SEO for Google Earth

Because Google Earth'm suggesting optimization for the world's favorite bit of fun? Well, Google are currently investing heavily in mobile and geographical range of information, including a new mobile browser, and location-based services like Google Ride Finder, Google Transit. As the web becomes increasingly local, you should seriously consider optimizing your site for Google Earth and the next generation of local search.

What is Google Earth?

Google Earth was formerly known as Earth Viewer before the acquisition of the company that created it - Keyhole, Inc - by Google in 2004. Google Earth is a virtual globe program that superimposes images obtained from satellite imagery, aerial photography and geographic information systems (GIS) on a 3D globe. The application has become very popular with web users around the world, eager to see what their house looks like from space and can be downloaded here as a standalone desktop application.

It seems inevitable to me that, as the bandwidth increases, Google Earth will become the high-level interface for Google Maps and Google Local Search entire interface. After all, the service is accessed using a browser (unofficial) Flash Earth and Wikimapia services.

Presentation of Keyhole Markup Language (KML)

KML is an XML-schema to support the display of three-dimensional geospatial data in Google Earth, Google Maps and other similar programs. Named after Keyhole, the company that invented the scheme, KML has many different parameters to customize the display of geospatial locations. A simple KML file for the Statue of Liberty in New York (statue.kml name of the file) might look like this:

Statue of Liberty-LibertyStatue 74.044700, 40.689400Optimising for Google Earth

I recommend to all my customers to create individual Keyhole Markup Language (KML) files for all business addresses of their branches. To find your (longitude and latitude) coordinates (to place the tags, enter the ZIP code in the branch multimap.com and read the coordinates resulting from the "information map".

Save the KML file to the root directory of your website (ie http://www.yourdomain.com/location-1.kml), then add one line of code for each position to the Sitemap file, so that Google will index Your location data the next time the network scanning Sitemap:

http://www.yourdomain.com/location-1.htmlhttp://www.yourdomain.com/location-2.html

After a few days, Google will crawl your sitemap and index individual KML files. The final step is to add a link to Google Maps places, branch finder or contact us page on your website, which follows a specific syntax for dynamic URL. For example, this code is a link (you can try) for the London branch of SEO Expert Services:

Expert SEO Services - London Branch Map

You'll notice that my KML includes a range of ways. You could add the same (a) a small image of the building, (b) a link to the company's web site, (c) the business address, (d) links to the contact form, and (e) links to other branches and their maps.

Conclusions

Over time, geo-tagged content is destined to become very important, as research becomes increasingly local. Future proof your business now investing some time in KML and the art of optimizing Google Earth. More help with my forum! ......