Targeting customers with local SEO

Using local SEO you can target your website to countries or territories, or to specific regions and cities. When someone enters your keyword on a search box, the search system uses several factors to determine whether to show your website:

Search engines analyze the actual search query the user submits. If someone enters a search query that contains a recognizable city or region, search engines will show related regionally targeted websites. For example, if someone searches for Asheville Dentist, search engines may only show websites targeted to Asheville, regardless of the user’s physical location.

When possible, search engines determine the user’s physical region based upon the Internet Protocol (IP) address. This also applies to regionally targeted websites. For example, if someone searches for Dentist, and the computer performing the search is located in Asheville, search engines will only show websites targeted to Asheville even though the location was not specified.

Look at this screen shot and you’ll see what I mean:

Unlike country-specific search engine domains (such as Google.fr), search engines consider a user’s IP address for ads that show on Google.com. For example, if a user with an Australian IP address visits Google.com, Google will display ads targeted to Australia, even though the user isn’t accessing Google.com.au.

Local SEO practices are conductive to generating huge gains in local, targeted traffic. Instead of getting random, useless traffic you have targeted customers waiting to buy coming straight to your site.

Tags: local search engine optimization, local SEO