Geotag city different from postal address. Can I mention both cities together in title tags?

[McTaggart]

This boundary thing seems to be haunting me at the mo. Oh what I'd give for somewhere within a defined boundary!

Anyway, just noticed a client has one city in its official postal address, and another city under its geotag.

So I'm looking at the title tags and I'm thinking of mentioning both cities on the main entry pages (6 of them) then dividing mention in sub pages.

Is this acceptable to Google? Might they see mention of both cities in homepage title tag (and other entry pages) as spammy. I don't want to upset Google!!!

PS. Both cities are core markets. I would say they're of equal importance in terms of current business bookings and business potential.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Luke,
Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. Now, I want to be sure I understand what you are referencing by using the word 'geotag'. Please, give a definition of that. The language of Local remains non-standard, so we sometimes use different terms for the same elements.

Doing Local SEO, one has to get into Google's mindset. Google's approach to Local is that everything is founded on physical location. So, the name, address and phone number is the core of any Local SEO campaign. In cases where a client has offices in city A, but also welcomes clients from cities B and C or goes to clients to serve them in cities B and C, the client's main data is still about city A, because that is where he is physically located and that is what Google cares about most.

I'm not entirely sure about your particular client's business model. Is he, for example, a dentist located in San Franciso whose patients come to him from Oakland and Berkeley as well, or, is he, for example, a lawn care specialist located in San Francisco who has a service radius including Oakland or Berkeley. In any case, it's his city of location that counts most, and so, this takes priority in elements such as titles, tags, headers, footers and content.

In the case of service area businesses (plumbers, carpenters, carpet cleaners, etc.) it is a common best practice to create unique landing pages for each city in which the business goes to serve. These do not outweigh his main pages optimized for his city of location, but they are a way to let humans and bots know that the business' employees travel to these other cities to render services. You typically cannot expect to outrank other companies with physical locations in these services cities, but you can hope to gain at least some visibility for these secondary geographic terms.

Now, with what I've described, would you be able to be a little more detailed about what you would like to know, Luke? You are not in any way obliged to name the client, but perhaps you can give a few more details if you have further questions. I'll be glad to stop back by. Thanks!

[McTaggart]

This problem keeps coming up at the mo, partly because I'm working for out-of-town locations. Hey, ho...

Anyway, now I'm in S.W. England. The site has a Bristol postal address. But is actually in Bath & NE Somerset County. So the post office claims them for Bristol, the administrators for Bath, and the business is about the same distance from both.

Bristol is more of a key market than Bath, but both are very important.

This is a pizza takeaway, pizza restaurant, bar, function room. There's a homepage, and 4 key landing pages for each key service, then loads of internal pages under each category.

Web developer did this in the title tags - key service (e.g Function Room)| Bristol & Bath | [then company name] on the 4 key landing pages. Then they've targeted Bristol and Bath individually on interior pages - e.g.  Function Room **| **Bath | [company name] on the party venue page.

This seems OK to me, but not sure if Google will find this spammy or not (2 key cities in the title tags). In which case I will start playing with the title tags. I don't want them to take a hit from Google, particularly with all the changes coming through at the mo. I'm being very cautious.

I also question the div between, for the service (e.g. Function Room) and they city in question. I would take that first div out.

Any thoughts on this would be great. I'm finding UK boundary confusion, and how Google might deal with that in instances like this, mighty confusing.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Luke,

Now, was that you who started a similar thread on this recently about the great confusion of the postal service vs. administration in your country? I know that I just discussed a really similar situation in another thread, but for some reason, I can't seem to find it right now in the system. So, perhaps that was you, or perhaps a countryman of yours in the same predicament.

My thinking on this is that the postal address has to be seen as your core geo data, and thus would be the main thing occupying your footer, contact us page, and the front end of many of your titles and tags. But your situation is extraordinary. People visiting City A want to find a pizza in City A...they don't want to send mail to City B. So, Google would be crazy to penalize you for including City A in much of your optimization, but don't take my word for it.

I find your scenario with the conflict of boundaries to be important enough and curious enough to report to Google. I sincerely recommend that you do so. At the very least, you will have documentation of your efforts to play by the rules should anything go wrong in future. This just isn't an issue that comes up every day, and I believe you and your neighbors deserve an official answer from Google about how they would like you to proceed when such confusion surrounds locale in your area. I'd post about this to the Google and Your Business Forum with a very catchy title, such as:

Our Part Of England Is All Mixed Up - Please Guide Us, Google.

Something like that. Should grab some attention. Here is the link to the forum, if you don't have it handy:

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/business

I'd love to know if you get an answer.

[McTaggart]

Hi Miriam, thanks again for your feedback. I've asked the question, so awaiting some feedback. Hope I can get their position on this (I live in hope!). Yes, it was me before mentioning some other sites. This is impacting me in several places at the moment, which is a right pain! If Google provides an answer, I'll definitely try to share it around

[MiriamEllis]

Good, Luke. I really do hope you get an answer on this. Deserves attention!

[McTaggart]

Thanks Miriam. I haven't had an answer, so not holding up much hope. Is there anyone on the SEO Moz team who may have stumbled across such a specific ssue before? Do you have better access to Google? L

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Luke,

Do you want to link to the thread you started in the Google and Your Business Forum?

[McTaggart]

http://productforums.google.com/d/topic/business/2b-n5hzA9EU/discussion - hope that helps > I posted it before and someone got wrong end of stick, so tried again.

The person answering here suggests it is fine, and having just looked back at SEOMoz forum notes, I've been given same advice from someone on these forums before.

That said, it might be logical in some way to have both, but it might land you in trouble as you've suggested. Would be so good to clarify this point.

A good many people will be getting this wrong.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Luke,

I'm so glad Mike replied to you. As Mike said, what you put on your website is up to you, but I was hoping you'd actually describe the scenario going on in your region a little more fully in that thread. It's good you got an answer, but bringing Google's attention to the border change issues and getting a response to that would likely be helpful to lots and lots of your neighbors. Maybe you can attempt to discuss that in their forum at some point.

[McTaggart]

I will have another go I think