When Is Geotargeting Necessary?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Monday, 6 of October , 2008 at 8:06 am

Search engine optimization geotargeting is getting to be much more popular today than it used to be. As more and more businesses go online, and many of them are local businesses trying to leverage the internet to increase their local business, then more of those companies are engaging in the practice of geotargeting. Is it necessary? If so, how do you know when to geotarget your website versus going it full force with a global SEO effort.

That’s a good question. If you geotarget your SEO then you’ll find that the competition is a lot slimmer. But your prospect list is much smaller as well. I’d say you probably do not want to geotarget if the pool of potential prospects for your business is so small that even getting a respectable percentage of the local market isn’t worth your time and investment to build the website. You do want to geotarget if your business is a service business that provides services that can only be delivered in person or at a specific physical location - for instance, an auto mechanic.

Besides these obvious examples, are there circumstances that might tip the decision making process one way or another - toward geotargeting or against it? One thing to consider, of course, are your business goals. What is the point of your website? But besides that …

I’d say you might want to consider geotargeting if any of the following applies to your situation:

• You provide a product that will only appeal to be in your geographical area
• You only want to do business with people in your area and not “worldwide”
• You have a global aspect to your business but you want to explore a narrower geographical niche
• You want to run a specific campaign targeting a specific geographical region
• You know there is a high demand for your product or service in your specific area
• You are a local business and people in your area know you and respect you and will do business with you online
• You want a website to drive traffic to your local brick and mortar store
• You want to build a local brand

There may be other reasons you want to geotarget, but these are the general reasons why people set up a website for geotargeting. If your product or service is one that appeals to a global audience as well as a local audience then you might have two websites - one to target the local market and one to target the broader “global” market. Another approach is to set up a website where specific pages are geotargeted but the focus of the entire website is global. At any rate, geotargeting is a growing trend in Internet marketing and I see it gaining even more popularity as more businesses go online to do business.

                      Category: Local Search Engine Marketing, SEO