Local SEO

Ratings are the New Rankings in Local Search

on July 28th, 2008 by Michael D Jensen

Rankings are used to gauge progress in search engine optimization, as higher rankings translate into more traffic and opportunities for conversion. Simply put, the higher up on the search engine results page your website is, the more clicks you get.

In local search engines, the same general rule applies. The higher you are on the list of local businesses, the more clicks you get…with one caveat. What if there were a visual element that distracted you from your natural top to bottom glance? Enter customer review ratings:

Immediately your eyes are drawn to the red stars. This is a Yahoo! Local 3-Pack that shows up in the typical Yahoo! web search. Instead of the number one listing getting all the attention, number 2 and 3 get the attention and probably the first phone call.

The rating has the same influence in Yahoo! Local, even when there are several more local businesses on top.

The moral of the story? Get online customer reviews, and do your best to get reviews with high ratings. The other step is you’ve got to get into the top 10 as well to be even considered a player.

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on June 17th, 2008 by Michael D Jensen

David Mihm released an important report on Local Search Ranking Factors today. I was happy to be a contributor to the report, among many others in local search.

The top 10 factors with moderate to high agreement among the contributers were:

1. General importance of claiming Local Business Listing
2. Local Business Listing address in city of search
3. Proper Categorization of LBL
4. Product / service KWs in LBL title
5. Proximity to centroid
6. Validation with third-party providers
7. Number of inbound links to website
8. Location KWs - anchor text
9. Number of customer reviews
10. General importance of on-page criteria

Certainly the local business listing (LBL) plays a huge role in local search rankings, along with the location of the business, and then basic SEO things like links and on-page optimization. The report is a great read, especially the comments from the contributors. I’m sure you’ll learn something interesting!

Local Search Ranking Factors Report

Thanks David, great job on putting that together!

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on June 4th, 2008 by Michael D Jensen

I have always said about Google, they will always try to be as human-like as possible. When you are in a new area and want to find a clean, yummy restauraunt, who do you ask? The locals.

Andrew Shotland notes that inbound links from the same state of a local business may have more weight in Google’s eyes, based on something said by Richard Zwicky of Enquisite (details to come from Andrew on that).

As Google et al. have more “location data” based on IP address and even more detailed data like from KML files, they should basically be able to say “this website is at this location” by now. It only makes sense to then take the whole basis of Google, links as a vote of authority/trust, one step further and give them one more level of context.

So what does that mean for local businesses and local search marketers? Make friends, network at local activities, and get links from partners, friends, and companies in your area/state.

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on June 3rd, 2008 by Michael D Jensen

A great interview by Greg Sterling with Google’s Carter Maslan vocalized what I think many of us are thinking in Local Search:

The results that appear among the top 10 local listings are based off how relevant we think the listings are to the search terms. Of course, we’re always changing how we determine relevancy.

I like to think about the field of Local Search as what SEO was like at the very beginning. Lots of wondering, lots of real experimental testing, lots of changes and improvements, and of course lots of tricks to rank better!

Some other gems from the interview:

1) If you’re not at a physical location, the best you can do is to have a PO Box.

SEL: What about cases where people want to appear in results for areas where they don’t have a physical location (e.g., a “service area”). Is Google going to address that scenario?

CM: Yes, we will. We currently don’t allow for service areas, but we recognize that many businesses don’t have physical locations and are working to accommodate those businesses. We recommend that businesses without a physical location register themselves as a single business listing using a PO Box.

2) Use a Geo Sitemap, called a KML file. How to create a Geo Sitemap KML file, and more on Geo Sitemaps

3) If you think what you are doing is spamming, you may want to think twice because of the potential “indefinite” consequences:

I can say, however, that spamming Google Maps is a surefire way to remove your listings from the top 10 indefinitely.

Hat tip to Mike Blumenthal on covering the interview, particularly in regards to KML files.

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on May 8th, 2008 by Michael D Jensen

It can be difficult convincing a local business that having an online presence is beneficial, and will be worth the initial investment. Although a nationwide chain, Papa Johns has gone online and last year made $400 million in sales just from online orders, and over $1 billion in all online sales. Sure, Papa Johns invested 15 million in online technology, but consider the ROI!

What can your business do online that you’re not doing now?

A plumber company back in Missouri had radio ads that informed listeners about online appointment scheduling. How sweet is that?

A realtor I’m friends with lets you ask questions about real estate to their “Real Estate Hotline”.

A local dry cleaners offers coupons on their site that you can print off and bring in. It got me to use them!

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on April 1st, 2008 by Michael D Jensen

An article by Lisa Barone titled “Local Search Engine Optimization Doesn’t Exist” has just the opposite title of this post. I like Lisa, she’s really nice, writes well, and contributes greatly to the industry. But I think she is wrong on this, but only wrong maybe because she hasn’t really ever stepped foot into true Local SEO.

In her article she mentions targeting city or region based keywords like “simi valley seo” and “simi valley optimization”. Sure that is “local SEO”, but there is so much more than just targeting keywords.

Major Differences between SEO and Local SEO

1) You don’t even need a website! Obviously the best situation is to have a website and make that a part of your Local SEO strategy, but businesses that don’t even have a website can benefit significantly from doing Local SEO.

2) Local Listing Submission and Optimization - Instead of optimizing on-page factors on your website, in Local SEO you optimize your local listing submission. You make use of the fields, categories, and text areas in local listings with Yahoo! Local, Google Maps, Yelp, SuperPages.com, etc and optimize them for the keywords your potential customers will use to search and find you. For example, if I owned a UPS store or FedEx Kinko’s, I’d want “post office” to be somewhere on my listing because people just looking to send a package don’t have to go to the post office, they could just hit your place if its closer. I did a search on my iPhone for “post office” today, and the only places that came up were actual post offices, when just up the street about 1/2 a mile is a UPS location.

3) Online Customer Reviews - This goes back to the whole reason I built LeaveFeedback.org, because online customer reviews are so critical. How about for your regular website SEO? Nope. Another example, I was doing some local queries (for a future post) and looked at the word “pizza” in a town I used to live in. The first listing that came up was also the most popular pizza joint in the whole town. Why? They had ONE customer review, and not a single other pizza place (out of over a dozen) had a review. Were they close to city center? Yes, but there were 3 other pizza places closer to city center. Were they alphabetical? Nope. They had ONE customer review.

4) On-Page Site Optimization - If a local business does have a website, there are many aspects to Local SEO that simply do not apply to regular SEO. For example, listing your address and phone number on every page and creating city/region/area specific pages of real content that align with local search queries.

So Lisa, it’s more than just keywords with a local area in them. Obviously this isn’t something a regular SEO can’t do, but it is a whole set of different strategies that need to be addressed.