SERP Results Questions: My business shows for City, State but not City

[alxvallejo]

My client runs a marriage therapy business and we show up on page 1 for the City, State results but not for just the City.

Is there a way to optimize your website to make sure you show up on page 1 for both?

Our organic traffic dropped significantly from just one particular city so I am trying to optimize for that city.

Any ideas are much appreciated.

[alxvallejo]

Just to clarify, our business shows when we type in "marriage therapy city, state" but not "marriage therapy city"

[Jack Chase]

The backlinks you build - is the anchor text "marriage therapy city, state" or "marriage therapy city"?

The anchor text of your backlinks has an impact on what keywords you rank for.

[rbrShorty]

You could tinker the title tag of the homepage. That would help the most in my experience. However, although Google claims opposite, searches for "city keyword", "keyword city", "keyword city, state" all return different results in many cases. What type of SERP does appear when you search for both keywords - is it a standard 7-pack or an O-pack (merged search)?

[alxvallejo]

Thanks for the reply.

I'm kind of new at the whole backlink strategy. Can you give me some tips for building your backlink portfolio? Where to look, how to ask. I imagine that when I start sending out backlinks to my site, I would simply mention the business name because we market ourselves to around 70 local cities and towns.

I'm also trying to build citations as I understand they increase your rankings for your Google Places page. I'm applying to local business directories, dmoz, and other business directory listings.

I'm thinking that our organic traffic is underperforming compared to last year due to the increased importance in Google Places. What other factors could there be? Competition has remained constant in our market and our conversion rates have gone down.

I'm trying to explain all of this to my client but she wants answers!

[paulgl]

You need to get listed in google places.

I guess nobody has thought of the fact there are numerous
cities that have the same name. So, needing a state attached
seems quite normal.

If your city is the most searched city and state, it would probably default
to first page. Google is, after all, guessing which state if it is
left out.

Paul

[alxvallejo]

Originally Posted by rbrShorty

You could tinker the title tag of the homepage. That would help the most in my experience. However, although Google claims opposite, searches for "city keyword", "keyword city", "keyword city, state" all return different results in many cases. What type of SERP does appear when you search for both keywords - is it a standard 7-pack or an O-pack (merged search)?

I believe it's a 7-pack. I'm actually not quite sure what the 0-pack is. I don't have a clear definition other than it's a hybrid of organic listings and Places listings.