Using Geo-identifiers to expand your campaign reach

Many sources claim that up to 50% of searches are tagged with some sort of Geo term. With those kind of numbers, Geo terms are something you can’t ignore when building your campaigns. It’s possible to incorporate these location searches in many types of campaigns.

What exactly are they?

If someone adds any geographic location to their search term, that is a geo tag. For example:

Seattle car insurance

Florida trial lawyer

CA mortgage

The most common GEO tags for the US at least are city, state, and state abbreviations. Obviously you can append almost an search with the common geo tags. But just be sure it makes sense with the search. For example “Michigan ringtones” does not make sense. But “Michigan dating” does.

You can get very creative with GEO tagging, especially if you think outside the box. You can also get very granular in your keywords when you start going down to the city level or even suburb level in large cities. I always recommend putting your geo term keywords into their own campaign.

Here is a list of the states, state abbreviations, and top 50 US cites by population for your campaigns.

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Posted in Pay Per Click, General by Chad on 21|05|08
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6 Comments »

Comment by Jason Tibbons
2008-05-21 16:05:25

I have a few of these mixed in with my normal campaign. i guess I need to pay more atention to them. thanks for the list!

 
Comment by David
2008-05-21 17:14:50

One other thing Chad, you forgot to mention that to gain additional visibility you can target or Adword campaigns buy city or state. Thus putting the name of the city or state under your ad.

 
Comment by Matt L
2008-05-22 01:20:28

Very good suggestion for an edge, though I believe that 50% number is influenced somewhat by those promoting local search. I do about 90% b2b client work and many of which are items that don’t necessarily ship that well so as to be profitable for either party and even then geo mods don’t approach near that number. Chad, do you see that in your more commercial type niches?

Have noted Davids comment works - tried it when selecting all 50 states as a workaround to locking out weird international traffic that would sneak in though I only had US selected. Having the states under the listing did boost CTR.

 
Comment by Lenen
2008-05-22 17:57:02

That’s just the list I needed for some checking! Maybe I’ll start a website focussed in the US. Unfortunately, my English is crap :(

 
Comment by Kris
2008-05-24 15:08:52

I always like to pick a city and target all of the surrounding suburbs. This ensures I can target ALL of the people living around there.

 
Comment by Jason Caluori
2008-05-26 09:25:35

Much thanks for the list.

 
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