Local SEO Tips for Your Web Site

Who does your web site attract?

Some business web sites are set up to promote products and services without thinking about who they want to attract, but your web site should be your most important marketing tool.

And whether you have a local restaurant or an eCommerce business that doesn’t have a physical location, you should work to attract local clients first.

People do business with people they know, like and trust. And there is a certain level already established of that know, like and trust with local businesses.

That doesn’t mean you only market to your local community. In fact, here’s a little-known secret: Let’s say you run a fashion boutique or electrical supply company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So, you can use keywords (and I talked about keywords in another video, I’ll try to get the link in the comments area). You can use keywords like fashion boutique or electrical supply. But you can also use fashion boutique Pittsburgh, or fashion boutique in Pittsburgh. You can put the city or suburb name as part of your keyword.

The secret is, if you use fashion boutique (or electrical supply) Pittsburgh, a location-based keyword, the search engines will pick up both the local and world-wide keywords. They will see electrical supply Pittsburgh, but they will also see just electrical supply.

So, doing online marketing that targets a local audience does not diminish your national advertising efforts.

But here’s the rub. The search engines are one thing, people are another. Let’s say you are a real estate agent in Los Angeles, CA and the front page of your web site boldly advertises how you help people in the Los Angeles area. However, you also know San Diego well. How do you market to both local areas?

The answer may be a bit simpler than you think: On the front page of your web site, advertise that you specialize in helping people both in Los Angeles and San Diego. Then, create a marketing web page for each city that markets to that audience.

“That’s great, Dr. Ty,” you may say. “But I have an eCommerce site and sell around the world. How do I market to all those areas?” The answer is: You don’t, not specifically. Your front page at that point should just market to your target audience without talking about your location.

BUT, you can still create marketing pages that include your home city. Talk about how your product helps your local customers, maybe even get some local testimonials just for that page.

Don’t think you can do this for every major city in the world, however. Yes, there are some sites that have marketing pages for 10, 20, even 100 cities. That’s called spam, and the search engines are getting smart enough to see it for what it is. Don’t give in to that temptation, it may hurt your search engine standing in the long run.

You see, the search engines know where you live, so they know what your home city is (oh, in a couple of weeks I’ll be talking about using Google Places for local marketing also).

Anyway, having a marketing page about your home town will make sense to the search engines. But having 50 marketing pages about UK cities when you live in Australia won’t.

So don’t try to turn your web site into a spam factory. But creating a few marketing pages won’t hurt as long as you do it right.

Learn more in the 3rd edition of the book SEO Secrets, available now.

Have a great day everyone!

– Dr. Ty Belknap, Port Bell SEO

* Search Engine Journal has an article that talks about the importance of location-based keywords.