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
