It’s quite clear that local SEO will be *one* of the places to be in 2010 and beyond. Need convincing?
Check out:

* Google and Yelp’s failed deal – If local search was unlikely to see a decent ongoing up tick, Google might not have as much interest in acquiring a site like Yelp. Even if Google was just buying Yelp out to remove competition for it’s own local stuff, it still shows an acknowledgement that local search is quite important.
* Google’s Flat Rate Local Adwords Pricing Model aimed at local businesses
* Google’s Local Business Center is becoming a more and more robust service.
* The local 10 Pack continues to show up in general service related queries. Local SEO is also about gaining visibility in Google’s 10 pack and maps in general so it is equally as important to be optimized for your geo-specific keywords as it is to be set up to succeed in the local pack

Speaking of the local 10 pack, it appears to have done part of its job for Google. Consider the following from TMPDM/ComScore

So Google’s maps increased sharply, likely due to the local 10 pack being shoved down people’s throats. I happen to like the 10 pack to some degree, more when I type in a town/city + service instead of my town + service because lots of times they pull from my IP which is a ways away from where I am now, which kind of renders the initial map findings a bit useless for me. I also like it much better when it takes up #4 in the rankings rather than having be at spot 1 or 2
The Process

One of the nice things about local SEO for me is that I don’t have to fuss around with a bazillion different keyword tools, cross reference data points, wonder which data sets are more accurate (and which ones are entirely useless), or spend time creating a site structure which ultimately has to be redesigned after finding some some of the keyword data was rubbish.

There are a few ways get a general idea of which keywords you should incorporate in your campaign. You can use tools like Google Trends, Google Insights, as well as PPC campaigns. You can also look at competing sites to see how they structure their page or site in order to target specific keywords.
A Case Study

So you just spoke at a local chamber of commerce meeting in your hometown of Atlanta and now you have the locals all fired up about search marketing. You end up landing a client named Mary Smith who owns Peachy Insurance Agency which has offices in Atlanta, Savannah, Macon, and Athens.

Mary has decided her agency is going to focus on vehicle insurance only. So she asks you to begin the process of figuring out which keywords best suit her goals. Will it be broader geo-local keywords (on the state level) or pursuing really local keywords (down to the town level) or both?
In this case, we have to figure out if car insurance or auto insurance is the more popular keyword in this specific area. I would start with the Adwords Keyword Tool to figure out if there is any big difference from a broad perspective

It appears that the modifier georgia and “auto” is a bit more popular (but it is pretty easy to work in other variations like the state abbreviation into your on-page copy)

Then I would head over to Google Insights for additional data points, one targeted to the state and one broader country wide search with local modifiers
Broad Search with modifiers

Broad Keywords but geo-targeted by region

Lastly, from a tool standpoint, I would give google trends a shot. They break out volume by town/city but I would still test that heavily in Adwords.

My next step would be to type in some keywords, since the difference is not huge and trying to target both might be a good move

Note the local box on the more niche, local search. Also, note how some sites target both car/auto. From a relevancy standpoint, Mary’s site should be able to do pretty well in these SERPS as a local resource guide, a local insurance agency, and a site which is not essentially a lead generation site. If Mary can create content which is valuable to the local community, earn local links, promote the site in local communities, etc.. she should do pretty well when compared to either thinner affiliate sites or one page off-shoots on a large lead generation domain.
Georgia Auto Insurance

Georgia Car Insurance

Atlanta Auto Insurance

Atlanta Car Insurance

The best way to figure out local keyword volume, or really any keyword’s volume in most cases, is to set up an adwords campaign. I like to set up 2 PPC campaigns:

* Campaign 1 – no radius targeting, targeting keywords with specific geo-local modifiers (georgia auto insurance, car insurance in atlanta, etc)
* Campaign 2 – targeting by maps (state of Georgia and specific zip codes) with no geo-local modifiers (auto insurance quotes, car insurance quotes) etc.

