Using City and State

[Mike Pedersen]

What are your thoughts on using city and state on all pages for meta title, heading and meta description?

I've heard that is how it should be, but wouldn't that be over-optimization, and awkward for the visitor to see the city in heading of every page?

 

[mborgelt]

We only usually use City and State if there is more than one city with the name. I think if you have schema properly in place, you can omit the state code around the site. I also it think it looks better to users just to have the city so in places where it's visible to users I would leave it out unless you believe it to be absolutely necessary but it's personal preference in titles and meta descriptions, imho. I'm curious to see what everyone else has to say, though.

 

[Mike Pedersen]

In looking at rankings, it still looks like google is giving higher rankings to websites with the city in the main domain name. Nearly EMD sites which I thought went out a few years ago.

Mike

We only usually use City and State if there is more than one city with the name. I think if you have schema properly in place, you can omit the city code around the site. I also it think it looks better to users just to have the city so in places where it's visible to users I would leave it out unless you believe it to be absolutely necessary but it's personal preference in titles and meta descriptions, imho. I'm curious to see what everyone else has to say, though.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Ya Google still loves EMDs and PMDs for local. Has for a long time.

The EMD update didn't really affect local. And the whole EMD thing never penalized EMDs for just being an EMD, it was only if it was a thin or spammy EMD with nothing else going for it, the EMD alone would not give a ranking boost.

 

[Mike Pedersen]

I'm seeing a competitor domain that has no age beating us now for many terms. We are doing everything by the book, so have no idea why this new domain is getting top rankings.

bestdentists[cityname].com

In looking at rankings, it still looks like google is giving higher rankings to websites with the city in the main domain name. Nearly EMD sites which I thought went out a few years ago.

Mike