What is the best way to get found for different areas within my County.

[Web_Prosper_SEO]

my business is based in the UK in the county of East Sussex. It is not a large County and its neighbour is West Sussex. In terms of local search optimisation I would like to be found when people search for East Susses, West Sussex and Sussex. What is the best way to attack this?

e.g.

I could use the keywords, "my business is based in East Sussex, but we work across West Sussex too.

But would this cover me if someone searched "business in Sussex" .

I need some guidance as to the best way to handle this kind of local search conundrum.

Thank you

[MiriamEllis]

Hello There!

Here are a few tips I hope may help you.

1. Local SEO, at its core, is city-based rather than county based. So, the very core of your identity as a local business is based on the city/town/village where you are physically located. This is the locale you will be using in your Google Business Profile and in all of the citations you build, and it's the place in which you'll proclaim yourself to exist on your website.

2. Your Google local rankings will then be based on this physical location as it relates to the locations of searchers when they search for what you offer. How large of a search radius Google will show when someone makes this kind of a search will be based on how much competition there is for the particular keyword phrase. For example, if your business is the only Italian restaurant in a 10 mile/km radius, then you could well show up for searchers quite far away from your business, because Google has few options to return as results. But, if your business is one of 20 bakeries in the center of your town, Google might set a radius that is only a couple of streets wide, and keep changing the local rankings up as the searcher moves around town. In sum, your ability to rank in the local packs for an entire county is entirely predicated on how dense competition is for what you do. If competition is low, you might possibly do this, but it would be the exception rather than the rule, unless your business category is truly unusual. Ranking across two counties would be even less likely.

3. Because local rankings are so highly influenced by user location, the effort to become visible for searches beyond the true local search radius has to be shifted to other campaigns. Instead of local pack rankings for other cities and counties, you can work to achieve:

• Organic results visibility via a combination of content development and link acquisition

• Social media visibility via participation

• PPC visibility via investments in ads

• Offline visibility via community involvement and paid offline media

In general, this is the lay of the land for any business hoping to ranking somewhere beyond its city of location. Hope this helps!

[Web_Prosper_SEO]

Great response Miriam,

I appreciate you giving such a thorough answer !!

[MiriamEllis]

My pleasure! And you might like to know, I have an article coming out on the Moz Blog on this topic later this month. Stay tuned