How does a place name in my website domain name affect national organic rankings?

[jimb95]

Hello,

My domain name has an geographic area in it (www.westmidlandshutters.co.uk) however, I am having trouble getting any keywords to rank across national searches. Local searches (ie roller shutter Wolverhampton) rank reasonably but no matter what SEO work (articles, link building etc..) I throw at it the generic national term does not rank. I am pondering whether this may be to do with the regional name in the website name.

Has anyone any thoughts on this?

cheers

[NathanielB]

Hi Jim and welcome to the forums.

By "generic national term" I take it you mean "roller shutter" and "roller shutters" correct? If so, these terms both have high competition and return about 3.5 million results on google, so I wouldn't hold your hopes for ranking for that term any time soon on a site with such a small amount of links (58 according to OSE) and non of them seem particularly great IMO.

Go to Open Site Explorer and compare your site with Roller Shutters, Fire Shutters and Insulated Doors who rank top for both "roller shutter" and "roller shutters" and you will see just what sort of link profile you have to compete against.

Plus you seem to use the same text on many pages, which is not going to help much, you need to and original content across the whole site, not just a line of two of fresh content on each page along with the same content site wide.

I take it you are new to seo? So might I suggest you start with the basics and have a read of the google guidelines so you know what it is google wants to rank at the top of its results, and then have a read of the sticky threads on here etc to learn more about seo and what you need to do in putting quality content on your site as well as building quality, relevant links.

[jimb95]

Hi Nathaniel

Thanks for your feedback

Whilst I take on board your suggestions regarding further seo work to be completed on the site and the need for more and perhaps better links, my real question was regarding the use a regional term in our domain address and whether this could have an affect on how the site is seen and ranked by google, (ie is it a positive for local searches but maybe a negative for a search made in the London area) or will it have no impact at all. It may not make much difference at the moment as we are a new site still building our profile, however, if it does affect the visibiliy on the rankings then I need to address it sooner rather than later.