Performance monitoring is a part of any online activity and any marketing
program, and with SEO there is a large amount of data from various different
sources that can be used. This data enables the SEO to look at how well a site
ranks in the search rankings, how much traffic is being directed, and many
more detailed statistics about visitors. By tracking these statistics on an
ongoing basis it is possible to tweak your efforts, further improve traffic
levels, and ensure that the traffic you do receive is being responsive.

Geo-Targeting And Its Importance

Geographic location may not see like a statistic you can do much with. However,
geo-targeting is a part of any SEO campaign. Some service providers or digital
goods manufacturers are able to operate on a global scale making traffic from
the rest of Europe and the US as important as traffic from the UK. For the
small business that requires on-site access or the delivery of goods UK traffic
may be the only beneficial source of visitors from the search engines.

Checking Statistics

Among the wealth of information readily available to the website owner or
marketer is details about the country and location of visitors. Typically this
data is found in an analytics package and usually includes the country, state,
and city of each visitor. It may also be found with the IP address, as much
of the information is gathered by using the IP address of a visitor. Good statistical
packages should enable you to view each visitor individually or view statistics
regarding visitors from a specific country or location.

Improving UK Based Results

There are methods that a website owner can employ to help ensure that they
perform better on the UK search engines rather than the universal .com engines.
In July, according to the data analysis company Hitwise, approx 73% of UK searches
were conducted on the Google UK website with a further 15% from Google.com.
This shows the importance of letting the search engines know which country
your website hails from and taking advantage of the geographically targeted
visitors that this garnishes as a result.

Local Linking Strategies

Using a UK domain name, registering with a UK based hosting provider, and
using UK spellings will help identify a website as being from the UK but there
are other actions you can take in a bid to highlight this fact even further
to the search engines. Specifically, by gaining links from websites based in
the same country this will pinpoint to the search engines that you offer value
to UK visitors and will help improve geographically targeted search visitors.

UK Search Results

In the UK we tend to search using the UK based search engine pages rather
than the more generic .com pages. While a general SEO campaign will usually
garner reasonable rankings in the UK search results, it certianly doesn’t hurt
to further highlight the point. Using a UK domain, hosting provider, and UK
spellings are all good indicators, and gaining links from UK based websites
will also help to further enhance geo-targeted listings.

Geotargeted keywords are used in various types of online marketing. In SEO terms, they can be considered a type of niche keyword because by geographically targeting search terms, it reduces the number of competitors and provides you with more targeted visitors. This can help a page rank quicker and higher and improve conversion rates of those visitors that do happen across your site.

Local Companies For Local Search

The Internet may be a global tool and provide access to companies and services from around the world but a lot of people would still prefer to deal with local concerns. They prefer the more personal touch that often accompanies this. In some cases, local knowledge can be a big part in helping to win a contract or secure new business.

Levels Of Geotargeted Keywords

At its most generic level, geotargeting can usually be achieved by adding the appropriate country to your search terms. Taking it further, counties, states, cities, and towns can also provide a level of geotargeting that will further reduce your competition and provide greater opportunity to rank highly in the SERPs.

Keyword Research

Rather than simply adding UK to the beginning and end of all your keywords, you should conduct separate keyword research for each one. Some terms may be used more commonly than others in certain areas of the world and even in certain areas of the country. Existing branding can also play a major part in determining the most effective keywords.

Targeting Your Potential Customers

Geotargeting provides a solid way to reduce the number of pages you need to compete with and increases your chances of ranking highly for relevant keywords. By conducting separate keyword research for these geographic keywords you can ensure that you get the best results.