Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Local SEO: City & County Pages
-
I'm working on developing some local pages for an HVAC company. They cover two counties, so I was planning on having two county pages, then linking them to individual city pages to keep the menu simpler and not cluttering it up with a couple dozen city pages for people to slog through.
Has anybody ever done county pages before for local SEO? Or at least seen them? Just curious to see if there's any real benefit overall for have separate county pages, or if I should just stick to city pages.
-
Thanks! Wish we had something as catchy as the Triangle out this way, but we don't. It looks like county-related keywords have enough traffic to make it worthwhile to make pages for them. And I hate messy menus, so they'll help in that regard, too.
-
Thanks! There's some search volume for county-related keywords, so I'll probably end up creating them. That, and I hate having a messy menu.
-
As Miriam said, check if people search for the county. In the particular area where TheeDesign is located (Raleigh, NC) we are referred to as the Triangle (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill) but almost no one searches this way. The county is Wake County, but few people search by the county name either (more in some industries than others,) and typically the city is the highest search terms. So you have to debate whether the extra effort and planning is worth the extra visitors or not.
-
Hi Marty!
Good topic! Honestly, the only reason you should create county pages is if keyword research indicates that people search this way. They may in some cases, but for an HVAC company, this might not be the case. What your research teaches you will dictate whether this type of page will actually be useful to users.
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
-
International SEO - How do I show correct SERP results in the UK and US?
Hi, Moz community. I hope you’re all OK and keeping busy during this difficult period. I have a few questions about international SEO, specifically when it comes to ranking pages in the UK and the US simultaneously. We currently have 2 websites set-up which are aimed towards their respective countries. We have a ‘.com’ and a ‘.com/us’. If anybody could help with the issues below, I would be very grateful. Thank you all. Issues When looking in US Google search with a VPN, the title tag for our UK page appears in the SERP e.g. I will see: UK [Product Name] | [Brand] When checking the Google cache, the UK page version also appears This can cause a problem especially when I am creating title tags and meta descriptions that are unique from the UK versions However, when clicking through from the SERP link to the actual page, the US page appears as it should do. I find this very bizarre that it seems to show you the US page when you click through, but you see the UK version in the SERP when looking in the overall search results. Current Set-Up Our UK and US page content is often very similar across our “.com” and “.com/us” websites and our US pages are canonicalised to their UK page versions to remove potential penalisation We have also added herflang to our UK and US pages Query How do I show our US SERP as opposed to the UK version in US Google search? My Theories/ Answers US page versions have to be completely unique with content related to US search intent and be indexed separately - therefore no longer canonicalised to UK version Ensure hreflang is enabled to point Google to correct local page versions Ensure local backlinks point to localised pages If anyone can help, it will be much appreciated. Many thanks all.
Local Website Optimization | | Katarina-Borovska0 -
Does having an embedded Google Map still count as a positive SEO signal?
I know this was true a few years ago, however is there still an advantage to having an embedded map vs. a pop up map in 2017?
Local Website Optimization | | BigChad21 -
Subdomain vs. Separate Domain for SEO & Google AdWords
We have a client who carries 4 product lines from different manufacturers under a singular domain name (www.companyname.com), and last fall, one of their manufacturers indicated that they needed to move to separate out one of those product lines from the rest, so we redesigned and relaunched as two separate sites - www.companyname.com and www.companynameseparateproduct.com (a newly-purchased domain). Since that time, their manufacturer has reneged their requirement to separate the product lines, but the client has been running both sites separately since they launched at the beginning of December 2016. Since that time, they have cannibalized their content strategy (effective February 2017) and hacked apart their PPC budget from both sites (effective April 2017), and are upset that their organic and paid traffic has correspondingly dropped from the original domain, and that the new domain hasn't continued to grow at the rate they would like it to (we did warn them, and they made the decision to move forward with the changes anyway). This past week, they decided to hire an in-house marketing manager, who is insisting that we move the newer domain (www.companynameseparateproduct.com) to become a subdomain on their original site (separateproduct.companyname.com). Our team has argued that making this change back 6 months into the life of the new site will hurt their SEO (especially if we have to 301 redirect all of the old content back again, without any new content regularly being added), which was corroborated with this article. We'd also have to kill the separate AdWords account and quality score associated with the ads in that account to move them back. We're currently looking for any extra insight or literature that we might be able to find that helps explain this to the client better - even if it is a little technical. (We're also open to finding out if this method of thinking is incorrect if things have changed!)
