Cool Stuff with Geo Data for Your Local Website

Posted on Saturday, May 31st, 2008

Mike Blumenthal just wrote a great post about adding Geo Sitemaps to websites. So I got to tinkering with some of these KML format geo data files and discovered a few new things and revisited some older ones.

So here are a few cool geo data things you can do for a local website.

Geo-Meta Tags

Now I’ve been adding geo meta tags to websites for some time now. An easy tool to use to generate your geo-location meta tags can be found at mygeolocation.com. Simply navigate the map to pinpoint your location then click the Geo-Meta Tags button. Copy and paste those tags into the head section of your web page.

You can also then submit your website and location to GeoURL here.

Google Maps - My Maps

In Google Maps you can create public maps. You can use this map as a feature on the “about us” page or “service area” page of your website. Or just have fun with it like this one I made.

Create a placemark and then you can add text in the pop-up balloon that appears when the placemark is clicked. You can add html inside the balloon, so include a link to your site and maybe an image of your logo or something.

You can draw lines and create polygon shapes too.

I went a little overboard for this example but for a local business you could simply leave it as a placemark only, or add a polygon of the area you service.

KML Geo Data Files

Now this is new and cool. You can create a similar map to your Google My Maps as an XML file in KMS format. Done right you can open this file in any geo-mapping service, like Google Earth, and you will see your map, placemarks and balloon text.

Now I could not find any easy online automated tools for creating a detailed kml file. But for a basic one with points you can again use the tool at mygeolocation.com. There is another button to generate KML data.

You can also use Google Earth to create your KML files. Add a place marker where you want it. In the pop-up give it a title. You can then write HTML into the description field. When your done find that point you just made in your My Places menu on the left. Right click on it in My Places and click copy. When you go to paste it into a basic text editor, like Notepad, it pastes the kml source code. Save that text file with the extension .kml and presto, you have your KML file.

You can see my KML file here. I used Google Earth to generate that.

If you are a subscriber to Google Earth Plus you can create polygons and lines in there too. I’m not But i see its only $20 per year for a subscription. Looks like I know where i’m spending $20 soon.

For even more advanced uses of KML data you can see all the tags available and how they work here in Google’s KML Reference available here.

Add that KML File to Your Sitemap!

Like mentioned in Mike Blumenthal’s post, add that KML file to your sitemap to let Google crawl your geo-data. Here’s how to add your geo data to your sitemap.

It appears to build a lot more trust with Google if you have one of these geo-data files so its certainly worthwhile.

Oh yeah, and don’t forget to link to your website from within your description balloon. It may send a little traffic too.

Posted on Saturday, May 31st, 2008

Topic = Local Internet Marketing

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