Region specific SEO
-
I am doing SEO for a client in Canada.
A few of his keywords are:
palliative care
home health care
home care
respite care
senior careHe wants to attract vistors only from Calgary specifically, not Canada wide.
What should I do to optimize his website only for Calgary region? Should I add the word 'Calgary' to all his keywords?
-
I'm so glad to be of help, KS_. See you around Q&A!
-
Thanks Miriam. You are as good as it can get!
I just came across your post on http://www.seomoz.org/q/local-websites-for-raking-in-google-places and that was very helpful indeed too.
Thanks for all the help. I'll get back to you if I need further help.
-
Hi Again KS_ So glad to be able to help you. Let's take your questions one by one.
1. Yes, directory submissions are quite important, though not all of them are equally important. Here is an excellent post from Nyagoslav Zhekov covering Canadian citation sources: http://www.ngsmarketing.com/local-citation-building-study-part-4-local-business-directories-around-the-world-canada-uk/ And another terrific one from Jim Rudnick: http://www.canuckseo.com/index.php/2011/05/diy-canadian-citations-our-2011-update/ As for Classifieds, I'm not completely sure I'm familiar with your intent. If you can get a permanent listing of your business on a local classifieds site, that would be great, but if it's an advertisement that comes and goes, that wouldn't really be the same thing as a permanent citation.
2. Check out the 2 links in my answer to question #1. These are great resources for Canada. These resources will list important general citation sources for all Canadian business types. Beyond this, if you are looking for citation sources specifically for Calgary businesses, or specifically for elder care facilities, you will need to discover these by manually searching for them. Look for Calgary business directories, elder services directories, etc., in Google and see if you can get cited there. No general article is going to list these types of directories, because they are niche-specific, but with manual searching, you can find them.
3. Local SEO comprises everything in the world of traditional SEO, and adds to it the concept of geography. So, anything you might do in a traditional SEO campaign is also applicable to a Local SEO campaign. As I wrote in my original response: "Depending on the competitiveness of the client's industry and region, you may then need to engage in other forms of marketing such as linkbuilding, social media, video marketing, offline marketing, etc."
4. The definition of a Local Result has changed constantly over the past 6 years. Right now when people talk about a Local Search Engine Result, they are typically referring to a result or set of results accompanied by the little teardrop shaped pin and comprising information both from the company's website and other sources like Google Places or +. You may also hear this referred to as a blended local result, because it draws information from a mix of sources. For example, my search 'home health care calgary' brings up these results. Scrolling down the page of results, you will come to the set of pinned local results, ranking A-G. Those are the local results. Google can show these results for a variety of search phrases. For example, my search for 'home health care calgary' brings me these local results, regardless of the fact that I'm in the USA. On the other hand, if someone in Calgary searches just for 'home health care', without adding 'Calgary', Google can also show them local results, based on their IP address. So, local results can be returned based on query or location. Hope these answers have helped!
-
Hi Miriam. I read a lot of resources on Local SEO and found your above description to be very comprehensive and includes almost all details. So I'll stop running elsewhere and stick to you for further queries
1. Should I give a lot of weightage to Directory and Classified submissions for Local SEO?
2. IF yes, I read that it is important to make submissions in area specific Directory and Classified sites? Is that true? If yes, how can I find area specific Directory and Classified sites?
3. Should I follow this up with Organic SEO?
4. This question is very important. What are LOCAL SEO RESULTS? Does it mean results that will be presented when somebody in Calgary, Canada search for "palliative care"
or
Does it mean the results that Google will display when somebody searches for "palliative care calgary" from anywhere across the globe?
-
Hi KS,
Well, some of those things are going to be months in the workings for you, but I'm so glad that this gets you off to a good start. My pleasure.
Miriam
-
Thanks for the awesome write up Miriam. I will bring all your suggestions into action later today/tomorrow and get back to you if I have more queries. I am sure you will help:)
-
Hi KS_
Good question. So, essentially, what you are doing would be termed 'Local SEO' rather than just SEO. Local is its own discipline. I will give you a brief outline here of what a Local SEO campaign looks like, in a step by step format. These are general guidelines.
1. Do keyword research without geographic modifiers (no city or regional names). Looks like you are already doing this.
2. Take your list of discovered core keywords and add your geo terms to it. This might include city names, county names, regional nicknames, zipcodes, neighborhood names and other terms.
3. You might also like to use Google Insights to surface other terms by setting your region to Canada and plugging in terms like 'home health care + calgary'. Add found terms to your list. Here is a link to this tool:
http://www.google.com/insights/search/
4. Due to your keyword research, you now have guidance as to the focus of your content development and optimization of the website at hand.
5. Your keyword findings will be reflected in the titles, tags, headers, internal links and copy of the website.
6. Understand that all of Local Search hangs on 'NAP' (name, address, phone number). The client must have a unique business name, unique street address (not a shared address, not a P.O. Box or virtual office) and a unique local telephone number in his city of location. He must also have in-person transactions with his clients in order to qualify for Local inclusion. NAP must be published consistently across the website and across the web.
7. Make sure that the complete NAP is on the contact page of the website, and I also recommend putting it in the footer, sitewide. I recommend using Schema to mark up the NAP. Here is a link to a schema creator for local businesses: http://schema-creator.org/ Be sure to choose the 'organization' tab.
8. Write unique, non-duplicate content for every page of the site. Make it excellent.
9. Once you have the website in great shape, you will be going off-site to build listings and citations. You will likely be starting with Google Places/+. Be sure to follow all the rules: http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528
You will then be building other listings and working on citation building for the client. The most reputable citation discovery tool currently available is Whitespark's: http://www.whitespark.ca/blog/post/2-using-the-local-citation-finder
10. The client will also need to win reviews from his clients on a variety of sites. You need to be aware of the different rules of each review site so that you don't accidentally violate them.
