Optimizing for Local Search

As I did research on optimizing a website for local search, I found few things that should be considered. Below are the points:

1. First adopt organic way of optimization
2. Include city name and region in title tag, meta-description and meta-keywords tag
3. Have full address in footer area
4. Add business information in Local Business Center/Google Maps
5. Target local keywords in Pay-Per-Click Campaigns
6. Target keyphrase and location in each page
7. Have incoming links from local pages
8. Have incoming links with location and business
9. Have extra pages that are more local area related. For example: direction page, places to visit when you are here, Nearby parks/meuseums/schools
10. Having pages for other local offerings
11. Adding geo-sensitive meta tags. For example:(Meta name=”zipcode” content=”12345,45678,09876″; meta name=”city” content=”dallas, houston, Austin”; meta name=”state” content=”texas”; meta name=”country” content=”usa, united states of america”)

Meta-Tags for Page Optimization

There are many different meta tags that do different things (refreshing pages automatically, redirecting; preventing from being cached etc). However, from the marketing or website optimization standpoint, “Title”, “Keywords” and “descriptions” are important.

Forming a good “title”:

Most of the search engines look into the title content first to match the searched keywords/phrases. Therefore, you can use combination of the most important key-words and key phrases so that the line is powerful and attention grabbing. Title Tags can be made in the form of a sentence but it is good to remove unneeded “linking” words, such as (the, in, at, is etc). You should never make more than 200 characters for a good title.

Forming “Meta – Keywords”:

There has been a debate about how many keywords one should use or whether to use commas or spaces between keywords/key phrases. I have been using commas to separate key words. To increase the chance of matching a search phrase, you can use the strategy of placing key words where it can be tied with the words ahead or after so that it is meaningful. You should always pick the right words and phrases to match the content of your site to search queries made by your target market. And you should try to place the primary keywords or phrases at the beginning. Don’t over-spam keywords though (repetitive use of a single keyword in order to manipulate search engine indexing and ranking)!

Forming “Meta – Description”:

Use your most important keywords and key phrases in your description, but make it meaningful! It has to be in the complete sentence form. Like the title tag, content you used in description tag is used by some search engines to tell people what your site is about. It's your only chance to motivate most people to click to your site. It can be considered as the summary of the web page that is rich with primary key words. Common questions include: "How long can the description be?" and "How many times can you repeat your keywords in it?" Again, there are no exact answers to these questions. I generally make about 40 – 60 words in description part. The rule of thumb is just to describe your site as attractively as you can using the fewest words possible.