Online Marketing is much more effective if you appeal to specific people, interests or locations and if you have a business based on the Costa del Sol you should be making use of your location to improve on the relevancy of your website to searchers looking for Costa del Sol based businesses. This can be done in a variety of ways….
Directing your website and information to people based in a particular area is known as geomarketing. Location specific online marketing including Local SEO has the ability to positively affect your traffic and conversions as it improves the relevancy of your website by targeting the specific area(s) you are able to service.
If you have a website that is targeting a specific country there are a number of things you can do to ensure the search engines know exactly where your business is based and where your potential customer base is. This may include;
1) A country specific top level domain (TLD), for example, .co.uk or .es
2) Hosting in the country you are targeting. Perhaps not a huge factor but a site hosted in Spain is going to be seen as more relevant to a Costa del Sol based search than a site hosted outside of the country. If you have a .es then Google will take it to be that you are targeting Spain but if you are targeting an English market with a .com domain and are in Spain then your hosting location may play more of a role.
3) Use Webmaster Tools to let Google know which country you want to associate your website with. On the WMT home page go to Site Configuration >> Settings >> Geographic Target
Online Marketing for your business on the Costa del Sol
Narrowing this down further, if you are based on the Costa del Sol and have a website specialising in products or services only available to those on the Costa del Sol, as well as following the above points you can also do the following;
1) Choose location specific keywords. If you have a location specific service or product, i.e. something that is only of interest to people within a certain radius to you, you should use your location as part of your keywords. If you have a website for your kennels and cattery in Marbella on the Costa del Sol, optimising your website for “Kennels Spain” or “Catteries Spain” is not going to help the person who lives in Barcelona and is looking for somewhere for Scooby-Doo to stay for 2 weeks while she’s in Greece (unless of course you have a chain of kennels across Spain and just happen to live on the Costa del Sol)…..
Your keywords should follow the format keyword + location, i.e. alongside each other to maximise on the SEO benefit and to get your site ranking for the exact search query.
2) Write effective content for your website that gives a clear indication of your location and have your Costa del Sol address visible on your website. Use your keywords and location in a variety of different ways, make your content appear natural as well as clearly indicating your base. Not only does Google see this info and indexes and ranks your site accordingly but other website owners will visit your site and want to link back to you if they find your site interesting and relevant enough to their own customers.
3) Relevant inbound links from other local website owners. An inbound link from a website with a similar theme and also based in the same location will generally hold more value than otherwise.
4) Verifying your address with Google Maps. If your company is listed on the Local Business listings in Google, your location on the Costa del Sol can be seen.
5) Find and research local forums that you may be able to participate in to improve brand awareness to the local market. Remember to include your website and company details in any profile if anyone wants to look you up and contact you. Forums will often have no-follow links and so any links to your website may not hold any SEO value but it will certainly get your name and brand out there.
Costa del Sol SEO and You
In comparison to many traditional forms of marketing, a website is working for you 24/7. It doesn’t run out, it doesn’t stop working, it’s not “only available on Fridays” and instead, when built and marketed correctly, can generate you business from the Costa del Sol in a successful and effective way. It’s always worth bearing in mind that there should be synergy between your offline and online marketing means. Traditional marketing can be used to complement to your online efforts and will reinforce your message online.
SEO Virgin works with Artemis Internet Marketing, a leading Internet Marketing company in Spain based in the Marbella area on the Costa del Sol. Over the years, Artemis Internet Marketing has built up the Artemis Media Network, a network of websites that have helped many a local business to the Costa del Sol as well as all over Spain achieve improved rankings for their geo-specific keywords and local SEO efforts which has led to vastly increased traffic and revenue.
With an impressive number of Spain-specific websites, the Artemis Media Network Costa del Sol specific property websites alone generate over 10,000 visitors per month of which an average of around 84% are unique. Artemis have been on the Costa del Sol for several years now and have stood the test of time and seen many other internet marketing companies come and go. As one of the very few that has managed to build as well as maintain such an impressive network of websites, SEO with Artemis Internet Marketing can give your Costa del Sol website the edge over any competition.
If you want to know more about Costa del Sol Online Marketing and any of the above points feel free to get in touch and subscribe to the SEO Virgin blog to have future posts on how to choose the best keywords for your website and for a follow up post to the recent SEO Copywriting entry.
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