Do you GEO target keywords for your online audience? One of the great things about SEO is that you can Geo Target specific markets for maximum market saturation. Let’s discuss how…
With so many ways to appeal to a specific audience, if you have a national presence for a particular keyword or market, you can afford to think outside the box when it comes to reaching a larger percentage of market share.
Since search engines have a tendency to GEO target (target local search results) based on the IP address of the originating browser, you can use this to your advantage. Local search results are like low hanging fruit, they have hundreds if not thousands of searches attached to them with only a few thousand competing pages for most.
Essentially within each industry, a target market or niche the ability to cater a specific message to a specific type of consumer exists. This is where GEO targeting can benefit to create a secondary revenue stream (for lead generation or selling advertising space / banners to smaller competitors) or conquer a competitive keywords through reinforcing topical relevance.
Using Content and Site Architecture to Secure Competitive Rankings
For example, if you were tackling a competitive natural term, you could revamp your approach by:
- Modifying the site architecture to include 50 states
- Taking it a step further by adding a folder for cities within each state (although one or the other usually suffices)
- From there, you place relevant pages within each sub folder based on sorting order (also known as theming and siloing)
Setting up the Silos / Folder and Sub Folder Structure
So, If I created a silo for cities and states, then added a relevant landing page with the local topic infused into the title, H1 tags and on page content such as mydomain.com/illinois/chicago/local-marketing.html then even before adding one word to the document, the allinurl relevance for this document is already SEO friendly. From there you can link to other documents within the sub folder (after you create them) or they can link to the top level landing page for that sub folder.
Internal Linking Tactics
This page if augmented properly with internal links from other pages within the site or other sub folders (with relevant anchor text / words in the link) and a few tactics using sitemaps or site architecture could rank well in a relatively short period of time vs. using traditional flat site architecture (keeping everything in one folder).
The contingency here is that the main folder is receiving sufficient link weight or links from other pages higher up in the hierarchy. The closer a page or sub folder is to the root folder (the domain.com/default-folder) the easier it is to nurture those pages with a sufficient amount of links to produce search engine rankings.
Crossing the Tipping Point for Content and Relevance
Next would be adding the appropriate amount of content (750 words or at least 300 unique words on the topic). The key is not to load up each page with spam laden text in an attempt to tip the scales of keyword density aka market focus, but rather use the volume of content and external links wisely (like a laser beam) to overcome competition for the keywords in question.
For example. if we wanted to rank for “chicago marketing company”, we would add at least 5 pages of content to the “chicago” folder with the modifiers leading chicago marketing company, best chicago marketing company, marketing company in chicago, etc. By overlapping the keywords and modifiers, we produce the effect over time of ranking for all of the variations in addition to the root phrase (which is included).
By adding 5 pages of content to a keyword-rich silo (sub folder with the purpose of creating drill-down content from adding pages) you increase the ability to rank for multiple variations of the keyword. This is called long-tail optimization, which is ideal if you understand how to steer the process through internal link mapping to suppress or support specific pages.
Competitive keyword topple under this strategy so long as the naming conventions are concise, that the pages support each other with the appropriate link density (including links per page from deep links as well as how many websites are linking to the main sub-folder and that page).
Through funneling the flow of internal links, you can potentially cap any hemorrhaging by not using more than 10 links per page (leaving the page) and with every link, make sure it is the most descriptive text linking to the most relevant page.
Reciprocating Links with Pages with High Crawl Frequency
Understanding a websites crawl frequency is imperative for SEO. For example, you can make changes all day long, but unless search engines re-crawl your site, it won’t matter (at least to them).
What happens next is, you summon the search engines spiders from deep linking from pages with a high crawl frequency to dig in to the new content. After it is indexed, then augment the pages with a natural progression of links over time until buoyancy occurs.
This process can happen quickly for less competitive keywords (based on the domain authority your site has) but you should see results in 2-3 weeks if you add 5 pages of content per keyword and funnel it in the right sub folder.
When linking to the new sections of your site, you can use the main navigation (which only gives it a slight bump of relevance). However, in addition, linking from pages that already have something in common with the topic is the ideal format to increase and spread topical relevance from page to page (just like wikipedia).
