I have some white space to fill on a webpage I'm building and am thinking about including some keywords on the page such as..

 

Plumbing services in Ipswich, Central Heating services in Ipswich etc etc

 

Is this considered bad practice?

 

Also I often see on sites things like areas covered followed by a list of towns and villages which I'm guessing is to try to attract keyword searches - again is this considered bad practice or not?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Jason.

It looks spammy. I'd avoid it, tbh. White space doesn't necessarily need to be filled. The content is the main thing that'll be attracting searchers and driving conversions, so if your client can't come up with enough to fill the space I'd recommend that they hire a competent copywriter. That will gain them far more benefit than a spammy list of "areas covered".

I'm going to risk getting my neck cut off here and stick it out a bit but I think including the areas covered IS important. It doesn't have to look spammy. My usual practice for clients targetting local search is to include areas covered in the footer, done subtley so it doesnt distract from the rest of page, but enough so its visible and readable.

 

If you want to attract business from surrounding towns and villages, then its crucial IMO to include that village name somewhere on your page. Certainly DO NOT start filling up white space for the sake of it stuffing in "plumber in X" but if you include some of the the smaller town/village names on your page then you stand a great chance of showing up top on search results as the competition is always going to be much smaller for when someone searches for "plumber in <tiny village>" as opposed to "plumber in <city>"

 

& make sure you have your company address(if applicable) & telephone number present when you can.

I agree it looks spammy and thought these would be the replies I got. Thanks for the replies

 

 

@daveb

With regard places covered in the footer I think your right as long as you can make it subtle enough then I think it can add to the page rather than detract from it right?

Edited July 19, 201115 yr by jheg

Keywords are important without a doubt, however you should integrate them within your content. Google does not like keyword stuffing and what I mean by that is lists of keywords. Google will mark you down for this.

 

You can add these keywords to the bottom of the page, however Google gives the most importance to the keywords at the start of a page, therefore this will not do much for you! (these are the basics and most important fundamentals of SEO)

 

If these keywords are important I would advise rewriting your content to place them in a more important position.

Thanks I'll take all this on board. From what I can see, correct me of I'm wrong, is that if the domain name includes your keyword phrase (for example plumber Ipswich) then getting to the top is going to be incredibly difficult. Impossible?

Keyword specific domains, in my opinion, carry a lot more weight than other domains. It certainly gives it a boost, and is something Matt Cutts has spoken about. I've worked with clients that have a ton of keyword specific domains which I did a 301 redirect right to their main business URL.

 

With regards to placing areas covered in the footer. Avoid it like the plague. Dont you think Google is smart enough to see a chuck of text that simply reads as "Plumber in Ipswich, Plumber in Colchester". Also, you're diluting the **** out of your main copy. See it as this:

 

You can rank poorly for a lot of keywords (poorly meaning pages 4 onwards) or you can rank highly for a small selection of keywords which you have chosen based on your keyword research. The latter provide highly concentrated, targeted traffic to his website, if albeit a smaller amount of traffic but has a higher conversion rate

Thanks I'll take all this on board. From what I can see, correct me of I'm wrong, is that if the domain name includes your keyword phrase (for example plumber Ipswich) then getting to the top is going to be incredibly difficult. Impossible?

 

A local search is not impossible, however it may take some work. The other thing to think about is that many businesses gain work from word of mouth. If you have a non competitive name then potential customers may find your business easier through recommendations.

 

You could have something like nameplumberipswich.co.uk [name to be replaced by the name of your company]. This way you get the best of both!

Keyword specific domains, in my opinion, carry a lot more weight than other domains. It certainly gives it a boost, and is something Matt Cutts has spoken about. I've worked with clients that have a ton of keyword specific domains which I did a 301 redirect right to their main business URL.

 

With regards to placing areas covered in the footer. Avoid it like the plague. Dont you think Google is smart enough to see a chuck of text that simply reads as "Plumber in Ipswich, Plumber in Colchester". Also, you're diluting the **** out of your main copy. See it as this:

 

You can rank poorly for a lot of keywords (poorly meaning pages 4 onwards) or you can rank highly for a small selection of keywords which you have chosen based on your keyword research. The latter provide highly concentrated, targeted traffic to his website, if albeit a smaller amount of traffic but has a higher conversion rate

 

Exactly why to include the areas he covers on his pages. The smaller localities are not likely to be featured in googles index for search phrases so he stands a very high chance of getting the long tail seaches for "plumber in <tiny little known village>"

 

And just to make it clear so he doesn't go down the stuffing route, of course I don't mean keyword stuffing the footer, when I say including the areas covered, I mean he should write the content to inform the reader of the areas covered, i.e. - "We are located in Ipswich but also cover the following areas : blah,blah" That's not being manipulative but informative.

Edited July 25, 201115 yr by daveb

Thanks again for the replies guys. Another sits I've just finished (my own) is ranking very high for local searches. The sites been live for a couple of days and already ranked in second spot for the local searches 'mortgage advice Ipswich, mortgage advice Woodbridge, mortgage advice Felixstowe and mortgage advice Aldrburgh' I have zcheived this by having a rotating banner on the home screen with some photos I've taken of local areas with a vertical description pushed to the side of each image. http://www.keystonemortgages.co.uk This wasn't intended to be spammy what do you think?

Thanks again for the replies guys. Another sits I've just finished (my own) is ranking very high for local searches. The sites been live for a couple of days and already ranked in second spot for the local searches 'mortgage advice Ipswich, mortgage advice Woodbridge, mortgage advice Felixstowe and mortgage advice Aldrburgh' I have zcheived this by having a rotating banner on the home screen with some photos I've taken of local areas with a vertical description pushed to the side of each image. http://www.keystonemortgages.co.uk This wasn't intended to be spammy what do you think?

 

 

Damn I was searching whilst signed into my google account and it was influencing my results!!!

lol, love it. I used to do that. It's great when you suddenly see a site you've built appearing on page one, but equally annoying when you discover it's just personalization going on. Never mind.

 

There used to be a toolbar add-on you could get that depersonalised Google for you but last time I tried to install it, there was a major virus on it which pretty much melted my pc.

 

Anyway, what I was really going to say is that, given your original post was back in 2009 and you are still doing the localised use of keywords, it's pretty clear to me that this does still work. As long as the balance is made between sensible use of the keywords, healthy and useful content and the right aesthetics.

 

Be aware though that Google has recently made more moochings that it's clamping down on "doorway pages". The trick is knowing how close to the wind you can sail before it becomes a doorway page.