City in title tag hurt Local Search?

[LyntonWeb]

Big city A is the target optimization for services.

Suburb city B is the location of the business.

Will having big city A in the title tag of pages confuse the NAP consistency and local SEO for the site?

[GlobeRunner]

Whenever working on local search engine rankings, I try to be as consistent as possible when it comes to the NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) data. If you were to put the name of a larger city in the title tag (I am assuming it is in the same metro area), you'll need to mention that larger city in copy on the page. If you just keyword stuff the larger city name in the title tag and don't make it part of a larger strategy (such as getting anchor text links to the site with that city name pointing to your site), then you won't be successful.

Google knows that smaller cities are a part of a larger city or metro area, and usually it isn't a problem with the NAP data being confused. When you set up the Google Plus Local listing, make sure you specify that you serve customers in that same metro area that you're including in the Title Tag.

[LyntonWeb]

Thanks Eric! Would you suggest putting the larger metro are in the title tag and mentioning it later in the page OR just keeping the nap consistent using the physical address's city and trusting that Google will understand that the suburb serves the metro area?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Jason,

In Google's world, Local Search hinges on physical address, even for SABs (service area businesses). This means that, regardless of your on-page optimization, your business is most likely to achieve local pack rankings for its city of location - not for a different city where you are not physically located. While I'm not sure from your description whether your business is brick-and-mortar (like a dentist located in the suburbs who wishes to gain clients from the neighboring major city) or is an SAB (like a plumber located in the suburbs who travels to the neighboring big city to make house calls), it doesn't really matter. Google's bias toward physical location dictates that most local businesses must go for local rankings for their city of location and organic rankings for any other city.

Because of this, the approach that makes most sense to me is to optimize the basic pages of the website (home, about, contact) for the city of location, because you want these pages to reinforce Google's belief in the validity of the NAP (name, address, phone number) you have included on your Google+ Local page. The goal here is to achieve the highest possible local rankings for the city of location, because this is what Google cares about most.

Then, build additional content on the website for additional target cities and try to build as much authority surrounding it as possible, in hopes that it will be able to achieve organic visibility.

This would be my approach, as I feel it clearly delineates both physical location and target cities.

[LyntonWeb]

Hi Miriam,

Thank you for the response. That is very helpful!

When you say: "Then, build additional content on the website for additional target cities and try to build as much authority surrounding it as possible, in hopes that it will be able to achieve organic visibility." Is this typically landing pages or can it be anywhere on the website outside of basic page?

I guess I am struggling to grasp the concept of what is a "basic page" that should stay consistent with the NAP, vs what page is ok to use to try and gain organic search target city.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Jason,

I should have been more clear about this. I'm sorry. Let me provide a little more detail.

In my experience, most local business websites have some basic pages, regardless of whether the business is a dental clinic, or a legal firm or a restaurant. Most feature the following pages;

• Home

• About

• Contact Us

On these pages, I would be adamant about ensuring that the optimization of the titles, tags and text matches the core business NAP (name, address, phone). So, if the business is physically located in Jamestown, then these pages should reflect this in every way possible so that when humans and search engine bots hit these pages, the content there matches the content you are publishing on your various local business listings, in terms of geography.

Beyond these three basic pages, most local businesses will also have a set of service/product description pages. Here, we enter some grey area, because the content and optimization of these pages will be dictated by the needs/goals of the unique business. Some possible choices:

• If the business does serve clients in its city of location, then it's a no-brainer to optimize the product/service pages for this geo term. In other words, instead of just optimizing for 'teeth whitening', you would be optimizing for 'teeth whitening in jamestown' and such variants.

• If the business does not serve clients in its city of location, then these pages could be optimized for the neighboring city where it does serve.

• If the business provides services in multiple cities with equivalent values, then you could either optimize the core service/product pages for the city of location (my first choice) with the plan to build additional content for other cities, or, you could not use geo terms at all in the optimization of these pages (a somewhat iffy choice) and rely on 'cities we serve' pages to stand in for having optimized the actual product/service pages.

There may be other choices, because there are always little nuances to each businesses, but what I've described above are the most common approaches.

Now, in terms of building city landing pages for multiple service cities, I'd like to point you to an article I wrote on this some time back that many people told me really helped them understand their options. Here we go:

The Nitty Gritty of City Landing Pages for Local Businesses

Of course, a local business website will have other pages like testimonials pages, work with us pages, etc., on each one of which you'll be making a nuanced decision in regards to which keyword terms are targeted.

I hope I've provided some further insight here and that the article I've linked to will provide even more.

[LyntonWeb]

Thank you for the awesomely detailed response Miriam! That helps a ton

[MiriamEllis]

It's my pleasure, Jason. Good luck to you with the work ahead!