LOC@L SEO GUIDE

VCs from Canaan Partners (Warren Lee), Trinity Ventures (Patricia Nakache) & Comcast Ventures (Michael Yang):
Patricia Nakache:
no one has cracked local impulse purchases - mentions Groupon
Warren Lee:
Skeptical that growth will happen as fast as Kelsey predicts because access to venture capital is not as easy. Venture capital is going to contract by 20-30% and fragmented nature [...]

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I am supposed to be up there but given my lack of voice I thought it not such a good idea.  Here’s the presentation I would have given
ILM 09 Local Media SEO Presentation (it definitely needs narration so feel free to ping me with questions)

it’s pretty much a rehash of my SEL post: Don’t Give [...]

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Sivan Metzger, GM of the just announced Kenshoo Local, is up and talking about the local search marketing challenges:

Massive programs/thousands of listings
Cumbersome on-boarding process
Resource intensive ongoing management process
Cross channel geo-targeting/tracking conversions
Manual keyword & bid optimization

Huge surge in demand for SEM services from SMBs, however:

30-40 accounts per account manager
40 accounts x $500/mth @20% margin
= no profit [...]

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DirectoryM is a huge local search network that most people in the local search biz don’t know anything about.  Here’s waht Panos had to say:
It looks like DirectoryM takes in a lot of third party data to provide relevant content. They either crawl and suck it in or they have a deal with the partner [...]

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Lost my voice at SES Chicago yesterday.  Thankful I made it out of O’Hare.  Since I am effectively mute I will probably be doing a bit of blogging at the Kelsey ILM 09 show.
Just came in to the pre-conference at the tail-end of a talk by Jeff Ferguson of Local.com on the different local marketing [...]

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I’ll be speaking at the BIA Kelsey ILM ‘09 Local Search “Preconference” - sort of akin to sitting at the kiddie table at Thanksgiving - along with Mr. David Mihm, Chris Spanos of AOL/Going.com and BIA Kelsey’s Mike Boland.  We’ll be doing a site clinic as part of the session so if you have a [...]

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I don’t have enough brain power to give you the blow-by-blow on the Out Of Home session, but listening to Aileen Lee of Danoo, John McMenemin of RippleTV and Rocky Gunderson of SeeSaw Networks, I am hearing some impressive stats about the power of place-based marketing (e.g. those tv screens in your local coffee shops).

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According to the Kelsey video panel - 30-50% of those who have websites will use online video in the next three years.

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Per my previous post on CitySquare’s success with online coupons, it seems like offering deals on your site is the way to go in this meltdown.  I had lunch today with Loren Bendele, CEO of Savings.com, a deal aggregator.  According to Loren they had a record month last month in what would normally be a [...]

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While everyone at the ILM conference is acknowledging that the economy generally blows, I am having a surprising number of conversations with local-oriented companies that are saying business is good.  Case in point, Ben Saren, CEO of CitySquares.com, a Northeast-based IYP with reviews, just told me that he has seen a dramatic increase in inbound [...]

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The big difference between Angie and everyone else is…they charge consumers to see the ratings & reviews.  The cost of taking the time to read everything and meet a number of contractors is much greater than paying Angies List $6/mnth to get a single trusted recommendation.
Businesses don’t pay to be listed but they pay to [...]

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Virutal Paper is a SEO play that repurposes print materials and publish it to help with SEO.  I guess it’s also helpful for users, but that’s besides the point right?
For example they can take a menu and scan it and publish it to your website or for directories to its profile pages, so [...]

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Got to the “Leveraging Traditional Media Online” panel a bit late.  Meredith is talking about the trend toward accountability in advertising and explaning Google Adwords for TV, which has been flying under the radar a bit.
GoogleTV has a partnership with DISHTV where they analyze how many viewers were watching your ad when it ran on [...]

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Listening to Matt Booth at the Kelsey ILM 08 conference.  I’ll have more detail later but basically he’s talking about how you can take advantage of this strange market to grab market share.

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If you are going to be at the Kelsey ILM conference in Santa Clara this week I hope you plan to stop by the “pre-conference” sessions on Wednesday the 19th.  At 9:15 I’ll be putting on the “Local Seo: Ultimate Search Workshop” with a couple of SEO rock stars.  Joining me will be Jonah Stein [...]

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