The Importance of Being Accurate

A while ago I was asked to write an article about upcoming garden events in London. Now some orders are more interesting than others and this was one I was delighted to get. I did what all good writers do, my research. OK, so I knew about a few events but it always feels lazy not to at least run a search.

In this instance, it looked as if my diligence had paid off I discovered a place I'd never heard of. Historic London Town and Gardens, somewhere near Edgewater. The fact that I'd never really heard of Edgewater didn't trouble me all that much, it's a perfectly reasonable sounding name and the place sounded fabulous. Beautiful, historic, educational, and as I discovered when I came to look at the directions, somewhere near Washington D.C.

Ah, not so good then.

Location, Location, Location!

It's a prime example of one of the pitfalls of the internet. How often have you found yourself looking for a a service near you; found a really good sounding firm that gives exactly what you're looking for. Only to find that they're in Australia, or New Zealand?

Thankfully the situation is improving. Google and the other search engines are getting much better at figuring out where you are and where you're likely to want your service to be located. But it does still happen and as often as not it's down to an oversight of the person who optimised the the website in the first place. So, if you're aiming your site for local seo uk, please do yourself and potential customers a favour and include your location in your meta data.

Sometimes you'll achieve this at least in part by having the.co.Uk ending to your web address, but if not then it's worth including your post code somewhere in the data. Google's not stupid. It can tell the difference between a UK post code and a USA zip code. But search engines aren't psychic either, if you don't tell them stuff they won't know. They'll try to guess but they don't always get it right.

What Else Should You Include?

Be very clear about what your service is. As an example let's take something like 'glass', now is that car glass, window glass, or studio glass? Or could it be a drinking glass? You'll hear people who specialise in search engine optimisation talk about keywords, often it's more useful to think about key phrases. You site will succeed if people who are looking for the thing you have on offer are able to find you and you'll be doing your bit as a good web citizen if you avoid frustration for people who're looking for something a bit like what you have on offer but not quite.

Local Fame provides a multi-channel solution for seo for franchises and smaller enterprises.