Local + National seo for a new website

[mlc]

Hi,

Look for idea for a website owner selling training courses on painting , he wants to be ranked locally first but also national on google Serp (only one physical address available). His domain name is rather a branded one (no kw in it), and the website is recent (1 year) . An audit will be focused on competitor rankings to find niche KW.

I 'd advise  :

- For local : optimized Google  address listing  + local business directories + optumized page with local emphasis (shema.org ..)

• For national : to make unique relevant content pages with keywords geographically targeted (according audit), for instance for a specific town, to include terms related to this particular local market etc..

1/ What 's else could i suggest to start a national ranking ?

2/ Have you heard of a tool to make distant queries on Google ? I mean , i leave in Madrid (spain) and want to see google serp as if i was in Barcelona ? (seems difficult as google uses Ip).

Tks in advance for your advices...

[mlc]

Tks for your explanations.

I can't tell you for Spain, as i live in France (just for an exemple i use Spain) ! But I 'm pretty sure that Google handles all his new search features at the same time in France, Spain...(ouest europe). So, we can change location settings in France for some months now, but i think it's only a tiny part on  how the location is handled by google, as you can't change your ip address, your isp,

But regarding "history" as you say, if a user is not logged, google cookies can't store any history , is it (or just a part of it but how much)  ?

Even more, if a user don't allow cookie or javascript on his browser, you won't have any history on google servers.

Tks for your comments on that...

[MiriamEllis]

Hi MLC,

Thanks for coming to Q&A to ask your question. The requirements for your client having a local listing are that he has a:

-Legal Business Name

-Real street address (not a virtual address) where people come to him for services or from which he leaves to render services for clients

-Local phone number.

If he does not have all three of these things, he is not appropriate for inclusion in Local results.

If he does have all three of these things, then a local SEM campaign for him is typically going to include having strong geographic hooks in his site + good local-focused content + inclusion in Google Places and any other local business indexes that are relevant to his country + the acquisition of links, citations and reviews.

In addition to this, you will be implementing traditional SEO techniques for his national SEO campaign.

I want to be sure I am correctly understanding your question regarding making queries from other locations. I believe what you mean is that you are located in a different city in Spain than your client and, thus, you are seeing different results than he. This is true.

However, it is critical for any Local SEO to understand that ALL Internet users see different local results (and organic, results, too) based upon factors including IP address and past user history. Because of this, Local SEOs must educate their clients to understand that no results are set in stone. Even the person living next door to the business owner may be seeing slightly different results because of his past user history.

Now, that being said, in North America, when I do a search for something, the results come complete with a left column that shows my location and asks if I want to change it. Do a search for something like tapas restaurant and see if you get this same column on the left side of the results in Spain. If so, you can change your location from Madrid to Barcelona. Sorry that I'm not 100% positive which options there are in your country - I'm most familiar with how things work in the USA. Try this and see if it works for you.

But bear in mind, no matter what your settings are, there is no such thing as a set of local results that are the same for all users. Because of the way Google now handles relevance for individual users, we all see personalized results.

Hope this helps, and I would appreciate you returning to this thread to let me know if you have the change location capability in Spain. I'm interested!

Miriam

[mlc]

Tks..

I don't want to deceive google, it's not my aim here.

In fact, if you're working for a customer located outside from your office area, the Google serp in Barca or elsewhere are not the same as they are geo targeted according the ip device.

So , to make an audit, sounds like a bit difficult. That's why i look for a way to launch located queries from a distant point, but i'am afraid that is not possible...

[seoroyal]

About the second question i dont know about this and i sound like me google wont like this. So if there are tools like this i would not use them.

If i get i right you are trying to let google think you are in barca when you are not.

[mlc]

Tks for your reply..

What about my question 2**/** regarding a tool  for queries out of a native location ?

Rgds

[seoroyal]

For the national ranking...Do you mean you want your keywords to rank national?

If this is the case try to let your client or you write original content for the site. Content like a small beginners tutorial and make sure that it is worthy for people to link to it. Then get links to it.

Try to get good links from autority pages with your keywords in the anchor texts. I live in madrid to and with good linkbuilding it should not be to much of a problem ranking .  Was this what you where asking?

At the seomoz blog there are some good articles on how to write good content.

remco