I’ll be at HostingCon in Austin on Monday July 19th where I’ll be speaking on the Local Search Ranking Tactics panel along with Curtis R. Curtis (no relation to Sirhan B. Sirhan) of UBL.org and Lisa Maier of Local Directive. If you are going to be there please stop by the panel and say hello. We might do some site clinic stuff so if you are having problems with your local rankings we might be able to point you in…
To: Local Directory Sites From: Google Subject: A Little Head’s Up As you may have heard, we’ve been testing a new design for the SERPs we display when we detect a query with local intent. In the past these results have typically been a mix of local businesses, local directories and other random sites that figured out how to get in there by creating compelling content and earning the trust of the Web community while in no way engaging in…
My latest Locals Only article for SearchEngineLand is Franchisee SEO – Can You Trust Corporate’s Recommendations? I often get called by franchises and by franchisees to help with SEO and too often I see the two working against each other. If you don’t feel like reading the piece here are key takeways: Franchises need to educate their franchisee partners on SEO before trying to get them to invest in it Franchises should not sell franchisees untested SEO services from a…
Merchant Circle just launched a City “Mayor” program designed to promote the most connected SMBs in a service area on the site. As Greg Sterling, he of the newly redesigned Screenwerk blog, put it: Because MerchantCircle gets so much traffic from SEO in search results this will also be a major SEO play for the SMB that is the mayor of his/her particular city. Merchant Circle has long been a favorite of mine and other local marketers for its ability…
Just saw this release that Chris Winfield, Dave Snyder, Brent Csutoras, Jordan Kasteler, Loren Baker, Tony Wang and Danielle Winfield along with their colleagues at their various companies have joined forces to form Blueglass, a full service Internet Marketing agency. This may not mean much to my readers in the local search world, but each of these people is the equivalent of a rock star in the search marketing world. In search marketing consulting there are a few types of…
David Mihm has done it once again and published another edition of Local Search Ranking Factors. This year David surveyed 32 local search geeks to get their takes on the top factors for ranking high in Google Maps. The entire set of results is well worth the time for any business that wants to do well in local search. For those of you who just want the goods without the verbiage, here are the top factors: Claiming your Google Place…
image liberally appropriated from Roger Hollander Thanks to Vanessa Fox as always for eliciting grains of truth from Google. At last week’s Google I/O conference Matt Cutts confirmed that there was an algo change at the beginning of May that will likely be affecting sites that generate a lot of long-tail traffic: ”this is an algorithmic change in Google, looking for higher quality sites to surface for long tail queries. It went through vigorous testing and isn’t going to be…
Last year I published the first IYP SEO Rankings Report which looked at which yellow pages/general local search sites ranked the best in Google for popular queries in the top U.S. markets. That post has spawned a few other SEOs to try a similar approach for specific verticals. Here are a few worth checking out: U.S. Real Estate SEO Ranking Report by Ash Nallawalla (These are the top sites in Google. Check out Ash’s post for Bing, Yahoo and more…
One of the things I love about local and the Web in general are the crazy niches you can go after like Find a Mohel. I was checking out the profile of one of my Twitter followers @jwegener and found this great service he created with his sister, ExitStrategyNYC. The concept behind it is pretty simple, it tells you where the best place is to stand on a subway car to have the most efficient exit from the platform. When…
I had a lot of fun with using embedded Tweets to extract some useful tips from last weeks LocalU conference in Minneapolis. Here’s a sample: Mike Blumenthal @AaronWeich leading search ranking is like BigFoot….very blurry < p class=”bbpTweet”>@Mary Bowling There is no trick to SEO. It’s a process. Make your website unblurry. @Aaron Weiche Oh BOY! @marybowling is breaking down keyword research & data on plastic surgery & breast augmentation. Never saw that coming. Read the full piece at SEL