Geographic Qualifier, SEO best principles for local services Options

[Purple3]

Can you advise best practice approach to SEO for local services - Ive seen 3 types

eg looking to SEO for Denistry services in Liverpool

1. Using key phrase, Denistry services in Liverpool , in H1 , content, alt text etc , some times can look spammy

2. Using key phrase, Denistry services , in H1 , content , alt text etc , some references for Liverpool though with lower keyword density - reads a lot better

3. Using point 2 + separate page purely on Liverpool , could be history , tourism whatever , not relevant to dentistry . This page link is on the site map at the bottom of each page and not directly linked from main visible hyperlinks .


Regards

Paul

[Jill]

#2 for sure.

[qwerty]

#2 plus putting the practice's street address on every page. Potential patients might find such information useful. So will search engines.

[Purple3]

#2 plus putting the practice's street address on every page. Potential patients might find such information useful. So will search engines.

Thanks for confirming my thoughts , point 3 is very tempting as ive seen it done to great effect - are the SE clever enough to work out whats going on and to discount the text on the geographic qualifier ie Liverpool

Regards

Paul

[qwerty]

My main issue with #3 is that it's a waste of effort. It doesn't make sense to me that a dentist's website would include information on the history of Liverpool, because when I'm looking for a dentist, I don't care about local history. The audience for this site is, for the most part, going to be made up of local people looking for a dentist they can see over a period of years. Do they need to learn about Liverpool's history as part of their decision about who's going to get the job of pulling their wisdom teeth?

Unless the dentist's USP is that s/he is an expert on local history and regales his/her patients with thrilling tales of the Beatles' early days while drilling and the folks in the waiting room are watching Of Time and the City (I think that was about Liverpool) on a loop, there's just no point in talking about local history on the website.

Some people will argue that the Liverpool History page is a bad idea because it's a sure sign that the site's been "optimized" (not a very accurate term when it's used to describe wasting time, effort and money, if you ask me). I don't know if there's any truth to that, but it doesn't matter. If you plan your site around what your users need, you won't see any reason to create pages that are irrelevant to the business the site promotes. It really is as simple as that.

[sm911]

For geographic SEO, you should definitely use GEO meta tags.

<meta name="geo.placename" content="Westminster, Londra, Birleşik Krallık" />
<meta name="geo.position" content="51.500152;-0.126236" />
<meta name="geo.region" content="GB-Greater London" />
<meta name="ICBM" content="51.500152, -0.126236" />

[chapulin]

I have a similar question. Say I want a different home page for Canadian customers and another one for US customers (based on IP address). Is it good/bad/indifferent for search engines? I read long time ago that having different content based on IP was bad, but I think it referred to showing different content to search engines as opposed to people.

[Purple3]

For geographic SEO, you should definitely use GEO meta tags.

<meta name="geo.placename" content="Westminster, Londra, Birleşik Krallık" />
<meta name="geo.position" content="51.500152;-0.126236" />
<meta name="geo.region" content="GB-Greater London" />
<meta name="ICBM" content="51.500152, -0.126236" />

Hi - not heard that using GEO meta tags is picked up by Google - Where can I learn more

Im learning a lot

Regards

Paul

[qwerty]

I don't think Google pays attention to those tags. There may be some sites out there that do, but I'm not aware of any.

[Jill]

Hi - not heard that using GEO meta tags is picked up by Google - Where can I learn more

They don't. I don't think you need to use those tags, and if you do, it's doubtful Google will notice.

[jass_blink]

How good or bad is #1 technique in comparison with #2? Why not have Liverpool in the Title and h1?

[SEO FF]

I agree with qwerty here. Having pages about the history of liverpool can only distract your visitors. Something you may be interested in doing is targeting a few other local cities. Perhaps on these pages you can target the next city over and provide directions and speak to different geo graphics areas. Just an idea.

You may however, try to obtain some links from other sites in Liverpool including history or tourism sites. This can help you gain some local ground and is still related to your site.

I'm not quite sure why # 2 would be better than # 1, especially if you are targeting these services in a specific place. Hopefully someone will dive a little deeper into this comparison.

[adibranch]

For me, #2 will work , but only because dentistry services in liverpool is such a low competition term. Should it be more competitive you wouldnt get away without mentioning it in titles, h1 etc. However, you say #1 may look spammy, but a page full of copy with liberal sprinklings of liverpool in every paragraph (such as in #2) is also spammy.


There's nothing wrong with mentioning it in titles or H1 anyway.. That is , after all, describing exactly what the site and service is about. Its a dentist inliverpoool, so put it in your titles as such.

This post has been edited by adibranch: Oct 29 2009, 05:30 AM

[SEO FF]

There's nothing wrong with mentioning it in titles or H1 anyway.. That is , after all, describing exactly what the site and service is about. Its a dentist inliverpoool, so put it in your titles as such.

Okay, so I'm not losing my mind. I'm not quite sure why #2 would be a better option over #1 especially considering the competitiveness of those terms.

[adibranch]

#2 would be enough to rank well enough for the term yes, but not to top it. Whereas #1 if done properly could quite easily get you to the top purely from the onpage/site, and it certainly isnt spamming as it describes exactly what the business is.