Promotion in Regions: Which Method to Choose
Regardless of the direction of your site, all efforts for its promotion should be focused where potential clients are located. In this way, you can avoid excessive competition and ensure greater visibility for your site. Today we will discuss regional targeting, which involves using the exact address of the company, its number, where the settlement code is indicated, as well as information about the region.
To effectively rank a resource in a specific area, you should target as much data as possible at the residents of that area. Today you will learn how SEO optimization is generally conducted by regions in the most popular search engines and whether methods differ depending on the industry.
SEO Promotion by Regions – General Information
The foundation of promotion by city is linked to geographic placement. The search engine needs to understand where the company is territorially located.
Let’s consider the main ranking parameters in the search engines that interest us:
- It is necessary to enhance commercial factors. In the most visible places of the site (header, footer, and category with contact details), leave the addresses and phone numbers of the places where your target audience is located.
- It’s important to make articles and tags unique. In the H1 header, title, and description, incorporate the name of the settlement to which the site relates.
Ways to attract traffic to the site from specific regions differ in Yandex and Google. For Yandex, the region’s relation has greater significance, as this search engine gives a huge percentage of traffic to the region. For Google, the link factor plays a more important role. If the domain is strong, the relationship to a specific region does not improve ranking indicators.
When promoting a web resource in a specific region, you need to consider the peculiarities of each search engine’s operation.
Yandex works as follows:
- Location. You need to indicate the region and contact details (location and phone numbers). The name of the settlement should appear in anchor links.
- Usage of the necessary city’s toponyms on web pages. For example, “TV in Kiev,” “buy a TV in Kiev.”
- Use the name of the web resource in sources for a specific city. With the help of links, you can increase traffic, domain significance, improve the website’s place for local queries, and also make it visible on Maps.
- Behavioral factors. From which cities do the people visiting the site come from and what actions do they perform.
- Advertisements in social networks. Search engines will like it if you place ads in social networks.
- Micro-formatting contact details. This way, search engine robots will find it easier to familiarize themselves with the data of the web resource and understand its geolocation.
Google primarily takes into account link factors and enterprise location.
If you enter any query in Google, you will end up with two output options. The first is local, and the second is organic, and each of them applies its own distribution factors. If you take into account the importance of each of the local output factors in descending order, the business signals will be in the first place, and the social signals will be in the last. The first place in organic output is taken by link factors. What do they denote?
- Link factors are the text with keys, the number of links, as well as the level of domain authority.
- Business signals relate to the real geolocation of the enterprise (office).
The site will reach the leading positions in both Google outputs if the person entering the query is geographically located as close as possible to the company’s office. If the user has not enabled location, then the importance will depend on how close the company is to the city center. And, accordingly, if the company does not have an office in a particular city, it will be difficult to get into the top positions in both organic and local output.
If you want your web resource to occupy a leading position in the found results, you need to add it to “Google My Business.” Here you also need to consider some tips:
- in the card, fill in the sections both with the main and additional category;
- confirm the information in the card;
- upload high-quality photos;
- fill out all the sections of the card;
- implement keys in the title.
It is necessary to try to fill out all the sections of the card because the more information there is, the clearer it is what you represent.
How to Promote a Site in the Regions
There are several options for promoting sites, and each of them has its own working characteristics. This will depend on the activity direction, location, and the chosen search engine.
For example, the first method is suitable for sites with a wide range of geolocations and significant price differences, as well as if different people manage the site in each city. If there is no manager in each of the cities, the second method will be relevant. The third method is ideal for sites with no offices in several locations.
Option №1
If you have separate representation in each region and want to work on them individually, this method is optimal for you. Moreover, it is most suitable for Yandex.
In this case, each region will have its own subdomain on which the site is located. Its filling, management, pricing formation, and delivery features will be managed by representatives from each city.
For example, your site is engaged in the sale of blenders in 4 cities. The main domain will look like this – site.ua/catalog/blenders. In this case, if a person wants to select another city in the profile header, the subdomain will be an address with the name of this settlement:
- https://lviv.site.ua/catalog/blenders/ – Lviv;
- https://site.ua/catalog/blenders/ – Kyiv (main domain);
- https://odessa.site.ua/catalog/blenders/ – Odessa;
- https://chernigov.site.ua/catalog/blenders/ – Chernihiv.