11. Depending on the competitiveness of the client's industry and region, you may then need to engage in other forms of marketing such as linkbuilding, social media, video marketing, offline marketing, etc.
Again, these are just the bare bones guidelines and there are nuances involved in pretty much every step . I highly recommend that, if Local SEO is new to you, you read David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors Report 2012:
http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml
This is the industry's most important annual survey and includes the feedback of the top Local SEOs in the world. It is a great place to get acquainted with the core issues and challenges surrounding the discipline and is a great read.
I hope this gets you off to a good start!
-
Hi,
You can submit your sites in local directories of Canada and you can also add your business in Google Bing and yahoo.
For example https://plus.google.com
http://listings.local.yahoo.com/
http://local.botw.org/ https://biz.yelp.com/
For the keywords before starting link building check about the search volumes of that keywords. You have to promote your keywords for getting clicks. So try to add that keywords in content.
<colgroup><col width="317"></colgroup>
| https://plus.google.com | -
Hi,
Just a few days back I had the similar query. Instead of making changes to your keyword list. You should try to promote your website locally. Try submitting your website into local directories, list your website in Google Local, create a G+ page.
Before finalizing your keywords, do some research with http://www.google.com/insights/search. Google Insight for search can give you an idea if people add Calgary while searching for your products/services
Also request your customers to leave genuine comments/reviews (Do not spam) on your listings at various local directories, google listing
-
Thanks for the help.
So the updated keywords should be:
palliative care calgary
home health care calgary
home care calgary
respite care calgary
senior care calgaryIs that right?
Can you suggest me how to go about 'local business listing'? I have never tried that earlier. Any good resource that you can direct me to which can help me do it?
-
Hi,
Yes you can attract visitors Calgary specific, you can add Calgary into your keywords and also make landing page as per keywords, add that keywords in content also. you can also do local business listing for improving local SEO.
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
-
Looking for Adult SEO company
Hi guys and girls, I am looking for a company that is willing to work with us to improve our SEO. Our website is www.reallovesexdolls.com and we keep on going all the way UP to fall rock bottom hard again (like waves in the ocean). It's really weird, we never invested much in link building and such. We are so busy with other things that it would be nice to outsource this task. You can contact us by phone, or by email. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MartinePeters0 -
Pixel tags impact on SEO?
I was asked by our IT if switching to a tag management company that removes the pixels from our site and is replaced by a javascript would have a negative impact on SEO. I have not been able to find anything that discusses this: Does anyone have experience with this? Has it caused any issues? Has it caused any issues? How do crawlers see pixel data, and what do they do with it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn_Huber0 -
SEO Problem with PowerPoint to PDF?
Can anyone think of any reasons why it would be a bad idea to use PowerPoint to create documents and then convert them to PDFs? Do you think this could cause any crawling issues for Google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Hosting Providers and SEO
I have been wondering for a while which web host provider is the best for SEO purposes? Things to consider. Shared Hosting vs Dedicated Server Location of the Host Provider Site Up Time One question that I have been thinking about is what impact would changing a host provider have on a websites serps ranking? Is there a possible negative impact and if so how can it be avoided? Name the top 3 Web Hosts for SEO.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bronxpad0 -
Right SEO strategy for Wordpress
Hello all, I am working on my SEO strategy for a WordPress site. I am trying to cover all my keywords in: 1.a) Page title trying to have a length <70 1.b) Page url trying to have a length<115 My question is: should i try to focus all my keywords in both name and url page path? or only in the Page title as the SEOMOZ's guide suggest? I would go for a mix strategy with my keywords in both page title and url path name, but I do not know if the search engines PAY MORE ATTENTION TO THE PAGE TITLE, so mixing 1.a) and 1.b) would mean I am loosing keywords. I am using the WordPress All in ONE SEO Plugin. Do you recommend me this or any other plugin? This plugin has 3 input fields: a) Title tag b) Description tag c) Keywords My questions here are: a) If these tags replace the standard settings of WP as described in point 1.a) b) If the description and title tags are META TAGS that are not taken into account in terms of SEO but in terms of customer description of the contento of the page. c) Where are the keywords listed inserted in the page? In H1, H2, H3 and H4 tags? My feeling after reading the SEOMOZ guide is that this plugin is not providing any added value for SEO any more??' Thank you very much, Best regards, Antonio Alcocer
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aalcocer20030 -
SEO for eCommerce?
I'm working on a game plan for the on-page optimization for a growing e-commerce site (https://www.boutine.com) and I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with similar projects. Specifically, how to get the most SEO value out of product and category pages. Thanks in advance! -Adam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | boutine0 -
SEO Provider
At the risk of opening the flood gates, I'm posting this in hopes of finding a SEO provider on this site. I'm currently a member, and have learned a lot through this site, but I'm still having issues ranking higher. Because of this, I have come to the conclusion that I need a dedicated SEO company/professional who can help our company reach the next level. I'm open to suggestions of companies that you have used, or please feel free to throw your hat into the ring. Thanks in advance! AW
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheCTC0 -
SEO consultant/expert
I am looking to hire an SEO expert that can not only make suggestions/perform audit, but also execute changes. Of course lots of companies are available, but I am ideally looking for an individual with a nice track record. No offense to SEO firms, but I am not interested in paying for overhead, etc. Curious to know if others have gone this route and what the experience has been like. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MNKid150