Targeting a city or state

I've been reading about SEO for about a couple years now and I haven't really ran across this. How would you do SEO to target a city or a couple of cities next to each other?

Say you want to be found in Orlando for the keyword computer services. Do you need to write computer services in Orlando in your copy or do the search engines already realize where your business is located so you don't need to have the city in the phrase? It just seems like it would be really redundant to keep writing the name of the city in the title bar or in the copy.

 

There are a few ways to approach this. First, I would use the adwords keyword tool or wordtracker and make sure those are viable search terms. About 5 years ago I was optimizing my site for seo services aspen colorado. I did not know back then that its not a search term. Go figure, I live in a 4 block town.

At any rate, you can target local stuff a bit differently by submitting your site to google maps and running an offsite campaign that involves posting reviews on places like city search etc.

Ok, I went ahead and ran the keyword tool for you. This will help you determine what to target. I need to re up my wordtracker account. Adwords takes some other things into account but its pretty close.

http://www.jnlew.com/dump/orlando.csv this will be pretty self explanatory. I ran it with the query computer repair orlando.

hope that helps,
Nigel

 

Thanks for the response. What program do you use to generate that csv file?

 

You can use AdWords Keywords Tool to see keyword search volumes and export it into .csv.

 

Yea I see the export feature now. Any other opinions or targeting a local area?

 

Local is generally pretty easy to target since so few people do it..

Having your physical address in your footer on every page, claiming your location on Google Maps and Local, and tossing a handful of anchor text appropriate links at the site is generally enough..

 

Yeah, get some pens printed with your business info on it. I hand them out handfulls at a time. Any place that takes a credit card is golden. Convenience stores, the beer store is flippen huge. People walk off with their pens all the time. Hence, they are happy to take them, and they also get circulated like the plague

Nigel

 

look up what keywords are being searched with your city name and use them in articles, press releases, title tags, h1 tags etc...and if possible get backlinks from web sites in that locale.