Sometimes, I get ahead of myself when I'm answering questions and in this case, I forgot for a moment that such a huge number of the business listings that make up Google's local index are still unclaimed. Let's get down to basics with this article. If you've been mystified by the verification process, read on!...
Google definitely did a cool thing a couple days ago. They now offer a reporting dashboard for your local business listings. It's slick, intuitive and can even help local business owners jump on great opportunities.
This week in Local Search, Google has made a small change to the pin number process in the Local Business Center which will slightly alter the way SEOs need to manage assisting clients with the all-important verification process. And, just today, Google has added a new favoriting feature to Maps....
Google is now looking at IP addresses of searchers and putting in local results even if you didn't put in a geographic modifier....
Google's latest move brings Local to the forefront of the search experience, for searchers and marketers alike. This is a game changer....
Observation is the key skill you need to succeed with a local-focused business, and with the promotional tools the web provides, there has never been a better time to begin cultivating local needs for the benefit of your community and your business....
Live blogging coverage of the SES NY session: "Search on a Dime".
Google Maps gets sprinkled with thousands of little red dots - you get tons of new local business choices with the amazing new K-Pack!...
With SMX West, the SEMMYs and big news in the mapping world, my friends and colleagues in Local have been busy this past week. Keep apace with the latest in Local Search by taking a gander at these informative and important articles....
Many marketers are asking me about personalized marketing, which you should expect to see more and more of in the next few years. We've already seen behavioral targeting in display ads and personalized search, and we'll see more personalized advertising emerge. But are we marketers just assuming that users will allow all this personalized marketing in? What if they clean their cookies regularly? Will that prevent those users from being exposed to personalized ads?...
Officially launched on January 20th, 2009, GetListed.org is a fantastic new resource for small business owners that will help them learn more about the way their business is listed online. The main goal of GetListed.org is "to help small businesses claim and enhance their listings at major search engines."...
In a Local climate where failure to claim your business listings can result in competitive hijacking, loss of income and damaging misrepresentation, there is no time to lose in getting listed and getting listed right. Sexton and Mihm have just made this vital task incredibly elegant and oh-so-easy with what I believe is the most noteworthy tool yet created for the Local Search industry....
Almost everyone with an interest in Local Search is trying to get a message through to the large minds at Google, in a variety of ways. The message concerns the real-life effects of inaccurate data in Google's One Box, 10-pack and Maps on the public. While a major percentage of Internet users have grown to trust the Google brand and will take Google's local data at face value, few will understand that Google views its own local applications as a wiki, community project. Let me explain why this is seriously problematic....
Discover how clearly written user reviews give you the power to shape your local economy. This article provides specific instructions for styling your reviews powerfully and describes the real-life incentives for doing so....
Listen up and you'll hear the cries and groans of citizens everywhere as they interact with Google's Local entity and come away bruised and confused. What happens when you release a demi-god product into civilization, with the power to change common people's daily lives in terms of their earnings, their activities and the use of their time, and then you fail to back up that super power with adequate support? The past few weeks on the Local scene give a bird's-eye-view answer to that question....
The days of flipping through a big fat yellow book to find a local business are quickly coming to a close. After all, why settle for a simple phone number when an online search can also net you menus, pricing, hours and consumer reviews? In this workshop, Matt walked attendees through the most popular local search engines and will show you the best ways to leverage them to promote your business online....
Lots of big news coming from Yodle this past week including a report of a 700% year over year increase in revenue and the addition of some experienced veterans Yodle's leadership. I got a chance to catch up with Yodle CEO, Court Cunningham to get his insight on some of the latest news....
This past week I had the chance to catch up with Peter Hutto, Vice President, Business Development and Sales at Local.com to get some insight on his session regarding Local 2.0 at Search Engine Strategies in San Jose....
If David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors left you longing for more local fare, Mike Blumenthal takes the cake by Cracking Google's Local Algo. Visit Mike's site for the presentation he just gave at SMX Local, and stay tuned there for a more in-depth report on our findings....
As a Local Search practitioner, I'm a big fan of Google Maps and the brilliant technology behind it. I interact with Maps daily and am always excited when they roll out some new tool or application that makes their index of information about local businesses more thorough or useful. But seeing Google Maps' newest offering, Street View, didn't make me feel excited. It made me feel...ticked....
David Mihm is one of the top experts in the ever-growing specialty of Local Search Optimization and he focuses his consultancy on helping small business clients generate online revenue in their respective marketplaces. His Mihmorandum blog is a "mandatory add" to the feedreader of anybody remotely interested in the Local SEO niche....