Local Website Optimization | | mkbeesto0 -
Page optimisation score = 93, but rank on 2nd page?
So, one of my pages has an optimisation score of 93. The DA of the website is 74 and is lower than many of our competitors, but to rank 12th? Anyway, does anyone have any suggestions? All the images are under 100kb, but the page speed isn't great (not something I'm currently able to change). All alt tags are using variations of our keywords.
Local Website Optimization | | SwanseaMedicine0 -
301 or 302 Redirects with locale URLs?
Hi Mozers, I have a bit of a tricky question I need some help answering. My agency are building a brand new website for a client of ours which means changing the domain name (yay...). So! I have my 301's all ready to go for the UK locale, however, the issue I have is that the site will also eventually have French, German and Spanish locales - but these won't be ready to go until later this year. We will be launching in just English for September. The current site already has the French and German locales on it as well. Just to make sure I'm being clear, the site will be www.example.com for launch, but by lets say November, we will also have a www.example.com/fr/ and www.example.com/de/ site launched too. So what do I do with the locale URLs? As I said above, the exisitng site already has the French and German locales on it, so I don't particularly want to redirect the /fr/ and /de/ URLs to the English homepage, as I will want to redirect them to the new URLs in November, and redirecting more than once is bad for SEO right? Any ideas? Would 302s maybe be the best suggestion? Thanks! Virginia
Local Website Optimization | | Virginia-Girtz1 -
Local SEO - Multiple stores on same URL
Hello guys, I'm working on a plan of local SEO for a client that is managing over 50 local stores. At the moment all the stores are sharing the same URL address and wanted to ask if it s better to build unique pages for each of the stores or if it's fine to go with all of them on the same URL. What do you think? What's the best way and why? Thank you in advance.
Local Website Optimization | | Noriel0 -
Is it okay for my H3 Tag to appear above my H2 Tag on the Web Page
Hello All, I am currently doing my H1 ,H2, H3 Tags on my redesigned website We have the ability to have links to relevant DIY Guides on the bottom of our webpage and these are currently displayed under a heading "DIY Useful Guides" above my on page content which is at the bottom of the page. My H2 Tag will obviously be the title that sits above my On Page Content at the bottom of the Webpage and I was going to do the H3 Tag for my DIY Guides Is it a problem if the H3 tag sits above the H2 Tag on the Page or not ? Or have i got this wrong and I need to move the DIY Guides (links) to below the on page content so the H3 tag sits below the H2 tag? thanks Pete OTmPbbR
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC120 -
Does the Location of my Server effect my SEO?
Does the geographic Location of my Server effect my SEO? HELP US! We are arguing for 3 weeks already. My partner has mentioned multiple times in the past that "since 2013 google does not require your server to be in the country you are targeting for seo"
Local Website Optimization | | DanielBernhardt
And that actually all they care about is if its a good and fast server - not where its physically located in the world. I am a strong believer that the geographic location of your server directly effects your SEO ranking... lets say if you want to target www.google.ru for your seo, best you have a server located in Russia for hosting your website.. WHO IS RIGHT? Choose the winner and base the facts.
If anybody has the correct answer and information to base it on it will help us alot - and maybe even spare some unnecessary violent between us two! we found some articles across the web, sadly they are all dated back to 2012.... Thanks in Advance for all the help guys!0