So that second option will probably be fairly pricey but the long term payoffs of making sure you or your client are optimized for the correct keyword variations in your market are much bigger than any nominal PPC campaign costs.
Conclusions

So the volume might not be huge but keep in mind this is a local insurance agency. They may not be able to scale their operation with a huge firehose of traffic (say the 10’s of thousands places like Geico and Progressive receive per day), it is all relative.
You might proceed as follows:

* Go with the state level keywords on the home page and try and grab the exact match if possible (either GeorgiaAutoInsurance.Com or GeorgiaCarInsurance.Com depending on what your PPC campaign tells you has the higher volume)
* Target towns/cities on individual pages like peachyinsurance.com/atlanta-auto-insurance.com

Most of the time local SERPS are ripe if you can figure out which angle you want to pursue, be able to execute it, and have a client willing to spend some capital

Must have resources, for me, when launching an SEO campaign is to browse through the local search ranking factors and see how I can apply them to my client’s site. Also, I am a big fan of Andrew Shotland’s Local SEO Guide & understanding Google maps & local search.

Google has joined Bing (and Yahoo to a lesser degree) with today’s announcement that it’s emphasizing the content and sentiment of reviews and ratings on its place pages. Here’s a look at how Google spotlights review content on the Wild Ginger Asian Restaurant place page:

reviews-google

Google is pulling reviews from a variety of sources, classifying them, and then providing a review and summary of the sentiments expressed in those reviews. Searchers get a quicker glance at whether the business scores favorably on things like (in this example) food, service, atmosphere, and more.

Google is catching up to Bing with this feature. The Bing local listing for this same restaurant shows what Bing calls a “Scorecard” of review sentiments.

reviews-bing

Yahoo also highlights reviews content, but in a different way. The Yahoo local listing for this same restaurant shows star ratings and user reviews, but there’s no attempt to analyze and classify the sentiments being expressed in those reviews. Yahoo does, however, display the full content of reviews out in its main local shortcut.

reviews-yahoo

Google and Bing only show a star rating and a link to read reviews from their main search results pages.

There are obvious SEO considerations here: If Google and Bing, in particular, are doing sentiment analysis to determine whether the content of local reviews is good or bad, it’s logical to think those sentiments are being used in rankings. Higher ranking local business would be the ones that have the best combination of review quantity and quality.

Winning at Internet Local Search

This is a multi-faceted endeavor. You must have a strategy to utilize:

1) Organic Search Engine Results – Great results on page one of Google and others for your marketplace. These will drive traffic to your website.

2) Local Directories – Yelp, Google Local, Yahoo Local, AOL, zillions more. These will be informational listings with links and reviews.

3) Local News Websites & Portals -They get good traffic and might be a good place to be.

4) Internet Yellow Pages

5) Local links – Chamber of Commerce, Business Organizations, Local Partners

6) Social Media Strategy – Twitter and Facebook programs

You will also need to manage reviews and customer feedback in this realm on the local directory sites as well as Twitter and Facebook. A good strategy here will build great word of mouth and affinity. This can be a boom but can be an challenging issue as well.

But I Am a Plumber, How Do I Do This?
Personally, I try to stay away from plumbing. I am great at building websites that get excellent traffic and provide revenue opportunities. And if you are a plumber (any any other business), you should outsource this vital task of increasing website traffic. The good news is that it is actually easier succeed at local search positioning than national or international. Why? Less competition. More focused vertical marketplace. The downside is that there is less volume of searching on any given keyword. Consider the search terms “website designer” (22,200 avg. monthly searches) and “St. Louis website design” (170 avg. monthly searches) . But if you are in St.Louis and you are at the top of page one on Google searches for “St. Louis website design”, you will get the lions share of opportunities.

The Great Frame Up, a custom frame gallery with three locations in the Tampa area, recently won the honor of Best Technology Integration from Décor magazine for its use of technology to eliminate waste, streamline business and give customers a good online experience.

In addition to these technological advancements, the company has incorporated search engine optimization (SEO) to help increase online traffic and reach local customers looking for framing services in their area.

“We have really tried to embrace technology and use it to our advantage, to more efficiently run our business and to provide added benefits to our customers as well,” said Alan Divers, co-owner of the framing company. “It has really helped us to set ourselves apart from other Tampa frame shops, and our customers notice the difference.”

