Targeted Local Search Engine Optimisation

One of the key elements to Internet and Online marketing is identifying your target market. Who are they, how old are they and most importantly where are they located? With the advent of more advanced geo-location software systems being used by Google we are now able to target very specific markets with our online marketing campaigns. The first step in this process is to write down and identify your market with the 3 questions I have listed above. Once you have done that then you should consider the following and address them in order to hone in on your target search engines and then consequently your target market.




I will use the example of a Web Designer and Developer in Melbourne, Australia.




1. The website should be hosted in the country and if possible the city in which you plan on targeting with your online marketing strategy.




2. The website should have on page search engine optimisation which is tailored towards the region - country - city. So, in other words these three elements, if they are identified as the target market, should be mentioned in titles, keywords, meta tags, content, on page titles, links etc within the website.




3. Any controllable external links to the website should have a sprinkling of the region - country - city within them, without over doing it.




4. The website should have a fully qualified domain name. In this case .com.au




5. The website should be listed in the regional Google search index. You can go to your local search engine and simply register and request for the googlebot to scan your website. If you host within the region and/or you have a fully qualified domain name then you should get listed within the regional index anyway but registering will triply ensure.




6. Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools and then go to Tools->Set Geographic Location. Some sites target users for a particular geographic location. For example, a site may target all users within a specific country, or it may target only those users who reside within a very small geographic area within that country. Using this feature allows you to further refine your target your market.




7. Have a regional specific phone number. For example, for website design in Australia it would be 1300 880 841.




8. Get listed in local online directories.




9. Use a Google map that shows your business location. This will ensure that your regional association is further enhanced within the search engines.




Once you have done all of these things then your website should be fully targeted towards your identified target market. Now you just need to make your site interesting, make it sell and get it developed properly in order to do this.

The Values of a Link for Search Engine Optimization

Since most link building campaigns are done to support ongoing ranking strategies, it's important to know where and how to look for "link traps" that keep you from your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts and goals. Websites that employ the use of robots.txt, JavaScript or certain redirects should be avoided. Websites that show no meter of Google green (PR) should be thoroughly checked. It's important to secure links from a venue a search engine can spider. Links from websites outside your industry niche won't hurt your link building effort; however they don't provide a good ranking boost contribution since it doesn't reinforce any relevancy of your keywords.


Overview

Reciprocal linking is an effective way of generating targeted, topic related traffic to your website. By increasing the amount of websites that pass a vote to your web page through the use of a backlink, the more important Google’s will deem your website, which with time will lead to higher Search Engine Result Pages (SERP's).

What we will focus on is determining which link exchange partners have links that are worthwhile of your time & effort. When looking for link exchange partners you want to look at multiple factors to ensure you are receiving a quality link exchange that allows a vote to be passed back to your web page. Intense Development is going to review 3 factors that qualifies the link as a good exchange:

1. Passing a vote
2. Passing traffic
3. Passing PageRank


1. Passing a Vote

This factor is more virtual than materialistic since this would at most times be based on your personal opinion. The quality of the vote passed on to your web page consists of multiple pointers that you have to ask yourself:

• Is it informative to your websites topic? Does it provide a quantity of quality content? Stick to websites that provide unique content that provides additional insight and is relevant to your websites topic.

• How long has the website being in existence? Has this website being in existence long enough to build itself up to be considered an authority site?

• How many outgoing links does the link page have?

Web pages that have less than 50 outgoing links are still considered effective enough to exchange with. See it this way: A Search Engine will provide (example) 100 points to each page outgoing links. If you have one outgoing link it will get the full vote value. If you have 50 outgoing links to other websites, than you vote count is only 2 points. Web pages with limited amount of outgoing links are favorable.

The placement of the link: Will the link partner allow a submission of your link within a paragraph of keyword related / informative text? This way your outgoing link does not follow the webs usual linking exchange pattern, which overtime could become devalued with Search Engines? The surrounding text reinforces your links keywords and might provide additional boost in the keywords relevance.


2. Passing Traffic

Serves good for targeted and high-volume traffic which could convert to clients. Many times the position of the link is what it takes to get more traffic from the website. On good way to determine the hotspot where visitors look most often is by checking out this site EyeTracker


3. Passing PageRank

PageRank (PR) is Google rating system of the quality of the website. The bar runs between 1 to 10 and the closer to 10 you can get the more valuable the exchange. In the past, Page Rank has been the main focus point in many webmasters and Search Engine marketers. Page Rank has overtime become less important in Google's overall ranking algorithm, and now it determines the interval of the Search Engines spider / bots return to the website, for faster indexing of new content.