Ways to expand your marketing area

[music100]

I have a local business and put additional city names (7 of them) into the main title page along with the biz description in order to expand into these areas. I included these same cities on 3 other pages in the site as well, along with the custom descriptions for these pages.  Is this overuse of city names in title pages? Will it negatively affect my rankings? What are the best ways to expand your marketing territory for a local biz?

Thanks for any and all responses.

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

This could potentially be overoptimization of local SEO, I would be very careful, especially if the content on these pages are closely related with the names being switched out.

You can look into Google My Business Service-area businesses, as well as citations through services like Moz Local and Whitespark.

I would instead have an "Areas We Serve"-esque page that lists areas and any relevant contact information for those areas.

I highly recommend reviewing this piece from Moz called Get Your Multi-Location Business Ranking in Multiple Cities With One Domain, which says "Putting ANY Geo, City information in your home page title tags." is a No-No.

Lots of great tips there - hope it helps! Good luck!

[music100]

Thank-you Patrick, good information. I appreciate your response.