Important Question for Local Town Page Title and H1

[lexer]

If I am creating individual town pages for "replacement windows in anywhere USA" for example, should my actual page title be unique since there will obviously be other page titles with " replacement windows in anywhere USA ". Or is it the actual page content that needs to be unique?
should the H1 be unique or just the actual content be unique?
thank you

 

[mattmcgee]

Yes, everything should be as unique as possible. Avoid duplicate page titles, meta descriptions, and H1s for sure.

 

[lexer]

Thank You Matt
So my title page should not be "replacement windows anywhere, usa ". wouldnt that hurt me since that is the most relevent search, what most homeowners would put in the search engine?
"anywhere, usa window replacement expert" would still capture the same search query and rank ?

 

[mattmcgee]

@lexer - I'm saying (as a general best SEO practice) you should not have multiple pages using the exact same title tag, same meta description, same H1, etc.

It's difficult to give specific answers without seeing/knowing the entirety of the website content, your competition, etc.

 

[lexer]

Hi Matt
I have a main website and linked 30 individual town pages to the main site-
each town page has the same title but I use a different town. Same with the H1 tag.
example- Replacement windows ABC, Replacement Windows XYZ ect...
the meta description for each page is the same but I change the town name for each page.

does that seem logical or am I missing something?

 

[mattstephenskc]

If your question is regarding uniqueness compared to competitors in your local market, then I wouldn't worry about differentiating yourself in your H1s. Your page Title should include your business name, which should satisfy the uniqueness criteria. Of course that presumes your business name is unique among your competitors.

 

[mattmcgee]

Oh, interesting. I read the question as uniqueness within the same website.

But yeah, if it's asking about uniqueness compared to competitors' websites, that's a different story.

 

[mattstephenskc]

If I am creating individual town pages for "replacement windows in anywhere USA" for example, should my actual page title be unique since there will obviously be other page titles with " replacement windows in anywhere USA ". Or is it the actual page content that needs to be unique?
should the H1 be unique or just the actual content be unique?
thank you

This depends on what you're comparing them to.

If you're comparing your site's pages to each other, then the only thing in the H1 that needs to be distinct from the other (topically identical, but location differentiated) pages is the city name, or whatever your geographic modifier is.

That said, my understanding is that the body content should not be identical from page-to-page, with the only differences being the geographic references. This is debated, but IMO not worth the risk of the so-called "duplicate content penalty" (i.e., Google indexing one, but ignoring the rest of the pages, since they're virtually identical), since we aren't certain of how Google treats these. (If someone has recent evidence to the contrary, please drop a link to educate us.)

Now, if you're asking whether you're safe to use "replacement windows in anywhere USA" as your H1 (changing "anywhere" to match your geo-location name on each page) when other window vendors in the same area use that same H1 on their site, I strongly doubt this would hurt you in any way as far as Google is concerned—provided that your site is set up to add your business name to the Title tag (e.g., "Window World | Replacement Windows in New York City" or "Replacement Windows in New York City | Window World").

Your brand name should be prefixed or suffixed to the "topical title" of the particular page. At a minimum, this is good UX, which Google is supposed to prioritize.