What exactly is local SEO?

Local SEO is search engine optimization aimed at getting clients to get out of the house and get down to your place of business!

Awhile back, before Google map search results changed the way we looked at search, a local doctor was effectually locked out of Google as a technique to bag new clients. Old school SEO was just too costly and formidable to do when the only results that counted were customers that live within 5 mile distance of the doctor’s office. Doing classical search engine optimization for a local enterprise would have been like of buying an ad in the Wall Street Journal, simply not effective for a local company looking for local clients.

Google identified the problem and modernized. Come forward to a year ago. Google reported that thirty-five percent of all searches had included city, state, or zip-code. Google reacted by originating Google Places, which made around 50,000,000 novel world wide web pages for US companies. The information on these pages was gathered from open sources such as online yellow pages. The other search engines, not to be left out, jumped onboard. That’s right, Google, Yahoo and Bing have each made your company a web page. Now all you need to do is claim the page and fill it out, correct?

Well, almost correct. Claiming your pages is the start. These Place Pages have changed SEO, and made a new business for it Local SEO pros like me.

Go to Google, and search the term “dentist”. The first thing you will notice is that Google knows where you are located. If they have it right, the search results will show you a map, with your location in the middle, and burgundy dots and pins all around you representing local dentists. Several of these pins will be large, and marked with the first 7 letters of the alphabet. Now on the left side of the page, under the paid placements, but ahead of results you will find 7 enriched organic search results, with letters, matching to the pins on the map. These results are at times “7-Pack”.

How do you get your organization included on the first page of search results?

Searches function by algorithm, which is another way of saying that Google will assign a numeric value to one’s web page. That value when correlated and compared with the scores of other businesses in your sphere of influence. It is this juxtaposition that translates into the rank that companies will be displayed in return for search results. This is the art of local search engine optimization; accepting the evolving ways that search formulas classify and order establishments, and optimizing the things that Google and the other search engines evaluate, in order to get the best possible rank.

But beware! If Google believes that they are being gamed, that you are doing bogus things to modify the organic results, you could be the unfortunate receiver of the heinous “Google Slap”. No one needs to get slapped.

Who needs organic Local SEO?  Everyone that is looking to grow their local business!

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Yelp jumps ahead of Google using service areas as ranking factors

Nearly a year ago Google added the ability to set a service area for local businesses in Google Places. At the time there was speculation as to how it might influence rankings and many local SEO’s quickly realized it didn’t have as much influence as promoted. Except that if you opted to hide your address, because you were a home based business, it more or less kicked you right out of the rankings all together. That unfortunate side effect of hiding an address has been fixed since the roll out of the new blended organic-local results. But there still is no strong ranking benefits outside of the actual city your address is tied to.

Will Google one day get around to using service areas as a ranking factor for businesses serving say, a larger metropolitan area from one of the outskirt communities (a common occurrence)? Well it appears Yelp has recently done just that.

“…business owners in service-based categories who have unlocked their Yelp page will be able to add up to 5 major cities to their areas of service via our Business Owner Tools!

The best part? Once a business updates its areas of service, it becomes searchable in those cities on Yelp.“

This feature has been added only for specific categories of businesses, these that tend to be service based businesses that travel to customers locations.

Now that Yelp has upped the ante, how long till Google follows suit?

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The importance of internal linking

One of the elements of site development and SEO that often gets overlooked is internal linking. When done right, you can kill two birds with one stone, and improve both search rankings and usability. You may be familiar with the fact that when sites link to other sites, search engines pass value for the terms/phrases used in the link anchor text. (Anchor text is the highlighted text in the link.)

When working on improving rankings for a site, people usually try to target links from other sites (external links) that have the desired anchor text related to terms they want to rank for. However, contextual internal links can also be effective in helping to improve a site’s rankings for targeted keyphrases.

Your website’s text content is filled with opportunities to potentially pass link juice to other pages of your site and to help users find their end destination.

To start improving your internal linking strategy, go through your site section by section, page by page, and see where it would make sense (from a user’s point of view), and insert some contextual links to other pages that you want to rank better.

