In (or In-between) 2 cities - and mentioning both cities in title tags

[McTaggart]

Hi, just wondering what your thoughts are on this one - several businesses I work for are located in in-between places.

For example, one is in one city for its address, but in another city's council (/state) area. Another is in a rural area, almost exactly the same distance between 2 cities (about 10 miles either way).

Both businesses mention both cities on several pages of their websites, including in title tags (including homepage title tags), and it seems to be working OK in terms of rankings (ie they're ranking well for keyphrases for both cities).

Is it acceptable practice to mention both cities in a single title tag though? That's my question.

(some of this confusion dates back to UK local authority boundary/name changes, in 2009)

[RobertFisher]

Hello Luke,

I would approach it like this. FIrst, ask the question: What is the best way to maximize the locations I want given I am between two distinct geographic areas? If you want to insure you are hitting both, what is at your disposal?

For Google + you will have the choice of one or the other and I go with which is most important first. Then, mention the other. In search, someone searching for city A is going to pull geographically (given all other things are equal) from city center point out. If you are center of city A that is great, if you are halfway out, you will be in the search, etc. But, then make sure you have other indicators like your title tags. If each city is important I would have two pages (one on each city with differing content). That is better than a single page of content and title tags as you have them.

If, your only other option is to use the title tags with both, keep them at 70 characters and have a go at it. You won't hurt anything, but it is not the highest value approach.

Hope this helps you out,

Robert

[Audiohype]

Robert has pretty much covered it here.

I would say it depends on the level of competition. If the competition is low you could probably have one page focused on both locations, but if it's high you may need to consider having a targeted page for each "page + location".

The homepage is the only tricky one. Obviously with this generally being the strongest page on the site, splitting this may result in one high strength page (homepage) and a low one (newpage).

[McTaggart]

Thanks guys - appreciated.