As I said in the beginning, there's a lot to cover and we're about half-way through.  Today, we'll cover why it's important to include your area name since it's usually half of your search phrase. 

 

If you’re looking for a dog groomer you don’t just type “dog groomer” and hit Go – you type “dog groomers in Oklahoma City” so that you only get results you care about. With this in mind the search engines care a bunch about making sure your site is obviously relevant in a specific area. First and foremost you have to mention an area somewhere on your site or you just won’t be a match. Find a way to mention it that doesn’t mess up the flow of the page, like putting it in a headline (like Smalley Properties – Servicing the greater OKC Metro area including Oklahoma City, Moore, Norman and Edmond) or a simple bullet point list (“Learn more about our communities…”).

 

If you’re in a competitive market and need to rank better for certain areas then you may also consider going for the “richness” score and dedicating a part of your site to talking about that area. Create a separate sub-page and go through things like local attractions, reasons to live there, price ranges, neighborhoods, demographics or just about anything else of interest. The search engines will see you’re going into detail, which matters a lot more than simply mentioning an area name in passing on a page. Our "Featured Communities” feature is a great shortcut to creating pages that focus on an area and it just takes a few minutes to run it.  See how easy it is here.

 

Here’s a portion of my “7 Steps to Success” video class that covers more advice on adding area info to your website.