Geographically Targeted Keyword Strategy

Do you have a product or service to sell within a geographically limited area? If you do, then there's a specific keyword strategy which you can take full advantage of. It's also one of the ways that a small business can compete online even against the fat cats.

Let's say for the sake of this article that you own a small shop in Melbourne, Australia which sells gourmet coffee. You decide to create a small web site for your shop which advertises your store location, business hours and a general overview of your products

Luckily for you, search engines love local search. They love to be able to say how targeted and specific their search engine software is, it's a selling point for them. Search engines compete with each other to provide relevant local search capabilities. They feel that this is a service which search engine users appreciate, and for the most part they are right.

You can utilize a Geographically Targeted Key Word Strategy to market your business online. Simply target your specific location and your service and this becomes your primary key-phrase. In this case, "Melbourne Gourmet Coffee" Your goal is to incorporate this term into your site design as much as possible, using it for page titles, page names, developing content related to the term, etc.

I mentioned that this strategy offers an advantage to small business web site owners. Depending on your location and the nature of your business, there is no reason to believe that your site won't enjoy good results in search pages for geographic searches of your products or services.

Try a search for the term "Melbourne Gourmet Coffee" on any of the major search engines and see if there are any major multinational companies listed there. You might expect at least one well known global coffee retailer to be in those results or perhaps you will be surprised with the results.

You see, the internet offers an even playing field for everyone. If have always believed this and I still do. Any small business can compete online. Large corporations can't have offices everywhere. Franchises have no interest in developing a unique web site for each and every store location. The cost and time it would take to create a web site for every location would be outrageous. Can you imagine a separate web site for every local McDonald's restaurant or for every Starbucks?

On the other hand it makes perfect sense for a small business owner to develop a web site based on their location. And it makes sense to take advantage of the major search engine's love of local search capabilities.

While a Geographically Targeted Key Word Strategy is important to the online marketing efforts of most small businesses it forms only part of the overall internet marketing mix. I do not advise depending on geographic search terms alone to bring visitors and potential customers to your web site. There are many other variables to consider and each adds to the overall level of your online success.

Copyright © 2007 Jeff Palmer / Semultra All Rights Reserved