SES Local Conference coverage

At Mike the Internet Guy’s Blog he has some interesting coverage of the SES Local conference. The summary from Local Search Marketing Tactics – SES Local had a very nice overview by Christine Churchill of the steps to develop a local campaign

Continue reading

The road to Google Maps Nirvhana is paved with good intentions

In mid- July Search Engine Roundtable noted in a posting that Google Maps results with the map included were displaying prominently in the Google Organic results. Clearly for anyone attempting to optimize for local placement this possibility brought up images of the promised land. I experimented with tweaking our own listing and in our first …

Continue reading

Local Database accuracy

Greg Sterling had an interesting piece on local database accuracy What did they find? Shockingly, they discovered there was something wrong (minor to major issues) with 47% of the listings! That’s a remarkably large number. I was truly surprised. The discussion in the post is of equal interest and well worth a read. My experience …

Continue reading

Does Business Name = Title Tag?

2)Enhance the title of the Business to include the key phrase(s) As I have explored Google Maps local rankings, I have used the models developed for organic search optimization as a starting point to develop understanding and make progress. The working theory I developed is that the business name created in the Google Business Center …

Continue reading

Local Search Continues to Gain According to comScore

“According to the study, 63 percent of U.S. Internet users (or approximately 109 million people) performed a local search online in July, a 43-percent increase versus July of 2005. Google Sites (30 percent) and Yahoo! Sites (29 percent) garnered the largest share of local searches in July. Microsoft Sites captured 12 percent of local searches, …

Continue reading

From Google Local to the World

1)Be sure to edit the local listing and include the relevant business categories For those of you that are new to Google Local this might not seem obvious how to do. If you have just one business your can edit the business listing that appears in Google Local in one of several ways, neither of …

Continue reading

The Basics of Listing for Success

Here is a simple list of what is I have discovered is necessary to start improving your ranking at Google Maps and Yahoo Local. As I have worked with local listings over the past year I created this small check list for achieving some measure of success. These points may be self evident or they …

Continue reading

Does Google Maps have a sandbox?

Almost 6 months ago I was requested by a local client to get them listed (or rather improve their listings) in Google Maps and Yahoo local. I made a series of changes to the listing, helped them get their reviews improved, modified their business categories. On Yahoo the results showed up within a week. On …

Continue reading

Local Search

I have been working on Google and Yahoo local search optimization for awhile. It is an area that while not earth shattering in terms of traffic that they have generated it became clear to me that the importance to Google and Yahoo and the client was increasing and it would be a benefit to understand …

Continue reading