The Importance of Localization in SEO

Do you run a business that targets local customers or customers in a specific geographic location? Then one of the most important aspects that your SEO efforts should focus is localization. What does this mean? Why is localization important for any business? When you take your business online you immediately get into global competition. However, a particular business or brand is in no way your immediate local competition because they are in a different country or different continent. When it comes to the internet, they can very well be your competitors because of the keywords for which they are trying to rank and these websites can take your precious search engine results places. This can prove to be highly disadvantageous to your website.

However, you need not have to worry because you don’t have to fight with global competition all the time if you are a business that is pretty much concerned about local business and local customers. This is where localization becomes important for your website’s SEO.

What exactly is localization? This is the process of making your website relevant for searches that use keywords with place names. The keywords the internet users type to search for a particular service may contain country name, city name, state name or even be narrowed down to street name. Localization makes your website more relevant to these keywords, which contain the geographic quantifiers. This again is very helpful in cutting down the competition level.

Let us consider an example, if your website is targeting customers specifically from Houston, Texas then there is no point competing with websites that try to get ranked for global searches for the same keywords. What you can do here is to make minor tweaks to your website’s page titles, the alt attribute that you use for your images, the website content that you add to your pages, etc., can be made keyword rich with the place names. Even in your link building efforts you need to make sure to add the place names in the hyperlink text all these will tell the search engines that you are a business that is targeting local customers and they will make your website rank for local searches. This way you will be able to get ranked for relevant searches and drive more targeted traffic to your website.

Localization is important not only for organic search optimization but it is even more important if you are using PPC programs. With PPC, each click counts and costs your business money. So it is vital that you drive only the most prospective and highly targeted to ensure better conversion rates.

When you are trying to get your website listed or ranked for local searches, it is vital that you don’t end up with keyword stuffing, which can prove to be counter productive for your brand. If you are not sure how to go about, it is always best to get help from a professional SEO service provider that can optimize your website for local searches in the most search engine friendly way.

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