Local Geo Domain Names

[williemanillie]

Does anyone think using a geo emphasized domain name would rank well within search engines organically?

I am always on the lookout for improvements and have thought of stuff like www .houstonpottery.com or www .seattlemovingcompany.com, for example.

[petsgb1]

Can you pleasae explain a little more. Specially the reasons.

[williemanillie]

Originally Posted by petsgb1

Can you pleasae explain a little more. Specially the reasons.

Essentially using keywords in the domain name. My company naturally has one domain and my thought is to create a unique landing pages for each geo area we service, and then using a domain name for each area.

Currently I am in the thirty-third position using Joomla on Google. I want to shoot it higher and my thinking is the more domains the better.

The geographical location is an important keyword with a service based company.

[incrediblehelp]

We have had some posts on this before:

Building a Local Directory
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=49861

What is spam?
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=60450

You see websites like:

cityhere.citysearch.com
cityhere.superpages.com &
cityguide.aol.com/cityhere/

do it without buying separate domains. I would suggest following their model, but if you choose to buy separate domains go ahead, but the content has to be very unique. Also Google, Yahoo and others are getting better and better at distinguishing and demoting mini-networks like the one your contemplating.

[cspelts]

Originally Posted by williemanillie

My company naturally has one domain and my thought is to create a unique landing pages for each geo area we service, and then using a domain name for each area.

I think the question to ask is if you're willing to create some unique content about your business in each area for each of these new domains? If you try to recycle the same content and just change the city name for each area, it won't be of benefit - and it looks spammy to customers who find it.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by cspelts

I think the question to ask is if you're willing to create some unique content about your business in each area for each of these new domains? If you try to recycle the same content and just change the city name for each area, it won't be of benefit - and it looks spammy to customers who find it.

Exactly cspelts

[williemanillie]

Originally Posted by cspelts

I think the question to ask is if you're willing to create some unique content about your business in each area for each of these new domains? If you try to recycle the same content and just change the city name for each area, it won't be of benefit - and it looks spammy to customers who find it.

Using a dynamic CMS such as Joomla doesn't help my cause trying to move up the list. I've recently changed over to SEM friendly URLs and added a sitemap.

This was just an idea I had and looked at each geo location as a landing page of sort.

[SEO Recruit]

I have experienced the following in the past.

I had a client who was targetting the UK Geographic Market with a site hosted on a .com and on a server located in the US. His site was not performing at all on his regional version of Google ( Google.co.uk)

You see Google.co.uk is just a front end with a filter button so when a user selects to have UK-only pages shown, Google uses the same search algorithm as normal,but removes all the listings for companies that are not known to Google to be UK -based.
The pages that are left either have a .co.uk domain, or are .com domains hosted on an IP address that is registered to UK use.

We moved the site to a UK IP Address and now its doing very well locally on Google.co.uk, by the way we used the same rational and setup a .ie as well, now he has three sites all hosted in three separate countries and doing very well locally on their respective google local versions.

So i think you can target your services at least nationaly. Maybe this is Country specific Geo marketing as opposed to Regional Marketing within a county which is i think what you want..


Regards SEO Recruit

[SEO Recruit]

IMHO

Google.co.uk is just a front end of the main Google index, with a filter button so when a user selects to have UK-only pages shown, Google removes all the listings for companies that are not known to Google to be UK -based.

The pages that are left either have a .co.uk domain, or are .com domains hosted on an IP address that is registered to UK use.

The question is what % of users use the Filter button or local search Feature, me thinks a large %.

SEO Recruit