How To Geotarget Ads For Localized Leads

[Nelson Tan]

It is a missed opportunity for businesses not to promote on the
Internet. For those which are already doing it, it is another
challenge to execute a geotargeted marketing campaign to accurately
attract location-based leads. In this article I will write about the
key steps and tools a webmaster must know in order to harness them for
such a campaign creation. Google, being a global, multinational
corporation, does not have just one search engine at google.com.
There's google.de in German, google.es in Spanish and so many other
languages. To learn of all the available languages, visit Google's
Language Tools.

So what's the significance? If you should do a quick search with, say,
the term "Internet Marketing" you'll find both sets of results in
google.de and google.es are different. The similarity is each contains
some numbers of sites based on their native country-specific domain
extensions and languages. This is Google's attempt at presenting the
best possible results based on localization and as you can see, it
also becomes possible for you as the business owner to take note of
the combination of factors that enables your localized site—if you
should design one—to rank high in the "localized Google".

Possibly the most influential factor is, as mentioned, the country-
specific domains. Invest in website.co.in when there is a compelling
reason to target the India market. You can still take on the lesser
recommendation of sticking to just one domain. Some corporate websites
I've seen have subdomains created to represent their various country
offices e.g. india.website.com or website.com/india.

The IP address of the web hosting server with which you run your
website also contributes some weightage to the localization effect.

From the SEO point of view, it is more effective to publish content in
the local language since localized Googles run on the same language.
Though there are many free and paid translation tools, you cannot
afford grammar and vocabulary mistakes and miss out on subtle nuances
of language when you're in business. It pays to get a professional
human translator to edit the content.

The benefits of inbound backlinking to increase PageRank still
applies.

So far all that's being said refers to on-page optimization to
influence free traffic. In Google AdWords there's also some work to do
for geotargeting ads. However, AdWords have always been well known for
ease of use so you can clear this hurdle in minutes simply by clicking
on "Edit Campaign Settings" in your campaign and modify under "Target
Audience" section.

Here's the interesting part. Consider 2 phenomena in searches:

1) The unwritten rule of thumb for conducting a localized search is to
input "(keyword) (location)" e.g. "plumbing london".

2) Let's say you live in the UK. Have you noticed whenever you access
Google you are redirected to google.co.uk instead of the presumed
'default' google.com? That has to do with your web browser's IP
address, which becomes part of a range of addresses that is assigned
to a region or continent, and the Google search engine has been
programmed to act accordingly.

When you geotarget AdWords ads, it's not necessary to put in location
to the ad's title, but consider carefully whether your business should
accommodate travelers. Travelers would have done their homework before
they make their travels, so you cannot restrict your ads from
appearing depending on where these would-be travelers conduct their
searches.

Example: your business may be renting out vacation homes in Florida,
but surely it's not only the Florida natives who rent vacation homes.
What about the Brits?

Unless you're highly aware of where your overseas sources of customers
are likely to come from (Google Analytics will be helpful for
tracking), you can switch off geotargeting option and put in title
"Rent Vacations Home In Florida". You may also put in negative
keywords for locations where you know you won't convert.

Alternatively, create and geotarget a separate ad appealing to British
travelers for Florida vacation homes.

Let me end off by saying this post does not end conclusively and I'm
sure there's more to geotargeting strategies than meets the eye. I'm
writing as a creative response to a query by a client of mine about
targeting specific crowd and demographics, and I hope this article
contains enough information to get you on a good start.


Nelson Tan is the webmaster behind Internet Mastery Center. Download
$347 worth of FREE Internet Marketing gifts at http://www.internetmasterycenter.com