SMX Local Search SEO Best Practices - SMXLoMo - Denver

A really good session covering some tips and tricks related to local search. I picked up on some things I’d not known before, and it sounds like I should get kicking on some hcard and address tagging of some clients. After Chris Sherman did introductions, these are the folks who did presentations. The presentations went fast, but I did my best :-)

Chuck Aikens - Booyah Agency

70% of internet users perform local search, 68% would use the phone number to contact business in the last 30-60 days. Only 11% would fill out an on-line form but 68% would use the phone number to contact the business

So, between an online form and phone number as much as a 12:1 ratio has been observed. Wow!

49% of search users put in a geographic modifier, 23% put in a business name.

Top search categories for Local (Mapquest data)

• Travel - hotels, airports
• Search - food, retail
• Entertainment - bars, nightclub, theatres
• Places - hospitals, churches, banks, pos
• Brands - starbucks, wal-mart, ups

Excellent SEO Tips

• Double listing between google maps and top organic rank can drive conversion to the site big time.
• Strategy is to talk about what they do and where they do it. This is an important technique - so you must lay down the geographic locations on the left and right of the site very specifically. This technique worked with very little time investment.
• Essentially good old fashioned SEO with local authority sites combined with high quality local listing practices.
• On your sites, you need to put WHAT and WHERE both on right hand side and in footer! Lets you go after organic long-tail without chasing keywords that will not result in searches. Conversion rates also go way up based on their findings.
• All of this was done with local link coverage from local media and local authority sites.
• Grab links from local bloggers and regional PR.
• List geographic targets
• watch the long tail
• get local links!

Gib Olander - Localeze

Local is a messy place. It Closes the loop on the buying cycle. {slides moved really fast}

Two types of searches….

• searcher they know exists - wants to recover information.
• The searcher knows where but not who - discovery search for a specific need.

Lots of moving parts to this index for SEO, business listing database index in addition to organic and paid search listings on SERP. Sometimes the biz listings don’t even have a website.

4 tactics for optimizing a local search:

• Microsite - location relevant info
• Locator - business name in certain communities
• Profile - build out simple profiles - what’s unique about a business in a category?
• Directory inclusion -IYPs, Merchantcircle, Superpages, etc.

business listings listing - you must get to the aggregators - infousa, acxiom, localeze so your listings in the SERPs on those listings. There are tools you can use.� (SC - ?)

You should try to answer the discovery and recovery answers with your campaigns in all of the types.

Vanessa Fox - Zillo

• Leverage community to do the work for you.
• You want to be found for city+topic pair, compel customers to click, and put them to work to dominate!
• You may not have much content for each location and you can’t just DUMP data from other sources.
• Duplicate content issues can bite you.

“Solutions”

• Autogenerate content (ha)
• You pop in irrelevant search results (ha)

Better solution?:

• Get users to create content for you! People are creating content for other sites for free. Users can add localized expertise to results.
• But then tumbleweeds grow through a ghost town if you leave them to their own devices.� Nobody is doing it… what can be learned from this?

To get people creating content for you you need….

• seeded content / beta testers / early adopters
• engaged active users with a vested interest
• Hire moderators to watch things.
• Expert/user hybrid. REI does this
• Influencer/Engagers are likely to spread word
• Go for the few “vocal” people - they contribute most content
• Discounts
• Reputation, ego, credibility

Matt Van Wagner

Learnings:

• People don’t search for zip codes
• People sometimes DO search for counties, esp after city searches have failed.
• National and State-Level campaigns must both be kept online. You can’t lean on regionally qualified campaigns only.
• Keywords + State outperforms Keywords + Abbreviations
• “Near”, “End”, “Around”, “Area” are words that people will use.
• “Western”, “Eastern”, are also used.
• County Names were actually searched for…
• Sometimes the area you are placing ads inside will be larger than you thought.

Q/A

How can we crack the maps algorithm!

Get registered in the local business center, and have all of your meta data filled in!
Let the algorithm come to you. Many people do not fill in their local business center information, so before you start cracking algorithms, get the basics done.

How many are just clicking on the map in the maps one-box?

Nobody in room knew. Chris Sherman said that Inquiro is finding eyes are drawn to the map like they are with regular images/video. They will be releasing a BIG study in Nov/Dec (!) about this.

What about Hcards, address tags, etc?

Recommendation use HCard Format definitely. But it doesn’t seem to make a difference today. Make sure the target location is used TWICE in the page (hint/tip) [note to readers - low battery]

HCard/address tags can’t hurt. Vanessa Fox doesn’t know of Google using Hcard, but they “might” for local. Yahoo Local is using hcards now and address tag. Snuck it in 6m ago.

There is no organic lift given to one Google product from Any Other. (Chuck)

Local Events might help local rank even though temporary (tip!)

Craigslist with smaller cities helps more than large cities

Also check out Mike The Internet Guy’s LiveBlogging

What is liveblogging? Liveblogging is basically notetaking for the world. I’m not taking the time to write perfectly because I’m listening to the speaker - taking notes much as I would on my own. I will revise these posts some over time, but they will always be quickly written like this.

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