Think Basis It's Good For Business

Yesterday I had an opportunity to sit in on a local search panel with Stoney deGeyter, Matt Van Wagner, and David Mihm at SES San Jose. The three panelists provided a great overview of some of the local search basics and provided numerous simple actionable items small business owners can use to build a solid Local SEO foundation. The presentation was focused primarily on benefiting small businesses that have a minimal understanding of search engine optimization. And, since the vast majority of those businesses are unable to attend conferences like this (and maybe even unaware they exist) I wanted to make my notes available online. Here are a few quick facts and some simple tips for small businesses looking to maximize results on a shoestring budget.

Quick Facts:

• 40% of searches have local intent, but fewer than 7% have local modifiers (Ian White, Urban Mapping)
• Potentially 500 million local searches on Google per month
• Search engines will try to gauge local intent on general searches like “restaurants” or “theaters” to provide users with the most relevant results
• The “New” Local Search shows the 10-pack of local listings, which defaults to the #1 or #4 listing for all local searches
• The 10-pack levels the playing field for mom and pops

What you can do for yourself

• Build a search friendly website
• Avoid duplicate content
• Keep your domain name short, memorable, and brandable. Try to use keywords if you can, but don’t force the issue if it’s going to keep you from being memorable.
• Redirect all domain names to the primary URL
• Use search engine friendly URLs, this is a great place to utilize keywords
• Build a custom redirect page
• Avoid an entirely flat directory structure or a structure so vertical you need to go 7 or 8 clicks deep before you get what you’re looking for.
• Use search friendly links so your content can be spidered
• Links should be as keyword rich as possible (but still make sense) and not just be “click here”
• Have a Site Map available in your footer
• Prevent broken links (good program for this is Xenu)
• Don’t duplicate your title tags from page to page, every page should have its own unique title tag
• Link to related content whenever possible
• DIY Checklist from PolePositionMarketing.com

Tips for ranking better in local results

• Utilize the Google Local Business Center to provide basic information about your business
• Free to submit to both Google Maps and Yahoo Local – Total No Brainer!
• Claim your listings manually (in general it’s more trusted)
• Categorize properly and try to use one or two relevant keywords in your business listing (example: John Smith Finance & Accounting vs. John Smith Co.)
• Make sure your data (business title, address, and phone number) are consistent across all directories
• Claim your listings at the following places: infoUSA, Localeze, UniversalBusinessListing.org
• Other great places to submit: BOTW Local, OpenList.com, CityVoter.com, InsiderPages, SuperPages.com
• Check the “Web Pages” tabs of your competitors
• Create a contact page on your website with your address + phone coded in HTML hCard Microformat, don’t use an image that can’t be read by the search engines
• Link out to various listings from your contacts page
• Incentivize user reviews and respond to negative reviews

How local businesses can use paid search successfully

• Design campaigns for low maintenance, keep it simple
• Stay within the major search engines, take a laser focused approach
• Make sure you are able to measure your campaign
• Imply local intent by including your phone number in the ad
• Track your conversions (can use Excel for this)
• Determine your cost per order (cost spent on ads / number of orders) and figure out whether your campaign is paying for itself

Tags: Local Search, SEO, Small Business, Tips