Maximising Local Search

[simonsw]

Hi,

I work for a weather company. I have recently begun to define a keyword strategy to target specific keyphrase segments with the objective to maximise webpage visibility and increase CTR.

One growing keyphrase segment is "location weather" based searches (e.g. "London Weather", "Manchester Weather"). I am keen to understand how I can maximise our presence for location weather searches within the SERPs. This seems to be a common trends seeing as Google announced that over 20% of all searches contain a relevance to locality.

I have been trying to understand if there is a way to maximise our location based weather pages, perhaps using the Google Local search tactic and if there are any recommendations you could suggest?

ISSUE: In order to maximise your presence through local search you need a fixed address, something  our site does not offer, however it does offer bespoke landing pages for a specific weather forecast based on locality (city, town etc)

Essentially, are there any recommendations you can provide a website that offers specific location based pages (without a fixed address) to maximise our location weather based search rankings within the SERPs?

Many thanks

Simon

[Goetzman]

Well, I know having P.O Boxes is against the Google Places guidelines making them a negative local ranking factor. so lets throw that idea out.

I found the best method was local directories and backlinks on local pages with proper anchors.

I'm interested in seeing what others suggest. This may also help: http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml

[MaryAnneG]

Google Places (formerly, Google Local) isn't the right solution for a situation like this - you need to have a bona-fide address at each location to list there.

Some people USED to get around the PO box requirement by using mail centers that provide you with a street address instead of a box number, however I don't recommend this. Not only would it be an unreliable tactic on a large scale, but it would be way too easy for Google to identify and block these providers (if they aren't already.)

At the risk of stating the obvious, make sure the location is in your page titles. Local directories are a start, but try to get backlinks from local businesses and resources.  What are your competitors doing that you can do better? Lots of web sites post local weather links - the trick is in getting them to post YOUR link.

Hope this helps!

[perfectweb]

Have you thought about using micro-formats?

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=146897

If these are not currently affecting rankings, they certainly will be going forward. Very cheap to implement as well.

[simonsw]

Thanks for the responses guys...

The specific location based weather pages have been optimised within the page titles. As you suggest, I've been targeting high authority local websites that provide specific local content (sport, lifestyle, events, news etc).

This seems to be the only solution to the problem in trying to increase our ranking for these pages, any other suggestions would be much appreciated