Local SEO Warning: City in Title Tag - Former Google Spam Team Member Speaks Out

[Travis Van Slooten]

Ah...got it. Ya, I used to think that way too and went away from pipe characters for a while but now I find myself using them again. When I use them I only use one. I'm not using them to keyword stuff like this:

Atlanta Landscaping | Landscapers in Atlanta | Landscaping Services Atlanta

I have come around to using ONE pipe character again (when it makes sense) to separate a business name from some other phrase I'm trying to get in simply because I think it looks so much cleaner than a dash.

I figure until Matt Cutts comes out and explicitly says pipe characters are a no-no I'll continue to use one and only one when it makes sense.

Travis Van Slooten

 

[Andrew RLM SEO]

I completely agree with Travis on this. Even if you do not get penalized for listing your city 3 times, it still will not look user friendly. If I saw a title like that I would instantly think it was spam.

I agree with the general public here and think that listing the city twice, in a spread out, user friendly way would work best here.

 

[21Development]

I'm starting to see several "under optimized" sites ranking in the local pack for a client site. It's driving me a bit nutty as we are optimizing as we normally would. I know we've not been penalized, but is my only recourse to try to under optimize like the competition?