Tips to Maximize Local Search Engine Optimization
| by Jeffrey L. Smith | September 24, 2007
Ever wondered how to attain higher local search engine positioning?. Here are a few tips to strengthen organic search engine placement. Although the competition can be fierce from local businesses (who often resort to keyword stuffing) local search engine optimization is far less convoluted by comparison to national search engine placement.
Without further ado, lets get to the how to part of this article.
1. Include your city, state and zip code in the page you seek to have indexed.
*If you want to rank for something, it should be located somewhere on that page. Sounds simple enough right? Search engines pay particular attention to proximity as well as keyword density (the number of times the keyword appears) as well as proximity to other keywords or qualifiers.
A qualifier is a term like services, company, professional, expert, affordable, specialist, etc. and are used specifically to (a) add relevance to your keywords or (b) assist your positioning when people use them in search queries. How many times have you noticed that when you conduct a search and you see the description is a hybrid of the terms in the search box?
This is because, based on the accessibility of your content to web spiders, they can extract words outside of chronological order and truncate them in the description in order to return content with the highest exact match phrases. But once again, if those qualifiers are missing in action from the page in question, chances are your page will be missing in action for that search and one of your competitors who build their pages with keyword-rich content will get the click through on that session.
There are however ways to rank for terms that are non existent on your pages (off page link building), but that is a more advanced SEO technique. So starting with the basics make sure to add your most pertinent information to a clearly identifiable area.
2. Use the city name and abbreviation of the state in the title or description tag.
*Pages are interpreted and indexed with the intitle, inanchor and intext (pretty obvious what theses term imply) so understanding this provides one more unique opportunity to construct your pages in accordance to standards which are known to affect how search engines rank and respond to your content.
3. Hyper link the city and function of your web page in the body of the pages content.
*When employing links, the less the better for the strength of the link, also the higher up on the page a link is placed, the higher relevance it garners like Chicago Web Design Company, is a perfect example of a keyword rich, optimized hyper link that leads to a specific page with the highest relevance for the term. Not sure on how to determine which page has the strongest affinity for the keyword check out this SEO tip to find out how.
4. Add the qualifiers or specific geographic terms to the footer in addition to a local reference.
*This rule applies if you have qualifiers in the title, description and page, then solidifying the affect of the collective goal of the page for the sake of word density can be accomplished in this manor. Example: Company Name, Offering Professional Web Design Services in (City and State). For an added kick, hyperlink the main terms in the footer on every other page and point them to your about us page, which usually has the highest concentration of local and geographic information.
Thats it, from their let the spiders do their job. You should increase your ranking potential for the on page factors, for even more punch, build links to your site using the same in the anchor text.
Speaking from first hand experience that this is a very effective local search marketing tactic. If implemented in conjunction with link building, its merely a matter of finding a high traffic term, writing a page to match the terms with high search volume (using word tracker or another keyword discover tool) using the on page SEO tips on this page and waiting for the results to get indexed.
If you get the formula right the first time the next time you conduct a search using the local search terms, you will be able to see the response for yourself.
Without further ado, lets get to the how to part of this article.
1. Include your city, state and zip code in the page you seek to have indexed.
*If you want to rank for something, it should be located somewhere on that page. Sounds simple enough right? Search engines pay particular attention to proximity as well as keyword density (the number of times the keyword appears) as well as proximity to other keywords or qualifiers.
A qualifier is a term like services, company, professional, expert, affordable, specialist, etc. and are used specifically to (a) add relevance to your keywords or (b) assist your positioning when people use them in search queries. How many times have you noticed that when you conduct a search and you see the description is a hybrid of the terms in the search box?
This is because, based on the accessibility of your content to web spiders, they can extract words outside of chronological order and truncate them in the description in order to return content with the highest exact match phrases. But once again, if those qualifiers are missing in action from the page in question, chances are your page will be missing in action for that search and one of your competitors who build their pages with keyword-rich content will get the click through on that session.
There are however ways to rank for terms that are non existent on your pages (off page link building), but that is a more advanced SEO technique. So starting with the basics make sure to add your most pertinent information to a clearly identifiable area.
2. Use the city name and abbreviation of the state in the title or description tag.
*Pages are interpreted and indexed with the intitle, inanchor and intext (pretty obvious what theses term imply) so understanding this provides one more unique opportunity to construct your pages in accordance to standards which are known to affect how search engines rank and respond to your content.
3. Hyper link the city and function of your web page in the body of the pages content.
*When employing links, the less the better for the strength of the link, also the higher up on the page a link is placed, the higher relevance it garners like Chicago Web Design Company, is a perfect example of a keyword rich, optimized hyper link that leads to a specific page with the highest relevance for the term. Not sure on how to determine which page has the strongest affinity for the keyword check out this SEO tip to find out how.
4. Add the qualifiers or specific geographic terms to the footer in addition to a local reference.
*This rule applies if you have qualifiers in the title, description and page, then solidifying the affect of the collective goal of the page for the sake of word density can be accomplished in this manor. Example: Company Name, Offering Professional Web Design Services in (City and State). For an added kick, hyperlink the main terms in the footer on every other page and point them to your about us page, which usually has the highest concentration of local and geographic information.
Thats it, from their let the spiders do their job. You should increase your ranking potential for the on page factors, for even more punch, build links to your site using the same in the anchor text.
Speaking from first hand experience that this is a very effective local search marketing tactic. If implemented in conjunction with link building, its merely a matter of finding a high traffic term, writing a page to match the terms with high search volume (using word tracker or another keyword discover tool) using the on page SEO tips on this page and waiting for the results to get indexed.
If you get the formula right the first time the next time you conduct a search using the local search terms, you will be able to see the response for yourself.
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