5th October 2007

Geographic search is an important aspect of search engine optimisation, with The Kelsey Group suggesting that up to a quarter of all searches are for local information and suppliers.

It is becoming increasingly important to ensure that your web pages have information that can identify where you are based, such as address, postcode and telephone numbers etc.

"up to a quarter of all searches are for local information and suppliers..."

But what if yours is a larger company with a number of stores or outlets across the country, how do you use this to leverage good coverage in the search engines?

Search Engine Optimise your storefinder.

Many web sites have a store finder facility that via a simple form provides the details of local stores, usually by typing in a postcode or the name of a town or city.

At Mooloop, we have pioneered the development of store finder functionality to deliver the added benefit of geographic search engine optimisation.

Know your key phrases.

Knowing your key phrases (search terms used by visitors to find your web site) will no doubt give you a range of terms such as 'yellow widgets' for each of these terms there will also be geographic variants such as 'yellow widgets Leicester', 'yellow widgets Nottingham' etc.

Now wouldn't it be great if these geographic (local) searches returned your relevant local store for each search?

SEO Content Management.

The content management system and templates that build the final dynamic pages must carry not only information for human site visitors, but also for search engine spiders.

It is important to get the keywords and the semantic structure of the pages absolutely right and this can take several updates over a couple of months. The other is to ensure that the store pages are built into the website in the correct way to ensure complete indexing by search engines.

With the store pages being generated automatically from templates, we then have the option to adjust keywords across all of the store pages quickly and easily, to maintain those search engine results postions (SERPS).