Jennifer Slegg - Search Engine Marketing Consultant |

It is a fact that when I am searching for any number of random products or services on the internet - those things where it doesn’t matter if the product is shipped from my hometown, across the country, or even in a different country - I tend to pay attention to those ads that are geospecific to me. I give them a second look, even if they don’t have the best PPC placement in the bunch of ads. I notice them because their use of geolocation jumps out at me.

First, consumers are driven by price, especially when looking at buying a product. But there is still the mentality of “support the little guy” and “support the local guy” and the desire to buy locally rather than from “big box” or “multi-national corporation”. Then there is consumer confidence and the feeling of value and service one gets from a local company versus a large corporate company. So if you are competitive on price - or even slightly higher - you can actually increase conversions by giving potential visitors the idea you are local, simply by using geolocation targeting in your ad copy.

Let’s use Seattle as an example. Now, first off, you don’t want to actually lie and tell people you are located in or shipping from Seattle, unless you really are. But there are many ways you can use to imply your service is targeting those in the Seattle area, which can then be replicated across many other cities and states. You could make your url seattle.greenwidgets.com. Your description could mention something about express or free “shipping to Seattle.” Or if your product is somehow customized for Seattle, you can use that in your description too.

That said, don’t go overboard You don’t need to be repititious and mention Seattle four times in a single PPC advertisement because not only does it waste space you could be putting to better use with more keyword-laden ad copy, but it also starts to sound a bit spammy and unprofessional if you have repeated the same word over and over again - especially if it isn’t the most important “widget” keyword. Once in the description or title and once in the URL would be fine. Or if you really need that ad copy space, start off testing with Seattle just in the URL.

Now, once you have created your Seattle-specific ad copy, you need to geotarget that campaign so that it just shows to Seattle. It isn’t as effective to show your Seattle ad to someone in Boston, and it will very likely cause your CTR rate to drop dramatically… not to mention the problems a low CTR rate can bring with it in Google AdWords. So you should specifically geotarget Seattle, and perhaps some areas outside Seattle as well. Then remember which areas you target, especially if you create ads for other other Washington State cities, or if you then create a specific one that covers Washington State as a whole.

If you product or service is world-wide, even creating a country-specific ad would get the attention of users, especially outside of the United States. When I am searching for products, those that mention Canada specifically will always get my clicks first, because if they mention Canada, odds are pretty good that they either ship to Canada or are located in Canada. And that has just cut my work significantly from hunting and clicking on sites where the second page I view is their shipping information to see if they ship to Canada.

When you create your campaigns, you should also do A/B testing with a generic non-location-specific ad copy. In AdWords, Google will automatically auto-optimize your ad copy by doing testing in rotation and then showing the one that performs best, so you don’t need to do that work. You might discover that your Seattle specific ad rocks, but for some reason, those in Boston prefer the non-location one.

Not sure where to start? Start by testing a metro area local to you, or maybe pick 3 or 4 locations throughout your country to test. And Google has anything and everything to do with AdWords location targeting and there is also information on Yahoo Search Marketing Geo-targeting and Microsoft adCenter’s geolation targeting. Funny how all three call the same thing something different

Many people have the misconception that all PPC clicks are created equal when they come from the same source with the same keywords. But user intent plays a huge part in conversions, and if the people who click your ads are looky-loos without any intention of buying what your ad is advertising - at least not at the stage of the buying cycle they are in - then those clicks you have paid for don’t convert at all.

When you are selling a product that is not exclusive to your site, especially with high-ticket items or items that people tend to shop around for to find the best pricing, you end up paying for clicks from people who are just checking to see if you have the best price or not, and they don’t have the intention of buying from you right then… unless you were fortunate enough to be the last site they checked (which goes against regular PPC techniques where you want to be the first click) AND you had the best price. And obviously, you will have lower conversions and a low ROI (return on investment) when you do have a high percentage of non-buyers. Keep reading…