More threads by koji

koji

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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
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 

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