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.
In local SEO, how important is it to include city, state, and state abbreviation in doctitle?
-
I'm trying to balance local geographic keywords with product keywords. I appreciate the feedback from the group!
Michael
-
Hi Michael,
You're welcome. Regarding the use of brand names in title tags, we've had some good discussions of this here in the forum over the years (https://moz.com/community/q/include-site-name-in-page-titles-or-not)
You'll see opinions differ. My personal feeling is that, for a local business, the brand name should definitely be in the title tags on the home, about, contact and reviews page + city landing pages for multi-location businesses. Then, it should be included where you can on other pages (product/service for example). I don't think it's essential for it to be on every single page, but for the sake of branding, I like making room for it where possible. I hope you'll read that discussion I linked to, and you might want to research this further. Great title tags are so important! Worth the research and effort. To that end, I think you'll enjoy this Whiteboard Friday:
-
Hi Miriam,
Thanks for the detailed response! One follow up question. I see you included the company's name (ex - Progressive) in the tag. How important is it to include the company in the title tag? Many times I'm fighting to save space/characters. Would it be harmful to leave the company name out in order to include product keywords and geographic qualifiers?
Thanks again,
Michael
-
Hi Michael,
Great, thanks for the further details. Okay, so typically, for a single location local business, you're going to have a homepage, about page, contact page, testimonials page and set of pages defining the services the business offers. Multi-location businesses are more complex, but with just a single location, you'll want to be sure that the complete NAP of the business is on every page of the website, either in the masthead or footer. Be sure it's also the first thing on the Contact Us page, too.
While this provides good, strong signals to people and search engines about the locale of the business, it remains a good practice to optimize the title tags with your geo-terms as well. So, for example, let's say your insurance agency (Progressive) is in Oakland and offers fire, health, life, home and renters insurance. You'll have a page for each of these services, and the title tags might read like:
The fire insurance Oakland, CA residents trust most | Progressive
Oakland's most affordable health insurance | Progressive
etc.
Your tags will be better than that, but my point is that there will be variety of language, and that sometimes you may use both city and state names, and sometimes only the city. I don't believe state abbreviations are essential, with one very important exception: if the name of the city you live in occurs in numerous states, definitely do try to work in the state abbreviation when you can. For example, there are apparently 30+ cities called "Franklin" in the U.S. I continuously see Google assuming when I search for something in Fairfax, CA, that I'm actually searching for something in Fairfax, VA. It's very annoying. This tells me that state modifiers are important signals to Google, and so while it may not be necessary to always specify them, if your clients are in cities with analogs, I'd play it safe by including state abbreviations in as many title tags as I could. But, if the client is in San Francisco, it's a safer bet that Google (and searchers) are going to get where you are if you do business there, without the addition of CA to your title tags.
Hope this helps, and please let me know if you have any further questions.
-
Thanks Miriam.
Yes, I’m asking about including the city, state, and/or state abbreviation on home or interior pages for local SEO.
I say local because I’m working on an insurance agent and a lawyer website. I’m trying to balance the needs to include both a geographic qualifier and product/service keywords in the <title>to optimize for local searches and map packs.</p> <p>These are both single location businesses with a physical address.</p> <p>Thanks again!</p> <p>Michael</p></title>
-
Hi Michael!
Would you be able to provide a bit more context here so the community can fine-tune its suggestions? Are you asking about including these terms in your title tag for a local business website? If so, which pages of the site? What is the goal of the page you're optimizing? What is the business model (single location local business, multi-location local business, virtual business?). The more detail you can provide, the better of an answer you should receive here. Thanks!
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
-
SEO Best Practice for Managing a Businesses NAP with Multiple Addresses
I have a client with multiple business addresses - 3 across 3 states, from an SEO perspective what would be the best approach for displaying a NAP on the website? So far I've read that its best: to get 3 GMB account to point to 3 location pages & use a local phone number as opposed to a 1300 number. Display all 3 locations in the footer, run of site
Local Website Optimization | | jasongmcmahon1 -
More pages on website better for SEO?
Hi all, Is creating more pages better for SEO? Of course the pages being valuable content. Is this because you want the user to spend as much time as possible on your site. A lot of my competitors websites seem to have more pages than mine and their domain authorities are higher, for example the services we provide are all on one page and for my competitors each services as its own page. Kind Regards, Aqib
Local Website Optimization | | SMCCoachHire0 -
How to Do Local Keyword Research
I am familiar with how to do regular keyword research, finding opportunity based on competition, search volume, etc. For local search, do I go to all the trouble of finding hidden gems or just pick higher volume terms that have local intent. For instance: A search for "physical therapy" is a high volume term that Google thinks has local intent. If i pick a low volume national term, that has 11-50 avg searches per month, I have lower chances...and even less chance that someone is searching locally. What say ye? Nails
Local Website Optimization | | matt.nails0 -
Impact of .us vs .com on SEO rankings?
