Region specific SEO

[KS__]

I am doing SEO for a client in Canada.

A few of his keywords are:

palliative care
home health care
home care
respite care
senior care

He wants to attract vistors only from Calgary specifically, not Canada wide.

What should I do to optimize his website only for Calgary region? Should I add the word 'Calgary' to all his keywords?

[SanketPatel]

Hi,

Yes you can attract visitors Calgary specific, you can add Calgary into your keywords and also make landing page as per keywords, add that keywords in content also. you can also do local business listing for improving local SEO.

[KS__]

Thanks for the help.

So the updated keywords should be:

palliative care calgary
home health care calgary
home care calgary
respite care calgary
senior care calgary

Is that right?

Can you suggest me how to go about 'local business listing'? I have never tried that earlier. Any good resource that you can direct me to which can help me do it?

[Visiblics]

Hi,

Just a few days back I had the similar query. Instead of making changes to your keyword list. You should try to promote your website locally. Try submitting your website into local directories, list your website in Google Local, create a G+ page.

Before finalizing your keywords, do some research with http://www.google.com/insights/search. Google Insight for search can give you an idea if people add Calgary while searching for your products/services

Also request your customers to leave genuine comments/reviews (Do not spam) on your listings at various local directories, google listing

[SanketPatel]

Hi,

You can submit your sites in local directories of Canada and you can also add your business in Google Bing and yahoo.

For example https://plus.google.com

https://www.google.com/local

http://listings.local.yahoo.com/

http://www.bing.com/local/

http://local.botw.org/ https://biz.yelp.com/

For the keywords before starting link building check about the search volumes of that keywords.  You have to promote your keywords for getting clicks. So try to add that keywords in content.

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[MiriamEllis]

Hi KS_

Good question. So, essentially, what you are doing would be termed 'Local SEO' rather than just SEO. Local is its own discipline. I will give you a brief outline here of what a Local SEO campaign looks like, in a step by step format. These are general guidelines.

1. Do keyword research without geographic modifiers (no city or regional names). Looks like you are already doing this.

2. Take your list of discovered core keywords and add your geo terms to it. This might include city names, county names, regional nicknames, zipcodes, neighborhood names and other terms.

3. You might also like to use Google Insights to surface other terms by setting your region to Canada and plugging in terms like 'home health care + calgary'. Add found terms to your list. Here is a link to this tool:

http://www.google.com/insights/search/

4. Due to your keyword research, you now have guidance as to the focus of your content development and optimization of the website at hand.

5. Your keyword findings will be reflected in the titles, tags, headers, internal links and copy of the website.

6. Understand that all of Local Search hangs on 'NAP' (name, address, phone number). The client must have a unique business name, unique street address (not a shared address, not a P.O. Box or virtual office) and a unique local telephone number in his city of location. He must also have in-person transactions with his clients in order to qualify for Local inclusion. NAP must be published consistently across the website and across the web.

7. Make sure that the complete NAP is on the contact page of the website, and I also recommend putting it in the footer, sitewide. I recommend using Schema to mark up the NAP. Here is a link to a schema creator for local businesses: http://schema-creator.org/ Be sure to choose the 'organization' tab.

8. Write unique, non-duplicate content for every page of the site. Make it excellent.

9. Once you have the website in great shape, you will be going off-site to build listings and citations. You will likely be starting with Google Places/+. Be sure to follow all the rules: http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528

You will then be building other listings and working on citation building for the client. The most reputable citation discovery tool currently available is Whitespark's: http://www.whitespark.ca/blog/post/2-using-the-local-citation-finder

10. The client will also need to win reviews from his clients on a variety of sites. You need to be aware of the different rules of each review site so that you don't accidentally violate them.

11. Depending on the competitiveness of the client's industry and region, you may then need to engage in other forms of marketing such as linkbuilding, social media, video marketing, offline marketing, etc.

