Google recently launched a localization service which takes into account your site’s locale through search engine optimized description. The advent of the mobile web and the ability of smartphones and mobile devices to access the web and provide local services makes geotagging a necessity in the search engine optimization process.
Geotagging is the process of adding geographical identification to various aspects of your website such as photographs, video RSS feeds and, of course, the website itself. Geotagging is part of the on-page optimization process involving meta tags. The geo.placename tag is provided primarily for resource recognition; it is anticipated that this field will be harvested by automated agents such as search engine bots and presented to the user in search engine results in a similar manner to the description META tag. This field is free-text, and typically would be used for city, county and state names.
META tags (including geo tags) should be placed in the HTML document header, between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> elements, for instance:
<html><head><title>My Document</title>
<meta name="geo.region" content="US-WA"><br /> </head></p> <p>You should also include uch elements as:</p> <p><META NAME="geo.position" CONTENT="latitude; longitude"><br /> <META NAME="geo.placename" CONTENT="Place Name"><br /> <META NAME="geo.region" CONTENT="Country Subdivision Code"></p> <p>While this is a brand new meta tag and localization is a service just launched by Google the widespread use of geotagging technology in mobile platforms which range from smartphones to netbooks is going to play an ever increasing role in driving business directly to your door.</p> <p> </p> <p>For a fuller description of the implementation of HTML 4.0 compliant geo tag implementation visit the <a href="http://geotags.com/geo/geotags2.html" target="_blank">GeoTag Elements website.
The moment you realise your website is not properly optimised the temptation is to blame either the web designers who built it or the webmaster who is managing it. In both cases you would be wrong. While search...
14-04-2011 Hits:206 WEB View
After months of talks, vacillations and the necessary scrutiny by the anti-trust regulators BING and Yahoo! have finally received the greenlight to hop into bed together, effectively turning what used to be a three-way in search into a tug-of-war between...
14-04-2011 Hits:319 WEB View
When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO) there is a simple example I use which helps highlight its importance not just for webmasters but, practically anyone working online.
26-10-2011 Hits:878 Web Talk
Last week I received 60 emails from HelpMySEO visitors who were experiencing a problem. Used to new pages on their websites being indexed within 48 hours at the most they found the fact that they now had...
14-04-2011 Hits:895 WEB View
It takes, as always, a catastrophe to show up the cracks in the ways business works. One of these catastrophes broke on the second day of the year and started to create waves today and it featured Google operating in...
03-01-2012 Hits:1544 SEO Tips
Folks, today I woke up thinking that if Harold Camping is right by midnight tonight I will have to no longer worry about search engine optimizing my website any more.
20-05-2011 Hits:784 WEB View
What do Flickr, Quora, Twitter and Google Buzz have in common with Google+ ? The answer is that they are all now feeds in Google’s Social Search which, as the Official Google Blog post explains, takes personalization one step further...
18-08-2011 Hits:713 Google News
One thing that’s constant about search engine optimization is that unless your website is on the first page of Google at the very top position for every search term you optimize it for you are really not ...
14-04-2011 Hits:2966 SEO Tips
As a species we are inherently irrational. We are subject to our biology which still fires our neurons with inappropriate responses because it has not yet advanced from the days when ‘threat’ equated to ‘life or death’. Yet our day-to-day...
12-03-2012 Hits:1809 WEB View
Every week you will get an email newsletter with my personal recommendations on social media marketing tips and crucial SEO advice to help your business succeed faster, at a lower cost.
Subscribe to HelpMySEO via 
email.
I’ve led the discussion on how social media and SEO are changing the processes we use to work and live, online, with the publication of my book ‘The Social Media Mind’. I combine experience in journalism and blue-chip corporate management with a penchant for explaining complex issues in simple terms. Contact me for media interviews, presentations and panel discussions
