Andrew Shotland runs Local SEO Guide, a local search engine optimization and web strategy consulting firm.  He has worked with some of the biggest and some of the smallest companies in the local search world. Andrew got his start in local seo when he was head of product & business development at InsiderPages where his biggest achievement was “losing two million monthly visitors overnight by screwing up the SEO”.  He is a regular speaker at the Kelsey Group conferences.  According to Andrew, his proudest SEO accomplishments are that he regularly ranks at the top in Google Image Search for “soup nazi” and “larry craig“.

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The more time I spend in local search the more I am convinced it’s not much different from non-local search. Sure there are maps and centroids and things like that, but that’s what I read your blog for Mike!

Most of the following posts are not local-specific, but they are all relevant to anyone considering local marketing on the Web.

How Important is Branding to Search Engine Marketing?
Aaron Wall, SEOBook

This is one of those simple ideas that Aaron blurts out every other day that crystallized something I had been messing around in my brain for a while. A quick read gives the impression that businesses with brands should spam the search engines because they can get away with it, but what it underscored for me was that any business, even a mom & pop, can redefine its brand through search.

Local Search Ranking Tactics
Steve Espinosa

Steve is a relatively new voice in local search and he quickly made a name for himself with this post. No philosophy or rantings, just a nice meat and potatoes approach to improving the local rankings for your pages by clever cross linking and use of other sites’ authority. Unfortunately Steve’s blog blew up a few days ago and the article no longer existed. Good thing I liked it so much when he published it that I basically ripped it off on my own blog (no self-promotion intended).

Small Business Reputation Management
Matt McGee, SmallBusinessSEM

Let’s face it, most small businesses are in the dark when it comes to online marketing. Matt’s post on why it’s important to keep an eye on your business’ online profile is effective in its simplicity. Most small guys are not going to take the time or spend the $ to do SEO or PPC right, but if you show them someone talking smack about them on Yelp, or show them that their contact info on a big Yellow pages site is out of date, they are going to want to do something about it.

Planet Chiropractic Blog
Michael Dourasch, Planet Chiropractic
Twitter: @chiropractic

Sometimes the best way to learn is to watch a star athlete do his thing. Mike is a Santa Monica chiropractor cum search/social media junkie who seems to live online. If you want to see want to see how a real small business guy who gets web marketing does it, you could do worse than to get all Web 2.0 with Mike.

Twitter: Ultimate Time Waster or Great Tool
Chris Winfield, 10e20

If you are hearing about this Twitter thing and how it might help your business, Chris’ presentation is one of the best around.

Twitter Case Study of a Commercial Non Big Brand
Rae Hoffman, Sugarrae.com

I love it when people show me step by step how it was done. I often refer to Rae’s post about how her company used Twitter to build up a non big brand’s brand. If you have a product or service that others need but don’t know about, this one should be pretty inspiring.

Bits of Destruction
Fred Wilson, AVC.com

I could have picked almost any post by Fred. He is great thinker and an even better writer. This is one of his latest on the “creative destruction” brought about by the information age. Every business, small and large, could benefit by thinking about the ideas he discusses here. Oh yeah, and the guy has great taste in music too.