Again, these are just the bare bones guidelines and there are nuances involved in pretty much every step . I highly recommend that, if Local SEO is new to you, you read David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors Report 2012:

http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml

This is the industry's most important annual survey and includes the feedback of the top Local SEOs in the world. It is a great place to get acquainted with the core issues and challenges surrounding the discipline and is a great read.

I hope this gets you off to a good start!

[KS__]

Thanks for the awesome write up Miriam. I will bring all your suggestions into action later today/tomorrow and get back to you if I have more queries. I am sure you will help:)

[MiriamEllis]

Hi KS,

Well, some of those things are going to be months in the workings for you, but I'm so glad that this gets you off to a good start. My pleasure.

Miriam

[KS__]

Hi Miriam. I read a lot of resources on Local SEO and found your above description to be very comprehensive and includes almost all details. So I'll stop running elsewhere and stick to you for further queries

1. Should I give a lot of weightage to Directory and Classified submissions for  Local SEO?

2. IF yes, I read that it is important to make submissions in area specific Directory and Classified sites? Is that true? If yes, how can I find area specific Directory and Classified sites?

3. Should I follow this up with Organic SEO?

4. This question is very important. What are LOCAL SEO RESULTS? Does it mean results that will be presented when somebody in Calgary, Canada search for  "palliative care"

or

Does it mean the results that Google will display when somebody searches for "palliative care calgary" from anywhere across the globe?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Again KS_ So glad to be able to help you. Let's take your questions one by one.

1. Yes, directory submissions are quite important, though not all of them are equally important. Here is an excellent post from Nyagoslav Zhekov covering Canadian citation sources: http://www.ngsmarketing.com/local-citation-building-study-part-4-local-business-directories-around-the-world-canada-uk/ And another terrific one from Jim Rudnick: http://www.canuckseo.com/index.php/2011/05/diy-canadian-citations-our-2011-update/ As for Classifieds, I'm not completely sure I'm familiar with your intent. If you can get a permanent listing of your business on a local classifieds site, that would be great, but if it's an advertisement that comes and goes, that wouldn't really be the same thing as a permanent citation.

2. Check out the 2 links in my answer to question #1. These are great resources for Canada. These resources will list important general citation sources for all Canadian business types. Beyond this, if you are looking for citation sources specifically for Calgary businesses, or specifically for elder care facilities, you will need to discover these by manually searching for them. Look for Calgary business directories, elder services directories, etc., in Google and see if you can get cited there. No general article is going to list these types of directories, because they are niche-specific, but with manual searching, you can find them.

3. Local SEO comprises everything in the world of traditional SEO, and adds to it the concept of geography. So, anything you might do in a traditional SEO campaign is also applicable to a Local SEO campaign. As I wrote in my original response: "Depending on the competitiveness of the client's industry and region, you may then need to engage in other forms of marketing such as linkbuilding, social media, video marketing, offline marketing, etc."

4. The definition of a Local Result has changed constantly over the past 6 years. Right now when people talk about a Local Search Engine Result, they are typically referring to a result or set of results accompanied by the little teardrop shaped pin and comprising information both from the company's website and other sources like Google Places or +. You may also hear this referred to as a blended local result, because it draws information from a mix of sources. For example, my search 'home health care calgary' brings up these results. Scrolling down the page of results, you will come to the set of pinned local results, ranking A-G. Those are the local results. Google can show these results for a variety of search phrases. For example, my search for 'home health care calgary' brings me these local results, regardless of the fact that I'm in the USA. On the other hand, if someone in Calgary searches just for 'home health care', without adding 'Calgary', Google can also show them local results, based on their IP address. So, local results can be returned based on query or location. Hope these answers have helped!

[KS__]

Thanks Miriam. You are as good as it can get!

I just came across your post on http://www.seomoz.org/q/local-websites-for-raking-in-google-places and that was very helpful indeed too.

Thanks for all the help. I'll get back to you if I need further help.

[MiriamEllis]

I'm so glad to be of help, KS_. See you around Q&A!