City names in URLs
-
Hey guys. When targeting a specific keyword that mentions a city (eg. Dover Used Cars) would it be a good practice to include that city in the URL when creating additional pages (eg. placethatsellsusedcars.com/dover-used-fords)?
Thanks!
-
Hi Anton, Is your business local or virtual? If local, then yes, city landing pages are extremely common and typically contain the city name in the URL of the landing page. However, it is key with these types of pages to be sure that you are creating unique, high quality content that will be of value to the user. Do not simply duplicate content and change out city keywords across multiple pages. That would be spammy. City landing pages work well for service radius businesses like plumbers, landscapers and general contractors, because the staff travel to clients in a number of cities. They are not as good of a fit for brick-and-mortar businesses like dentists, restaurants or retail shops, because in such cases, all clients come from their locations to the locale of a business. If a brick and mortar business wants to write about cities other than its city of location, it has to discover a valid reason for doing so. For example, a doctor located in City A might have hospital privileges in City B and give seminars in City C, giving a good reason for him to publish content about his involvement in these other cities. But, to simply create pages for cities in which he has no involvement, just because he hopes patients living in those cities might travel to him, doesn't really make sense So, what you do with your city landing pages is a case-by-case situation. One rule covers all scenarios - always build unique, quality content on the pages with the goal of helping users.
-
Is this for a national site? if so, you will need to further segment the URL placethatsellsusedcars.com/used-fords/de/dover or if you have multiple pages for the same city, you can furthe segment the URLS by zip code - placethatsellsusedcars.com/used-fords/de/dover-11010. Most importantly is that you provide user value on every page and the pages don't seem like duplicates to each other. Google frowns on directory sites and you need to provide much more value then just a directory of links.
-
Keywords in the URL is part of the algorithms, so I would suggest it if it is not used in a spammy way, which you are not.
I might suggest these URL's: placethatsellsusedcars.com/dover/used-fords or placethatsellsusedcars.com/used-fords/dover
I suggest this because it will benefit your website's architecture. It will give you website a good flow and organization. Use the one makes most sense for your website. Be sure that the /dover or /used-ford pages have links to all of the next level pages.
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 much can our page title, URL and alt-tag differ without negatively affecting SEO?
We are a bridal store selling wedding dresses and bridesmaids dresses. We are wanting to know how much our URL and page title can differ, whilst still optimising SEO. For example, for the category Wedding Dresses, the URL contains wedding dresses, so can we use " the best wedding dresses in Sydney" in the page title? For the bridesmaid dresses (URL is /bridesmaiddresses/) can we use " buy best bridesmaid dresses online in Australia"? Can we use terms such as "buy best black dress in sydney", "buy online in australia" or "shop online in sydney" in the alt-tag, additional from the page title .i.e. adding extra keywords in the alt-tag that do not appear in the title? Would this be classified as keyword stuffing? In our main categories .e.g. Wedding Dresses, can we add "best wedding dress store", "buy wedding dresses from best wedding store in sydney" in the alt-tag? Thank you.
Image & Video Optimization | | CostumeD0 -
Identical pages with different URL's
Hi All,I have a page with the titleFunny charactersanother page as Funny Characters/VideosAlmost all data is same in both URL's except the videos page will have 20+ video thumbnailsHow can i set Google not to index the images only on this page and consider both pages as identical and not create any issues but yet scan the videos.Thanks
Image & Video Optimization | | jomin740 -
How to best automate batch naming of product images
On an ecommerce website with tens of thousands of products, product image file names are auto generated by your system, and are often just a string of numbers and letters. We optimize our callout images and heroes but I'm questioning if we are missing a big opportunity with our product image names not being optimized. Does anyone have any insight on a smarter way to automate batch naming for thousands of product images?
Image & Video Optimization | | WebLincon0 -
For a URL, is it better to have Keyword +City?
I am working on some landing pages and trying to do well in Local areas. Is it better to have my landing pages set as mysite.com/keyword+location or mysite.com/Location+keyword. or does it even matter anymore? So for a plumber selling water heater services. is it better to be: site/hot-water-heaters-jacksonville-fl or site/jacksonville-fl-hot-water-heaters? I normally do keyword+city.
Image & Video Optimization | | netviper0 -
Targeting cities and services
I'm having a dilemma about targeting different cities and services. My client has offices in different cities but the services offered are the same. Let's say for divorce, the current url structure is website/city1/divorce website/city2/divorce website/city3/divorce 6 different locations so that makes 6 different divorce pages. They offer 13 services so there are 7 different pages of each of the 13 services targeting different cities. I hope I said that clearly but I guess you know what I mean. My problem is the pages are kinda competing with each other since all of them are about the same topic. It also messes up the internal linking since sometimes you link to one city using the anchor text "divorce" and then link to a different city later on using the same keyword. Any advice on how to target different cities and services better? I was thinking of subdomains in order to target the different locations without having competing pages but I'm not sure if it's a good idea. city1.website.com/service city2.website.com/service That way each site is stand alone. What do you think? Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | spersily0 -
How can we geo-target our website optimization for cities besides our physical location?
We have a client that is a solar energy installation & leasing company in Austin, TX that wants to target the Houston and Dallas markets. We can do a Place Page for their physical offices in Austin and San Antonio to drive traffic for those cities. But we’re not sure the best way to help them rank for Houston and Dallas, where they don't have a physical address. We’re considering a separate landing page for each city, optimized for the geo-term. Will that help them to rank in the 7Pack in Houston and Dallas, if there’s no Place Page? Will it help them rank in the organic listings for that region? Can you offer any other suggestions for how to help them rank in 2 cities where they don’t have physical offices?
Image & Video Optimization | | DenisL0 -
Name Change in Google Places
In the middle of a nightmare in Google Places. Dealing with a number of Chiropractic franchises. They all had previous practices (and Places listings). In many cases, a duplicate listing was created. Some locations are "under review", others have lost their ranking and a few are ranking for both location in the 7 pack.(usually because they had a different phone number used so I assume Google sees it as a separate company despite the same location) I am trying to fix all these duplicate or near duplicate listings that were created previously. In one case I edited the existing listing and tried to verify by phone. I got the 5 digit code but Google then said code is not valid. Has anyone been through a similar situation? Should I delete/deactivate old listing and Then optimize the remaining or vice versa? A complete mess. In some cases they may have four listings...old company, new franchise and new name, Doctors names. Any insight appreciated.
Image & Video Optimization | | AgileInt0 -
Local Keyword vs Business Name in URL
I am working with a local business owner who has purchased multiple domains. One includes the geographic area she serves and the type of business she runs. The other includes her business name and the type of business she runs. She is unsure of which domain she would like to use as the main URL for her business website. When choosing a domain for a small, local business, would you consider it advantageous to have the main geographic area that the business serves in the URL rather than the actual name of the business? What would be the best use of domain name which isn't selected from a SEO standpoint?
Image & Video Optimization | | Neustop0