LOC@L SEO GUIDE

I’ve been spending a lot of time talking about Google+ and sometimes it’s nice to remind myself that good old-fashioned meat-and-potatoes SEO still works, and can be critical to start-ups trying to break into a market.  To wit, here’s the organic traffic chart for a start-up that has a great service but had little traction in Google…until this past week…

UPDATE: Their organic traffic jumped by 50% yesterday. #Krazy

And while I’m on the subject, Stever has a great post up on some tips for Encouraging Google +1 Votes for Local Business Websites. Key point for unsuspecting SMBs to take note of:

“Forget the new schemes popping up to buy hundreds of plus 1 votes. Those will be meaningless to a local business as it is very likely nobody in that network are local to that business. That and it is likely a manufactured network just to sell +1’s in bulk so again the people within the circles of those accounts are not likely to be local either.”

Check out this Kelowna painting contractor for a simple example.

SearchEngineLand just published Google Plus Connections Are The New Link, some thoughts of mine on how local search co’s and SMBs may try to leverage Google Search Plus Your World to improve local SEO. After rereading it, it seems clear that as more and more organic results are deemed to have “local intent”, the only way that Google Plus content stays relevant is for users to have tight local networks. If that doesn’t happen, Google’s own quality algorithm should purge these results from the SERPs, because they will have low click-through/relevance, either because they are from people I don’t know or because they are from people I know but who are not local. If Google can’t get this kind of local content density, that Twitter firehose is going to be looking a lot more necessary.

Here’s my SERP for “Chinese Restaurants” included in the post. Not really helping me find that moo goo gai pan.

I don’t recall seeing these little prompts in the search results before.

A few years ago on these august pages I did a post on Reputation Management Jujitsu as a way of obtaining links by saying nice things about companies with poor online reputations. The idea being that these companies are eager to link to blogs saying positive things about their brand.

Now that Google Search Plus Your World has begun its putsch and Google Plus connections have become the new link, it has got me thinking about the ripple effect of tactics we will start to see play out as SEOs and social media douches consultants (“SMDs”) start to play around in there. And I think Google Plus SEO Jujitsu is going to be a big part of it.

So what do I mean grasshopper? (I know, Kung Fu. Whatever.)

Here’s how it could work:

1. Big brand spends a lot of time and money “engaging” with Google+ users, perhaps egged on by their SMD. For example, Android, Google’s smartphone OS is one of the top brands on G+ with over 200K followers.

2. Some other eager beaver SMD writes the definitive “why my I love Android v. iPhone “post. A good strategy would be to create a “mommy” persona on G+ and do it in her voice. Brands love it when mommy’s tout their shit. And this mommy for some reason just can’t seem to shut up about her Android. Maybe she even starts a blog called AndroidMommy, because let’s face it, she’s basically a machine anyhow.

3. Android’s SMD, eager to show that mommies love their Android phones, connects with AndroidMommy on Google Plus, maybe even RT’s her (R+?).

4. Now that AndroidMommy is connected to Android’s G+ profile, in theory when AndroidMommy starts G+ing about her favorite stuff, Android-related or not, she now has the ability to show up in Android’s 200K+ members’ SERPs. Of course she’ll probably need to be working hard to produce quality content that gets shared and looks relevant to the SPeW algo, but isn’t that what SMD’s do all day anyhow?

And voila, you have got yourself a Hakama Hooker.

I couldn’t resist.

It’s pretty clear that Google Search Plus Your World – Boy that sounds like something out of a sci-fi novel where some machine has taken over and is breeding humans for advertisers (never happen right?) – could radically alter the SERPs for queries that match up with content with strong social signals in your network – or not-so-strong signals as we are seeing in the early version.

That means that a huge economy is going to grow up around influencing social signals and connections on Google+. If I am connected to a plastic surgeon’s Google+ page and one of my Google+ friends is searching for a nose job, it seems likely that eventually that connection will help the good doctor show up higher in my friends’ results. And we all know where that kind of thing can lead.

Hence my new acronym for Search Plus Your World – SPeW (or G-SPeW).

Mike asked me what I had read in 2011 that had influenced me, so I told him.

WhitePages.com gets into the infographic/linkbait game:

So far I am not a fan.

When I am looking for info on Bronycon, I don’t need to see the Bronycon info that I shared, or that my friends have shared, as the default result. Would be much better as an option to filter the results.

And who came up with that mouthful of a name?