Geo-Location

 

Geo-location or geo-targeting is concerned with ensuring that the correct pages of your web site appear in front of the correct target customers when they search.

 

Here are the signals that locate your web site or pages - ranked in order of importance:

 

• Local domain

• Language

• Local hosting

• Webmaster tools

• Local inbound links

• Address details

• Language metatags

 

Domains

By far the easiest locator and strongest signal for the search engines is the local domain. If the web site has domain.co.uk - it can only be a UK-based web - or a web site targeted at the UK. If it has domain.fr, then it must be targeted at France - the fact that French domains require a French national address gives this domain even further strength.

 

Local domains appear in the right geo-targets faster than any other technique - it can be a matter of hours not days. Can you use generic domains such as .com, .net, or /eu? In fact no, if your site relies on one of these domains the search engine will have to rely on other signals to determine the web site's targeted location.

 

Language

Assuming the language is correctly detected, this language narrows to geo-target a range of countries or country.

 

Local hosting / webmaster tools

Search engines check the IP address to ascertain the geographic location of a web site. So hosting locally provides another strong clue as to the relevant geography. 

 

Local inbound links

Local inbound links also help to locate a web site correctly. Note that what the word ‘local' means in this context is that the search engine has identified that the link is located in the target geography. In other words, local links are those with local domain names, local hosting and, in their turn, inbound local links.

 

Address Details

Addresses, post codes, city names, country names - all act as signals to identify a web site's geography. These play their most significant role with intra-country geo-targeting in other words following keyword searches such as "Chicago pizza."

 

Language metatags

Within the HTML library there are tags to indicate the language of a particular page with encodings such as en-gb or en-us for example. You are recommended to use these tags - but it should be noted that they are frequently not used correctly with the result that search engines also will not rely on these language tags. They will generally have little impact on geo-targeting issues.

 

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