Jeff is the founder of Catch Search Marketing. Catch offers local businesses free guides to help improve their online marketing knowledge, including a local search marketing training course. Jeff has delivered SEO results for major consumer oriented websites all the way down to local businesses, he has spoken about SEO at Higher Ed Heroes.

Away from the laptop Jeff enjoys anything mountain oriented, and a constant itch for music. .

When Should I Build a New Website & Invest In SEO

by Jeff Howard    November 17, 2009

The Holidays are no further than one week away, and on the other side of everyone going bonkers is a new year. Chances are at this juncture new budgets will be set, taxes paid, and 2010 business goals established. If you're on the fence about SEO, or whether or not to build a new website here are objective methods packed into two PDF guides that can assist in the decision making process....

The 3 Variables of Google Local Search

by Jeff Howard    November 16, 2009

Sometimes organic search seems straight forward, type in a keyword and returned is a list of 10 recommended websites. Of course, getting to the top isn't so simple, but the notion that once you arrive at the top, traffic will ensue is a hypothesis hard to deny. Local search results don't play into this scheme. They have variables such as size of the map, and definition of a region's center that combine with trust, a citation, or sometimes what I call "sureness factors" to determine what businesses should be recommended. This post isn't a blueprint for better local rankings, but...

Going Down The Long Tail of Local Search

by Jeff Howard    November 5, 2009

As the growth of local search continues, companies who serve large regions by remote service, warehouses, or otherwise should not feel disadvantaged from an obscure physical address. These companies can naturally optimize across a region by discovering how searches for niche areas occur within a larger region. Because so many searches are now localized a long tail of local phrases are emerging within major metropolitan areas. By drilling down for the names of towns, neighborhoods, municipalities, counties, and zip codes that receive search volume businesses serving larger regions can take the long tail approach to incremental increases in local search...