Name of town/city in keyword phrase

[koji]

Hello there,

This has been probably already answered somewhere else but I can't find a recent satisfactory answer.

Is it relevant to mention the name of the town or city in H s, title, url, copy etc or it doesn't really matter anymore?

Thanks in advance

 

[Conor Treacy]

Anything that ends up on the page affects the indexing and subsequent rankings of that page. If you can use it, and it doesn't sound spammy, then I would put it in each of the places.

Google recently stated that keywords in header tags are not a critical item like it used to be years ago, however, if it makes sense to be in a title for a section, add it in.

For us, if we have a choice between "Your Local Plumber" and "Your Local Omaha Plumber", I'd choose the latter every time. It's also a reinforcement to your visitors on the page that you are local to a specific area.

The golden rule we follow - if it makes sense to be on the page, add it in.

 

[Tim Kahlert]

I always try to see it from the visitor´s perspective. It´s all about relevance. Does the page title/H1 explains precisely what the page is about? Does the H2 describe the topics in the following paragraph? Does the URL make it clear where I am within the physical website structure?

As Conor correctly said, you want to let your customers know whether your business is local or not by adding town + state code to your content. If you think this information is not relevant, just leave it.

 

[Emily Brady]

I agree with both Conor and Tim. In my experience, mentioning the city is definitely an important ranking factor, especially for SMBs that serve specific regions (cities, counties, etc). I think it's tricky because Google may not consider it AS "critical" as it was 8 years ago or so - but mentioning the location you serve is important to users (i.e., they want to know they're getting a local service because that's what they need) so it makes sense it can help your site rank. If I was looking for a service-based business near me and clicked through to their site, I would probably double-check their address if the page copy didn't mention the city I was in just to make sure they actually service my location.

When Google tells us something isn't as important as it used to be, I typically take that to meant Google uses more factors to understand the value of websites; thus, the importance of one very specific thing won't make or break your campaign.

TL; DR - I think it's still best practices to include the geo-target in your on-page optimization.

 

[koji]

Thanks All for your replies, I will go with Conor's golden rule.