Search Engine Optimisation or Seo can be targeted at a local level and opens up the Internet to business owners who only wish to attract clients from certain areas. Local search engine optimisation will help you target only those customers who are most profitable to your business and who are most likely to buy. Google is the most popular search engine and thankfully it offers rankings which are country specific, which offers far more diversity than Google.com.
As you will know by now if you have followed my tutorials, Google indexes sites in the most relevant way, therefore a UK based website will primarily be indexed in google.co.uk, therefore if you are targeting your site to a specific country you will need to compete with local sites as well as general ones on google.com.
I want go through some general pieces of advice for all of you targeting a country specific audience.
Your domains and Hosting
When it comes to local search engine optimisation (seo) there are two criteria Google will look at in order to determine where to index your site.
1- Your top level domain (TLD)
2- The location of your hosting
Your TLD is your main domain ie. this site is http://www.seowizz.net/, if you are targeting a local audience you should use the domain name of the country your targeting ie au = Australia ca = Canada and UK = United Kingdom. This will help Google decide where to list your website.
Another way of optimising locally is through opening your hosting account in the relevant country. If the IP address of your site is hosted in a certain country it will not matter what your TLD is, Google will list you in the hosting location index. This is a great way of targeting customers all over the world.
Contact Information
Another way of targeting locally is to place your contact information in the footer of your website. However only do this if you have one office as mentioning multiple countries and cities will do you no good.
Language Issues
This is more for your visitors, but try to use the same phrases as would be encountered in the particular countries you are targeting. Not all English speaking countries speak the same and more importantly sell the same.
Get Local Links
This is probably the most powerful technique to raise your local rankings and its simple all you need is local links. Try locating local government sites or businesses and attempt to get a link back. Submit your site to local business directories and contact directories. This will all help to improve your local link popularity.
Use Google Webmaster Tools
Simply go to google webmaster tools
Sign into your account and go to settings.
The simply select your geographic target and save.
Add your site to Google maps for added value.
Following these local search engine optimisation (seo) tips you will increase your chances of your pages being indexed locally and receiving highly targeted traffic.
Author: Tim (292 Articles)
Tim Grice is the owner and editor of SEO wizz and has been involved in the search engine marketing industry for over 7 years. He has worked with multiple businesses across many verticals, creating and implementing search marketing strategies for companies in the UK, US and across Europe. Tim is also the Head of Search at Branded3, an SEO agency in Leeds.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
hanx a lot for this article m8 !
Ive been cruising around for two hours now and I couldn’t find what I needed..
So, ur sayin that if my contact info are same on my 6 diferent languages, is better to remove them and leave the contact on language where Im actually located ?
tx!
Hi croatia,
There is nothing wrong with having the same address but n different languages, the problem comes when webmasters fill the footer of their sites with different office locations, use the address in the country you wish to be found. To be honest simply hosting your website in the country you wish to be found on Google with will help your cause more than anything else.
Hey tim, are you sure about Google Webmaster’s efficiency?
Thanks for your response mate!
I will come to see your response, Konige
@Agence….
Changin the targeting in webmaster tools is one way of producing a geo targeted site, I think it is only part of the puzzle. I suggest as well as changing the settings, also putting a relevant address in the footer and using the appropriate top level domain ie co.uk , if none of this seems to work then consider switching to a geo targeted host
Hi Tim,
Firstly thanks for taking the time to put up all these tutorials, they have been unbelievably helpful in getting to grips with the SEO basics.
I am about to start my own website and I want to make sure that I build it with a good SEO foundation. I have a silly question about “opening your hosting account in the relevant country”. Does this mean that I should pick a host based in the UK or can I pick any host then stipulate that I want to have a UK IP address?
If I need a UK host which ones would you recommend? I am looking to use WordPress to create the site.
Thanks again,
Reuben
Hi Reuben,
I personally host all my own sites so aren’t the best person to speak to about companies, however I am sure there are many good ones out there. Technically you can host it anywhere, it all depends on where your audience is, if it is in the UK, I would recommend a co.uk extension, this tends to be the biggest factor now. However I would use a UK host just to make sure.
Didn’t know that this hosting also helps on determening location. Then again many people choose hosting by price, not so much by ping time. What about SEO results, do they change based on hosting location?
It doesn’t affect overall SEO results, you can use the hreflang tag now to specify location. This works well.
Thanks for the article Tim.
What if now my website is targeted world wide and i am getting lets say 1000 visitors per day and then i target it to America only will it affect my seo?