We just finished up a great LocalU in Austin and we are moving on to Baltimore. In addition to  presenting a basic LocalU (use discount code MB2013) on the morning of March 8th we will also be offering our LocalU Advanced session.

Starting the night of March 8th with a mixer and following up with a full day agenda on March 9th that is chock full of new content. This is a deep dive into all aspects online Local marketing.

Our regular lineup of David Mihm, Mike Ramsey, Mary Bowling, Will Scott, Ed Reese, Aaron Weiche and myself will be there. Joel Headley of Google will be there to answer all questions about Google+ Local and the keynote will be provided by Bill Slawski of SEO by the Sea. Bill, one of the first online marketers that I befriended in 2006 when I started my blog just happens to be one that I have never had the opportunity to meet. I am incredibly excited to both meet Bill in person and hear his keynote talk at the Advanced session.

He will be discussing Google’s geographically-based patents, which provide a great deal of insight into how Google Maps/Places/Local+ functions. Topics include location prominence, rankings in both Maps and in Web results, recent patents on identifying spam in local directories and databases, and how Google might determine whether such a local source might be trusted or not.

He’ll also explain recent patents and papers that provide hints and insights into the workings of Google Maps categories for queries and businesses, and the associations that Google might make with specific sites when indexing them.

Join us for the evening of March 8th and the day of March 9th as we delve deeply into all aspects of Local search and Local marketing. The pricing is $899 for the event but if you sign up before February 14th you will gat the $100 Earlybird discount and a free pass for the basic LocalU on Friday (ping me if you want that pass).

Hope to see you there!