Geotargeting is an amazing mechanism within pay-per-click advertising that allows you to target your ads to a very specific ad location. This is the perfect solution for companies that might only have storefronts in four states, ship only to North America, or only have a business in one city.
One way advertisers geotarget their ads is to include the geographical terms in their keywords. For example, “Honda Dealership Palo Alto” or “Snowboards Vail CO.”
The search engines have a more formal approach that allows you to geographically pinpoint searchers whether not they use search terms that indicate a place they’re looking for. The search engines can figure you where searchers are coming from by their Internet Protocol (IP) address, a series of numbers that help determine where people are using their computer from and to identify your host or network.
For Google, geotargeting is done at the campaign level, and the default is that search engine ads will show to the United States and Canada. If you’re a newbie to paid search, you probably weren’t aware that ads were seen in Canada.
How Google allows you to choose your geotargeting locations:
- Search – This tab for geotargeting location allows you to search for the areas that you would like to target.
- Browse By Country - This tab allows you to select countries you’d like to target in your PPC campaign. Once you select countries, it allows you to drill down into more specific locations such as states and cities.
- Bundles – The bundles option for geotargeting allows you to select bundles of areas such as Europe or North America.
- Excluding – Excluding is like the negative keywords of geotargeting. If you want to advertise in Colorado but not all locations, excluding allows you to remove certain locations.
With all of the above options, you might not be targeting your PPC ads at the most granular level available. Which brings us to:
- Custom Geotargeting - Google also offers another geotargeting option, which is more granular. With custom geotargeting, you can input a zip code or multiple zip codes and draw out on the map where you want the pay-per-click ads to show.
How the Search Alliance allows you to choose your geotargeting options:
- Language and Market – You choose which language and market to run your ads in e.g. English – United States, Spanish – United States, French – Canada, English – Canada, etc.
- Location – Once you’ve selected your language and market, you can more narrowly define the location by states, metro areas and cities.
Next week, we’ll dive into the more advanced features of geotargeting to make sure you understand search intent, languages, etc.
About Elaine Ellis
