Interesting Local SEO tip

July 16th, 2007 · No Comments

I ran into an interesting local SEO tip today that I had not seen before. The tip was posted on Search Engine Journal by Sujan Patel.

Check your WHOIS information

This one is the easiest to perform, and simplest to explain. When you register your domain name, you have to put in a registered address. Make sure that you use your business information and not your personal information! If you’re unsure, I suggest heading over to whois.net and finding out what address your website is registered to. Most of the time if you need to change it, you can do this by logging into your registrar account and making the appropriate changes or contact whoever is in charge of your domain name. Very easy fix, and since it’s been suggested that Google takes this into consideration when delivering local results, it’s best to do this sooner than later.

I had heard things about hosting you site in your own geo-target region, but had not seen anything about the regitrant information. We know that Google is a domain registrar now, however no one knows for sure how they are using their new power. This is one of the those tips, where if you are registering a new domain you want use this advice. However for an older domain that does not comply (ie not using your business address etc.), it might not be worth changing or even worse could cause harm.