It was just over a year ago when I chatted with Hanan Lifshitz of Palore for the first time. We've spoken a number of times since then, and he and the Palore team have done some great things in providing local business data. I'm very happy that Hanan has agreed to do an online interview.
Local search walks away with two categories this week with continued praise for David Mihm's "Local Search Ranking Factors" article, and Local.com increases communication on its site by adding user reviews and ratings. USA Today featured Google's Matt Cutts as he shares five tips on how to help your website succeed in the search engines. And, the SEMPO survey says. . . the SEM industry exceeded its projected $11.5 billion spending with and actual spending of $12.2 billion in 2007!...
David Mihm steals top honors this week with his article "Local Search Rankings Factors." Sage refers to the post as the definitive local search document, thus far. David picks the brains of the top 20 local search experts to help determine what the most important factors are for local search. He created a scale of negative five to positive five that he uses to rank topics on how important they are to impacting your rankings. With a total of 47 different criteria listed, David not only tells you how the experts ranked them, but he also tells you how much...
Sometimes it's the really simple advice that can have the most impact on how you do business. That's the basis of Tim's advice over at Convert Offline this week. Tim harkens back to his Yellow Pages days and offers up some great suggestions on building a better local search presence. Now some people might find it odd to learn SEO lessons from something as old school as the Yellow Pages, but Tim offers up some good advice on improving your site.
Roughly a year ago, local search engine optimization was all the rage - the new frontier in search engine marketing. For a while, it seemed that everyone was interested in the local search angle - even multi-national companies. However, for many companies selling products or services to the entire United States, or even globally, it seemed like a non-starter.
Today we begin the first installment of a weekly site clinic column, where small businesses are invited to submit their websites for review. Can't beat a little free advice, right? I'll be looking at the design, copy, usability, SEO, marketing, and any technical issues that may prevent websites from drawing loyal, active visitors and meeting goals. Each week, I'll give the top five issues the website owner/manager can address to significantly improve performance. ...
The days of flipping through a big fat yellow book to find a local business are quickly coming to a close. After all, why settle for a simple phone number when an online search can also net you menus, pricing, hours and consumer reviews? In this workshop, Matt McGee, SEO Manager at Marchex will walk attendees through the most popular local search engines and will show you the best ways to leverage them to promote your business online....
No doubt some of you looked at your calendars last week and realized you'd missed the $850 early bird price for our upcoming Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference in Houston. Don't sweat it, we've got you covered. We've spent the last six months building the perfect conference for you. We know how busy you are. Do you think we'd let you miss out on this great show just because you forget to set an alert on your calendar?
Scott Buresh receives top honors this week with his article "Sam's Club Wants to Be Your Search Engine Optimization Company-Should You Let It?". He explains that Sam's Club is partnering with a company called Innuity to provide small businesses with access to a dashboard that submits their sites to local search engines, all for only $25! Scott's concern is that customers will feel they are getting the whole SEO package when really it's just a small piece of it, but he does acknowledge the possibility of the affiliation increasing validity for the SEO world....
If the buzz is to be believed, Sam's Club is now a search engine optimization company that is targeting the local search market aggressively. The fact is, this isn't something new; it's just recently come to the forefront. Sam's Club has partnered with a company called Innuity to offer a program that is primarily targeted at small businesses looking to get noticed in the local search results....
Matt McGee offers up a post over at Small Business SEM that makes it pretty clear Google Maps is on the way up in terms of usage. Despite my love of Yelp for local reviews, I find myself turning to Google Maps more and more often for brick and mortar business info. It's the integrated option on my iPhone and the simple navigation on the web version of the site let's me find specific types of stores near certain locations.
Today, I sat down and looked at approximately 1000 reviews listed in Google Maps for hospitality industry businesses. The following is the list of sources I found Google currently pulling this data from, in addition to their own Google Reviews source.
This week's "In the News" video talks about advancements that companies like Southwest airlines and Ask.com are making to enhance personal touches for their uses; Southwest is adding internet access on some of their planes, and Ask is now offering customized skins on their search tools. Also, Google expands its local search results, making more options available to users but SEO harder for other sites.
Since Google's been showing up to ten local results within their natural listings lately, it seems like a good idea to get back to the local search engines. They're now more visible than ever and are not going away. The search engines don't say (nor should they) how to get top local listings, and here are some basic steps and ideas to benefit from Google Maps and Yahoo Local listings.
