You may not realise it, but a large number of potential customers may be right there in your own neighbourhood. These people will often use local Search Techniques to find exactly what they are looking for.
Too often, website owners seek to reach the largest number of people globally without stopping to think about how to attract the people who live in the same town or state. Sometimes, you do not need to look far in order to find a wealth of potential clientele.
Why Bother With Geographic SEO?
Once you know where your visitors are coming from, then you can market specifically to them. It might be that the largest percentage of your traffic is generated from a particular locale outside of your own city or state. Perhaps it’s even a specific country.
If your website analytics show a large number of customers residing in Zimbabwe, then your web pages should be easy and comfortable for Zimbabweans to find, navigate, and purchase from. You might even want to change the type of products you offer through affiliate marketing to further attract the attention of this demographic.
Getting To The Top Of Local Rankings
Consider that web surfers will probably use different Search Techniques for a local or geographic specific business. They will undoubtedly use a city and state or province name in addition to the name of the product or service they are seeking.
Optimise your website so that your meta tags, graphic tags, headers, and content all include your geographic location. Utilise location-specific long tail SEO keywords in your content and site description.
List your site with local online business directories. More than likely, there are at least a couple of websites that list local businesses. Do a search to find them, or contact the local newspaper office or a civic organisation.
When you prepare your listing, make sure visitors can tell exactly what it is you offer and how to find you. Include a full physical address and local phone number not only in the listing, but also on your site’s “Contact Us” page.
For any listing on the internet which showcases your locality, adding video content and photos of the area will ensure that it garners the most attention. Consumers like to know they are dealing with a business owner that has experience with their own demographics and geographic area.
GeoURL And Google
Another way to optimise your site geographically is to register it at GeoURL. The process is simple. You add a pair of metatags in your website’s header. These tags are generated in accordance with the physical address you input. Registration is achieved via a simple ping. GeoURL then gives you a customised button to add to your page. A visitor who clicks on the button will get a map listing all nearby sites that have registered.
Make sure you visit your local Google pages, too. You can easily claim your business if it is listed. If you are not listed, then execute the changes recommended above and do another search. The more places your locality is referenced on your site, the more likely it is that Google will find it and place it on the proper local page.
Don’t miss out on the potential business of web surfers who are looking for a site based on geographic factors. It is easy and cheap to reach a geographic target market using these tips and Search Techniques.
Have a most outstanding day.
Sean RasmussenAussie Internet Marketing
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008 - 2012
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Sean
Can you give me some tips for doing SEO for location?
Hi Sean,
This is excellent stuff. I’m learning so much stuff I didn’t know.
I love Insights for Search. They have an excellent feature where you can get geographical information. It really gives me some ideas.
I hadn’t heard about GeoURL before, but I have my offline business registered with Google maps which is really helpful. Would you recommend Local Search optimization for a pure online business? I don’t think that it is that helpful if you are only online as you can send your products everywhere.
Local SEO will work for businesses that provide products or services to the local area Renee. If your site has products you send anywhere, you obviously would not target just the local area.
Hi Sean,
To register with GEOurl part of the process is to put the MetaTags in the header of my blog. Would that be in a widget on the sidebar?
And it says to add a pair of MetaTags in the header of my website. Does that mean that I enter the HTML MetaTag code supplied twice in a sidebar widget?
It might be a good idea to ask this one in the forum Jill, as we would need to check into it further for you. I imagine you would need to go into your theme editor and place the code in the header.php file.
When I can understand all of this and can utilise it, I can see that these techniques will give me a great advantage for reaching customers in a more localised area.
There is a wad of information here, some are advanced strategies that I will be pleased to revisit a little further on. Thank you.