November 30th 2009 Do You Need To Target Visitors In A Different Location?
If you have wondered how to optimise your site for a geographic location you have probably come across lot’s of differeing info about how to do it, for example you may live in States but want to target visitors from the UK, how do you go about making this happen? Like any area of search engine optimisation there are many theories, not all of them are valid and you have to be careful about the advice you take on, however below is a list of the most beneficial areas to look at.
The location of your server was historically the strongest factor when deciding where to geographically target your site, however Google have recently admitted that this is one of the weaker factors and there are better ways to target your site in terms of SEO.
The first thing Google will take into account is your domain, is it a com? If so then your site will naturally be targeted at US visitors, if it’s a co uk then the UK is your target audience. But what if you want to target people in the UK with a com address? Google make this pretty straightforward, head on over to webmaster tools, set up an account and simply change your preferences in the settings.
When you have done all this monitor your rankings in that area if there is no change consider a server location change, but wait there is one more huge way Google determines geographic preference for your website. Who links to you? Where are they based geographically? If you want to target the UK but don’t have a lot of links for the UK, now is the time to get some, this method alone can have a dramatic impact on where you rank for a given term.
Run through these techniques and eventually you should have a website that is perfectly optimised for the geographic location of your choice, also remember to add your business address to the footer for added benefit.