With a knack for local search and web marketing, Dave Cosper brings broad experience in all aspects of sales, corporate identity, marketing and advertising. Dave's specialties include: product development, strategic multimedia marketing, branding and identity, local SEO, SMO, website UI, professional networking, and project management.
Dave is the Vice President of EZlocal.com.
EZlocal is a local search site designed to help consumers quickly and easily find products and services in their community (and elsewhere), providing an easy reference map, customer reviews, and detailed business profiles. EZlocal has created simple tools to help businesses promote their products and services and place higher in local searches on Google, Bing, Yahoo! and top-ranked IYP's.
EZlocal Inc. – Local Business Search Made EZ!
A business owner recently asked me how to go about building positive reviews in a way that would "optimize" their Google Maps listing. This is about as provocative a topic as it gets in the Local Search community, I know, but it's also an unavoidable subject worth addressing. Search marketers ponder the same "How To" question, if for nothing else to try and understand every aspect of local search ranking factors and translate this to practical advice for SMB's....
For most business categories, Google uses customer reviews as a critical metric, among other things, to influence how listings rank in Maps -- essentially determining how locally "prominent" the business is. There is also rising importance of Google's own Places reviews as a ranking factor. Coincidentally, as review citations from third party sites have recently become less visibly significant. The challenge is putting in place a practical system that works; turning your offline customer interactions into online evangelism with as little friction as possible. Enter QR Codes....
It's not going to be easy to fool Google anymore. To rank well in the new Google algo, you need to think about how you can encourage other people to want link back to you within a meaningful context across a broad number of sources....
Google has begun to allow custom links to be added to a business's profile in Google Places. Up until now, only a single website link was permitted. Google's initial stance was this single link provided should be the best online representation of that company....
SMB's have just two meaningful representations in the local search space: a website and a business listing. If there was a Layman's equation for Google's local search algorithm, it would perhaps look something like this: Ranking = Location + Information + Corroboration + Input + X....
With a knack for local search and web marketing, Dave Cosper brings broad experience in all aspects of sales, corporate identity, marketing and advertising. Dave's specialties include: product development, strategic multimedia marketing, branding and identity, local SEO, SMO, website UI, professional networking, and project management.
Dave is the Vice President of EZlocal.com.
EZlocal is a local search site designed to help consumers quickly and easily find products and services in their community (and elsewhere), providing an easy reference map, customer reviews, and detailed business profiles. EZlocal has created simple tools to help businesses promote their products and services and place higher in local searches on Google, Bing, Yahoo! and top-ranked IYP's.
EZlocal Inc. – Local Business Search Made EZ!
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