In the past, people looking for a service in their area would head to the Yellow Pages, but today many people head directly to a search engine to find what they need which makes search engine optimization (SEO), especially for niche businesses, more important than ever.

Search engine marketing and search engine optimization, in their traditional forms, are designed to optimize for all users of the internet, including users from all over the world. By focusing on a search engine marketing endeavor that is localized, you can make sure that you are attracting attention from the right web traffic – People in your local area that can patronize your business not only online, but in person as well.

Search engine marketing involves keyword optimization, and you are probably already using keywords in your web content and advertising endeavors. The way that you can localize your search engine marketing campaign is to change the way that you optimize your content with keywords by implementing local modifiers for the keywords that you use. For example, keywords like “weight loss help” are over saturated because there are so many websites on the internet today that are using keywords like these, broad as they are. Could it be possible to optimize for this keyword while catering to a local crowd? How about “weight loss help in austin tx”? Now you are carving out a niche for yourself, and seriously cutting down on the competition by targeting a specific area, the local area where you operate.

There are a lot of websites on the internet that can help you with local search engine marketing as well. Websites like http://www.yelp.com and even http://maps.google.com can help you increase your search engine marketing capabilities online. When you create a local presence for your company or business online, you are creating a completely new and unique presence for yourself online that will go further then your traditional web presence, allowing you to reach out to new audiences that normally would not find you online. This way, when people start looking for local help in their vicinity, and they plug a query into a search engine, your business will come up for them.

In case you weren’t aware of this already, most people are going to prefer working with local businesses rather than product and service providers in other states and countries. This means that catering to your local audience is vitally important to the success of your business and your ability to attract traffic to your website, blog or anything else that you are attempting to market and advertise online.

Citation, 1948 Triple Crown Winner, from Spiletta.com.

In this lengthy post (sorry, it must some kind of delayed reaction to Twitter’s 140-character limitation) I’ll try to explain a hypothesis about optimization for the Google Local algorithm (along with the 10-pack, 3-pack and authoritative OneBox) that’s been brewing in my mind for the past couple of months. It has really crystallized this week in various discussions I’ve had with other Local SEOs, including Mike Blumenthal, EarlPearl, and David Klein, and after reading a blog post by Stephen Espinosa that’s no longer available, unfortunately.

Other experts, especially Bill Slawski and Mike Blumenthal (in fact, I think Mike may have been the first person to turn me onto the word “citation” in some of my conversations with him?) have postulated the importance of “citations” for quite awhile, but for whatever reason, the concept never really hit home for me until recently.
In my opinion, the Citation vs. Link distinction boils down to two parts:
1) In Local SEO, not all links matter.
2) “Links” that matter for Local SEO aren’t necessarily links.
Introduction

Even greenhorn SEOs are probably aware that inbound links are critical for ranking well in the organic search engine algorithms. Almost any link, potentially even those that are no-followed, can help a site rank higher for terms that its content targets. If there are enough links that use the right keywords in their anchor text, a site, or a particular page on a site, can rank well even for content that doesn’t appear on the page–a concept known as “Googlebombing.”

For new SEOs, or for those outside the industry, Yahoo Site Explorer provides more or less accurate data about the volume of links pointing at a given website, and where they are coming from. In general, the most powerful links in a site’s footprint are listed at the top. Google, on the other hand, doesn’t provide accurate link data for organic search, but most industry experts agree that their link analysis probably looks more or less the same as Yahoo’s.

Seemingly, however, Google’s Local algorithm (the one that populates maps.google.com and helps populate the 10-pack, 3-pack, and Authoritative OneBox) counts links differently than its standard organic algorithm. It also seems to present a much more accurate picture of the kinds of “links” that it values than does the organic. I say “seems” because it’s entirely possible that this is just another example of Google trying to throw competing search engines, and SEOs, off its scent. But one frequently gets WILDLY different numbers in comparing the volume of Local “citations” to the number of Yahoo Site Explorer links.
What do I define as a citation? Any page that is listed under the “Web Pages” tab inside a Local Business Listing.

