By George Pickering, LocalExperts.com

In May, I began working with a Wedding Officiant in Buffalo, NY. Like most professionals, Sandra Hustead was using a non geo domain name for her primary business address. Sandra was kind enough to provide some articles for Local Expert’s wedding planning blog, so I decided to provide free SEO advice.

After a quick search on Google, I noticed that Sandra’s site was buried on page four in the search results for several key local search terms, commonly used by brides to find a wedding officiant. Cross referencing with GoDaddy, I found that both BuffaloOfficiant.com and BuffaloOfficiants.com were unregistered and available for Sandra to use as her primary online address. I sent Sandra this message:

“Sandra, I would register BuffaloOfficiant.com and BuffaloOfficiants.com and then build your site on this domain. My experience is if you provide quality content and link to this domain you should be able to secure the #1 position on Yahoo and Google whenever any bride searches for “Buffalo Officiant(s)”.

Sandra registered BuffaloOfficiants.com in May 2009. Tonight I did the same search on Google and was happy to see that Sandra’s site was #4 for the local search term “Buffalo Officiants”. While satisfied with the results, a quick scan of her Metatags indicated areas for quick improvement.

The current Metatags on BuffaloOfficiants.com:

<title>Welcome</title><meta name=“Keywords” content=“buffaloofficiants, officiants, weddings, marriage, services, non-denominational, minister, officiant, local officiants, ceremonies,civil,service” /><meta name=“Description” content=“I am available to perform your wedding ceremony in WNY. I absolutely love what I do!” />

This evening, I suggested changing the Metatag for BuffaloOfficiants.com to:

<title>Buffalo Officiant Sandra Hustead specializes in non-denominational wedding ceremonies</title><meta name=”Keywords” content=”buffalo officiants, officiants, weddings, marriage, services, non-denominational, minister, officiant, local officiants, ceremonies, civil, service” /><meta name=”Description” content=”Buffalo wedding officiant available to perform your wedding ceremony. I absolutely love what I do!” />

We can track Sandra’s progress and see if her site rises in the search results for the local search terms “buffalo officiants”, “buffalo officiants”, “buffalo wedding officiant”, and “buffalo wedding officiant”.

By changing to a geo domain, Sandra was able to rise from the back pages to the first page. Now, changing the meta-tags to provide better targeting, should help her achieve top billing in her local market.