I threw up a quick blog called Melbourne Flamenco to promote a friend's dance classes in Melbourne, Australia. Trouble was that it did not come up in a Search Engine Result Page (SERP) when 'Pages from Australia' was selected.

This article will tell you how a search engine knows where your website is geographically located and give you a step-by-step guide to force this.

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So the question is...

How does Google know where your web site is from?

In the case of Google, it looks at three things to work out if it should include your website in a search limited to a specific region:

• The TLD or Top-Level Domain. For example, if your Top Level Domain is Hosting.com.au then Google will geographically label your web site as being Australian.
  
  
• If your site is not regional - like .com or .net - the next thing Google looks at is the IP address of your website. This is determined by your Host or in other words the geographic location of the company that is hosting your website for you.
  
  
• Now what if you have a .com and your host is overseas. This means that Google probably has your website labeled as American or just global. This is bad news if you are looking for traffic from Australia or whatever your non-USA country is.... Read on for the fix!

Before the 30th of October 2007 there was no way to take control of assigning a country to your website other than registering an international domain or choosing a local web hosting company.

Regional domains are often a lot more expensive than a global domain and lets face it everybody defaults to a Dot Com, add to that some amazing web hosting deals from companies that are probably not located in your country and you will understand why I am pretty happy that Google fixed this.

So lets grab your website and optimize it to target a geographic location!

1. Head over to Google Webmaster Tools and log in using your Google Account details.
   
   
2. At the Dashboard level, add and verify your web site.
   
   
3. Again at the dashboard level click on your site name under the Manage column.
   
   
4. At the bottom of the left hand navigation click the tab labeled TOOLS.
   
   
5. You should see...
   Set Geographic Target
   Associate a particular geographic location
   with this site if you are targeting users within
   that area.
   
   
6. Click that link and then select "Associate a geographic location with this site."
   
   
7. A web form will open up, select your region and save.
   
   

Thats it now you are optimized for a local search just have to wait for it to update!



Not too painful hey?

After you hit save you may also have noticed a highlighted box suggesting that you Add your business to Google Maps , this is a free listing and I recommend you go that step further and submit your business / website to Google Maps as well as other Local Online Directories and Local Search Engines.

Check out Yahoo Local, MSN Local, SuperPages, YellowPages, SwitchBoard & CitySearch.

Hope this helps you out!

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