How to balance International and Local Search targeting?
-
Hi guys,
A local company provides tourism services in Spain but its potential clients reside abroad in USA mostly.
This means we have 2 search potentials:
1. For reaching international clients via international search in advance before they arrive (preferred).
2. Last minute booking potential for local serach when they have already arrived and seek a service while already here.So far we have targeted USA and international searches solely and ignored local search. We have tried to target our website to USA in GoogleWebmasterTools and link building location mostly.
But what about local search? Would establishing ourselves in Local Search (google places and maps etc) be a confusion for Google and mess with our good rankings in US? Or would it add to our potential of additional last minute local seaches?
What's the best approach in a situation like this? Is a happy medium possible?
Thanks in advance.
-
Hi Again Emerald,
I hope we are all understanding your question better after the further details you have provided. As you answered all of my 4 questions - positively - for your city in Spain, then there is no reason why you cannot engage in a Local Search campaign. When I search, from my computer in the USA, for 'travel agency madrid, spain' Google shows me local results for that city. So, yes, it is certainly possible for you to do this.
You will want to make sure that your website has basic local optimization in place and then get the business listed in Google Places and other relevant local business indexes.
On a final note, I need to mention that I would not recommend setting up any virtual offices either in the USA or Spain as this would violate Google's Places Quality Guidelines. See: http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528
Hope this helps!
Miriam
-
Thanks for your responses. I had meant whether we should go after Local Search Spain rather than US for last minute bookers?
Do you all mean therefore that it's only applicabe for going for local search in USA as our clients reside in USA (this could be true for advance bookings like situation 1, but what about my last minute situation 2 above)?
So I shouldn't bother with Local Search ideas for Spain (last minute US clients already in Spain searching for last minute tour etc).
I guess this is more complicated because of the international situation - would love advice for our particular international situation, unless I misunderstood.
Miriam to answer your question:
1. We have a legal business name in Spain.
2. Our real physical location in not in US. We do not have US PO box. We reside and operate from a city in Spain.
3. Our local area code phone number will be in our city in Spain, not US.
4. Last minute bookers can call into our office in Spain.But again our incoming clients are Americans from USA, hence the question on how to approach this.
-
Greetings, Emerald!
Thank your for coming to Q&A with your question. I'm the Local SEO Associate here in the forum. While a local campaign in highly unlikely to injure your international results, you must be able to answer yes to having ALL of these items in place in order to qualify as a local business:1. A legal business name.
2. A real physical location in a city in the US (not a virtual office, P.O. box, shared space or any other substitute)
3. A local area code phone number in the city of location (not a redirected phone number or toll free number)
4. You must either be the sort of business to which clients come to do face-to-face business in your office in this city, or, you must have staff that goes out from the office to the clients' homes or businesses. If business is conducted virtually, it does not qualify as local in the eyes of the search engines.If your client can answer yes to all 4 of those things, then they can certainly engage in some Local SEM. You would want to have a good landing page on the cite for the city in question, and also include the complete NAP in the website footer site-wide. You would want copy that speaks to the geography of this physical location. Additionally, you would want to get your client correctly profiled at Google Places, Yahoo Local, Bing Local and other relevant directories.
Sincerely hope this answer helps. Good luck!
Miriam -
I would go as far as to invest in a local phone and address with a virtual office for a few months to build with the page.
-
In order to build the local search. Create a page for each city. I would do 5 at a time and personalize it. Go where you get the most clients first. So Spain. Travel to Spain. Have a page for NY, LA, Chicago, Houston And Philly first., Customize it for the city and build from there.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
When should i use 'Generated search clicks'?
Dear MOZ Community, When should i use 'Generated search clicks' (Links to google site results with your site results) in my content? Instead of direct links or ads to my site? For instance: I'm posting on social media or in a newsletter about a Top 5 OLED tv's.
Branding | | TimThijsse
Should i use a direct link to my Top 5 OLED page or should i use a link to search results on my page? https://www.plattetv.nl/categorie/top-5-oled?utm_source=social&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=Top-5-OLED
or
a search-click generator: https://www.google.com/search?q=plattetv.nl+top-5-oled Best regards, Tim Thijsse1 -
International SEO - Domains or Folders?
