Incorporating Geo Signals on Your Website

There are a number of factors that affect a site’s rankings and visibility for a particular geo target or location. These geo ranking signals can improve the ranking of your site and get maximum visibility. Here’s a list of signals to focus on for maximizing local visibility and for leveraging the local ranking signals.

Using DNS location for targeting a particular search index
Top Level Domain (TLD) and Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) signals
Management of (Name, Address, Phone Number) NAP
Geo Targeted outreach
Geo Targeted citations
GEO Tagging Your Images

Use Google Webmaster Tool Settings to Manipulate Geo Target Signals

A key factor to raising site visibility in a local search engine optimization campaign is to target the right search index. Google Webmaster Tools Advises:

Google has clarified that in case a site is a neutral top-level domain including .org or.com, geo targeting helps the search engine in determining how that site appears in Geo targeted search results. It also helps in improving the search engine results for queries related to a particular geography. Webmasters should select “Unlisted” in case they do not want to associate their site with any particular location.

This also indicates that Google considers some top-level domains as neutral, which means these domains are not associated with a particular country or search index. Simply start with a generic or neutral top-level domain for raising visibility of your website on a global level. If you already have a neutral domain and want to target a particular search index or a specific country, you need to go to the International Targeting option available under Search Traffic in GWT.

There is a lot of information on neutral top-level domains and the way Google determines the search index. Some of the generic top-level domains in the list may also surprise you. Remember that the Google.com index is also the International index which also indicates that there is no particular index for US.

Geo Signals for Manipulating Search Index

Location of the host or the domain name servers is another factor that needs to be considered. However, it is also important to consider that the domain name servers for a host need not necessarily be located in the same country and that may be the Geo targeting signal considered by Google. The top-level domain is the strongest signal when it is not a neutral/ international/generic TLD.

When it comes to generic top-level domains, Google uses a lot of interesting signals to determine the rankings. Some of the signals include the IP address of the web host, links to a webpage, location information on a particular page which becomes a stronger signal with Schema.org markup, related information from Google My Business and Geo targeted citations.

Links to a webpage is extremely important for international companies that want to get ranked in multiple indexes targeting multiple countries. Start with a generic/neutral top-level domain. You shouldn’t select a particular country in Google Webmaster Tools. Try to recieve links from websites with signals that may be easily defined as being from the particular country you are targeting.

It is extremely important to include niche specific and country specific directories that are often broken down at country/city level for local search engine optimization as part of overall SEO campaign.

Geo Targeted Outreach

Focus the local SEO citation building and to geo-target your outreach efforts. The structured citations include business listing sites and directories whereas the unstructured citations include blogs and websites that do not have any listing or topographic structure. Try targeting unstructured citations at the city level.

Make sure to choose blogs specific to your niche, and not general blogs. You can usually determine that by visiting the home page of the blog where the topic of the site should be clear. The biggest problem is that generic blogs may be targeting by Google’s algorithm and audited for suspected footprints.

Management of NAP

NAP refers to Name, Address and Phone number. Make sure that your business NAP is consistent throughout your website and on related directory listings. If you have a suite number, add that each time.

In terms of off-site management, you need to claim all the listings to make sure that nobody else can claim and mess with your listings. Google has also recently made changes to its Google My Business criteria which mean you may have a problem getting all your businesses listed in case you are using the same NAP for multiple businesses.
So each picture will have your business name, address, phone number, website all tagged right into the photo, So no matter were you put or send your pictures they will have your business citation included in them, So Google will see the picture with you citation and all the information no matter were they are on your website or uploaded to photo sharing site the opportunity is end less.

GEO Tagging Photos

Make sure Google knows WHERE your business is located! GEO Tagging Your Images.
Each picture setting will have your address coordinates tagged right into them, Use those images on your website, upload them to your local directories, share them on your social platforms and uploaded to photo sharing site the opportunity is endless!