Be sure to use the keywords/phrases (in the anchor text) that you would like the destination pages to rank for. In your links to these pages throughout the site, vary it up and don’t use the exact same phrases in anchor text, or it will look artificial to both search engines and users.

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What should your keyword density be these days?

After you have chosen the keywords and keyphrases that describe your site and are of interest to your potential customers, the next step is to make your site keyword-rich and to have good keyword density for your target keywords. Keyword density is a common measure of how relevant a page is.

Generally, the idea is to find a keyword density that makes your page relevant to the search string you are trying to rank for, but to avoid simply stuffing your page with your keywords (as Google and other search engines will penalize you for that anyway). The recommended density is approximately 3 for the major 2 or 3 keywords and 1% or less for minor keywords.

Although there are no strict rules, try optimizing for a reasonable number of keyword phrases. Six to ten is about right. If you attempt to optimize for a list of 300 keywords, you will soon see that it is just not possible to have a good keyword density for more than a few keywords without making the text sound artificial and stuffed with keywords.

There are severe penalties (including search engine bans) for keyword stuffing because this is considered an unethical ‘black hat’ practice that tries to manipulate search results. It won’t work well today anyway, not when compared with strong local SEO tactics and an overall SEM strategy.

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New focus for Google Social

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The power of geographic keywords

When it comes down to choosing the right keywords today, a more accurate description of the process would be ‘choosing the right key phrases.’

If there was a time when you could easily top the results for a one-word keyword search string that is long past. Now the Web is so densely populated with sites that it is next to impossible to achieve constant top ratings based on one-word keywords.

Achieving constant top ratings for two-word or three-word search phrases is a more realistic goal. If you examine closely the dynamics of search results for popular one-word keywords, you would find that while it may be possible one week to be in the first ten organic results, the next week you fall right out of the first 30 results because the competition for popular one-word keywords is so fierce and other sites have replaced you.

This is where local SEO becomes paramount, especially dealing with Goggle Places. You can use your geographic location in your keyword phrases to rank highly in localized search.

Of course, you can include one-word keywords in your overall keywords list, but you cannot depend upon them for high rating or targeted results. For instance, if you have a business selling fishing boats in Miami, Florida then of course “boat” is a mandatory keyword. However, your optimal keyword phrases will be much more specific, and would likely include “fishing boats,” “Miami boats,” “Miami fishing boat dealers” and even some other popular local terms like “Miami fishing” or “Miami boating.”

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The return of Google local listing ads

Remember Local Listing Ads?  You know, the ones Google released way back in October 2009 when lots of you were at SMX East?

Well, they’re back.  Only this time, they’re available through the ADWORDS interface rather than the Places interface.

Google just announced that something called “Location Extensions” are now going to have the same effect — a blue pushpin clearly labeled as a sponsored result, but one that shows up on the map of local businesses within Place Search also.

Clearly these are going to have the greatest effect for the businesses than can afford to get that #1 slot (or at least a slot above the 3/7/O-Pack), but it’ll be interesting to see whether clickthrough levels will also go up on the blue pushpins for advertisers who maintain their bids at positions further down the page.

Two of the things I said about LLA’s are still relevant 16 months on:

1. Internet Yellow Pages (and any businesses without a physical location) who tried to cope with the loss of traffic by buying more Adwords are now going to find it even more difficult to compete for Local searches.

2. The blue pushpin icons are sure to have a significant positive impact on clickthrough for the businesses advertising with LLA’s, taking traffic away from traditional Adwords (i.e. for non-brick-and-mortar businesses).

But, there’s one big difference:

LLA’s had easy-to-understand benefits and pricing.

These location extensions require an SMB to be a pretty savvy Adwords advertiser in order to get them to show up.  I’ll be interested to see whether Google re-releases these location extensions as a simple “one-click install” within the Places Dashboard soon.

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Essential local SEO tips

Local search engine optimization can be just as time consuming and competitive as “regular” SEO. The same rules apply — you need to have good content and quality links. However, the tactics are slightly different in specific areas. As always there are some tactics that you can use easily and some that require a dedicated local seo expert who can provide a daily punch to your local ranking efforts.

