Can Better Local Town And County Keyword Ranking Be Achieved Using Geo-Targeting or Geographic Targeting Content?

The Google algorithm looks at a company’s entire web presence, including up to 200 different competitive signals, when ranking a company’s content for its target keywords. Useful content or the best answers to a search is always a search engine’s priority, so beware of those folks who create false ‘silver bullet’ drama otherwise. What’s more, for MOST business owners, the ‘target consumer’ is rarely national or worldwide, but local to a particular geographic area. This is where Geo-targeting (e.g., Geographic targeting) content creation becomes important. 

Without the use of geographic keyword targets in content, how would a search engine know to include that business for a locally specific service search? Other than for a tight radius around (and including) its hometown, a business is not going to be able to compete for rankings in a separate nearby town or county where it can still support the local buyer?

In fact, most people search locally, and quite often. For the business that produces locally specific town and county content or geo-targeting, the reward can be the most qualified website traffic, leads, and new business … beyond its location!

What Are The Benefits Of Geographic Targeting?

While competing for visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs), a search algorithm can look for as many as 200 different competitive signals; however, it all starts with content. Properly executed geo-target pages can be a successful competitive strategy. They can be the necessary signal for a business owner seeking lead traffic from prospective buyers in a particular radius of operation, in other towns and counties!

Here are some of the benefits of geo-targeted pages that can translate to more traffic, leads, and new business:

1. A genuinely crafted geo-target page presents the argument to search algorithms that a business is authoritative for that town or county; it demonstrates that it should be ranked for and included in search results when someone is searching for those services in a particular town or county.

2. Geo-targeting also demonstrates authority in the specific towns and counties to the prospective buyers that live in them.  

3.  It can serve as a basis for the various social media, including Google listing, posts that demonstrate knowledge that is local to a town or county. To support both humans and search engines, these posts should include reinforcement for targeted keywords and backlinks from social media posts to geo-targeted website pages.

4. It can be used to link off the website to various useful local geography-related resources, the signal being ‘this page is a genuine resource for humans‘ on the subject of services offered in this particular area. 

5. Geo-target pages build a larger website page count. While it may not be the most highly weighted competitive signal, more pages can demonstrate depth, authority, and it can reinforce various keyword targets while relating them to a specifically searched geography.