Seth Godin, marketer extraordinaire, recently blogged about SEO. You might remember him from the review we did on his book Tribes. Seth comments that the key to ranking in all the mess that’s out there is to find something your good at and give it a unique name.
We’d agree, but we’d also like to point out that, given his example of plumber, going local is equally important.
Seth uses the example of a local plumber trying to rank online in Google naturally for the word ‘plumber’. Now of course there are tens of millions of pages with plumber terms, what’s one to do?
He’s right to suggest it would be asinine for the local plumber to bother trying to compete for the main keyword. His suggestion? Using your skills and distinct capabilities give yourself a unique brand that has no or very little competition online.
That’s a good idea to get quick and easy ranks for your brand.
However, you can also leverage your local search because that has fewer competitors as well. Drilldown into ‘gotham plumber’ and you’ll only have a handful of competitors. Typically local businesses don’t pay much attention to web sites and their correlating SEO. This further improves your chances of ranking online for your local searches.
So not only can you go unique, but you can also go local and capture your target market. After all, you don’t care about a plugged toilet on the other side of the country so why bother ranking found country wide?
Here are some tips for local search to help you increase your rankings and take advantage of some of Google’s local search offerings (like the automatic map displayed in local searches).
- Ensure your mailing address (the physical location of your business or PO BOx) is clear on the web site, preferably on the main page. While you’re at it stick your phone number with area code in there.
- It does help if you’re hosted in the country you’re trying to target, and that you have a country specific TLD (top level domain, i.e. .ca, .co.uk, etc.). This isn’t crucial if nobody else is doing it but when it comes to local ranking I make all my clients make the change.
- Get local links. Being linked from city specific web sites increases Google’s perception of your relevance for city specific searches.
- There are certain Google tools you can use as a Webmaster to be country specific (Google Webmaster Tools).
- Be sure to include your city or target geographic area name in your titles and content.
Applying these rules will help you rank for local and brand searches. Enjoy!
[tags]seth godin, seo, local search, local google[/tags]