Local search is essential to small businesses. In 2010, Google revealed that the proportion of Google result pages that show a map is one in 13. A few months later, Google changed from its Local Business Center (LBC) to Google Places, which enables businesses to communicate with customers as well as supplement their Google profile information to include hours of operation, photos, videos, coupons and product offerings. We assume Google is serving maps more than 1 billion times a month.

With all of this in mind, here’s the beginnings of what you need to know to successfully tap into local markets.

Where to Begin

List your business in Google Places — it’s free. Watch a number of training videos and explore the features, including tools like tracking of actions (meaning how many times users showed interest in your business listing), clicks for more information on maps, driving directions or direct clicks, as well as impressions (how many times users saw your business listing as a local search result). As you’ll see, it will be important to get ratings and references, too.

While much focus is placed on Google Places, don’t forget to also register at:

• Yahoo! Local
• Bing Local

Verify Your Business

One easy way to find out if your business is listed anyplace online is to search for your brand name. Include the city or locale you are supposed to be listed in.

If you are not listed, take action. For instance, if I’m a tax attorney in Beverly Hills, California, I would search for “tax attorney Beverly Hills.” I’d see the top local results (just below Google’s paid search results) as well as a local map on the right, hovering over more paid listings.

When I click on one particular local result, I notice that it has not been verified, meaning it does not include a “verified business owner” link. An arrow points to “Business owner,” indicating it needs verification.

Google pulls the data on this result (address, phone number) from some of the larger business aggregators like infoUSA, and attempts to match it up correctly. However, that data could be wrong. If that’s the case, it would be important for this particular owner to take corrective measures. This is why it’s important to verify your business information in local search results.

Select Your Categories

When registering, make sure to assign your business to the listed categories that best describe it. You can add up to five categories. Once you start typing, Google Places will display related categories.

Continue to add as much information as possible, including hours, payment types, e-mail address, phone number, URL/web address, photos, videos and coupons. Fill out each field, if appropriate.

When you’re done, make videos, upload them to YouTube and link them back into your local profile on Google Places. If you install and use tools like JingProject.com, it’ll be free and easy to make an informational, useful video. Screen cam your PowerPoint presentations. You can include up to 10 pictures and five videos.

Get Listed in Local Directories

Obtaining citations from local business directories like Yelp and Merchant Circle can be a powerful tool to get exposure and drive traffic. (See the list of directories in the Local SEO resources sections below.) Make sure that all your information is correct, and keep the same formatting across all locations.

Ask for Reviews

Don’t be afraid to ask customers for reviews. Offer special incentives and discounts for return visits to your office. You can also add a postcard or business card into your office invoice mailings asking your customers to review the visit and talk about the experience.

However, don’t unwittingly spam this system by asking all your friends to review you in a week. You should also get references from the Better Business Bureau, your local chamber of commerce and the top local directories.

These tips should start you out. A local seo expert can help you enlarge your campaign and show you many more local seo techniques to bring you Page Rank and customers.

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My Favorite SEO Tools

Here’s a short, sweet list of some of my favorite SEO tools:

Yahoo Clues Yahoo clues is sort of insights for search’ish and Alexa clicksteam’ish but a bit sexier because of the size of their index and depth of intel offered. Open up the tool, run a search, scroll down. The Money is in the little section waaay down titled as ‘search flow’ This section gives you the most likely, according to yahoo’s internal search data, previous and next search terms.

Why it’s hot:
It is based on yahoo’s index which makes it cooler then Alexa and you can search phrase combination and rerun the thing to give you previous/next data for those phrases.

How I use it:
I’d never recommend using just one tool for anything, so I call Google Insights for Search, Alexa Clickstream, and Yahoo Clues search flow my ‘unholy tripariate of new keyword opportunities. Whenever I’m doing any kind of reporting or just analysis generally, I always look for new words that are gaining speed that the competition hasn’t caught on to yet. This is easy because many sites do real keyword research once and call it a day. I exploit that fact in client competitors and get at all the words they’re missing using these three little tools ::maniacal laugh::

Search Engine Reports Rank Checker this is my ‘sweeter then the rest‘ bulk rank checker

Why it’s hot:
Not only does it give you ranking data for phrases in bulk for Google and Bing but it gives you the title tag meta description, url, and cache data.

