How do they do this?

By looking at a number of factors, such as:

• Country-specific domain name – eg. .com or .com.au or .co.uk etc. etc.
• Where your site is hosted – be careful with this as a lot of hosting providers may have their offices in one country, but use servers and equipment based overseas
• Language used in your website content – even things like UK English vs. US English can make a difference due to spelling and colloquialisms
• Inbound Links to your site – are they mainly from other Australian websites, US sites, UK sites etc.
• Listing of your address / location / phone number on your website
• Location of people who look at your site – if your site has more traffic from Australian visitors it is likely to rank better in Google.com.au than it would in Google.com

7 Simple Geo Targeting Tips for Your Site

Knowing the above information makes it a lot easier to perform a Geo Targeting audit on your site. Here are the things I would do:

1. If you run an Australian website and your main customers / clients are other Australians, spend the few extra dollars and buy a .com.au domain name. If you’re targeting clients in the UK, buy a .co.uk. etc. etc.
2. Apply the same logic (as above) to the web hosting – spend a few extra dollars to have your website hosted in the country that you are targeting.

   Be sure to check that your hosting provider uses equipment based in your country too. If you still aren’t certain you can check their IP’s using SEOmoz’s IP Location Tool.

3. Take the time to check your spelling and use the type of wording your clients will understand and are familiar with.

   For example the term swimwear, swimsuit, beachwear, cozzies, bathers and togs all mean the same thing but people in Queensland, Australia (where I’m from) rarely use the term bathers or cozzies – we wear ‘togs’.

4. An inbound link is like a personal referral or testimonial for your website. Having links from other relevant local sites will be far more valuable with Geo Targeting than having lots of inbound links from overseas sites.
5. Submit your site to local business and local search directories – this can often be one of the easiest methods of attracting local links and local traffic.

   As a rule-of-thumb, just make sure the directory presents well and that you are comfortable being listed amongst the other sites that are in the directory. If you think the directory isn’t great quality, you’re probably right and it should be avoided.

6. Mention your address, location and contact details in the footer of each page – this is one of the easiest things to do which can help tell your clients and the search engines that you are a local business.

   The only time this doesn’t really help is if you have offices in multiple locations. Mentioning a dozen countries / cities in the footer won’t do much for your local profile in each of those places. If this is the case you should build separate sites (or at the very least separate pages) for each location.

7. Build your brand locally as you will usually rank well for your business name before you’ll start ranking for more competitive terms.

   Ensure you promote your site through off-line advertising methods, which can be as simple as including your website on your business cards, letterheads and other corporate stationary.

   This will help you gain local search traffic and as mentioned above, if your site has more traffic from Australian visitors it is likely to rank better in Google.com.au than it would in Google.com.

I know that implementing all the above suggestions may not be possible – so don’t stress if you can only do 3 or 4 of the things in the list.

Every little bit helps.

7 Geo Targeting SEO Tips

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When I mentioned my friend was looking for cleaning services in her area, she wasn’t wanting to find some Wikipedia article on the history or origins of cleaning, she wanted to find someone local who could clean her house. This is where local search is perfect. It’s designed for businesses who provide products or services in their local geographic region and want local consumers to buy from them. They don’t care if someone on the other side of the world can’t find their site, nor are they concerned on gaining millions of hits a month… they simply want to be found locally by people who are interested in buying.

Local search works well because of the following reasons:

1. The search algorithms are now quite good with geotargeting, meaning local businesses gain greater priority when searched for in their region. For example, if someone is using Google.com.au and does a search for Ipswich, they’ll find results pertaining to the small Queensland town instead of having results from the Ipswich in England or Massachusetts returned.
2. Colloquialisms, slang and other language variations (UK and US English etc.) are better accommodated for with the local search algorithms as they are appear in the content of local web sites.
3. A lot of local search providers incorporate other additional features like maps which enhance the user experience and make it a lot easier to find things if you’re not familiar with the area
4. But most importantly, the people who perform local searches are more likely to make a purchase from you

If my 4 points above haven’t yet sold you and you’d rather see some statistics about local search, have a look at Marketing Pilgrim’s post on Local Search Trumps Paper or read through some of the excellent interviews on local search conducted by Graywolf – Local Search Tips, Tricks & Secrets.

So now that you can see how popular local search is becoming, what can you do about it? First-off, you’ll need to understand When Might Google Show Local Search Information in Web Search Results? And it would also help to understand the other local search offerings from the bigger players:

Guide to Google Local Search
Guide to Yahoo Local Search
Guide to MSN Local Search
Guide to Other Local Search Marketing Options

Aaron Wall from SEObook (which I honestly have to say is one of the best books for anyone wanting to learn more about SEO) has also put together some Regional / Local Search Engine Marketing Tips and Strategies.

The above guides are great to get an understanding for how local search works and how to leverage it in your favour, but some of it isn’t exactly targeted towards Australians. Given that we’re an Australian company and that our clients are generally Australian businesses, we’ve started building an Australian Local Search and Business Directory resource. It’s only small at the moment but it’s constantly growing with the intention of providing the latest news and developments in the local search and online business directory market within Australia.

If anyone reading this has had some great local search success stories I’d love to hear about them.

Localised Search

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