A quick Case Study from a client and from Sneaker

One of our top clients is a group called AIPPI. This is their description:

The International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property, known as AIPPI (Association Internationale pour la Protection de la Propriété Intellectuelle), is the world’s leading International Organization dedicated to the development and improvement of laws for the protection of intellectual property.

This group of about 9,000 attorneys around the world presents an interesting problem to tackle when it comes to SEO. They serve the international community of lawyers and have offices all over the world but how can they rank for local search? Of course if you needed a lawyer for anything related to intellectual property, or anything else for that matter, why hire a law firm in some other country than your own?

The target is for AIPPI to position itself as a leading authority in the international world of legal matters but it really all goes back to the local search. Google especially caters their results to your geo-location. If someone in Houston and in Jakarta search for the same thing they get different results.

This is the exact same issue we ran into here at Sneaker Interactive. We used to rank well for keywords like “Web Design Clear Lake” since that is where our home office is based but now that we have moved into the international space our local hits have dropped.

Is international search better than local search?

Well we think its really based on your strategy. In the case of Sneaker, we wanted the global coverage but didn’t want to loose our presence in the local search. We landed on the fact that though we serve the international community of lawyers, and pretty much every industry, we still have our home office in Clear Lake, Texas right across the street from Nasa.

Now I can tell what you are thinking, “hey this post is really just a way to get your site to rank for the local search!” Well, you’re right. It is but its all true. We really are located here, we really do have an office at 1322 Space Park Drive. We are not a virtual company all based in theory but instead we have a good ol brick and mortar location. We feel this helps us work together internally as a team and also makes us more viable to our clients.

Feel like coming over, we’ll be here. We’ve got coffee if you need a pick me up or a couch if you want to take a nap.

FYI: I pulled the images from Square Foot.