Can I add multi location business cities to homepage meta title or desc.?

[beehiive]

I have a business with 6 locations (in the same state) but very different cities. We we expanded from one location with the city name in the URL we followed best practices to move to the new domain without the singular city name in the URL. We definitly took a hit on the organic side and I'm trying to figure out best practice for where to add geo info.

Currently I have geo info:

-In footer
-Contact Page

-On local page

It's a WP site and each location has it's own page (ie. locations/geolocation_keyword). I know all other locations will take sometime but my concern is the hit we took on the original location that had geo-target URL.

I guess really my question is simply can I include city names in homepage meta title and desc.?
and is there anything else I can do to bounce back organically on the original city faster?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Beehive,

This is a good question. So, as I understand it, you originally had a city-specific domain name when you were a single location business. You now have six locations and have moved to a purely branded domain rather than a city-specific one and this site has a unique page for each of your locations (which is good - a best practice - provided the content is unique on each page).

I would not recommend putting all six city names in your homepage title tag or in the title tag of any other page. Once a business expands like yours has, you've got to come up with a different strategy than the one you were using for a single location.

Questions:

Did you 301 redirect the old domain to the new one?

Did you update all of your citations to reflect the new domain name? Realize this will take time to go into effect. This is very important.

Suggestions:

You might like to read this post about local landing pages: http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide

Study the part about Business Model III in the above guide, if you've not already read it. It applies to your business model.

A multi-location local business that I think is doing a good job with their Local SEO is REI.com. Check out their location landing pages.

You must now start building the authority for each of the 5 new locations, with content development, citation building, review acquisition, social outreach, etc.

I hope some of these thoughts will be helpful to you.

[beehiive]

I did 301 redirect and google webmaster tools site change tool.

I updated all the citations on yelp etc. to point to the now local page url (/locations/city_keyword)

I guess I figured I knew that this was the right answer and response but it's obviously difficult when you have a strong hold on many keywords and then you fall below the fold. Luckily most keywords do trigger at least 3 map results (after 3 organic listings) in which we are first.

However we did have the trifecta of 3 results above the fold (PPC, Organic, Maps) and now just showing for 2 of the 3 with the one missing being the biggest traffic driver.

I guess my follow up question is currently our organic listing is the serp page with just one mention (footer) of the original city. Should I expect that the local page prevail on serps eventually (ie /locations/city_keyword)?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Beehive,

Was the Google+ Local page for city #1 previously pointing to the homepage of the old website, but now pointing to a landing page on the new website for just that one city (among the other 5 new city landing pages)? If so, chances are your old homepage had more clout than the new local landing page, which could possibly explain the loss of organic rankings. After all, you used to have a whole website devoted to just this one city. Now you've got just one page on a larger site devoted to it. Chances are, you've got to build up the authority of these new landing pages, if the scenario I've described is accurate, in order to regain your organic authority.

[beehiive]

That is exactly the scenario. Thanks for your response and time.

[MiriamEllis]

You're welcome, Beehive, and good luck with the work ahead.