Google has become notorious for running updates to the search engine’s indexing and ranking algorithms, and one of the most recent updates was Google Venice. The update was a part of the search engine’s desire to localize search results and make it easier for people to find local businesses. When people search for a business or product type and add their location or chose the “search nearby” option, they are given a list of results based on their geolocation.
How Does Google Venice Work?
When a localized search occurs, the results that are most closely associated with a location are giving top search engine rankings, even if they have poor search engine rankings in a non-localized search. This means that websites can greatly improve their search engine ranking by optimizing their content and web pages for both regular and localized SEO. While it is clear that there is a lot of ground to be gained by localizing your content for Google Venice, how do you go about doing so?
Taking Advantage of Google Venice
There are a number of ways that you can ensure that you are taking advantage of Local Venice to improve your search engine rankings and traffic to your website. These include finding your target markets, developing content and HTML for these target markets and if you have local storefronts, making sure that you are listed in yellow pages websites. One of the first things that you should do is look for the market areas that you want to develop content for. While you may want to eventually expand your reach over time, it is best to start creating content for a few large areas.
Determine Your Target Markets
An excellent method for determining your best target markets is to look at your web analytics. Google analytics and other web analytic services offer you information about the geographic area that your visitors come from. Using this data you can either go after markets that you know are interested in your products or choose to develop SEO for markets that you want to grow into.
Create Localized Content
Once you have determined where you want to focus content building, you should start creating articles and posts that use keywords related to the areas that you are building content for. Common examples of these keyword phrases are “technical support in Austin, TX,” “used cars in Orlando, FL” or “buying homes in Rochester, NY.” In addition to creating keyword content that uses specific location keywords, it is also important that the URLs for your content reflect the geographic location that you are targeting. This means that you should have folders and web addresses for this content that include the city and state that you are targeting. This will help to ensure that your content is indexed by Google as being a localized search result.
Get Listed in Online Yellow Pages
If you are a local business or have local storefronts, be sure that you are listed in a number of yellow pages websites. This will not only improve your backlinking numbers, but it will also ensure that Google associates your website with these particular locations. This will also make it more likely that your website is recognized as a localized search result by Google.
Ultimately Google Venice provides opportunities for websites to improve their search engine rankings by creating localized content. Since localized content gets higher priority than non-local content, even websites that are in a highly competitive keyword market can greatly improve their search engine rankings.
Jennifer Carrigan wrote this article on behalf of San Diego SEO, where you can get advice on Internet marketing.