SEO and geography: Where the hell are you?

One of the things I find frustrating with many of the Web sites I consult with is that I oftentimes have no clue where the group is located.

Many of these sites are for individual chapters of our organization, so they are literally all over the map, in the U.S., Canada and a few other countries. So I find it frustrating when, say, I'm trying to determine where the North Coast chapter is and it takes me 15 minutes to determine that it's in Ohio, of all places.

Too often I think we assume people know who we are and where we're located. We don't take into account the search-engine tourists who may stumble on your site by accident. Maybe they have no interest in your content and will never spend a dime on your product, but if your content is in any way specific to one region, you should always let that be known in your page title and/or "about" information. 

I think this definitely can apply to newspapers, especially community sites with vague names. For example, I used to work for a paper called the Dispatch Tribune. Unless you live in that community, you'd have no idea where the paper is located. 

If the chapter mentioned above had mentioned Ohio in its page title, that obviously would help users determine whether or not to click through to your site. Also, maybe they don't know the exact name of your organization but they're looking for a group like yours in that area of the country. If your site in no way mentions where you are, you're potentially missing out on new visitors, customers, subscribers or members.