Writing copy for regional optimisation is one of the things that many SEO companies and SEO professionals often do badly. The problem stems from the fact that the client invariably wants to rank for a search based on his services, and for his locale, so for example:
Carpet cleaning
Wirral
If you live in the Wirral and you’re looking for someone to clean your carpets, then you’ll probably search for something like that. The problem is that to rank for a phrase like that many SEOs believe that you need to enter that exact phrase several times on the homepage of the website.
Not only is this not true, it’s also very poor English and harms the readability of the website. The stop words ‘in’ and ‘the’ should be used at the very least, as Google ignores them anyway. Even then, writing your keywords on your homepage as [service] in [locale] is still clumsy and doesn’t read well.
A typical piece of badly written SEO text would be:
If you’re looking for the best carpet cleaning in the Wirral you’ve come to the right place. Our carpet cleaning in Wirral is second to none, offering you first class carpet cleaning Wirral services.
This text reads very poorly and is overly stuffed with the keywords, yet so many SEO professionals write SEO copy like this for their clients. Google is far more complex than this, and doesn’t require this brute force, ham fisted attempt to SEO a website in order to organise its rankings.
A more intelligent way would be to write good quality, intelligent copy about your services, while mentioning the areas in which you operate in a concise manner. Writing another page about the areas that you service would also be advised, possibly even with separate pages for each area.
If your business is based in the Wirral, then talk about the area and the surrounding areas, such as Chester and
Liverpool. Mention towns and areas associated with them, all the while ensuring that your website is kept fresh with news about your industry.
This way Google will know what your site is about and where your business is located, without you having to spam your website up with badly written SEO copy.
Yes it is amazing how many people still try keyword stuffing. Key phrases only need to be in the body text once or twice. Also add your key phrases to your pager title and more important in the anchor text of in bound links.
The body text should contain many related keywords so use keyword tools to find words related to your keyword and use some in your body copy.