City Name in URL structure

[maghanlinchpinsales]

I have a client whose site was built when they only served one market, and they now have that city in the majority of their URLs. I'm suggesting we redo the URL structure to remove this location from the main URLs (think homepage, about, etc.) since they have now expanded to three markets. They are seeing a lot of great organic traffic in that original market but are struggling in the new ones they've added so I'm helping to optimize their site. How critical do you think that removing that location from the URL is? I know we would need to implement 301 redirects, but wanted to get thoughts on this.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

I'm a little torn between what I would do in this situation.

Google says don't change URL's for the sake of SEO as it won't many any difference, but if there is a location mentioned in the URL and that is now limiting, from a usability point of view, this might be detrimental.

I would probably go for removing it though as this is always going to be there and might make less and less sense.

Create 301's and you should be good either way.

-Andy

[maghanlinchpinsales]

Thank you! I was leaning towards a redo of the URLs. I appreciate the input!