for some ideas- https://moz.com/blog/title-tag-hacks-whiteboard-friday.
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
-
Site IA considering a "Resources" section
I'm working on a resources section for our website and I'm wondering the best way to handle my sites information architecture. The resources section houses things like webinars (both upcoming and recorded), case studies, ebooks, etc. Should things like webinars and case studies be considered supporting content to our main topics? For example we have a product that manages Rebates. So we have a page on our site dedicated to "Rebates". Would a webinar or case study about our Rebates software be grouped with "Rebates" or would it be grouped by content/resource type? So for example a breadcrumb could look like this: Home > Rebates > Rebates Webinar or Home > Webinars > Rebates Webinar Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | Brando160 -
Trying to SEO a site that used Header Tags for Design
I am trying to SEO a website that was built years ago and uses Header tags for design. The site must have 25 and tags used for design purpose. Is there any way to work around this problem? Perhaps a code that tells Google to ignore these as Headers? The web designers say that they are looking to fix the problem sometime this summer but you never know if that means it a month away or years away. I really want to help this website but I believe that the Header tags are one of the reasons that his site does not show in the top 100 rankings for any keywords. Any help would be great. www.wallybuysell.com Chris.K
On-Page Optimization | | CKerr0 -
Would adding noindex help?
I had completely forgotten that I have about 20 pages of content on my site that is an exact duplicate of other sites (i.e. obtained from PLR site). I really do not want to delete these pages as they do get a lot of visitors (or did before last algo updates). These visitors are not from organic search but have navigated to the pages from within my site. Question is should I a) add noindex to these pages and then ask google to remove them from index or b) try to rewrite them Many Thanks Simon
On-Page Optimization | | spes1230 -
URL and SEO
How much weight do search engines give the URL? We're a medical call center provider and medicalcallcenter is part of our URL. Does that help us much? Thanks!!
On-Page Optimization | | THMCC0 -
Does Google pick up on words such as "in", "the", "and" etc?
If I have in my meta-title e.g Holidays Ireland, but i have in my description for grammer purposes Holidays in Ireland will google see these as 2 separate keywords and will SEOMoz grade me lower for doing this? Or is holidays Ireland included in Holidays in Ireland because google doesnt pick up on "in" ?? I would appreciate your help on this.
On-Page Optimization | | Louise990 -
The Better Title to Use?
Hello Mozers- I am targeting the keywords "liposuction scottsdale", "liposuction phoenix", "liposuction mesa", "liposuction arizona". Out of the following two Titles below, one would you consider the better one? And Why? I am leaning towards the second example. If you have any more ideas that would be great. 1). Tummy Tuck Scottsdale, Phoenix, Mesa, Arizona 2).Tummy Tuck Scottsdale | Tummy Tuck Phoenix, Mesa, Arizona. Thanks!!
On-Page Optimization | | Red_Spot_Interactive0 -
Page title structure?
From an SEO and user perspective what structure do you recommend for page titles. For example (given that they shouldn't ideally be more than 70 characters) :- Keywords (maybe two or three) | Company Name | more keywords I understood the best place for the company name was about second place. Is this now the considered view taking into consideration 'branding' which has been flagged up as the way forward. Keywords are separated by the vertical bar | - any thoughts? For 'house keeping' pages such as Privacy Policy - should this be optmised or simply stated as 'privacy policy' Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | PH2920 -
Opinions on Alt tags
Reading around the web, there are many sources that suggest all images should have an Alt tag attributed to them. This is good for accessibility etc, however there appears to be conflicting interests between this and what works for SEO. Hence many other sources suggest that you include a keyphrase or two in 1 image Alt tag, and then leave the rest blank so as not to dilute the alts on the page. In my experience, the latter appears to be true. However this seems wrong when the Alt attribute really should be used for accessibility reasons and not for SEO - why would the search engines encourage us to provide poorer quality information by harming our rankings if we try to make a website accessible? Interested to hear your opinions and experiences on this subject. Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | RiceMedia0