Optimizing for Local Terms
-
I am just building my website and planning keyword strategy for my pages.
How much is too much in terms of optimizing locally?
So if I want "web design firm birmingham al," is it overkill to add that in the URL slug, title tag, essentially all the on-page optimization?
/web-design-firm-birmingham-al
much uglier than
web-design-firm
Obviously, would prefer to think big and believe it can go beyond one city to compete in other markets statewide or regionally, thus, optimizing for one city is too narrow (and there's the ugly url thing).
I'm working on offsite local optimization, so I'm thinking this will not be necessary.
Thoughts?
-
Hi Again C Smith, Regarding this: "I bet there's a "best practice" implementation out there - perhaps an "Areas Served" channel, with the cities as sub-pages, and then some truly unique content on each page with some keywords seeded in." I recommend you take a look at this other discussion I'm having with a marketer whose client is a contractor in a service radius. View my very long, most recent comment toward the bottom of the thread to see my advice on how to do this legitimately (without being spammy): http://www.seomoz.org/q/use-schema-on-service-areas-page-for-local-business-2#post-123244 This is applicable to your business model, as well:)
-
@Miriam, Owen:
I agree that a light SEO hand is best. As one who was a writer and journalist first, I despise over-optimization.
When you are just starting out with a new website, it's tough to know how aggressive one should be. When looking at the competition for local search terms, it does seem like most of my competition that ranks well does "over-optimize" for these local search terms like "birmingham alabama web design."
However, I need to just keep my head down for the next couple of months and blog repeatedly.
I've seen that done - creating a unique page for each locale - I'm not a fan of it. I'm not knocking your comment, but it does seem that in most implementations I've seen, the content seems to be bordering on duplicate with only the local SEO terms swapped out. I bet there's a "best practice" implementation out there - perhaps an "Areas Served" channel, with the cities as sub-pages, and then some truly unique content on each page with some keywords seeded in.
Curious to what others might think of this strategy?
-
Hello C Smith,
Like your avatar.
Okay, so here's the thing: 'web design' is not actually a local query, due to Google's handling of this niche. I believe it was in January of 2010 that they stopped showing true blended/local/pack-type results for web design queries, so your approach to this is basically going to be organic, in terms of SEO, rather than what you'd be doing if you were a shoe store in Birmingham.
If you're located in Birmingham and your goal at this point is to attract Birmingham-based businesses, then I would imagine your whole website (not just a landing page) would make frequent mention of Birmingham and the businesses you serve there.
But, as Owen has rightly pointed out, it is better to use a light hand in this. Don't go overboard. Write titles, tags and text that read naturally. Remember, you don't have to string your phrases together every time. In other words, you don't have to write:
Birmingham Alabama Website Design Services
over and over again.
A paragraph might contain the words 'Birmingham' and 'Website Design' and 'Services' and 'Alabama' within it, of course, but they don't have to be stuck all in a row with glue:)
Between Panda, Penguin and EMD issues over the past year, Google is very clearly moving towards a preference for naturalness. So, using a gentle touch is going to serve you better in the long run, both as far as human users and search engine bots are concerned.
-
I'd suggest starting out a bit more modestly. Follow SEO best practices as outlined via the SEOmoz tools and Google SEO 101. Present the keywords in a natural way which lets the user know what the page is about. If you find you aren't gaining traction in terms of visibility for those terms, and your competitive analysis tells you, you should, then perhaps increase the optimization.
Exact match domain value is something Google is looking with a sharper eye on now so don't overdo that just to rank for a city phrase out of the gate.
-
Hi- I'm not an expert but it seems like you could create a main landing page that includes links to all possible cities (maybe use a div tag for all that extra info.) at: web-design-firm, then create a specific landing page for each city: web-design-firm/birmingham then optimize that page. It's a lot of work for someone advertising to a lot of different locations, but you could use the opportunity to add really great locally-specific content that would help your users and SEO.
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
-
How important is it to use a keyterm word-for-word to rank for that term?
I need your help to settle an argument here in our office. It boils down to improving our ranking for “driver education course Michigan.” One guy is convinced that if we want a site to rank for a multi-word keyterm like that, we need to use those exact words, in that order. He keeps creating pages with really awkward H1 titles and H2 subheadings using that exact phrase. H e claims appeal to search engines, but I think the cumbersome syntax is off-putting to any potential people who come to our site. Another guy claims that search engines are more sophisticated than that. He says we don’t need those exact words; it’s enough that the text on the page include “Michigan,” “driver education,” and “driver education course” a few times each. Even related terms like “drivers ed,” “driving school,” and “driver education classes” will help us to rank higher for “driver education course Michigan,” according to this guy. Neither of them can convince the other, and meanwhile I don’t know which to believe. Can you help?
Keyword Research | | dbcooper0 -
Optimizing a Webpage without keywords
Hi all, I’m really running into a challenge internally lately in that we have a lot of teams redesigning or building new pages (specificially one team) that do NOT loop our teams in. When we finally get them to work with us, to drive traffic to the pages, they disagree that there must be other ways of optimizing the pages than focusing on keywords with search volume that are relevant to the page. We usually land that they will choose a keyword or two they think a user will search for, we do keyword research and pick something close (because they don’t want to utilize a term that doesn’t make much sense, as they have written the content without involving us from the beginning, but then our search volume is declining). They keep saying there are other ways than changing the paired down content on their page and adding in keywords to the H1 headers, content on page. they mentioned semantic search at one point. For example, https://www.entrust.com/products/entrust-getaccess/ currently ranks around #10 for "single sign on solution." This keyword was on the previous page quite a few times in headers and body copy. Now it appears on the page 3 times after the redesign and is not in the h1. The team does for example want to optimize for this term, but there’s lots of pushback as they want a page with minimal content and little design. Just wondering your thoughts on this. IS this a common challenge you deal with too and any idea on answers as I've tried many with the teams? Thanks, Laura
Keyword Research | | lauramrobinson321 -
Google: Is There a Way to Find Your "Unknown Search Terms"
I believe Google stopped reporting search terms for privacy reasons. All my searches show as "unknown". I found a video that showed how to get around this but it's not current. Is there any way to get your Google terms search information? Thanks, Jo-Ann
Keyword Research | | VinJGirl0 -
Getting good key search terms from google
are the related searches at the bottom of google highly searched keyword phrases and hence good to optimize other pages for on your website? Ron
Keyword Research | | Ron100 -
What is the best way to grow local seo outreach?
For example, I live in new york and most of my keywords, page titles and meta are featured for new york but I want to expand into new jersey. Should I add create new content with those keywords, page titles and meta (blog posts, new pages)? Thats what I am doing but I wanted to see what the pros say. Thanks guys!
Keyword Research | | ayesroc0 -
Is there a point in ranking non-competitive terms?
Hello, I wanted to know if you could still make $$$ of a term that is not competitive for people. For example if a keyword is a quote, an idea, topic, or something that isn't real but still brings more than 1K exact search a month (Several terms come out to more), how can this be monetized? If it can't, could you just own one to show off?
Keyword Research | | 6786486312640 -
Is 15 keywords enough to properly optimize content for an entire domain?
I have recently moved in charge of a 95 page web portal that has around 8 categories of content. The SEO agency I am touch with has sent me a proposal that says they will do on-page optimization for this domain for 15 keywords. Should that be enough? What should be my expected outcome? My promise to the client is that core pages from his website will show up early on the SERPs. If they can do this, I am fine with it. Do you think I am getting the right deal? Should I be asking for more?
Keyword Research | | amit20760