How to Target Specific Geo-Locations for Local Search Traffic?

Geo-location is essential for a good local search strategy. You could lose out on a lot of business by either targeting the wrong areas or by not using geo-location. Most people today use their mobile phones to find local businesses when they need to buy something or are craving sweets like gourmet donuts. You don’t want to miss out on all of these opportunities to make a sale. Here are three core techniques that all local business owners should master for effective local marketing:

Utilize Geo-Fencing to Target Customers Within a Certain Perimeter of Your Store

A geo-fence is a geographical perimeter surrounding a location. Some digital maps can highlight a one mile perimeter from a specific location on the map. How large the perimeter is can be adjusted, in case the user wants to consider areas within a 10 mile radius. Local business owners should use this technology as part of their search traffic strategies to increase their search traffic. Many ad services offer options in geo-fencing, so you can easily create targeted ads utilizing geo-fencing. This type of ad targets potential customers within the specified mile radius of your business location. You could also set up the geo-fencing ad around a nearby location. For example, if you operate a coffee shop, you may want to set up a geo-fencing ad around a nearby office. This leads us into the second tip you can use to improve local search traffic …

Use Venues Where Your Target Audience Hangs Out to Your Advantage

If your target audience consists of businessmen, then possible venues you’ll find them at include airports, high-end restaurants, hotels, and offices. You can target these venues in your local search traffic strategy to attract more customers to your business. It’s worth paying attention to the events being hosted at stadiums in the area too. When you spot an upcoming event that your target audience would attend, take advantage of that opportunity to drive traffic to your local business. For example, a One Direction concert will attract teenage girls. And if you have a clothing store or cafe that targets teens, you could use this opportunity to boost sales.

Exclude Venues and Other Locations Where Your Target Audience is Not Found

Excluding venues and other locations where your target audience is not found is just as important at including negative keywords in your SEO strategy. A negative keyword is a search term for which you don’t want your PPC ads to display. For instance, if you own a coffee shop and you don’t sell coffee mugs, you don’t want your ads to show up for search terms involving “mugs”. It would be a waste of money. Similarly, you can improve the efficiency of your local marketing by excluding venues and other locations where your target audience isn’t found. If you don’t serve a city that’s located two hours away, you should exclude the name of the city in your ad campaigns.

It is easy to target specific geo-locations for local search traffic when you have a thorough understanding of your target audience. Targeting geo-locations in your local search strategy is about more than just finding the locations where your target audience is. You must know where they don’t hang out, so you can exclude those venues and locations from your ad campaigns. Failing to exclude irrelevant locations drains your PPC budget and decreases the efficiency of your marketing. You only want to target people who are interested in what you’re offering.