Hi, We have been approached by a potential client. They are a UK company whose website is hosted on a .com domain (the .co.uk forwards to the .com). They also have a German website hosted on a .de domain. Both the .com and the .de are hosted in the UK. We believe that the .de website should be hosted in Germany. You agree? Anyway, they now need to target the US market. They are planning on duplicating the UK (.com) website and creating a US version of the site on a .us domain. They would rewrite the content for the US site to avoid duplications, and add Href Lang attributes etc. They are also debating whether the new US site should be hosted in the US or the UK. We don't think this is the best strategy. Would it not be better to host both the UK and US website on the .com domain. using reginal folders? i.e. example.com/uk, and example.com/us. Obviously we would setup Href Lang accordingly and change the Google Search Console geo targeting options for each of the sub-sites (/uk and /us). Or we could suggest hosting the UK site on the .co.uk domain, and the US on the .com domain. So, what is the best strategy to target the US audience, whilst maintaining UK rankings? Many thanks for your time, hope to hear from you soon 🙂 Lee.
Branding | | Webpresence1 -
Branded Search Results
I was searching Walgreen and I noticed a link next to business link in the results. You click on it and it's a breakdown of the business - business bio. How does that appear? Is there something that can be done to have it display? Image attached. 1pPgD
Branding | | Kdruckenbrod0 -
Are you ever handicapping yourself in search by using a subfolder over a new domain/website?
Hello Moz Community! We are building a separate hospital related to a single service line that is currently part of our main website. Traditionally all our hospitals are folded into one website with the same brand. Problem: Our organization's leaders want to market the new hospital as "Brand Name X" nationally, and not use our locally strong brand name at all. Therefore is the smarter long-term decision to begin building content on a new website with the new "Brand name X" even though it will take longer and be harder, than building it on our big, established website with a 60+ DA site? What I fear is our current website's DA won't matter much if people nationally are using Brand X, which isn't part of our traditional brand name? And they won't be using the traditional brand name at all. Example Scenario: We create a new hospital just focused on heart-related issues. Do we move the bulk of information for this new hospital from http://www.nebraskamed.com/heart, to a new website that will better rank with the new brand X and for just heart-related keywords? Or is it still better to try and stick with the same domain in a subfolder?
Branding | | Patrick_at_Nebraska_Medicine0 -
Google Local deleted my Google+ Accounts
I had a Google places/local account with several different businesses listed at the same address--they are separate businesses. I recently received an email from Google saying this violated their terms of use. I am not allowed to have several businesses listed in Google local with the same address. Google decided which of the businesses to keep and which to neglect, despite my request. So essentially they are putting us out of business by not including our money-maker in local results. Recently my company moved and now we have different suite numbers for each business. A customer can come into any of those and purchase in person, or they can purchase online. In trying to clean up my Google local account, I deleted the least important businesses, trying to get the "money maker" on local results. But now I cannot have a local account because I do not have 10 businesses listed, but I cannot have 10 businesses because they all have the same address (now different suite #'s). My Google+ pages have been deleted due to the Local business deletion. When I search for our main keyword, companies come up from all over the US but none in Arizona where we are located. Is there any way to get my Google plus pages back? Is there any way to get my main site back on Google local? Can I assign a Google + page with a company?
Branding | | RoxBrock0 -
Local SEO (UK)
Hi all, Question about 'local SEO' or 'Google Places' or whatever it is now called! 🙂 My day to day work is in house for a UK national travel agency and I pretty much know what is expected and what I need to do with regard to SEO. However, I have a friend who owns an 'upmarket' hair salon in my city of Sheffield (UK) and after a rebrand and a complete new website he has asked for my help with regard to 'local SEO' This is my dilemma, because the salon only wants to target the local area of Sheffield (5th largest city in UK with approximately 500k inhabitants) should I focus solely on 'Google Places' and if so, can anyone recommend any guides, books, or training that will give me an overview of what is required? I have previously 'touched' on citations and claiming the 'Google Place' but I could seriously do with a refresh! Many thanks Andy
Branding | | TomKing1 -
Local Business Listings
We have about 60+ local businesses under our main brand we are hoping to manage "easily". We are looking at these three, but unsure which will work the best: www.ubl.org localeze.com yext.com Our past vendor worked with localeze, but had some problems with axicom listings. We are leaning towards Yext, but not sure what all the differences are and if we are comparing apples to apples. Thanks!
Branding | | kerplow0 -
Business Acquisition: Balancing SEO and Customer Awareness
I'm looking for opinions on the following scenario: SuperWidgets buys GreatWidgets. That business acquisition involves the purchase of GreatWidgets.com, a standard but well-established website with some nice backlinks. The business acquisition is communicated to previous customers of GreatWidgets through the normal channels. What should be done with GreatWidgets.com. Re-direct to a splash page informing visitors of the acquisition? 301 page-to-page for directly relevant content? If a splash page, how long would you keep it up? Also, any opinions on how to handle any non-claimed local listings for the now-acquired business? Claimed ones will of course be handled, but what about the non-claimed and unclaimable?
Branding | | MRCSearch0