Should we add the city to our keywords for a site that is only local?
-
This is one of those things I have done for a long time and all of a sudden asked myself was it necessary: For our local clients, we add the city name (Houston, KC, Birmingham) after each keyword. An example would be TestSite.com/big-tester-houston
A Title Tag might be Big Tester Houston | Test Site, etc.
Where appropriate we do the same with H1 or H2's and occasionally in the content we will use the city name.
The thought being that since the site is only for a given city, it will be deemed more relevant than a site from outside.( I understand there are other factors in SEO; this is a specific question around adding the city). Yes, we also optimize with local directories/citation sites.
Is this overkill, is it even worthwhile? Is there any evidence one way or another?
I would love some strong opinions backed up with something other than anecdotal evidence where possible.
-
Hi Robert!
Nice to see you. I would recommend that you read this post from Mike Blumenthal from a couple of weeks ago if you haven't already:
Some of Mike's readers found the advice regarding the use of geomodifiers to be controversial and this led to an extremely long discussion between Mike and readers on this topic. I think you will find it to be relevant and extremely interesting, but you'll have to make up your own mind what you think!
-
Depending the scope and type of business the website is promoting adding the city name to your page content can be great. I have done it with two websites and it worked quite well.
For those sites, I placed contact info toward the top section of the pages.
That said, some people do not like to set page content up that way..... it worked for me though.
Give it a try, it may work for you, if not, the beauty is, changes can easily be made.
Thats just my two cents... good luck! and happy holidays
-
I do know that in the past year Google has weakened the power of keywords in the domain name, however, I don't believe that applies to file names. In this video: Matt Cutts does point out that this would be a very easy thing to test.
And I believe from my personal anecdotal experience that using the name of the locality in file names is useful for SEO.
-
We did this for a local client 2 years ago and had dramatic improvement. That said, we also followed it up with a link building campaign (of course). Try it for one of the pages and track any improvements, then roll it out if it works
Does this help?
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
-
Domain change from .co.uk to .com - do you add .com to the referral exclusion in GA?
Hi Mozzers, Just wanted to double check that when a website domain changes from .co.uk to .com - do you add .com to the referral exclusion in GA? Do you also keep the .co.uk version in the list too? I have updated the property settings to .com Thanks Anthony
Reporting & Analytics | | Tone_Agency0 -
Google Analytic - Is it possible to see which organic keyword triggered goals?
Hi, I am trying to see which of my Google organic keywords triggered my goals? In GA I click > Conversion > Goals > Overview > Source Medium (This then says where my goals came from but when I click Google / Organic it just brings me to the overview page of my organic traffic). Is it possible to see which organic keywords trigger goals?
Reporting & Analytics | | AdvanceSystems0 -
Is there a way to do this sort of keyword research?
I'd like to be able to do some keyword research as follows: Let's say I have two (or maybe more) separate keyword phrases I want to rank, is there a way to find out what combination and/or additional keyword phrases/descriptors are searched for the most? For example, let's say I want to rank well for the following terms. "Green widgets" and "boxes" Is there a tool I can use that will give me ideas/suggestions on how to use those two keywords the best way? Especially showing me long tell keyword suggestions I may not even know about. The tool may show me things people search for like "best boxes for your green widgets" gets more serach results than "best boxes for my green widgets." (Helping me figure out which combo of words in a long tail phrase is better. Or it may tell me a suggestion I didn't think about like "how to build boxes for your green widgets," or "how to put your green widgets into boxes," or "where to find boxes for your green widgets" or other combinations of things people search for using those two phrases? This may be possable using google keyword tools, but if it is, I'm not sure how to do it. Looking forward for any feedback. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | NoahsDad0 -
Why did my site go from 1,000 Impressions to 0 impressions over the past couple days
so we have been doing a lot of reconstruction our website the past couple days with our navigation and moving stuff around. Now bare with me because i am a noob to SEO and i am still learning. But we went from a steady 800-1000 impressions everyday to a 0 since the first. you can check out our site here: www.hidguy.net Not sure if its because we are moving stuff around or what. But we can notice that our conversion rate has dropped and we have had traffic but no conversions and no orders. Is what we are doing bad or is this normal?
Reporting & Analytics | | Dante130 -
Interpreting Keyword Difficulty Tool results
I have been running various reports using the Keyword Difficulty tool. The columns are color coded - are there one set of signals that are more important than others? I am trying to analylze why we are ranking where we are and where our competitors are weak enough to overcome in a short term. I cannot seem to find a formula for the top indicatators for moving up in ranking. One of my sites in ranking number 5 but is neck and neck with the number one site for results. The other site is number 6 for the same term but has virtually no strength in the data like links, mozrank, trust, Social, etc...The sites 7-10 are much stronger on data. Maybe since they are from the same C block that helps? Any advice or experience would be helpful.
Reporting & Analytics | | devonkrusich0 -
Internal site referrers
Hi, So I have a segment of my website-let’s call it /examplea, I am trying to figure out how many visits I have to /examplea from all other areas of my website i.e. /exampleb, /examplec etc to /examplea so almost internal site refers to a particular segment of my website, Any thoughts on how to do this within Google analytics ? Marc
Reporting & Analytics | | NRMA0 -
How to find out which URLs are NOT indexed on a site
Is there a way to easily find out which URLs on a store-type site are NOT being indexed in Google? For example, if my sitemap information in Google Webmaster tools shows I have 7342 URLs in my sitemap and 5699 of those indexed, how do I find out what the 1643 non-indexed URLS are? Thanks for any help!
Reporting & Analytics | | GregWalt0 -
How to export all my keywords from GA new version
Hi I want to know how can i download all my keywords within the kw report of the google analytics new version. It seems to me that the "limit=50000" parameter doesn't work on this new version. If that is true how can i do to export all my keywords let say on CSV format? Thanks a lot
Reporting & Analytics | | FranckNlemba0