Mike Blumenthal likes to talk about relevance vs ranking, a distinction that never really made sense to me until recently. As SEOs, our job is to improve the rankings of our clients, in a way that is going to bring more traffic and hopefully more business from people who are looking for what they are selling. So in that sense, links are a means to an end, because they lead to both higher traffic AND rankings. Links are like a “vote” for a particular website within the search engine

In the Local algorithm, links can still bring direct traffic from the people who click on them. But the difference is that these “links” aren’t always links; sometimes they’re just an address and phone number associated with a particular business! In the Local algorithm, these references aren’t necessarily a “vote” for a particular business, but they serve to validate that business exists at a particular location, and in that sense, they make a business more relevant for a particular search.

At this point in the post, I’d like to direct readers to some seminal patent analyses from Bill Slawski that have helped crystallize for me the distinction between “Citations” vs. “Links” :

1) Local Search Glossary – Of particular interest are “Geographically Relevant Documents,” the concept of a “Geo-Relevance Profile,” and “Geographic Relevancy Criteria.”

2) Signals of Authority / Authority Documents for Local Search

Pay special attention to this section:

A local document – one associated with particular geographic area, which can be associated with a location, by one of the following means:

* A document may mention a business at the location,
* The address of the business, and/or;
* A telephone number associated with a business.

3) A patent which states that links might not even be looked at

4) Google’s ability to analyze both “structured” data AND “unstructured” data

There are still factors that carry over from the traditional “link” algorithm to the Local “citation” algorithm. For instance, quality still matters. A citation from your local community college or city hall is going to be infinitely more valuable than one from findbusinessesinyourcity.info. Volume still matters too, in that if your business is listed on 100 websites, all of equal value, and your competitor is listed on 50 websites, all of equal value, you should rank higher (sorry, be more relevant) for a particular search than your competitor.

The interaction of all these factors clearly varies from industry to industry and business to business, but it is safe to say that comparing the “Web Pages” tab within a Google Local Business Listing and the Yahoo Site Explorer Link footprint yields some very interesting data.
By Way of Illustration: Florists in Seattle, WA

Not all searches will support the theory to quite this degree, but this particular search does a nice job of holding other well-known Local variables (like proximity to centroid, reviews, and keyword-laden business titles) more or less equal. So to my mind, this is more or less an ideal 10-pack to study.

It’s also an ideal search result–nice going, Google!–all mom & pop businesses, no spam, and a relatively small variation in the number and valence of user reviews of these businesses.

Let’s take a closer look & see how each of these businesses’ Citations compare with their Yahoo Site Explorer links.

Citations vs. YSE links for the Florists Seattle WA Local 10-pack:
Juniper Flowers – 61 / 396
Ballard Blossom – 99 / 421
Fiori Floral Design – 73 / 71
Trudy’s Flowers – 61 / 527
Topper’s European Floral Design – 39 / 227
The Flower Lady – 32 / 65
Flowers by Capitol Hill Flower and Garden – 45 / 28
Pike Place Flowers – 20 / 75
Fleurish – 41 / 188
Metropolitan Market – 96 / 1325*

*Metropolitan Market is a full-service supermarket & thus is a bit of an outlier as a true competitor in the floral industry.
What stands out:

1) Plenty of sites that are only listing address and phone number, or otherwise unspiderable links, are showing up as citations. A couple of quick examples: MySeattleWedding, Seattle.AreaConnect, and Daplus.us (which is a subsidiary of infoUSA, a well-known data provider for Google Local).

2) Crappy-looking links might not be crappy after all. If we go a bit deeper and see the kinds of links that are being counted by the Local algo, just using #1 Juniper Flowers as an example, we see a heavy dose of usual suspects Citysearch and Yelp, but we also see things like Washingtonfloristonline.com and Locateaflowershop.com. I don’t know about you, but based on domain name alone, those look like pretty spammy sites to me, and not worth pursuing as a link for the organic algorithm, but they’re just the kind of links that seem to be propelling Juniper to the #1 Local ranking.