How to use it:
Take your keyword research, find a competitor, pop the list in, run it!…now how is your competitor comparing to you for that huge list for phrases??

ez-seo on page tool : Crazy amounts of on page data in one place

Why it’s hot:
This tool really breaks the onpage down. You have no idea how many times I’ve seen people paying all this money to get their pages ranked for this or that phrase and their title tag is aweful. Scan for those kinds of simple issues easily with this tool and give your client lots of nifty number to look at. Just like SEO’s love graphs, managers <3 numbers.

How I use it:
I stick it into reports for the ooohh ahhh effect.

Web Design Tools

instant eyedropper Basically you download this free tool and it will identify and pate into clipboard the html color code of and pixil on the screen with one click.

Why it’s hot:
Awesome when you’re trying to replicate a certain webpage or style this is the super lazy mans way.

How I Use it:
This is really handy when I”m trying to replicate stuff or do design wireframes or any kind of templating really.

Lorem Ipsum is dummy text used by the printing and typesetting industry since about the 1500′s brought to the web age. Basically when you’re designing wireframes or planning a site design, this dummy text ‘fills’ in the layout. (By the way, thank you to colleague who showed me this, it’s awesome!)

Why it’s hot:
This tool is hot because you can choose the amount of words, paragraphs, bytes, or list based on the number you want and Ipsum spits it out exactly as such.

How I use it:
This is handy in several ways. You can use it to fill in layouts like you’re supposed to. You can also use it to plan the ‘look’ of content you want to out source or have your writer look on. After all, when it comes to content writing stuff seeing really puts content needs into context.

Affiliate Tools

With these, I’m not gonna go into why they’re hot or how I use them but they’re definitely neat. If you’re a for real affiliate, once you see them, you’ll know

domain crawler basically replace the numbers in the url with someones adsense publish code and find out what other domain names are associated with that publisher code.

sitonomy run a URL through here and this tool will give you the title tag, meta description, stat tools (google analytics, omniture etc), server software, server IP, and it will give you info on THEIR affiliate tracking code (adsense, commission junction, click bank etc.)

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Where you can go with local SEO

Local search marketing has recently become a part of an overall or complete SEO strategy. It helps ensure that your website dominates the search engines for the particular keywords or keyphrases for your industry in your local market.

Global marketing is also very important to many business, however there are several businesses that offer their services or products on a local level and do not necessarily need as much global exposure. We have created specific local marketing methods that focus on getting top placement for your business and website within local search results.

At SEO Pro Asheville we realized that not every business or situation is the same or requires the same marketing goals. That is why we develop unique marketing plans to help you website show up higher in the search engines and local business listings and for keyword terms specific to your city or metro area. Not all local SEO firms offer this type of service and our expertise in this field can help your business and website excel in these areas.

Currently the good old-fashioned phone book is still the top resource used when people need to find local products, services, or professionals, but local search is close on its tail. Every day more and more people are turning toward search engines to help find these same businesses that they once discovered only in the yellow pages.

We all previously relied on phone books, but with the evolution of local search we feel that phone books will be slowly phased out of existence. While the use of the yellow pages may not completely disappear, within the next 5 to 10 years a higher rate of people will be using search engines to locate local businesses than the phone book.

Getting ahead of your competition in the search engines now is key to dominating your local market. While everyone currently has the same opportunity to create and enhance their local business listings, those who do so sooner will benefit more. Getting high rankings in the search results within your local market will enable you to out-market your competition. Especially when it comes to impulse buying, being listed ahead of competing businesses can make the difference between making a sale or not.

Each particular market and area is different and may require a slightly different strategy or approach. However, even though the markets vary there are certain factors that remain constant in order to reach top search engine placement.

We specialize in SEO and attaining first page results for your business whether your reach is local or global. Contact us and we can tailor a specific SEO marketing action plan for your website inside the state of NC. It’s 2011 and it’s about time your business gained high exposure in the major search engines. SEO Pro Asheville can put you on that path.

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