How to balance International and Local Search targeting?
-
Hi guys,
A local company provides tourism services in Spain but its potential clients reside abroad in USA mostly.
This means we have 2 search potentials:
1. For reaching international clients via international search in advance before they arrive (preferred).
2. Last minute booking potential for local serach when they have already arrived and seek a service while already here.So far we have targeted USA and international searches solely and ignored local search. We have tried to target our website to USA in GoogleWebmasterTools and link building location mostly.
But what about local search? Would establishing ourselves in Local Search (google places and maps etc) be a confusion for Google and mess with our good rankings in US? Or would it add to our potential of additional last minute local seaches?
What's the best approach in a situation like this? Is a happy medium possible?
Thanks in advance.
-
Hi Again Emerald,
I hope we are all understanding your question better after the further details you have provided. As you answered all of my 4 questions - positively - for your city in Spain, then there is no reason why you cannot engage in a Local Search campaign. When I search, from my computer in the USA, for 'travel agency madrid, spain' Google shows me local results for that city. So, yes, it is certainly possible for you to do this.
You will want to make sure that your website has basic local optimization in place and then get the business listed in Google Places and other relevant local business indexes.
On a final note, I need to mention that I would not recommend setting up any virtual offices either in the USA or Spain as this would violate Google's Places Quality Guidelines. See: http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528
Hope this helps!
Miriam
-
Thanks for your responses. I had meant whether we should go after Local Search Spain rather than US for last minute bookers?
Do you all mean therefore that it's only applicabe for going for local search in USA as our clients reside in USA (this could be true for advance bookings like situation 1, but what about my last minute situation 2 above)?
So I shouldn't bother with Local Search ideas for Spain (last minute US clients already in Spain searching for last minute tour etc).
I guess this is more complicated because of the international situation - would love advice for our particular international situation, unless I misunderstood.
Miriam to answer your question:
1. We have a legal business name in Spain.
2. Our real physical location in not in US. We do not have US PO box. We reside and operate from a city in Spain.
3. Our local area code phone number will be in our city in Spain, not US.
4. Last minute bookers can call into our office in Spain.But again our incoming clients are Americans from USA, hence the question on how to approach this.
-
Greetings, Emerald!
Thank your for coming to Q&A with your question. I'm the Local SEO Associate here in the forum. While a local campaign in highly unlikely to injure your international results, you must be able to answer yes to having ALL of these items in place in order to qualify as a local business:1. A legal business name.
2. A real physical location in a city in the US (not a virtual office, P.O. box, shared space or any other substitute)
3. A local area code phone number in the city of location (not a redirected phone number or toll free number)
4. You must either be the sort of business to which clients come to do face-to-face business in your office in this city, or, you must have staff that goes out from the office to the clients' homes or businesses. If business is conducted virtually, it does not qualify as local in the eyes of the search engines.If your client can answer yes to all 4 of those things, then they can certainly engage in some Local SEM. You would want to have a good landing page on the cite for the city in question, and also include the complete NAP in the website footer site-wide. You would want copy that speaks to the geography of this physical location. Additionally, you would want to get your client correctly profiled at Google Places, Yahoo Local, Bing Local and other relevant directories.
Sincerely hope this answer helps. Good luck!
Miriam -
I would go as far as to invest in a local phone and address with a virtual office for a few months to build with the page.
-
In order to build the local search. Create a page for each city. I would do 5 at a time and personalize it. Go where you get the most clients first. So Spain. Travel to Spain. Have a page for NY, LA, Chicago, Houston And Philly first., Customize it for the city and build from there.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
In the Google search results, the company name (with the drop down arrow) next to the result URL is incorrect. The company being displayed here is a company we acquired many years back. How do I adjust/fix this?
When I search any term for my organization, we are getting good results BUT the company name, next to the results URL is of an orgnization we acquired many years back and not the name of our company. The URL is correct page JUST the company name next to this URL is incorrect on the Google search results page. How do I go about changing so the company name next to the URL ?
