As mentioned on the post, I pulled some interesting insights from this discussion – thanks all 🙂

Thanks for the comments, Mikes:

One additional comment on links…and links that might apply to additional pages that don’t easily flow back to the “location page” for the 3 pac; the long tail.

Before google decided that only it can see organic traffic phrases…(and thereby have complete control of search knowledge)….we saw more traffic and more conversions from the long tail…which provided results that often didn’t show on a map or pac result. Because a number of our smb sites run adwords with broad phrase…we still see a lot of long tail phrases. Aggregate conversions from the long tail…that don’t necessarily turn up a pac/maps….is still approximately equal to the adwords conversions that would have shown on maps.

The long tail works. Its one of the essential lessons of straight seo. It’s visibility can multiply, double, triple, and quadruple traffic.

Because its the long tail, sometimes it can show without links….but other times there is a lot of competition for the phrases….because…while they are long tailish…..they are reasonably high volume.

It remains valuable to get links that tie into the various pages and long tail. From our experiences with a number of very different types of smb types….there are rich veins to strike from the long tail.

Any responses to this?

thanks in advance.

Dave