Does your location matter to your business? The answer is yes. Whether you are looking to promote a local service, your business offers a service targeted to only Canadians, or you want to establish your company as a global brand, your location matters. For effective SEO, you need to harness the importance of your location to your target audience.
Here are 4 effective strategies:
1. Local Search
Major search engines such as Yahoo! and Google
allow you to register your business as a local business. The benefit to
doing this is that your site will show up in the local search results
that are highlighted at the top of general search engine results.
Registering your business is free. Check out Google’s local business center to sign up.
2. Local domains
Website domains have certain conventions: for example, .com for
businesses, .org for organizations, .edu for educational institutions,
.gov for government sites. However, countries also have conventions to
help search engines identify their location: for example, .ca for
Canada, .us for USA, .uk for the United Kingdom. An important caveat is
to set up one domain as your primary domain, for example, .com. then
for a business that serves Canadians, also set up the .ca domain, but
have it permanently redirected to the .com. A side benefit is the brand
protection that owning multiple domains will provide you.
3. In Bound Links
Search engines place great value on in bound and out bound links from
websites within a similar industry or with related content. When
establishing a location, this network of related websites helps too. A
network of links from our website to Vancouver based websites, and vice
versa, helps to establish our website as a Vancouver-based business.
4. Content
It may sound like an overly simple recommendation, but content is often overlooked when establishing a geographic location online. To make sure that your site is recognized for your location, ensure that your location is mentioned on all pages of your website, not just the contact us page. An easy way to do this is to feature the address in the footer text that appears at the bottom of the page. Placing the address in the footer helps search engines to find the address easily, and it also helps your website visitors quickly identify if they have found a business in their desired area. Be sure to include the identifiers that best suit your goals, whether your city, province or state, country, or even multiple metropolitan centers for a global presence.
