For a URL, is it better to have Keyword +City?
-
I am working on some landing pages and trying to do well in Local areas.
Is it better to have my landing pages set as mysite.com/keyword+location or mysite.com/Location+keyword. or does it even matter anymore?
So for a plumber selling water heater services. is it better to be:
site/hot-water-heaters-jacksonville-fl or site/jacksonville-fl-hot-water-heaters?
I normally do keyword+city.
-
Keyword planner tool within the Google AdWords console added nine new features today.
The new features include:
- Specify a time period for keyword data
- Compare time periods over time
- View absolute and relative changes for each ad group and keyword’s volume comparing two periods
- Visualizing mobile trends
- See breakdowns by device and targeted locations
- Flexible time periods
- Device segmentation and bid adjustments
- Location breakdowns for sub-geos of your targeted location
- Visualizations and estimates for sub-geos
http://www.phillymarketinglabs.com/9-awesome-additions-to-googles-keyword-planner/
-
Hi Dave,
Unfortunately, I find Google's KP tool to be next to useless unless the client is in a really major city. Basically, we're back to the old advice of researching keywords and adding geography through common sense. If anyone has a different take on this, please let me know, but local keyword research has never been very satisfactory and Google seems to return zeros or unbelievably low numbers for most US towns.
-
Yes. It seems in this instance there's not a big difference, if any difference at all, between search volumes for "Jacksonville water heaters" and "water heaters Jacksonville". And as vzPro points out, with Hummingbird, Google will find you anyway.
-
Hi Donna,
Taking your example:
" plugging "water heaters Jacksonville" turned up 0 searches a month. Plugging in "water heaters" and then targeting Jacksonville FL only turned up 40 searches a month."
Would you not still craft your page to be url/water-heaters-jacksonville and also your title tag to be water heaters jacksonville?
-
I agree with VzPro, it's at least an indication.
I also do things like search for "keyword+location" and then just "keyword", but using the targeting and location options on the left to select Jacksonville FL only (vs the entire US).
So in your example, plugging "water heaters Jacksonville" turned up 0 searches a month. Plugging in "water heaters" and then targeting Jacksonville FL only turned up 40 searches a month.
-
It depends on how you use it. Even if the numbers are 10 to 12 that can still be an indication. I generally try to stick to larger areas for search. If you look in Mayport you will probably only show a few searches. Remember, these are showing actual searches from those exact locations. My assumption (purely an assumption) that these smaller volume searches get "lumped together" with other search queries. Ie. Plumber Jacksonville, plumbers Jacksonville, Jacksonville plumbers, etc.
If you are doing landing pages per area, I find the keyword planner very helpful for improving my QA score in AdWords.
-
Do you guys actually find keyword planner useful? I find for 99% of the things i look at on a local level the volume is either blank or so low it doesn't really mater. Like 10 vs 12 a month.
-
I agree with Donna's take. I have a dozen or so plumber and ac repair clients and that has been a constant struggle to talk to owners about. They see a competitor ranking for ac repair Jacksonville FL but our page is /air-conditioning-repair-jacksonville. I also use the keyword planner to help decide this. What I do is search for "hot water heaters" and localize the setting to your search area and get the recommendations there. Let's say there are 150 searches for the FL version of a search and 60 for the non FL version. I'll generally check to see the competition level of each search. If one is medium and the other is high, I'll usually take the medium competition one and shoot to rank for that one. Wven if it has the lower search volume. This also works if you are setting up AdWords campaigns for these pages. I would try to mix up the h2 tags with the non primary version too. That has worked for us in organic results.
All that being said, the Hummingbird algo is meant to help googlebots understand long tail searches like this and is trying to make the difference between keywords + city and city + keyword a mute point. If you just do a regular search you'll see the SERP displaying both results.
-
Hi Dave,
I think the sequencing of words in the URL is less important than the sequencing of words in the title tag. That said, if I were you I'd look up "keyword+location" and "location+keyword" in Google Planner and make my choice based on what I learn there. Which version gets the most searches? Which is harder to rank for? And which looks like it might have the better commercial value?
The length of the URL is going to be the same either way, so err on the side of the sequencing that best fits your overall ranking objectives.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Repetitive Speaker and Keyword Stuffing Penalty
This question is a little bit on the whimsical side. Let's say you have a video on your page, and a transcript of said video. The speaker has a tendency to repeat a certain (key)word, somewhat excessively. Maybe it's an important term for a technical video, maybe it's a nervous thing, whatever -- that word is in there a lot. If you include a video transcript, could you get slapped with a keyword stuffing penalty for excessive use of said word?
Image & Video Optimization | | Oren.0 -
Internal pages targeted for local keywords
Hello, Simple question: how do you target local SEO with internal pages, where the home page may or may not be local?
Image & Video Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Google+ Local City Centroid Bias
It's well-known that Google has a bias towards businesses located closest to the center of the city being searched in. How can you tell where exactly Google considers to be the center of the city? I think that the way is to just search the city name on Google Maps and the marker will appear at where they consider the center of the city to be but just wanted to double check on that first.
Image & Video Optimization | | ChaseCameron0 -
Local SEO, hard time ranking a keyword
Hello. Im working with beauty salon client, i do rank them for top services, but there a term that i can't rank for, my page it optimized for this keywords (url,h1,h2) i have this keyword in Google places, as a category, and in description. i have build many citations with this term, BUT still cant rank it. If anyone can help me on that, ill be really appreciated, as i'm still learning this. Thanks You!
Image & Video Optimization | | Davidmez0 -
Does google places mind listing cities on the home page
Hello, A site in our industry is listing a bunch of cities on their home page and ranking for them. Like "Our dog training facility provides services to dogs in city1,city2,city3,city4,city5,city6 state" where the cities and states are relatively in their area. It's working organically, will this confuse google places? Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | BobGW0 -
All Keywords Down.
all keywords are down all of a sudden. Any input will be appreciated. Everything was just working fine. Was that a result of Panda or Penguin update? Under webmaster there is no yellow question mark. Everyhting looks good in "Onpage" optimization. SOS.
Image & Video Optimization | | tanveer10 -
Switching to a domain name with keywords in it, is it possible to make this happen smoothly?
Hello, We have been working on the SEO of our site for almost a year now, and we are still not really seeing the success we would like to see. I notice often we get outranked by other sites that have lower PA/DA/citations/reviews etc than us, and the only explaination i can find is that they are getting a boost for a Partial Keyword Match in the domain name. Right now our domain name is: http://www.storwell.com And we are considering switching to http://www.storwellselfstorage.com and of course 301 redirecting all the individual pages from the old domain to the new domain's pages. How much would we risk loosing out in this transition? Can we safely transfer domains, or do we risk loosing the majority of our PA & DA because the backlinks will point at redirects instead of the actual location? Has anyone successfully managed to transfer domains and keep their DA & PA?
Image & Video Optimization | | adriandg0 -
Alt text in combination with images from another source / url
I have a feed that is parsed on my website. All images do come form another source( and url that differts from my site). However I can change the alt text. I concerns hotel mages worldwide. In order to relate the images with the different language I want to add a small phrase "airport hotel" translated in the laguages that are present on my site Example alt text will be alt="airport hotel: Mercure Schiphol Terminal" or in German alt="Flughafen hotel: Mercure Schiphol Terminal" Will this have a positive effect on my SEO despite the url of the images are not related to my site?
Image & Video Optimization | | fctexel0