How to increase your sales
by optimizing for local markets
According to comScore last month, local search queries
now consist of up to 7 percent of all searches within
the United States. In addition, in a single month,
nearly 36 million Internet users conducted 200 million
searches that included keywords designed to localize
a query. This number is only going to increase as
the search engines add more features to encourage
localized searching. In recent months, a number of
new and existing search engines have announced local
search initiatives.
So what is localizing a query? It is simply attaching
local or regional qualifiers onto a search keyword
or phrase such as a zip or postal code, city, state,
province or street. The goal is often to find a nearby
product, service, or business. For example, you may
want to hire a Web designer to build a Web site for
your business. However, you may prefer to hire someone
locally. Therefore, you could localize your search
via one of the following phrases:
- Orlando Web designer
- Web designer Florida
- Web designer 32837
- Web designer Orlando, Florida
- Web designer John Young Pkwy
Orlando, Florida
Obviously, some products and services are more likely
to be localized than others by the consumer. However,
with over 200 million localized searches a month
just in the United States, you might be surprised
at how often people prefer to shop locally. For much
of the service industry, location is often essential.
Therefore, it's important that you design your Web
pages with local searches in mind even if you also
sell globally.
How do you do this? It's easy. Simply add local
keywords such as address, city, state, province,
or postal code to all of your keyword-rich Web pages.
One simple technique is to add this information to
the header or footer of all of your Web pages rather
than burying the information solely on your contact
page. Businesses that specialize in a local point
of presence such as dry cleaners, mowing services,
brick-and-mortar retailers, and so-forth will find
this tip critical to reaching their local market.
Unfortunately, how many Web sites do you see that
make the mistake of including this data only on their
contact page?
To find a match, the search engine will give strong
preference to pages that include ALL of the words
of a search phrase on the same page. Therefore, if
your contact data appears on one page and your best
content and keywords on another, you will not likely
show up for a localized search.
Want to go one step further to tapping into the
local search market? Add other keywords such as regional
indicators or nearby cities. Here's an example of
a footer I could add to each of my Web pages if I
owned a Web design company:
AAA Web Designers
1001 John Young Pkwy Orlando, Florida 32837. Tel: 407-555-5555.
Located in Southern Orlando just north of Kissimmee, FL and St. Cloud FL. Directions >>
Notice that I included the address,
city, state, and phone. I also included both the
state name spelled out along with the two-character
abbreviation. In addition, I added keywords to
take in nearby towns such as Kissimmee and St.
Cloud, which local shoppers may be searching upon
as well. Regional words such as "southern," "northern," and
so forth are also good ideas, particularly for
businesses in or near large cities.
You will notice I included a link
called "Directions" to
give people specific directions to my store or office.
If I wanted to include even more localized keywords
on the page, I could have written out detailed directions
referencing nearby streets, cities, and landmarks
to obtain the broadest possible search exposure.
Of course, I must balance my desire for greater visibility
with the goal of not cluttering my Web pages. A reasonable
compromise would be to at least work in my best business
keywords onto my detailed "directions" page. This
page could be used to pick up some of the less frequent
localized searches.
The great thing about localization
is how easy it is to grab top 10 rankings on the
major search engines. The number of competing Web
pages for localized searches is often a fraction
of what you will find for non-localized searches.
Therefore, take an optimized page that you've fine-tuned.
Insert your local keywords onto every applicable
page of your site. If you don't have a centralized
header or footer file you can modify, a global
search and replace via your favorite Web page editor
will often make this task easy. For example, search
for a common phrase or set of HTML tags on your
page near where you wish to place your localized
text. Search for that text and replace it with
that same text PLUS the address and contact data
you wish to insert. Presto! Your pages are now
localized. (Caution: Be sure to back up your original
pages before making any sweeping changes just in
case you receive unexpected results).
This article is copyrighted
and has been reprinted with permission from FirstPlace
Software, the makers of WebPosition
Gold. FirstPlace
Software helped define the SEO industry with
the introduction of the first product to track
your rankings on the major search engines and
to help you improve those
rankings. A free
trial of WebPosition Gold is
available from their Web site.
