Optimize Website for Geographic Location

[webcosmo]

For many reasons often webmasters tend to optimize their site for Geographic Locations. Lets say you are selling candy online for USA, and you don't ship anywhere else. Its very likely that you would want to optimize your site for that geographic location.
Why you wanna optimize for geographical location?

First of all to get higher ranking on search results. If you specify your site for a location your site will will be the preferred one over the ones that are not geographically targeted.

Another reason could be you just don't wanna do business with other locations.

So how do you optimize a site for geographic location?

Here are few tips that will hep you rank geographically.

- Include location name in your title tag ( e.g. Free Classified Ads Boston USA )

- Include physical address in your contact us page. Specify street address, city , state/province, zip code, and country on contact page.

- Set geographical location in Google webmaster central. If webmaster central for other search engines allow you specify geographical location, set the location there as well.

- Add your site to Google local business center. Url is http://www.google.com/local/add/

- Add your site to Yahoo local business. Url is http://local.yahoo.com/

- Integrate google map location in ur contact us page. Here is a good tutorial you could look at http://www.developer.com/java/web/ar.../10935_3528381

- Get link from local sites. Local classified ad posting is an option for that. http://www.webcosmo.com is one site to mention.

And you should move up the rankings for geo-targetted sites.

SOURCE: http://www.cosmocentral.com/post/200...-Location.aspx

[~DaRk-EyE~]

Originally Posted by webcosmo

For many reasons often webmasters tend to optimize their site for Geographic Locations. Lets say you are selling candy online for USA, and you don't ship anywhere else. Its very likely that you would want to optimize your site for that geographic location.
Why you wanna optimize for geographical location?

First of all to get higher ranking on search results. If you specify your site for a location your site will will be the preferred one over the ones that are not geographically targeted.

Another reason could be you just don't wanna do business with other locations.

So how do you optimize a site for geographic location?

Here are few tips that will hep you rank geographically.

- Include location name in your title tag ( e.g. Free Classified Ads Boston USA )

- Include physical address in your contact us page. Specify street address, city , state/province, zip code, and country on contact page.

- Set geographical location in Google webmaster central. If webmaster central for other search engines allow you specify geographical location, set the location there as well.

- Add your site to Google local business center. Url is http://www.google.com/local/add/

- Add your site to Yahoo local business. Url is http://local.yahoo.com/

- Integrate google map location in ur contact us page. Here is a good tutorial you could look at http://www.developer.com/java/web/ar.../10935_3528381

- Get link from local sites. Local classified ad posting is an option for that. http://www.webcosmo.com is one site to mention.

And you should move up the rankings for geo-targetted sites.

SOURCE: http://www.cosmocentral.com/post/200...-Location.aspx

Thanks for the pointers. This is advisable for businesses who has limited reach in terms of delivering their products. Focusing on a particular location for SEO is one good strategy if you really don't have the capability to spread your products and services worldwide...

[deezines]

Only thing I would add is to also make sure you include your target area/s in the on page copy.
Also, when doing so, do it purposely at the top of your page, in the main body, and at the foot.
You can target several areas too, not just one.
We usually target 5 main areas, and up to another 12 sub areas.

[bogs]

its also important that its necessary to promote your site to other region base on the content/service or anything your site can offer..

[keress]

What do you do with a situation where you have a number of communities/towns surrounding a large metropolitan area, all of which you serve with your business. Do you add a list of all those suburbs somewhere on the page?

[deezines]

Originally Posted by keress

What do you do with a situation where you have a number of communities/towns surrounding a large metropolitan area, all of which you serve with your business. Do you add a list of all those suburbs somewhere on the page?

Yes...but do it in a way that it looks like youre adding the list to show your potential browsers all the areas you cover...dont just stick a long list of areas totally without context.

PM me and i'll show you some good examples we have done which rank well on google.

[Harveyj]

You forgot the most obvious one... A country coded TLD.

Which is going to show up higher in a Canadian search, before you start SEOing it: .COM or .CA ?

.CA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cctld

[shoaeeb]

Thank you for those valuable pointers.

[hem]

Thanks for your valuable tips.

[deezines]

Originally Posted by Harveyj

You forgot the most obvious one... A country coded TLD.

Which is going to show up higher in a Canadian search, before you start SEOing it: .COM or .CA ?

.CA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cctld

Absolutely correct.
We are UK based and lots of our new clients say the want a particular domain with .com, and we have to explain why thats such bad idea.
It definitely is advantageous to have your domain suffix appropriate to your nation.
[only exception would be where Google doesnt have a national version in your country]

Having said that...what is even more crucial, and we think its as imporatnt as how you structure your Title Meta Tag...is having a Key Word rich domain.
Use up to 4 keywords [we favour spacing with hyphens] and if you want results from a particular geographic area add this too. Trust me...you'll rank on Google almost immediately and providing the competition isnt too severe [lets say up to 400,000] you have a good chance of getting page 1 or page 2fairly quickly.

Here is an example.
You have a Central Heating company based in Birmingham UK.
youre company name is Jones Heating Solutions.
You want enquiries from Birmingham, Coventry, Walsall, and other major towns in that region.
You want enquiries for; Boiler Repairs, Boiler Servicing, Boiler Replacemnets.

Domain to go for:
vvv.boiler-repairs-servicing-birmingham.co.uk
Meta Title
Boiler repairs>servicing>replacement>birmingham>UK

Then incorporate these key words [in that order] in the correct density at the top of the page, the upper 1/4 of the page, the body of the page, and also the footer.
list the areas you want to be found under [as I said, in a contextual way....not just a shopping list]
Use H1, H2 tags on those parts of the text.
Get a link on an existing site that has a PR of 3 or above [this will get you indexed quicker and better than submission]
make sure you optimize EACH page individually using the above tecnique. For example, have a subpage
vvv.boiler-repairs-servicing-birmingham.co.uk/boiler_servicing.php
[using key word rich page file extensions]

sit back and wait.
analyse results.
monitor at least every 2 days
reverse engineer any obvious omissions that show up from your analytics
add fresh relevent content at least once every 2 months

repeat this process over and over.

there is more...but this is a reasonable overview to begin with.

D.