Combining Keywords in Page Titles? And Near Me/Near You Madness!?

[CaribouFondue]

Hello, I am doing local SEO for a storage business, as I can only have one landing page url per google place location, I am trying to optimize this page for multiple keywords. Some keywords that I am trying to optimize for are:
"Storage Units Cityname"
"Self Storage Cityname"
What I am wondering is can I merge these two into one title? For example I am considering this for a title:
"Self Storage Units in Cityname - Company name"

Or would it be better to write out both keywords in the title:
"Self Storage Cityname - Storage Units Cityname - Company name"

Additionally I see some of my competition put words like "Near You" and "Near Me" both in their titles, and on page content. My knee jerk reaction is "surely google isn't THAT stupid", but we are talking here about the leaders in the 3 pack, who consistently rank very well across the board.

So should I include that? for example:
"Self Storage Units in Cityname Near You - Company name"

Thanks!

 

[CaribouFondue]

A bunch of "Near Me" stuff i've seen around (there's lots more than this, it's just a quick example).

 

[keyserholiday]

Google rewrites page titles a lot, so you should look at the source code to see if that is what they put or if that is what Google wants to display.

 

[CaribouFondue]

Google rewrites page titles a lot, so you should look at the source code to see if that is what they put or if that is what Google wants to display.

Are you strictly answering the near me question? (see attached)
What about the rest of the question, about combining keywords.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Adding instances of near me and near you and other variations to pages works, so that's why so many people are taking advantage of it.

As far as your title tag, if there is enough search volume for each of the variations to justify having both of the variations in the title tag then I would go for it. It would certainly make a good test if you wanted to try one variation, measure, and then try the other one.

 

[CaribouFondue]

Adding instances of near me and near you and other variations to pages works, so that's why so many people are taking advantage of it.

As far as your title tag, if there is enough search volume for each of the variations to justify having both of the variations in the title tag then I would go for it. It would certainly make a good test if you wanted to try one variation, measure, and then try the other one.

There is lots of search volume for the bare keywords like
"storage units"
and
"self storage"
I wouldn't say there is lots of volume for "storage units cityname" / "self storage cityname" i just don't think people really search like that anymore. But here's the thing, i've got multiple locations, so I need to differentiate their targeting a bit. or maybe I don't?

If this was the volume data you were working with, what would you pick for each location title?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

You most definitely want to include the city name in your title tags and page content.

 

[CaribouFondue]

You most definitely want to include the city name in your title tags and page content.

Right, ok, but can I combine keywords? or does it not work like that?
If i've got targets like:
Storage
Storage Units
Moving Boxes
Self Storage
Storage Units Near Me

Can i merge these all into:
Self Storage Units & Moving Boxes Near Me in Toronto ??

Or does this actually miss they keywords like "Storage near me" because it didn't appear in that order?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Can i merge these all into:
Self Storage Units & Moving Boxes Near Me in Toronto ??

No because I think you might have a couple of different pages there. I haven't done any research but I imagine self storage units would be one page and then you could have another page dedicated to moving boxes.

 

[CaribouFondue]

No because I think you might have a couple of different pages there. I haven't done any research but I imagine self storage units would be one page and then you could have another page dedicated to moving boxes.

But that other page dedicated to moving boxes won't be a google places landing page and will never rank in the 3 pack. Sure, we have a page about moving boxes, but i'm strictly talking about ranking in the 3 pack here. There is so many adds etc, that organic is way below the fold, nobody is going all the way down there for storage related queries.

Moving boxes is kind of a misdirection anyway, lets say we take that one out of the story completely so we don't overcomplicate this.

What I am trying to get at is does the word order matter in the optimization of a page title?
Do i need to do:
"Storage Units - Self Storage - Storage Near Me"
Or is those three instances of the word "Storage" redundant and I could compress all that to
"Self Storage Units Near Me" leaving more space for more keywords, etc.

Does the word order matter for which word comes first being more important that words later?
e.g. if I put my cityname location keyword all the way at the end of the title vs the start, is there an impact?

 

[dgrunited]

Hello, I am doing local SEO for a storage business, as I can only have one landing page url per google place location, I am trying to optimize this page for multiple keywords. Some keywords that I am trying to optimize for are:
"Storage Units Cityname"
"Self Storage Cityname"
What I am wondering is can I merge these two into one title? For example I am considering this for a title:
"Self Storage Units in Cityname - Company name"

Or would it be better to write out both keywords in the title:
"Self Storage Cityname - Storage Units Cityname - Company name"

Additionally I see some of my competition put words like "Near You" and "Near Me" both in their titles, and on page content. My knee jerk reaction is "surely google isn't THAT stupid", but we are talking here about the leaders in the 3 pack, who consistently rank very well across the board.

So should I include that? for example:
"Self Storage Units in Cityname Near You - Company name"

Thanks!

If you have a proper way of testing the success of your keyword injection plans, then you can automate the injection process itself.

The automation will work if the backend of your website supports php, mysql, javascript & cron jobs. Wordpress is perfect for these stunts. The process involves renaming the page urls in the mysql database periodically while testing the popularity of your newly renamed page url using whatever system you have.

So, in summary, your experiment can be automated but you will need a proper way of testing the success of your keyword injection plans. The success also depends on how often Google crawls your page. If they crawl your page frequently, you can test your results quickly.

All the best

 

[CaribouFondue]

If you have a proper way of testing the success of your keyword injection plans, then you can automate the injection process itself.

The automation will work if the backend of your website supports php, mysql, javascript & cron jobs. Wordpress is perfect for these stunts. The process involves renaming the page urls in the mysql database periodically while testing the popularity of your newly renamed page url using whatever system you have.

So, in summary, your experiment can be automated but you will need a proper way of testing the success of your keyword injection plans. The success also depends on how often Google crawls your page. If they crawl your page frequently, you can test your results quickly.

All the best

This is certainly a fun idea and well within our technical capabilities, but I see two pretty big flaws with it.

1) Nothing exists in a vacuum. Our off page SEO work is constantly ongoing, we gain links we lose links, we gain citations we loose citations, etc. It is impossible to filter out the impacts that this might have had on the rankings vs the page edit test that is being automated.

2) Google SERPs seem to dance a bit, regardless of what is happening. I don't know for sure, but I believe this is in response to CTR from the search results, but could be a lot of other things as well (maybe an algorithm adjustment, etc). It is impossible to know if my rankings changed because of because of a google dance, or if it is because of my page edit.