Will Local Links Hurt My National Rankings

[awaisashraf]

I have a national website - with a physical address in Chicago (just an example city). Its ranking well and is getting a decent amount of traffic. Is it a good idea to build citations for my site using the Chicago address? Will that hurt my national rankings?

[bhartzer]

If your site appeals to a national audience and you get traffic and sales from all over, then limiting the site to Chicago would definitely hurt sales and traffic.

I would tend to want to start a new site, like widgetschicago.com (assuming you sell widgets), and keep the national site separate.

[awaisashraf]

I am not going to limit my site to Chicago, by adding Chicago related title and meta tags or content on the site. The content would stay the same, and all the other on-page factors.

But if i build citations for my site, and as they'll have my Chicago address in it - will that hurt the national rankings of my site? Will that make G think, that "Oh! this site has local listings - its area specific, so lets bring down its national rankings, and let it just rank for Chicago related searches"

[GreyBeard123]

But if i build citations for my site, and as they'll have my Chicago address in it - will that hurt the national rankings of my site? Will that make G think, that "Oh! this site has local listings - its area specific, so lets bring down its national rankings, and let it just rank for Chicago related searches"

No, I've done the same with more than a few sites...
They all rank local as well as national.

[awaisashraf]

thank you @ Grey and bhartzer for your help. I got my answer.