Denver SEO - Local Search Marketing

Local Marketing Games

Greg — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 18:35:31 +0000

Are you tired of the way this thing called internet marketing, with all it’s supposedly secret algorithm’s along with totally confusing things like LDA, LSI, keyword density works?

Has someone told you that all you need to do is have a website and use social tools like Twitter and Facebook and the money will just roll in?

Local search is huge and getting bigger by the day. Google’s estimates 40% of traffic is for local products and services. This is huge!

But how can you tap into this?

The “go to guy” for local marketing is the guy ranked #1 for the term – Scott Gallagher has created a video that spins heart felt humor into the confusion that many business owners face with their online marketing.

80% of bricks and mortar business are in desperate need of Internet marketing services.

Post from: Denver SEO - Local Search Enthusiast

Local Marketing Games

Misconceptions, Consolidated SERP’s Shake Up

Greg — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 00:13:34 +0000

Did you know that 73% of all online activity is related to local content?

As a small business owner competing in your local market you should be aware that Google now determines the searchers location and provides the local search results regardless of their search query. This action has pushed business listing in Google prominently front and center.

But is this a good thing or a bad thing?

The Pros and Cons of Google’s New Local SERP

With Google’s new local SERP, sites that already perform well in both organic and local search results perform even better. The new consolidated SERP helps push a page’s ranking up a notch or two. A business’s Places page should then be …

Expert Interview on Local Search with Chris Silver Smith

With all of the changes recently rolled by Google in November 2010, It is now more important than ever to pay attention to local search marketing and to have a plan for your local business. I was also thrilled to have the opportunity to …

3 Misconceptions About Google Places & SEO

But, in smaller cities and/or less competitive industries, it was always possible to show up in the 7-pack or 3-pack of local results. That has not changed in the new Google Places. If you do enough searches outside the major cities, …

Post from: Denver SEO - Local Search Enthusiast

Misconceptions, Consolidated SERP’s Shake Up

Google Places, Spam, Edits and More

Greg — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 23:43:02 +0000

If you’re a small business and you want to get to the first page of Google’s results then without a doubt Google Places is the vehicle of choice. This is primarily due to the fact that the good folks at Google , for some reason, have elected to show search results for local business front and center. By this I mean almost an entire page of business listing!

Google Places Search – 8, 9 or More Local Results to a Page

It appears that Google is willing to fill the results page with local Places Search results if they are in fact the most relevant results on a given.

Mobile search makes your Google Places listing more important

You’ve seen the commercials, or perhaps even done it yourself. You’re out and about, suddenly remember you need to pickup flowers for your Mother’s birthday.

Google Places Cracking Down on Spam

Many local businesses, and those involved in local search marketing, have criticized Google for the amount of spam in Google Places (formerly Local Business Listings). Google has addressed these concerns by introducing new Google Places …

Now available with Google Apps: Google Places – Google Small Business

Google Places offers business owners a free and easy way to make sure that potential customers can find their business when searching online at Google.com and in Google Maps, both from desktops and mobile devices…

Google Places Now Verifying “Edits” With Owners

Google is now verifying, when they can, edits made to the Google Maps Places database.

Make sure that your listing is playing by the rules. Learn more about Goolge Places Quality Guidelines for more details on managing your listing.

Post from: Denver SEO - Local Search Enthusiast

Google Places, Spam, Edits and More

Improve Your Online Exposure

Greg — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 06:36:03 +0000

Whether you’re a local contractor, cosmetic surgeon, chiropractor, dentist, lawyer, or run a physique shop local search marketing is essential in the event you want to increase your client or customer base inside a targeted geographical area. It could be a town, parts of a big city or a few surrounding towns.

Here are few suggestions that can help improve your online exposure and get you website visitors and clients walking in the doors.

Videos

Brief instructional videos can be very powerful in attracting new clients and driving visitors to your website

Create short one or 2 minute videos
Post videos on YouTube.
Posting three to five per month will improve your traffic

Becoming a Local Resource

Become a useful resource for your community. Provide real help, advice and helpful resources. Become the go-to person in your business field.

Make sure the content you provide brings quality info to the reader

Reviews

Positive reviews that appear on Google Maps can be a huge boost to local search marketing efforts.

Ask clients to add a review of your company/services on Google

Implementing any of these strategies will significantly increase your web presense.

Post from: Denver SEO - Local Search Enthusiast

Improve Your Online Exposure

Search Based Keyword Tool Discontinued Soon

Greg — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 21:47:03 +0000

Google’s sktool will soon be replaced by the updated keyword tool they have been developing over the past year.

Feeding off the momentum of improvements we’ve made over the past year in AdWords, we recently released beta versions of the updated Keyword and Placement Tools.

We’ve maintained the core functionality of these tools, but have added some new features that we hope will make them more useful for you. If you use English as your AdWords interface language you may have noticed that you already have access to these tools, and availability to all English advertisers as well as other languages will be rolling out over the next few weeks

source: Updated Keyword and Placement Tools

Post from: Denver SEO - Local Search Enthusiast

Search Based Keyword Tool Discontinued Soon

Google Instant Search Makes SEO Pointless

Greg — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 05:39:47 +0000

This post is via The Steve Rubel Stream

Google today launched an ambitious effort to speed up searching. But what they really did is kill SEO.

Google says:

“Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type. We are pushing the limits of our technology and infrastructure to help you get better search results, faster. Our key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page. This means that you can scan a results page while you type.”

The most important consideration for marketers or anyone who creates content, however, is in the bullets…

“Smarter Predictions: Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help guide your search. The top prediction is shown in grey text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need.”

Post from: Denver SEO - Local Search Enthusiast

Google Instant Search Makes SEO Pointless

Latent Dirichlet Allocation Optimization

Greg — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 06:08:15 +0000

With all the hoopla about latent dirichlet allocation (LDA) optimization the past few weeks I decided to run a few test using SEOmoz’s LDA Topics Tool a bit. I checked a page on one of our sites that has zero incoming links and ranks #1 for the broad phrase search term “grunge boots”.

The results – 49% 55% 53% 57% 51% 56% 54% 54% 51% 55% for an average of 53.5% relevance between topics for the keyword and topics for the page. The page tested is a simple bookmark with >150 words of content that links to the original content and should not rank #1 for such a competitive search phrase.

Our Take on LDA – Latent Dirichlet Allocation

So, a little over a week ago SEOmoz put out some information on something they call LDA, or Latent Dirichlet Allocation. Some SEO people seem to think this is a game changer…well it’s not. In fact, the concept is nothing new, …

LDA – Is On-Page Optimization the SEO Secret?

“Latent Dirichlet Allocation (Blei et al, 2003) is a powerful learning algorithm for automatically and jointly clustering words into “topics” and documents into mixtures of topics. It has been successfully applied to model change in …

The Relationship Between Latent Dirichlet Allocation and Google …

SEOMoz and their research on Google’s use of Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), summarized for the rest of us.

Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) Correlations Clarified

Furthermore, