Many people are now beginning to realise the importance of targeting regional search phrases and the impact it can have on their sites traffic. Although the search volume on regional phrases wont be as high as those on a national basis it does mean that the traffic your website receives will be far more targeted and therefore much more likely to convert.
Many people make the common mistake of only wanting to focus on search phrases with the highest search volumes which they think will bring them the highest amount of traffic. Firstly it’s likely that these search phrases will be massively competitive and therefore very difficult to gain a good ranking for, unless you have a lot of time and money to spend on the optimisation. Secondly its all very well gaining traffic to your website but say for example if you are a cleaning company that only operate in Sheffield and want to rank only for the term “cleaning company” then anyone landing on your site looking for services outside of Sheffield will click straight off of your site as soon as they realise you don’t operate in their region. This not only proves to be a negative experience for the browser but also means your efforts in gaining that top position have been largely wasted and would have been far better spent if they’d been focused on on achieving regional positions.
It’s important to remember not to focus on the amount of traffic your site receives but instead focus on the the quality of the traffic, this will result in a far more effective SEO campaign that works well for both service provider and customer.