Thanks to Clint from ThinkSEM for pointing this out to me - Google is showing (at least today) up to ten local listings within their natural results. I'll use the standard "pizza" local search query, but this applies across many industries.
Sage uncovers the pros and cons of Ask's new voice activated mobile device for driving directions and Wikia's new search engine launch. With ease of usability is a concern for both releases, Sage extols the virtues of a free Internet design "Best Practices" report found on Matt Bailey's accessibility website.
The business landscape is changing and the longtail-esque small business is gaining power.
The announcement of the new Local PlusBox by Google Adwords which places geographical information in the top paid search location changes the PPC strategy for those using more local targeting. The new expandable feature allows advertisers to bid to the top spot in an effort to have the opportunity to display such valuable information as a map, address, driving instructions, and phone number, in addition to the location name that appears beneath the last line of ad.
Radiohead moves should open your eyes to possible changes in other industries. Verizon debuts Web 2.0 marketing campaign. AOL acquires Quigo for $300 million. Google at your gas pump. Tapping into social networks.
A couple nights ago I posted a random question on Facebook and noticed that Paul O'Brien from Zvents joined the "Local Search Central" group. I haven't had a chance to use Zvents yet, but then thought of a quick trip coming up.
I'll admit that as a marketing manager I'm typically slow to allocate budget and time towards a new marketing trend until I start seeing concrete examples of that new trend providing some ROI? Well, an example fell right into our lap and I'm sold. We're now starting to see examples of how video and images in Universal Search can pay off....
With small brick and mortar businesses starting to see the value in shifting some of their massive yellow page budgets over to online marketing, local search has become a hot topic. Unfortunately, many small businesses find themselves confused in terms of how to target those local visitors when they move their searches online. Ironically, this often leads them right back to the yellow pages...the online yellow pages. While there's something to be said for maintaining a presence there, it's important that these businesses learn how to better target the growing usage of the local search tools on popular search engines.
It was just earlier this week when Yahoo came out with blended search, similar to what Google and Ask have recently done. Now they've gone a step further by updating Yahoo Local. Yahoo can arguably be considered the better local engine already, although this looks like another step in the right direction....
We probably all had our iPhone media fill by now. We saw the TV stations covering the long lines for the launch and the endless buzz on whether it’s a revolutionary product or an over-hyped gadget. I’m one of many that bought into the iMarketing and now own one (justified by my way-outdated other cell)....
I came across a local search result yesterday that makes the Internet cry. It's not because of the Web site that I found. The site itself is rather nice and gives me a feeling of trust. It's actually the multiple local submissions and the obvious fake user reviews that make me run away....
This time, I'm searching for information. Citysearch has a newer facelift so it's time to put them to the test. It's been awhile since I've visited friends in Seattle and am planning to go there sometime this year, preferably during Bumbershoot....
Actually, this isn't between white or black hat search marketing. It's between SEM and flat-out marketing. When it comes to local search, it winds up I'll set aside my SEM hat and trade it in for that regular ol' marketing hat....
Even if your business sells products and services nationally (or globally), you should still reach customers in your own backyard. Today, we wrap up our week-long series about local search marketing by providing instructions for submitting your site � at no cost - to business data aggregators and Internet Yellow Pages (IYPs)....
People search online for local businesses by going to a variety of sites � regular search engines, local-only search engines, review sites, Internet Yellow Pages, and more. Today and tomorrow, we�ll wrap up our week-long series by giving you specific information about how to ensure your company is listed in all the major players....
We�re right smack in the middle of a series about ensuring your site can be found in local search engines, Internet Yellow Pages (IYPs) and other locally-oriented resource sites. Today, we�ll focus on off-site factors � specifically, submitting your business profile to all the key sites out there. (Did we mention it�s free?) The first step is to compile all the information you�ll need for your almighty business profile....
In part one of this series we talked about why it's important for every business to be visible in local search engines and Internet Yellow Pages (IYPs). Today, let's talk about one easy way to ensure that every search engine is crystal clear about your geographic location....
It's important that every company promote itself in its own local area. Even if your business sells products and services nationally (or globally), you should still reach customers in your own backyard. Local search expert Greg Sterling comments on a recent WebVisible study that reported 70% of consumers had used the Internet to search for a local service business in the past 90 days. So how do you ensure that your website is found for all these local searchers? Our five-part series will give you the tactical steps you need every day this week....
Nate Elliot, an associate editor for Jupiter Research, has some interesting commentary on local search over at ClickZ today....
As the search industry experiences an explosion in interest for local search, the yellow pages look to stay in the game....
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