Update: Check out my list of great Local SEO Tools here
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
it’s pretty much a rehash of my SEL post: Don’t Give Google The NoIndex Finger
Hanan Lifschitz of Palore is speaking in my place. Showing some data on what they have discovered by crawling different local search sites:
1.Only 14% of SMBs have claimed their listings on local search sites
2.64% of all businesses are only listed in 1 or 2 categories
3.Searching 20,000 local keywords for Orlando businesses on Google Maps, remarkably 20% of all businesses in their database show up on the first page of Google’s SERPs.
Now demoing their visibility tool – AmIvisible.org
Kind of cool you can compare your visibility with local competitors.
Hanan just typed a auto dealer in Memphis’ phone number and the service quickly showed that this dealer is the most optimized dealer in Memphis. We can see how many categories he uses, which keywords he is targeting and which sites he is advertising on. Very cool.
Now we’re seeing a less visible competitor and comparing to the above dealer and you can easily see why he is less successful compared to the top dealer.
AmIvisible is beta testing in only a few small cities but should be available nationally in a few months.
That was much cooler than my presentation for sure.
David Mihm now stepping up to the plate:
- Maximize Your Internal Linking Strategy
- Be Keyword Focused with Title Tags
- Enable User-Generated Contetnnt
- See Google as a Partner – XML sitemaps
Any important page on your site must be linked from your homepage
No more than 4 clicks from homepage
Use geographic anchor text when you link
UGC is great for long-tail phrases and creates distribution possibilities
Citysearch images seem to be showing up a lot on Google Place Pages – is there a partnership?
Google is starting to use more rich snippets in their results. Add a CSS class that Google recommends to try and get your reviews/stars to show up in search. Also try the hcard microformat.
Use an XML sitemap
Use KML to get your data on MyMaps pages
Creating an interesting map on your site and it can appear in the User-Created Maps section on Google pages.
Scott Knowles of AOL Local talking about how to use social platforms to get your info into search results.
David Mihm on Video SEO: Youtube is the place to be.
Yellow Pages headings are not search friendly. Tags are.
4 Response Comments
Thanks for the write up….. the amivisible tool looks like fun.
Was David talking about Organic strategy for SEO???
Great post! This is very informative information and it sure helps out an SEM Consultant to better furthering my knowledge. SEO is so viable to the success of a business and that business will only successfully if the SEO is done correctly.
Thanks Andrew:
I love the Am I Visible . Org site. Very helpful.
Aloha, Bob Sommers
I believe the key to your entire content is to see Google as a partner. This is critical and one aspect that SEO professionals already embrace.