3) Interestingly enough, we DON’T see a citation from Juniper’s #1 YSE link, Cory Parris Photography, a perfectly natural, white hat link from a Seattle wedding photographer that probably partners with Juniper for a lot of business. But evidently the Local “scent” of Cory’s site as being specific to Seattle isn’t strong enough for that to count as a citation, or else the Local algorithm expects to see some address and phone information somewhere near that link as well.

4) The Local “deck” is stacked against Ballard Blossom, yet it still ranks #2. The remarkable thing for me isn’t that Ballard doesn’t rank #1. It’s that it’s able to rank #2 despite being 7 miles and “up to 25 minutes in traffic” from the City Center. What gives Ballard such power? It’s citation volume is higher than ANY other competitor, including Metropolitan Market, which sells a lot more than just flowers. Ballard is #1 in the organic rankings for this search too, with over 400 YSE links.

5) For the most part, the businesses with lots of citations rank higher than those with a lower volume. Don’t know that I really need to say much else here. Again, I am certain that the quality of the citation plays a factor, but it looks like most of these businesses are getting cited on more or less the same websites, so volume correlates well to ranking.

6) Two of the top 10 Local businesses have MORE citations than they have inbound links! If this doesn’t prove the importance of non-link citations for the Local algorithm, I don’t know what will!

7) Now let’s take a look at the #5 Local result, Topper’s Floral. Topper’s ranks #2 in the organic algorithm, with good reason (227 YSE links). But its Citation volume is only 39. Clearly, the vast majority of links coming into Topper’s aren’t valued by Google as a Local reference; i.e., to channel Mike Blumenthal, nearly 200 of those links don’t make Topper’s relevant for a Local Result.
What Does This Mean for Local Linkbuilding Strategy?

Lots of us in the Local space proselytize about the need to verify your Local data with third-party information providers like InfoUSA, SuperPages.com, and InsiderPages.com that Google and Yahoo draw on to populate and confirm their own databases.

But the rise of citations suggests that this process should be taken one step further. Not only should you verify your data with these larger data providers, but Google seems to be actively spidering smaller sites both in your keyword niche AND your geographical niche. These range anywhere from knock-off YellowPages to the homepage of your grandma’s knitting circle. So take the time to submit to sites that you might not have thought were worth it before.

Also, mine your competitors’ citations. If you’re not ranking well in Local, study the Web Pages tab on your competitors’ listing. In many cases they’re local directories that are free to submit to or create a listing. In traditional SEO, it’s NOT usually a good idea to have the same link footprint as your competitor. But in Local SEO, it seems that there is a certain set of standard sites (which vary by area and by industry) in which Googlebot expects every relevant business to be listed.

I mentioned Steve Espinosa’s blog post about leveraging Yahoo Local for better de facto rankings in the Google organic search earlier in the introduction. Well, guess what–there’s another reason to optimize your Yahoo Local listing–the Google Local algo seems to count Yahoo Local as a trusted citation.

Think about targeting local bloggers when writing content that is going to attract links. These links are likely going to improve your “Geo-Relevance Profile” (Bill Slawksi’s term), and lead to higher rankings in both the organic AND Local algorithms. Matt McGee’s post today on HyperLocal Blogging is a great primer on the subject.

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Most of the time the local results take up the entire first half of the page requiring the searcher to scroll to see the first organic ranking. As a search engine optimization specialist I know that the majority of the clicks are going to these local listings.

The question then obviously becomes, “Is there a way to help businesses rise in the rankings for local search?” The answer is yes and no.

You see Google in its infinite wisdom uses a secret algorithm for local search just as it does for organic search. So there is no way to actually know the exact way to help businesses get better rankings in local search. . But just like with traditional SEO there are some things that will definitely improve the odds of getting those higher positions. None of these things will hurt your rankings, that’s for sure, so they are a must do.

Getting your information correctly categorized on the major data providers is the first and most important step in getting higher placement in Google local listings. InfoUsa, Acxiom and Localeze are the most important. Make sure you update this information with them so that they all match. Make it as easy as possible for Google to understand what your business does.

