3 replies to this topic

[S Wagner]

Anyone have any experience or insight to share on this situation?

Consider an online product reseller, in business for many years in the U.S., page 1 or 2 rankings for a large number of product keywords. They now have opened a product showroom next to their warehouse to sell their products directly to local customers, in addition to their current internet business. The decision to expand business has nothing to do with SEO, just natural expansion.

Should they go after regional/local directory listings and gain visibility in local searches -or- will this negatively impact their solid rankings for non-geographic searches in the major search networks?

Thanks!

[Randy]

I've never seen localized optimization have any negative impact on global efforts. None at all.

In all honesty, if their site is already ranking well for the terms globally it should be a piece of cake to get the local version since the local searches are bound to be many times less competitive. In fact, you may find all you need to do is make mention of the new showroom on the site and provide its address on your most important pages.

I've seen this strategy alone work several times in several markets where there were already good global rankings. Even if the Visit Our Showroom at (insert address info) is being dynamically added in the footer of each page with other contact information.

[OldWelshGuy]

A bricks and mortar address on a website helps you with your google trust ranking in my experience. After all, it is a legal requirement in the uk, and something you would expect to see on any correspondence.

[identity]

If they haven't, they can also register in Google and Yahoo's local business centers which may give them an added boost on local searches. As Randy mentioned, this shouldn't be too hard if they are already strong on global searches.