The advantage is that if the subdomain stops functioning (its actions are limited), this will not at all affect the main domain.
A web resource that is already known and has been functioning for a long time is much easier to develop further. When a site is formed from scratch, people know nothing about it, and trust has yet to be earned. But in the case of a subdomain, many people already know about the main site, and you already have an obvious advantage.
Let’s briefly highlight the pros and cons of the first method.
Pros:
- if something happens to the subdomain, everything will be fine with the main domain;
- those managing the subdomain can fully control its operation;
- in Yandex, there will be high indicators when ranking;
Cons:
- each subdomain must have its own link profile;
- you need to control all sites at once;
- the main domain will gain advantages during the domain and subdomain evaluation process, as it has better traffic and many links;
- to make pages unique, a lot of effort and time are required.
Option №2
If you cannot provide separate management for each site from all the existing ones, you can form a separate folder for each city on the domain. This option is suitable for everyone, no matter what direction you are engaged in.
In this situation, you will have only one domain from which branches or subfolders will originate. Search engines will recognize them as one integral site, not like in the previous version. Choose this option if you need to get regional traffic from both search engines.
Now we need to recall the blenders example sold in 4 different cities. In this case, the main domain will look like this – site.ua/catalog/blenders. But when a person selects the city of interest, the subfolders will have such addresses:
- https://site.ua/lviv/catalog/blenders/ – Lviv;
- https://site.ua/catalog/blenders/ – Kyiv (main domain);
- https://site.ua/odessa/catalog/blenders/ – Odessa;
- https://site.ua/chernigov/catalog/blenders/ – Chernihiv.
This will be one site, and accordingly, you will be able to save on management and promotion.
The second method implies forming product cards separately for each settlement. Thanks to templates, this is done quite easily. You can include the city name change automatically in the page title and description, as well as in the text itself. How many such subfolders you make, so many new web pages will appear.
There are also disadvantages to this method. If, for example, you have 2000 products, and there are 4 cities, then in the end you get a very large number of product cards. They will have the same description and text, and the only difference will be the city names. As a result, the pages will have a low uniqueness. Moreover, such pages will constantly compete for traffic, which in the end will lead to ranking problems.
Here we also highlight the pros and cons.
Pros:
- all subfolders will be located on one domain;
- there is much less need for funds, thanks again to the common domain;
- excellent ranking indicators;
- new products are automatically added to all subfolders when added to one of them.
There are far fewer negatives:
- the pages require filling with unique content;
- a huge number of pages overload the server.
Option №3
If you do not have representations in each city, but you work throughout the country, use subdivisions. This is quite a simple way, especially in comparison with the previous one. It is suitable for both large sites and small projects.
For example, you need a drill. In this case, there will be no link to a specific city on the site, but when making a purchase you need to choose the city for delivery. That is, products will be located in different sections for each of the settlements.
Let’s recall the blenders to see the difference. Using this method, the main domain looks like this – site.ua/catalog/blenders. Suppose the user has chosen the city he needs. But the name of this city will only be at the end of the address:
- https://site.ua/catalog/blenders-lviv/ – Lviv;
- https://site.ua/catalog/blenders-kyiv/ – Kyiv;
- https://site.ua/catalog/blenders-odessa/ – Odessa;
- https://site.ua/catalog/blenders-chernigov/ – Chernihiv.
It is necessary to monitor if each product category is in demand. If not, you should not spend efforts on forming a landing page for it. Since in this way, we create pages that have no traffic and no chance to achieve it. This leads to worsening ranking indicators.
Let us highlight the advantages and disadvantages of the last method.
Pros:
- work is carried out within one site, so the method is quite easy to apply;
- in comparison with subdomains, this option functions more conveniently in Google;
- one web resource accommodates all links;
- the site will have many pages tuned to the desires in all the necessary cities, so the site will be popular.
Cons:
- you need to make a lot of effort to make the content on the pages unique;
- it is impossible to choose a region for a specific site category.
Conclusions
As you can see, there are quite a few ways to promote a site in regions. But there is no method that would suit absolutely everyone and ensure high traffic indicators in any direction. When choosing the most optimal method, consider your possibilities and the peculiarities of each search engine’s work. Also, opt for those promotion methods that will not create problems for you in the future.
