Search and Social

Back from SMX Local Mobile 2008 in San Francisco

July 25th, 2008

Let me start by saying that there are a lot of smart people doing a lot of thinking about local search. Mobile search…I think they’re still smart people and there have definately been some great strides, but good lord, quality mobile marketing is a way off.

The guys from ComScore and Nielsen had some great stats/data on mobile usage and trends. They also had some great tips. Keep it simple and make sure it works. At this point you have one chance to impress users and if you blow it they won’t be back from some time.

Now on to local. This is where the biggest strides are being made. Web search SEO has stayed relatviely stagnant for the past couple of years. Yeah, there’s the social stuff now, which can be leveraged for SEO, but really is a whole different beast. So back to local.

If I never hear the word One box, three pack or ten pack again for another 6 months that will be OK. A lot of the talk focused around getting your business to appear on the Google 10 pack maps listings.

Unless I missed somethin, which is entirely possible given the vast amounts of info, there are two big pieces to getting the most out of locally targeted SEO.

1. Adhere to normal SEO best practices.
I’ll assume you all have number one covered, but if not you can read about SEO best practices here, here or anywhere.

2. Make sure all the data aggregators have the same info, and it is correct. 
So that leaves us at point #2. Make sure the data aggregators have your data correct. How do you do this? Time. Claim your business in the big Local Business Center (LBCs if you’re in the know).       You can find Google’s here, Yahoo’s here and MSN here.  While you’re at it grab your SuperPages listing too.

3. Long-tail is your best friend in local search.
All local search is arguably targeting the long tail. Many cities are two words add to that a product and your quickly into four or five word phrases. The good news is, that it’s typically easier to drive traffic from long-tail queries because they are less competitive. The bad news, for most site owners, there has to be content to support these terms. Google won’t know you should rank for Seattle auto repair if your site only talks about Seattle tires. Back to the good news. You’re an expert on your business. You have tons of great info in your head, get it on your web site. Give away a couple great little nuggest of info. The more content/pages you have on your site the greater the chance of you driving traffic from long-tail terms.

Here is a great post by David Mihm who surveyed local search pros to get their take on local ranking factors and signals for local SEO.  The format was inspired by the SEOmoz SEO ranking factors survey published in 2007.

Entry Filed under: Conferences