Our website is hosted on www.discovered.us. I have 2 questions: 1: we have had regular feedback a .us domain is negative in SEO and in conversion (customers don't like it). We are thinking of changing domain to: www.dscvrd.com.
Local Website Optimization | | Discovered
Any insights on the impact on our rankings (if any) if we do this? 2: we are focusing our SEO global / USA first but conversions in UK are better. We currently do not have multi-language SEO setup. What would the impact be of implementing www.discovered.co.uk on SEO in UK? Thanks! Gijsbert0 -
Applying NAP Local Schema Markup to a Virtual Location: spamming or not?
I have a client that has multiple virtual locations to show website visitors where they provide delivery services. These are individual pages that include unique phone numbers, zip codes, city & state. However there is no address (this is just a service area). We wanted to apply schematic markup to these landing pages. Our development team successfully applied schema to the phone, state, city, etc. However for just the address property they said VIRTUAL LOCATION. This checked out fine on the Google structured data testing tool. Our question is this; can just having VIRTUAL LOCATION for the address property be construed as spamming? This landing page is providing pertinent information for the end user. However since there is no brick and mortar address I'm trying to determine if having VIRTUAL LOCATION as the value could be frowned upon by Google. Any insight would be very helpful. Thanks
Local Website Optimization | | RosemaryB1 -
Schema markup for a local directory listing and Web Site name
Howdy there! Two schema related questions here Schema markup for local directory We have a page that lists multiple location information on a single page as a directory type listing. Each listing has a link to another page that contains more in depth information about that location. We have seen markups using Schema Local Business markup for each location listed on the directory page. Examples: http://www.yellowpages.com/metairie-la/gold-buyers http://yellowpages.superpages.com/listings.jsp?CS=L&MCBP=true&C=plumber%2C+dallas+tx Both of these validate using the Google testing tool, but what is strange is that the yellowpages.com example puts the URL to the profile page for a given location as the "name" in the schema for the local business, superpages.com uses the actual name of the location. Other sites such as Yelp etc have no markup for a location at all on a directory type page. We want to stay with schema and leaning towards the superpages option. Any opinions on the best route to go with this? Schema markup for logo and social profiles vs website name. If you read the article for schema markup for your logo and social profiles, it recommends/shows using the @type of Organization in the schema markup https://developers.google.com/structured-data/customize/social-profiles If you then click down the left column on that page to "Show your name in search results" it recommends/shows using the @type of WebSite in the schema markup. https://developers.google.com/structured-data/site-name We want to have the markup for the logo, social profiles and website name. Do we just need to repeat the schema for the @website name in addition to what we have for @organization (two sets of markup?). Our concern is that in both we are referencing the same home page and in one case on the page we are saying we are an organization and in another a website. Does this matter? Will Google be ok with the logo and social profile markup if we use the @website designation? Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | HeaHea0 -
How to target a site to only specific US states?
Hey Guys, Does anyone have experience or can point me to the right documentation about geo targeting possibilities for specific states in the US or specific areas in the world. Local SEO does not apply in my case, since my website is not a business nor have a physical address. My website offers information that is only relevant for specific states in the US, how can I leverage my I optimisation to gain more exposure in those specific states? I really appreciate any help. A
Local Website Optimization | | Mr.bfz0 -
Does the Location of my Server effect my SEO?
Does the geographic Location of my Server effect my SEO? HELP US! We are arguing for 3 weeks already. My partner has mentioned multiple times in the past that "since 2013 google does not require your server to be in the country you are targeting for seo"
Local Website Optimization | | DanielBernhardt
And that actually all they care about is if its a good and fast server - not where its physically located in the world. I am a strong believer that the geographic location of your server directly effects your SEO ranking... lets say if you want to target www.google.ru for your seo, best you have a server located in Russia for hosting your website.. WHO IS RIGHT? Choose the winner and base the facts.
If anybody has the correct answer and information to base it on it will help us alot - and maybe even spare some unnecessary violent between us two! we found some articles across the web, sadly they are all dated back to 2012.... Thanks in Advance for all the help guys!0