As analytic packages allow for greater granularity to geo-targeting and the adoption of mobile devices increases, how local does local have to be?
I am going to argue that you should not give up on nationally targeted geographically specific keywords just yet.
Microsoft Live and Google Analytics have both been working on new features of late and one of the most talked about has been AdWords Geographical Targeting with Google Maps. Now I am strictly an organic search man, but this has made me think about the granularity of local and geo-targeted search and how far it should be taken.
Geo-targeting is industry dependant but, as a rule of thumb, industries which will not benefit from geo-targeting (for example an estate agency where the location of a searcher is not going to be as pertinent as the location of the house) are equally unlikely to suffer from it (to continue with the estate agency analogy,a potential house buyer will be happy to include location details in his query and is very unlikely to make an impulse purchase, particularly at today’s prices).
Shorter term searches, where a user is looking for a swift answer to a pressing question and a handy provider for their requirement are far more likely to convert after one search. With longer term searches, users are going to be more inclined to carry out more investigative research and be more willing to follow links, complete forms and specify locations.
The most obvious examples of restaurants or weather forecasts are likely to have a huge number of false positives – users searching to find out where they can eat that evening when they arrive in Basingstoke or wanting to know what the snow is like in Glentress – but getting results which are tailored to one’s current location is going to be more intuitive than any other alternative.
As a rule of thumb, location-based delivery looks likely to be profitable. Current methods of geographically locating users are still far from ideal, but are improving greatly and that trend looks likely to continue. There is still a third way, however.
I am not advising that you stop advertising locally on non-geo targeted terms (for example, optimising for the term [restaurant] and using the Google Webmaster Tools geographic location feature to confine your page’s area of influence to Exeter). There is a lot to be said for localised advertising and, as mobile devices become more prevalent geo-targeting will become more accurate and should provide a good ROI. However, there remains a strong case for national exposure of geo-targeted terms, for the visitor who is arriving at the airport next week, for example.
I still advise you to put emphasis on advertising nationally on geo-targeted terms (that is to say, not setting a geographical region but bidding on geographically specific terms, for example [exeter restaurant]. As well as working across search providers (and this is a short term gain – other engines will not be tardy in coming into line with Google’s geographical determining options), a page which is optimised for [exeter restaurant] is going to remain the best bet for traffic.
For the moment at least, users are still relying on entering their location, if only because the IP data is still relatively poor. Once mobile device geographical positioning improves (and it certainly will), it is very possible that algorithms will include a user’s location data to try and match local results, but excluding traffic on the basis of the geographical location of the user, whether it be through the Webmaster Console or IP delivery, is inadvisable.
For PPC, where conversion per visitor rates are more important, there is an increased need for geo-targeting in order to maintain an ROI, but for natural, organic search, traffic breeds links, and it is cost per conversion, not visitor percentage conversion rates which must drive your campaign.
Tags: mobile