Top Tips to Localise Your SEO Campaign

Specific companies serve specific audiences, especially when it comes to smaller or independent companies. For the enormous conglomerate a global audience is just the ticket, a firm like McDonalds want to reach as many people across the globe as humanly possible and, thanks to the power of the internet, they can do just that. However many smaller companies want the exact opposite, they are either more localised firms to whom a global interest would be wasted, or companies offering more specialist services with a more niche target market in mind.

These types of small company have no use in accessing a googolplex of Google users every month, an over effective search engine optimisation campaign could create an impossible level of demand that would harm the business. Alternatively an over effective campaign could just be spending on reaching customers who would have no interest in the first place, wasting both time and money.

The internet can be reined in however and SEO can be manipulated to reach a more specifically localised target market. If you just remember these simple tips then your business can enjoy the perfect level of exposure for your ideal target market.

1. Use a country codernThe simplest step when you're buying your domain name is to make sure you include a country specific code. The country code is the suffix at the end of your top level domain name, whereas .com is a general global code, suffixes like .co.uk or .fr tell Google crawler bots that the website is specific to that country. That doesn't mean a .co.uk website is only available in the United Kingdom, it just means that when search engines are ranking websites they will consider it less relevant for searches in other countries and extra relevant for UK based searches. Meaning you won't need to worry about reaching disinterested foreign markets.

2.Use the directoriesrnTo localise even more you can submit entries to directory services that are specifically relevant to your service or target market. For example the Yellow Pages works on a very local level and many customers know to search on the Yellow Pages database when they want to find local services. Using directories not only targets and compliments the habits of specific local customers, gaining entries also increases your number of quality backlinks. And directories don't just work at a regional level, there are also directories specific to services or niche interests.

3. Target specific keytermsrnYou can also localise by knowing the right words to use in your keyterms. To target a local region, for example, include it in your main keyterm; if you're from Bristol then include Bristol in your title tag. This way you will be specifically targeting customers searching for your service in your area.

4. Use social mediarnSocial media is one of the most exciting new platforms for marketing in recent years and its potential for specifically local online marketing is immense. The reason being is that social media connects friends, if you can add a few profiles from your target market, then they are more than likely to have more friends interested in similar services, therefore through a six degrees of separation process you can reach out to access the perfect target market. Social media is also an engaging way to reach customers, you can communicate directly with customers and links in social media also contribute to your website's SEO.

So there's plenty of simple steps you can take to reach specific target audiences. You don't need to waste your money on far reaching speculative SEO campaigns, they can be localised to optimise towards the perfect target market for your own company.