Local SEO - Adding the location to the URL

[WeAreDigital_BE]

Hi there,

My client has a product URL: www.company.com/product. They are only serving one state in the US. The existing URL is ranking in a position between 8-15 at the moment for local searches. Would it be interesting to add the location to the URL in order to get a higher position or is it dangerous as we have our rankings at the moment. Is it really giving you an advantage that is worth the risk?

Thank you for your opinions!
Sander

[MiriamEllis]

Oops, above post was from me Sorry, I was logged into a different account when responding.

[Moz.HelpTeam]

Hi Sander,

You are mentioning Local, but are also saying you serve a state. Local is city-related, not state-related, so I want to be sure I'm fully understanding your scenario. Are you saying:

1. Yours is a local business with a physical location in a specific city or multiple cities and in-person contact with customers?

2. Or, yours is a virtual business with no in-person contact, offering a product to an entire state?

3. You have one product featured on a single page and you want to add a city name (or a state name?) to that product page URL?

4. You have one product and are thinking of building multiple pages to cover multiple cities, adding them to the URLs for all cities in which you offer this product?

Some clarification would help, for sure!

[NEdocs]

Hey Sander,

Anders hit the nail on the head - but I felt I needed to add a bit of information. Be careful how you decide to add location to your URLs, as it could potentially hurt your rankings. There is much more involved in local search relevance than just a city or state name being included in a URL.

Also, it could seem "spammy" if your website becomes overrun with local tags. I would suggest setting up a structured URL, for exampls "www.company.com/Nevada/Las-Vegas/Products"

This way your URLs are serving 2 purposes - thoughtful organization and helping out with your keyword strategy.

Best,

Christopher

[AndersS]

Hi Sander!

According to https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/local-search-ranking-factors it could be of some value to have some sort of geographic keyword in the URL, but I guess it would also be of value to have this as part of the onpage copy, in the title, meta description etc if it is possible to add i a ntural way, without making it look spammy.

If you have some contact information on the page, it could also be valueable to mark it up according to schema.org (same goes for the product information if not already done).

If you are changing the URL, also make sure to 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one.

My 2 cents. Hope this helps

Anders