SEO Blog

You might have notice that I’ve already rather unsubtly provided an example of how you can better improve your site’s strength in your immediate locality. There are examples of this all over the Internet, most of which are a little more subtle and better phrased than the title of this post. A website doesn’t need to just be recognised in its field of expertise, it has to be visible in its geographical location.

By including SEO Hampshire within the title of this blog post, it is more likely to get indexed for that phrase in search engines. That could in turn bring in people who are interested in finding out more about SEO services in Hampshire.

When optimising any website, the two key components that will add the most strength are content and links. Within the realms of content, one of the most important aspects is the title. This is the phrase that the search engine will pick up on and ordinarily assign most weight to. A page should only have one H1 heading, as this ought to be used to only get across the main message of that page – including keywords of course. Any other headings should only be given a H2 tag or lower, so as not to confuse search engines and ruin the strength of the page.

Within your pages you can also include embedded text links. This are the links that you find within the body copy of a page, wrapped around a certain word or phrase. To do this effectively you need to just work it in seamlessly with the rest of the content. For example I could write about anything and then dump SEO Southampton right in the middle and nobody would have a clue why. Keep your content natural and flowing at all times, even when adding links and boosting your local search strength.

Of course you need to work on your keywords, but you shouldn’t forget about your location phrases either. As previously mentioned, and woefully demonstrated, you shouldn’t just include phrases to the detriment of your pages overall flow. The title of this is a good example. “SEO Hampshire” actually has no bearing of what is actually contained in this page. Whilst I’ve written about SEO, there’s nothing particularly relevant to Hampshire within it (other than the location from which it emanated).

If I were writing a services page and wanted to optimise for a location-based phrase, I might use “SEO Services in Hampshire” – which would promote both the key phrase, “SEO Services” as well as the location “Hampshire”. Alternatively you might want to include the phrase within your content, as prominently as possible, and then optimise it by sending over a number of embedded links.

Subtler ways of doing this include keeping the address in the footer of each page. That means Google is given the best opportunity possible for locating your business. It won’t affect the flow of your content either and will also help visitors if they are looking for a quick reference on where they can find you.

Placing a website is often very important to visitors. If they want to do business with you, they first need to know where you are. Then they can visit you or at least have the peace of mind that you aren’t a fly by night outfit. If people are only looking to business within a certain catchment area of their home or office, you need to be sure that you are getting ranked in the search engines and seen by these very important eyes.

Be creative with your local search optimisation techniques, sign up to strong directories or create some inbound links with geographical references. Just don’t let it dominate your SEO work. You can’t allow your desire to include location terms overrun your common sense. Copy still has to be readable and titles have to make sense.