If your product or service does not require this type of SEO marketing strategy, then at least you have it set aside for a rainy day if you wanted to capture additional market share or simply apply the same tactic for a niche market or industry.
The selection of anchor text in the sub folders as well as the subsequent supporting content can change based on your ranking objectives. I can assure you that regardless of the topic, this is an effective tactic for securing multiple top 10 positions for any of the keywords involved in this exercise.
With regard to geo-targeting and siloing, you use the example of:
mydomain.com/illinois/chicago/local-marketing.html
You then suggest adding at least five pages of content relating to “Chicago marketing company.”
Presumably the content pages would look something like:
mydomain.com/illinois/chicago/content-page-1.html
OK, bear with me here: If you then wanted to also geo-target the “marketing company” keyword phrase for other cities in other states, would you add a further five pages of content for each city targeted? (Wouldn’t the content all start to sound pretty similar after a while, with the main difference being a change in city name?)
The reason I ask is I’m wondering if instead it would be better to silo the site as follows:
mydomain.com/local-marketing/illinois.html
mydomain.com/local-marketing/boise.html
mydomain.com/local-marketing/content-page-1.html
mydomain.com/local-marketing/content-page-2.html
etc.
Could you then use the five or so content pages to point at Illinois, Boise, etc., lending them all weight? Or do you really need the five separate pages per city to rank effectively?
No doubt I’m missing something here, but as I’m currently mapping out the architecture of a directory-style site, any help at all would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
No need for five separate landing pages per city. The city pages become your preferred landing page.
You are correct in the instance of the way you suggested with Illinois, Boise, Etc. Contextual links can lend themselves in this way to your landing pages from outside the silo.
So, in essence, you would rank for Chicago Local Marketing or Boise Local Marketing by using that format.
If you want, your main landing page or folder can be the name of the ideal key phrase /chicago-local-marketing/ and then create 5 themed related pages that can then link to the default page in that sub folder with the anchor text “Chicago local marketing”, etc.
The more pages you add over time increase your traction from the use of term frequency on the supporting pages. Eventually, they can be used to build a diverse array of anchor text to that will then pass those attributes back to your preferred landing page.
Here is a post I wrote recently that goes into more detail on the subject of link transference… Enjoy!
Thanks for the quick reply, Jeffrey.
I guess I’m getting confused about the whole siloing/subfolder thing.
See if you can straighten me out here: If we were to create a Local Marketing subfolder, then add the targeted cities, we would have:
mydomain.com/local-marketing/boise.html
mydomain.com/local-marketing/chicago.html
These city pages would be our main landing pages.
Then, if we added our Local Marketing content pages specifically written for this silo, they would be:
mydomain.com/local-marketing/content-page-1.html
mydomain.com/local-marketing/content-page-2.html
So, we’re keeping everything within the same subfolder/silo.
As you suggested, this could be better structured as:
mydomain.com/chicago-local-marketing.html
And when we need a landing page for Boise, it would be structured:
mydomain.com/boise-local-marketing.html
OK, so here’s where I’m getting confused: Don’t we now have two different silos (chicago-local-marketing and boise-local-marketing)?
Meanwhile, our Local Marketing content pages would be in completely separate silos again:
mydomain.com/best-local-marketing.html
mydomain.com/local-marketing-advice.html
Sure, we can creatively interlink these pages, but have we now lost the benefit of siloing?
One other thing.
In the original, tightly siloed structure, the main subdirectory (mydomain.com/local-marketing) has the benefit of being nearest the root, but really contains nothing of merit, other than links to the main “city” landing pages deeper down.
While on the one hand, this structure provides a neat silo effect, it also pushes our main landing pages a level deeper.
I understand this is why you suggested structuring it instead as:
mydomain.com/chicago-local-marketing.html
So which is better? And am I even understanding siloing properly or have I completely spazzed out?
Thanks for your patience.
Good topics, silo makes SEO more easier too!.
seo is very important thanks for this nice article.
This gives some good ideas that I’m going to try to implement in my site structure. I hadn’t thought of the silos idea in this way before. Very helpful.
This article is great, thank you very much! Being someone who enjoys locality I am all about local marketing.