SEO: Regional website promotion

Hello friends! Today I will tell you how to properly carry out regional promotion of your website.

Although this topic is not new, customers often want to cover the entire territory of Russia. Using contextual advertising allows you to solve this problem with minimal costs if you have a large enough budget. In SEO, the process is more complicated - not only will it require more funds, but also the use of many different sites.

Regional promotion in Yandex

Since the launch of the Arzamas algorithm in Yandex, which became a ranking factor for geo-dependent queries, it became obvious that for successful promotion in the region, the site must specify the region.

How to assign the desired region in Yandex

There are two main ways: through the Webmaster and through the Directory.

Webmaster

Go to the "Site Information" > "Regionality" > "Webmaster" section. It is important to select the region where your office is located and add a link to the contact information page. It is recommended to indicate only real addresses. The webmaster also allows you to specify the region of your city. Use the "Directory" tab to configure only a specific city.

Directory

In the Directory you need to completely fill out information about your organization, indicate opening hours, details and add photos. Also provide a link to the site, it will automatically be uploaded to Webmaster.

How to promote a website in several regions

Many people ask the question of how to promote a website in different regions. Previously, Yandex offered a catalog where you could add up to 7 regions, but this did not give the desired result. They also required a fee to be added to the catalogue. This method was ineffective because changes could not be made on the site without risking worsening rankings in other regions.

Promotion in regions using subdomains

Today, one of the most effective ways is to create subdomains for each region. However, large chains have already abandoned this method, since they have many points of sale throughout the country and use one domain. If you have a small or medium-sized store, you can try creating subdomains, for example, msk.site.ru, spb.site.ru.

A subdomain is essentially a new website and needs to be unique. You need to understand that promoting a new subdomain will take time and effort (just like getting the main domain into the top 10).

How to put this method into practice

• Determine your budget and list of cities, but it is best to start with large cities where competition is high.
• Create a separate subdomain for each city.
• Set up a robots.txt file and an XML sitemap (be sure to disable subdomain indexing in Google, as it doesn't index subdomains well).
• Change meta tags on all pages, replacing place names.
• Remove or hide blog and article sections from indexing.
• Remove texts from categories and tags.
• Change meta tags on all pages, adding a new address and phone number on the contact page and in the site header.
• Specify delivery conditions for the new region.
• Assign a region to each subdomain through Webmaster and Yandex Directory.
• Use parsers to check that the site does not contain links to other subdomains.
• Add the ability to select a region for the user by IP so that he can select his region when visiting the site.

After completing all the settings, submit your sites for indexing.

What are the pros and cons of the subdomain method?

Yandex makes it easy to assign regionality to a subdomain, even if you don’t have real points of sale. In case of filtering, only one subdomain will be affected, which makes the method more secure.

Advantages:

• Ease of scaling and analyzing the situation in each region.
• Security: if the site falls under filtering, only one subdomain will be affected.

Flaws:

• The budget for promoting and maintaining subdomains is increasing.

Regional promotion on Google

Google began to show geo-dependent queries since the release of the “Venice” and “Dove” algorithms, but Google’s decision on geo-dependent queries is not always clear-cut. Unlike Yandex, Google can show results for other regions, even if they do not match the user's query.

What to do to rank better in the region

• Use the .ru domain.
• Complete your Google My Business profile.
• On the contact page, be sure to include your full address and telephone number with area code.

What conclusion can be drawn?

If you don't have a real address in another region, ranking for geo-based queries will be difficult. Before you start promoting, it’s worth conducting an analysis of the region’s search results, assessing the competition and checking how your site is already ranking in other areas. It is also necessary to prepare a semantic core for the new region. This will help you determine exactly what queries will be relevant to your target audience. After this, you can start working, but remember that promoting a new site takes time, effort and money.

If you have any questions, you can write to the SEO studio "SEO COMPUTER" with any question at email info@seo.computer.

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