At first glance, the new Google Local SERPs appear to be a potentially big problem for local directories that rely on SEO for traffic. But with change always comes opportunity.
As you can see in the screenshot above, when a city does not have many businesses in a service category, there is still an opportunity for the Web results to get some traffic.
6 Response Comments
so does that mean that Google is now displaying 10 maps + fewer organic results for high competition niche?
Hey Andrew, I followed your last posts about the new serps for the local searches. Do you think Google is planning to launch some kind of Sponsored Google Places Listings?
So the long tail comes to the location. A lot of towns have smaller community names; here in city of Fresno we have Pinedale, Las Palmas, Sunnyside, etc. Perhaps we need to start including the community in our addresses in our database. Of course, the problem then is to encourage users to use those very-local terms in their search.
Isn’t Google already selling sponsored Google Places listings via their Tags?
http://www.davidmihm.com/blog/google/google-places-telesales/?goback=.gde_1918396_news_237572923.gmp_1918396.gde_1918396_member_33016533
The opportunity for Directories to receive traffic via web results will surely evaporate as Google succeeds in signing up all the local service business that exist in the city? What do you think?
A very interesting and informative article.
Yeppers, Did searches on several verticals for small towns across the US. Still, lots of opportunity. Maybe take on the biggest small cities in America and let others fight over the big metros.