Allocating adequate budget for Search Engine promotion may result in High rankings of the website on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). This would substantially augment visitor count, however it may not necessarily result in increased revenues.

The most effective promotion of a website is to have it visible where the target audience is. A potent tool to address this requirement is Geo Targeting which allows the website to be visible to only a specified audience based on their geographic origin.

Geo Targeting, or geographical targeting, is a mechanism through which the website can control the display of the content to specific geographical location. This targeted content may be advertisements, product news, or city specific information.

Geo Targeting has special relevance for local businesses that want to target the audience of a particular region e.g. Plumbing services, florists etc.

In this newsletter we would attempt to discuss the implications of Geo Targeting, and how the Search Engine promotion strategies can be altered to benefit from this opportunity.

Geo-Targeting is the ability to advertise the Online marketing campaign in a certain geographic area, which is achieved by tracking the IP address of the website as well as the person initiating the search. Likewise, Local Search is the actual search that one performs with the intention of doing it in a designated area only. This is often done by appending names of cities or states into the search query.

In their pursuit of delivering relevant results for such search queries, the Search Engines have started to accord more importance to the Origin of the website, and the audience that it purports to address. This results in delivery of relevant results.

While the inherent benefit of Geo Targeting is that it delivers relevant results, it has advantages for the Website owners too.

By attracting the desired audience, it ensures that the website owners get maximum ROI for their advertising spend.

It also allows creation of a level playing field for all websites, irrespective of their size. Hence, a big marketing campaign may not necessarily result in a larger audience, but a more targeted promotion campaign with a local flavor would. Therefore, a smaller web business with a better understanding of the local market would have an edge over a larger web enterprise, since most consumers are fairly provincial when it comes to their preferences.

Another use of Geo Targeting is localization. For instance, if a website features multilingual content, say English and French. By default, the English version is visible. However, if a visitor comes from France or any other French speaking region, the website would serve the French copy by default.

To capitalize on this opportunity and benefit from the advantages of Geo Targeting, would require making the website compliant to the contemporary website ready for Geo Targeting. This would necessitate a few technical changes to the website. However, before discussing the necessary plans, the operational intricacies of the Geo Targeting process should be understood.

Geo Targeting happens at the server level, before the result page of a query is sent to the browser. When a user requests a page from the server, the server checks the user's IP address against a database of worldwide IP addresses. The database identifies the country (at times even the city) of the user's IP address, and then the server sieves the available information to show only the relevant information. E.g. if the search query is initiated from Montreal, and involves a search for Plumbing services, the results displayed would be of all the plumbing services firms based in and around Montreal. The server would sieve the results and not display the Plumbing services firm operating out of any other city in the world.

1. Country-specific domain name – e.g. .com or .co.ca or .co.uk etc.

2. The geographic location of the server where the site is hosted. This may not be as accurate since a lot of hosting providers may have their offices in one country, but use servers and equipment based elsewhere.

3. The language used in the website content as the different dialects would determine the origin of the search. E.g. A search for "color scheme" indicates that the search has its origin in the US while "Colour Scheme” would indicate a UK origin.

4. The origin of the Inbound Links to the website.

5. Geographic location of the visitors to the website. If the site has more traffic from UK, it is likely to rank higher in Google.co.uk vis-à-vis Google.com

Having understood that the information is edited at the server level, there is a need to make changes on the website to address the server level requirements. The following changes would be mandated:

1. Buying a domain name of the country where the website is to be promoted would be helpful for Geo Targeting. In the same sense, it is also a good idea to host the site in the country, which is being targeted for promotion.

2. Making the content to be in sync with the style of writing that your target audience is familiar with, will enhance the readability of the content and make the site more popular amongst the intended audience. The spellings and use of the wording should be given greater emphasis. E.g. "Lawyers” are referred to as Barristers or Solicitors in the UK and Australia, but in the US the term used is Attorney.

3. Obtaining links from other thematically relevant local sites would help in promoting the website in the specified geographic location.

4. Submitting the website to the local business directories and search engines is also recommended as these are known to be the preferred search medium of the local audience. However, care should be taken to ascertain that the local directory is authoritative and is frequented by the visitors.

5. Highlighting the address, location and contact details prominently all across the website would ensure that the search Engine crawlers capture this information and index the website as a local business.

6. It is also recommended that the website be designed to suit the style and taste of the intended audience. This may require a market research in to the behavioral patterns of the audience as well as understand other demographic parameters.

While these points may not be comprehensive, however, addressing these requirements would improve your chances of reaching out to the desired geographic location better. This is an evolving methodology and may further improve in the coming months and we will keep you posted on the developments.