FRIDAY, JUNE 04, 2010

Website Optimisation To Cater To Local Market

The common perception is that an online business is a global business. However, reality is that truly global sites are few and far between. Most of the businesses running online cater to their local market. Why would someone use a site based in United States to get some flowers delivered somewhere in the West Midlands! In order to serve your local market better, it is a much that you focus website optimisation for that market only.

There are various aspects of website optimisation to cater to your local market.

First of all, you must make sure that all the website content and the keywords are in the local dialect and spelling conventions. In this way, the search engine will get a better match at your site when a local search query is run. People would not change their words and spelling on the web so if you know how or what a local will search, you get an upper hand (and your site gets a better rank).

Second thing is that you must get your site listed with all online local business directories of your area. Various search spiders rely on these business listings for improving their search results. It is like getting your business listed in the Yellow Pages, just in a more internet oriented manner!

Another good way is to include a local industry news section in your website. For example, if you have a local cab service catering to a particular county, include the information about traffic details, road conditions and other news related to road safety etc in your area. This will not only improve your search ranking, it will also improve the credibility of your business. Such functionality can be done easily by RSS or Atom feeds without any significant cost burden.

You must also be active in your local communities online, particularly in the social networks like Facebook and MySpace. This is known as Social Media Optimisation (SMO). SMO is the next big thing in website optimisation. Plus it works really well as a community outreach and market research measure.

Above all, it is important to realise that a local web design company can do better site optimisation because they also cater to your local market. A company based somewhere in Texas or Philippines would have practically no idea of a market like Birmingham or Warwickshire. However a company based in the city itself would perform much better website optimisation for sites catering to these markets.