Generating Region-Specific Traffic

"I have a portal website for the construction industry that is region-specific. We focus on three major counties in our state. What is best way to have search engines point to our site when someone searches using the region or county as a specific topic?" -- Josh Weaver

There are several ways to approach this.

• "Free" search engine traffic can be generated for your site when you optimize your webpages using the place names as well as construction trades as keywords. Titles and meta description tags, plus the first or second sentence on your webpages might be something like, "Find general, plumbing and framing contractors for Seattle, Bellevue, Tacoma, Bremerton, Renton, and Kent, Washington, plus other locations in King, Pierce, or Thurston County. So-called "free" search engine traffic is very important for local and regional businesses.
• Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising from Overture and Google allows you to bid on searches that include place names in your local region -- county and city names. However, you may have to pay for a lot of clicks that aren't really looking for your services. Make your ad copy very specific to discourage clicks from anyone not interested in a contractor or the building trades. Your best keyword combinations will be very specific -- "Seattle contractors," "Seattle framing," etc. With Google you can select matching options -- broad match, exact match, phrase match, etc. You may also exclude your ad from searches that contain certain keywords ("negative keywords"), such as other states that have duplicate place names (https://adwords.google.com/select/tips.html).
• Advertise on local portal sites that attract locals, such as newspaper, TV, and radio station sites. Also consider Yahoo! GetLocal City Guides, CitySearch (www.citysearch.com), and other locally-focused portals.

You'll find more information on geotargeting in the "Overview of Local Marketing" section of our Web Marketing Info Center