Local Ranking Question

Hey everyone, just today i stumbled across a client unintentionally that would like SEO done for their website. I am from Australia and currently i have never thought of doing local SEO but this might be a good time to start small and see how it goes.

I have good SEO sense and have ranked hundreds of keywords on google's first page.

The only thing is, all my sites have been adsense and i have been targeting 'US' traffic and all my domains have been, .com , .net . org. I am from Australia, and the site that i may be promoting has a '.com.au' (Australian) domain.

If i do decide to go ahead with the work, when i back link their site, and target their keywords, will they still rank good even if all my backlinks are coming from .com , .net , .org web 2.0 sites, article sites, doc shares, wiki backlinks etc as they are not .com.au domains.

The keywords will be similar to this > 'South Australia + Keyword'

So basically my question is do my sites have to be backlinked from other Australian domains to rank local sites in Australia or can it be from all over the world as long as my anchor text's correspond and the sites domain that i am doing the SEO for have .com.au in their domain.

Would love to hear some good responses from anyone that has done SEO for local Australian businesses.

Have a great day

Anyone ?

Every links counts, no matter if it's from a .com or .com.au...
In my experience (in Brazil), the only difference is the site language, when the links come from site in English, they don't worth as much from sites in Portuguese (Brazil official language).

Besides that, relax, don't worry about only ranking local...

I rank local Aussie sites also and a mix of international and aussie based backlinks works best. Are you actually trying to get them into google local results? Then there is more than just backlinking! You need to get the reviews etc, etc, etc. Search google locla cheat sheet, it was shared here on BHW a while ago. That has a great step by step on how to rank google local.

Thanks so much for the replies, that clears things up a little. Yes i want to get them ranking for local terms in my state. I am going to look at getting a google maps listing done aswell.

I have a web designer who gets alot of big contracts, not this small $200 sites and he always asks me to do SEO for his clients but as i work full time, i just have enough time myself to manage my own sites on my own hours. But this time he really begged so i thought i would give it a go.

A pointer for local: consistency is key. Make sure to fill out all portal listings and citations with a consistent address and phone number for your client's business.

Does anyone have a good source for Aussie links? I can't seem to find a good source for these (willing to throw down $) ... would love to hear what's out there.

Thanks.

nicknick said:

So basically my question is do my sites have to be backlinked from other Australian domains to rank local sites in Australia or can it be from all over the world as long as my anchor text's correspond and the sites domain that i am doing the SEO for have .com.au in their domain.

Click to expand...

""....basically my question is do my sites have to be backlinked from other Australian domains...""

If you want to do it then you can go for it but basically let me share a personal experience.I myself have done thousands of SEO works and among them many are of Local domains.I used basis web 2.0 properties which are being used by every one like weebly,Yola etc and every time I got good ranking.I have heard a lot of times that German sites are tough to rank but to be very frank I got the sites rank #1 also.So from my point of view it hardly matters that whether you are building links on local web 2.0's or not.The fact that is more important is how effective your SEO plannings are and How effective the linking is and even more important the indexing part.If the back links are not getting indexed then its only a wastage of time.

Local SEO is slightly differnt but all the same rules apply:

- yes all links still count
- make sure to list in the local portals like yelp, google places, citysearch, chamber of commerce, better business listings, phone listings, etc. Check who is ranking for those keys now, check their backlinks, get listing in the same local directories (even if they are paid - gogole ignores paid penalties for local
- do this even if no link is offered, google still records the mention
- as has been said make sure to use the exact same info for each posting - same name, same place, same number - no deviation

everything else is the same

do good keywords research to see what's converting locally - make sure to have the same cookies or be in the same area

no you don't need Australian IP links - but it might help to have the site served from a local IP address - until you get enough links

Remember in google, if you have enough legitimate links, you will even beat the originator for his own content - just about all google semantic issues can be beaten with enough authority

For the second time this month, all of the places reviews and citations have been wiped out for all sites in my city. Seems like they are cracking down and monitoring this stuff more.

Links from anywhere are good as long as they are legitimate sites. A high PR international site will do you much better than a local site with low PR.