Making Your Site Local

Posted by EssexMax on 11 June 2012 under Search Engine | Be the First to Comment

We had an interesting question posed by one of our clients recently – how to make a website rank well for a local search, without looking like the company only serves a small geographic area.

This is always a tricky area, and there’s no real right or wrong answer here. The conflict is that you have to decide whether to write for Google, or for your human visitors. The official advice is that you write for humans first, and if necessary, review the pages with SEO in mind to help the search engines out. Here is some general guidance on the subject:

Local or National?

In this scenario, we’re assuming that you are based in Essex and get most of your business from the Essex area, but you also get jobs in London, Kent, Suffolk and anywhere else you can drive to and from in a day.

As for the wording on the website, it comes down to how you’re hoping your site will get you business – If a key aim is to generate new business from the local area, then ‘local’ has to play a big part in what’s on the site. Ask yourself which you’d prefer:

• Not being first in the search results for “Fridge Maintenance in Essex”, or
• Being first for “Fridge Maintenance in Essex”, and having to let other potential customers know (online or when they enquire) that you also fix fridges in Kent

Understand Your Audience

If you’re hoping to use Google to attract local business, then you need to make sure that the pages you’re trying to optimise contain some local elements. You have to try to get into the mind-set of the searcher. If they are likely to be searching for “fridge repairs essex” in Google, then you need to make sure that the best page on your site contains those words and ideally in that order.

This is where sometimes it helps to get the advice from a novice. Asking someone what they’d put into Google if they were looking to find someone to fix their fridge should yield a few ideas as to how people might search. You’ll find all sorts of combinations:

• “Broken fridge in Southend”
• “Local fridge repairer”
• “Fridge fixing companies in Essex”
• “Kitchen equipment repairs in Leigh-on-Sea”

Come up with a list of a few ways that you think people may try to find you, and bear it in mind when writing or reviewing your site contact

Still not sure?

If you reach a point where you can’t decide whether to go local (for Google), or regional (for the humans), there are a few compromises, for example:

1. Have two pages – One page that talks about recent jobs that you’ve done in Essex (including names of towns as well as the county name), and a more general page about your range of services
2. Find a compromise sentence that works for both, for example “EssexMax Fridge Maintenance is based in South Essex, but we fix fridges all around the country. Whether you live in Southend or Stowmarket, Basildon or Birmingham, we can help with repair, service and help with parts for your kitchen fridge or freezer – Take a look at our Testimonial Page to find out where our team has been working recently”
3. The competition – Type in a few searches into Google. Try a few different phrases such as “essex fridge repair” and some general “freezer maintenance” and see who comes up. See how your competition has addressed the problem and what’s worked for them. If it’s got them to Number One, the same solution could well work for you too

Google and Bing are pretty smart and the best advice is to write with the human in mind first and foremost, then make a few tweaks to make sure you give the search engines a helping hand

If a lot of business comes in from Essex, Kent, Suffolk – and you’d like more, make sure those areas are featured on the site in a few strategic places. Adding in mentions of Norfolk, Canterbury and London will give humans the impression that you’re not tied to a small area.