How to set the site region correctly
Promotion of a regional website should begin with specifying the region. This is done in Search Console. You need to go to the “Search Traffic” tab, and then “Targeting by Countries and Languages”. For more precise geo-referencing, it is also worth registering the website in Google My Business and performing the appropriate settings (we will consider this issue a little later).
Important! If your site has a domain zone with a country code, the region will be assigned automatically. It is impossible to change it in this case.
However, there are other ways to set the regional affiliation of the site and use regional SEO more effectively. Let’s look at them in more detail.
Using the hreflang attribute
Using the hreflang attribute is a relatively special database simple and convenient way to inform search engines about the regional affiliation of a site. To do this, it is enough to specify the language and region to which the page belongs in the HTML code. It looks like this:
In this way, you can even set up website promotion in several regions and countries, using different attributes for different pages. This is very convenient for resources that have a wide geography of activity.
Contact details
Contacts are important information not only for site users, but also for search robots. They analyze it and thus form the correct binding to the region. You need to specify the following information on the site:
- physical address (if any);
- phone number with country code;
- email address and so on.
Contact information should not be hidden from indexing – search robots should read it. Be sure to check that everything is set up correctly and the contact information is up to date.
Map
Adding an embedded map to your site can hvis det ikke er direkte relateret also improve local SEO and help users find you at the same time. You can copy the link/map code with your mark directly from the Google Maps service. Then you just need to add it to your site. This can be done in just a few minutes, but this will make site promotion by region much more effective.
Keywords
Promotion of an online store in the regions by lists involves the use of relevant regional search queries (keywords): “buy a Samsung phone in Kyiv”, “coffee shop in Kharkov”, “tire service in Lviv”, etc. Mentioning the names of cities, regions and areas increases the visibility of your site in the relevant regional search results.
Links
Getting links from other sites in your region can increase the regional relevance of your website. They act as a kind of “signal” to search algorithms that your resource has a certain geographic reference.
Google My Business
If you have a physical presence (office, store, etc.), be sure to register with Google My Business and specify your location. This will directly show Google what region you are targeting. Plus, this will increase the regional relevance of your site.
Hosting
Choosing a hosting service located in or close to your region may slightly improve the site loading speed for local users and increase regional relevance. However, it is worth mentioning that it is not a determining factor. Therefore, if your current hosting is located in a completely different region or even country, this is not critical, and there is no need to “move” to another one.