Branding | | DigitalNTT0 -
International domain query
my client is a financial services company with some ccTLDs for brand name but does not own the .com eg: brandname.ch, brandname.ro etc we need to launch a brand UK site plus a global site. should we go for another name on the .com: brandname_financial.com_, and: brandname_financial.ch_, brandname_financial.ro_ etc or could we go for instead brandname.uk.com and brandname.eu.com? i'm worried the owner of brandname.com will build a site and out rank us.....however the alternative is a longer url but owning the .com hope that makes sense and any advice would be gladly received! Many thanks
Branding | | bisibee10 -
What Other Local Listing Aggragator are like Localeze, UBL, Yext?
Hey guys what do you all use for listing your sites? Current I use UBL, Yext, and Localeze. Would it benefit me to use more? Also what other companies or services are like these three?
Branding | | qlkasdjfw0 -
Google Local & Google+
Hi All I'm looking for a bit of a steer on which direction to go in here. I have a new client and the client has a 'branch' in London. The brand is about to be franchised across the UK. They currently have a google places page in London (old style Google places, not a plus page) and nothing else on Google +. I don't really want to touch the Google place (local page) because it ranks well for their business and far higher than their organic search result. In terms of adding to their social presence, I think a Google Plus 'Brand' page would work as a generic brand, with several additional local pages being created as franchisees come on board. They have a safe and strong brand and have plans to reinforce through social. I'm about to set up the brand page and wondered if anyone has any thoughts, words of warning or points to consider? I don't know why but I feel somewhat tetchy and fearful of Google places that have yet to be merged. Thanks
Branding | | littlesthobo0 -
Trying to de-mystify Google Places, Google Local & Google Plus
There is a lot of online 'noise' regarding the changes / merging and making the best out of Googles' Places / Local & Google Plus. Any tips, ideas, experiences or just plain revelations regarding all or any of the above services and how they will work & come together in the future?
Branding | | ScotSEO0 -
Should Global Company List in Local Directories?
Hi All, I am the Web Marketing Manager for a small, yet global, company. I've just started working at this company and I am focusing a lot of attention right now on link building, as the company is not great there in comparison to competitors. So right now I'm submitting us to directories. My question is whether submitting to things like Yelp and the Google Local Business Directory make sense for a global company. I want the inbound links available from those sources, but I just want to make sure I'm not missing something in regards to this. i.e. a pissed off customer could leave a negative review about the company on Yelp. That doesn't worry me, because if a customer is pissed off and wants to vent online, they'll find somewhere to do it. Is there anything else related that I might be missing? Thanks, Ben Alvord
Branding | | Ben_Alvord0 -
Capturing Brand Search
Hi, How do you capture as much brand results as possible in search results? I know Mike from Koozai recently did a video about brand reputation, but this is slightly different. The current issue i'm having that the client's brand name is also a specific geographic destination, hence the confusion in SERP's. This means non-related industries are eating up the client's potential market share and traffic. My objective would obviously be to capture as much traffic as possible for brand related keywords for the site, so that we can focus more on long tail product terms. Any help would be appreciated. Obviously re-branding is out of the question. Regards, Vahe
Branding | | Vahe.Arabian0 -
YouTube search
Searching for our branded term "smartdraw" in YouTube Search returns: #1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_V9l3tOH-0
Branding | | SmartDraw
#2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2GgoAC2cU0 (our video) Comparing YouTube stats for the two videos: Result #1: Total Views: 15,103
Likes: 9
Dislikes: 0
Comments: 3
Favorites: 15 Result #2 Total Views: 72,223
Likes: 11
Dislikes: 0
Comments: 3
Favorites: 17 The #1 video does not include "smartdraw" in the title, rather "Smart Draw", does not include anything in the description, and does not include the keyword in the tags. The #2 video includes "SmartDraw" in the title, includes "SmartDraw" in the description, and includes "smartdraw" in the tags. The author of the #1 video has only posted 2 videos with 4 subscribers vs. 46 videos and 128 subscribers Does anybody have any suggestions on why it's ranked #1 or how I can improve our YouTube search rank for our brand name? =/ Thanks!0