SEO – Regionally Targeting Your Traffic
Posted on April 7th, 2008 by reviews
SEO – Regional Targeting for Geographically Specific Traffic (geotargeting)
How does one target a specific geographic region/country/city?
There are a few areas of SEO and marketing that you can do to improve your site ranking within a particular region, known as ‘geotargeting’. The biggest challenge would be ranking well in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) across a range of regions. It would probably require several regional campaigns.
- Domain TLD: You can register your domain with a country specific TLD, such as “.co.uk”. This should help you rank better in the UK. The same can be done for other countries.
- Hosting: This is a major factor, if web host server is located in France, then you are likely to rank well in France. Unfortunately, you may not rank well for search engine users in other countries. You should look around for webhosts from that area, for example: you can be hosted on a Maui server, if you are targeting a Maui audience.
- Languages: If your site includes more than one language, you will have a better chance of ranking well within countries where that language is spoken.
- Keywords Usage: If your website has too much content for “German”, as apposed to the “UK”, then the search engines may perceive this as the website is targeting the location mentioned in the content. I do not believe in keyword density as being of any value, but I do believe that including the keywords within the content would be relevant.
- On page/site SEO: Create individual pages or sections of your website for the area you are targeting. Your efforts should then focus the traffic to these pages/areas. This includes link building, advertising, and other means to direct traffic and improve your rank in the SERPs.
- Localized Link Building: Find local bloggers and websites (government city, state, country too!) and see if they’d link to you. Even better, see if they would write an article or two about your site or services.
- Create a network: Buy domains and host them on localized webhosts. Create original, good content and point them to your main site. You may even get some referral traffic from them as well.
- Google Local Business Center: By using the Google Local Business Center, you are also narrowing your site down to local areas.
Use the Local Business Center to create your free listing. When potential customers search Maps for local information, they’ll find your business: your address, hours of operation, even coupons to print out and bring to your shop. It’s easy, free, and you don’t need a website of your own.
- Google Webmaster Tools: Within Google Webmaster Tools, go to Tools, Set geographic target. You can associate a particular geographic location with this site if you are targeting users within that area. You are currently not able to designate multiple regions.
- Google Adwords: You can target regionally specific traffic via Google Adwords. This is an excellent way to get targeted traffic.
- Yahoo! Local: You can list your site locally within Yahoo! Local for some additional traffic.
- Use other local directories: You can use other directories to bring in local customers.
- Use localized SEO companies: These companies specialize in improving your regional presence. If your own efforts appear to be limited or you do not have the knowledge or time, then definitely consider going with an SEO company such as these.
- Seeing the search engine results: Use Geoseo.com to view how your site/pages rank in the SERPs for specific keywords. It will show you results for Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.
thanks for the article. it helps me.
i’ll apply this tips formy blog. i’ll write you soon.
i think these are the best tips.
Localized search is an interesting twist thrown into SEO. It’s not enough to be ranked highest in Google, you have to be ranked highest in the US, Canada, UK, or wherever respectively. Just one way that job gets harder
Nice tips we work with regional optimizing and use more of this tips but they are some new that I’ll test soon
10x
Awesome article…..I’ve been using the GLBC (Google Local Business Center)–also called “Google Maps” — for about 2 years now… its been fantastic being on top of the search results (non-sponsored).
Once I got the SEO improved on my site’s key words, metas, and content—I was able to make the Organic results go into Top 10 Page one (usually somewhere between #6 and #9).
Looks like you found a couple of local directories that I hadn’t heard of, so here are TWO MORE that you need to add to your list (US Only):
Yelp.com
Kudzu.com
Great post.
Another good idea is to include your local geographic term (i.e., city) in the anchor text of your backlinks.
Most of the people are focusing on only general SEO, but you are talking about the target SEO which is better focusing on special traffic group. Great job!
Wow, this is a great resource for local marketing which is clearly the direction the search engines are and have been heading. Thanks again!
Interesting that you mention domain TLDs being region specific as beneficial. Im from the UK but using a .com and I seem to rank far better in UK search engines. Maybe its my style of writing.
This is a good and valuable approach to getting a good serps return. Which is by far the best advertising available on the net.
With domains at a premium people are adding fluff adjectives to there tld. As stated above you can easily target an area or region and get results from your efforts.
Doing some keyword research before hand is a must, targeting hickville, Kansas most likely will not do the trick, And targeting a city like New York could create more work. So doing some keyword research is necessary.
While I only have a couple of sites area specific they do have a higher ROI then sites with a General target market.
Great post keep up the good work.
Google’s project is to ultimately do away with the need for your sites altogether.
There is pro and con about geotargetting serp. However i agree with google because that is the only way to give more weighting to the localize website if the visitor are searching for the info for the specific region.
Some great info right there.
Optimizing your local business listing is the next step
Very handy and useful tips, thanks a lot.. it prove really helpful to me. Cheers
Very well said about the tips you have given. Interesting that you mention domain TLDs being region specific as beneficial. Im from the UK but using a .com and I seem to rank far better in UK search engines. Maybe its my style of writing.
I really needed to promote my blog post more then the total blog. I have found dome link which can help me with the point .Thanks for the link..
I am wondering if the websites like superpages or yellow book provide links that are noticed by the search engines and if these sites help build local results?
Good post! I may be stating the obvious, but one thing to consider as well for regional targetting is finding out what is the most popular search engine in the region. Take the Czech republic, the most popular search engine was at some Seznam. It could be that SEO for Seznam is different from google.
As the site I’m doing SEO for at the moment http://www.todaysbestmortgagerates.co.uk is in the UK t’s Google all the way!