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.
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.
Nick White
SEO Services KC
https://seo-kansas-city.com/
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
-
When Google rewrites a title tag, do you get the SEO impact for the original version?
Let's say you're writing a homepage title tag like this: KEYWORD | BRAND and Google rewrites it as BRAND | KEYWORD From Moz and best practices, we believe that keywords closer to the beginning of a title tag may have more impact on search rankings. So, when Google rewrites the title tag, do you get the impact you would have made with the keyword being closer to the front? Or, does Google give you the impact you would have received with the keyword being at the end?
On-Page Optimization | | Kevin_P0 -
OnPage SEO
I am about to start my website http://i-love-skiing.com/. I would like to know what OnPage ranking factors should I consider while launching or building my website. I want to rank higher on search results.
On-Page Optimization | | TheresaWoods0 -
Brand name in title?
Hi all, I have noticed that a lot of companies put there brand/company name at the end of their page title. To me, that seems like a huge sacrifice of your limited 60 characters. Wouldn't it be better to use characters for words that people might actually be searching for?
On-Page Optimization | | RaoulWB0 -
Is there any benefit to removing brand name from the title tag?
I just signed up for Moz recently, and have noticed that in my crawl errors, I have hundreds of issues with my title tag being too long. My business is selling prints for landscape/travel/nature photography, and I've built these pages dynamically to where the title tag for pages selling individual photos has the title of the photo for sale followed by a hyphen and then the brand name. The same goes for gallery pages "Gallery Name | Brand Name". Would it be worth it to shorten the title tags by removing the brand name from these pages? Or will that actually harm more than help? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | shannmg10 -
Choosing a title tag in seo (H1 or H2 or H3)
I look many times on google that what is the best tag to set in title for seo, H1 or H2 or H3 In many forums and sites they are asking that you need to put only H2 tag in title and someone ask to put H1 in title and i am confused, Some body tell me the correct tag for seo in google, or any other search engine.
On-Page Optimization | | seom20140 -
Need I add rel="dofollow" or not?
Hello, My website is http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com is using the href links without meta tag rel="dofollow" such as I am using . Should I put ref="dofollow" in this: Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh0 -
Duplicate Content when Using "visibility classes" in responsive design layouts? - a SEO-Problem?
I have text in the right column of my responsive layout which will show up below the the principal content on small devices. To do this I use visibility classes for DIVs. So I have a DIV with with a unique style text that is visible only on large screen sizes. I copied the same text into another div which shows only up only on small devices while the other div will be hidden in this moment. Technically I have the same text twice on my page. So this might be duplicate content detected as SPAM? I'm concerned because hidden text on page via expand-collapsable textblocks will be read by bots and in my case they will detect it twice?Does anybody have experiences on this issue?bestHolger
On-Page Optimization | | inlinear0 -
Should I include location in title tag to rank higher in local search
I'm working on a site for a small guest house (http://www.tommysonthebeach.com). I have created a Google Place page (Bing and Yahoo Local) as well and I have the address in the footer on every page. I have the location (Indian Rocks Beach) at the beginning of most titles tags because that is how people tend to search, e.g. "Indian Rocks Beach vacation rental." In theory I would think that I don't need location in the title tag because Google knows the location, and I could use the real estate for other keywords suchs as "pet friendly" or "beach hotel," etc. But when I look at the SERPS, those ranking highly all seem to have the location at the beginning of the title tag. Thanks. P.S. The site is currently not showing up in Google local search apparently because Google thinks it's a vacation rental agency, which are not allowed in local search. I'm trying to get that fixed.
On-Page Optimization | | bvalentine0