The next step is to put the same information into as many of the local directories as possible. Some of these include Yelp, Yellowpages.com, City Voter and many more. Again these links to your site tell Google that you are locally relevant.

User ratings seem to have some positive impact in some cases. It definitely doesn’t hurt and give the searcher a warm feeling also. Get a few of your best customers to leave some comments on Google local for your business and you will reap the rewards.

Local search sounds like a whole lot of trouble for little results. In reality it does make a huge difference. With out targeting your business locally in the internet, your business could loose a great amount of potential clients.

Its is better to not assume that your local customers know about your business. In time they may forget that your business exists and will go to the competing business since they do target locally and continuously remind their customers that they exists. No matter of how great your offline advertising is inside your residential area, online is an altogether another niche and one that ought to be marketed in an entirely different level. Local search targets your business online via search engines. When someone searches locally your business should be right up there in the results.

You are able to be as particular or unspecific any way you want with local search. It’s just about altogether contingent on wherever you believe your business to be originating from and the search terms you wish to aim for. The most important location to begin is the city or community that your company is location in. If you think about search engines as being an online Yellow Pages, you are able to better comprehend how critical that your business organization is seeable inside your immediate locality; otherwise all of those local clients might go somewhere else for their products and services.

Even on the Net, where you are able to have services remotely and buy products from the all around the world, buyers still like use their local business for services. There is customer satisfaction in knowing that your are dealing with a live person, where you are able to call them and to get hold of them. Optimising your internet site for local search will allow for just that. It will show that you are a real business with real services and not just another run of the mill online entity somewhere in the world.

There are a lot of manners that you are able to go about applying your site’s local search value. The 1st and most visible direction is by simple transcript alterations. By incorporating a couple of acknowledgments of your neighborhood beside the service you have to offer, for example ‘Los Angeles Body Shops’ or ‘LA Body Shops’, you are increasing your chances of local visibility in the search engines.

In order to get the maximum visits to your website you have to do more than just change description of your services. Geographic tagging of your business is very important in helping your customers find your business in local maps such as Map Quest and Google Maps. Using your address and coordinates in google maps can pin point your business on the street and even give driving directions to your proposed customers in your area.

You want to show up in Google search results for keywords like real estate agents, appraisal services or relocation specialist– but not for searches from Southern California or Northern Maine. You only care about searches from Ohio because they’re potential customers.

Right now your best tools are meta keywords (you can add local keywords to your web pages), links from local sites, and targeted local PPC ads.

But you’re about to get another very important tool: Twitter.

Last week Twitter announced that it’s going local – it’s going to make it possible to tie a location to tweets. This is big deal for marketers. It means that customers, businesses and search engines will be able to sort Twitter traffic by place.

(1)To Find People Looking for Their Service – Right now it’s possible to search Twitter for keywords like “real estate agent” but you get a worldwide search. That’s not very helpful for a business that serves customers within a specific geography.

But consider what happens when you can search “real estate agent” and narrow the results to a specific geography; all of a sudden the results of that Twitter search become a source of new business. Anytime somebody on Twitter asks for a real estate agent you can reach out to them. Once they find a local real estate agent they can start following them and learn about local market statistics and other relevant information from a variety of local real estate agents. The more timely and relevant information you provide the more likely they may choose to work with you

(2) For Customers to Find Them – As soon as it’s possible to sort tweets by location, customers will get a powerful new tool for finding local business. Looking for a real estate agent? Just search Twitter in your geographic area. The results will make it easy to see what the options are – and what their reputations are.

If you’re a local business, this means you need to get started building relationships and reputation on Twitter now.

(3)For Search Engine Optimization – Twitter and other social media tools are now a significant factor in search engine optimization. The links and authority that social media sites help your business create help you rank higher inorganic search results.

Now that Twitter is adding geodata, it will be a significant factor in local search. Searching Google Maps for a real estate agent in Northeast Ohio? Chances are you’ll find an agent who has a lot of inbound location-specific links from Twitter.

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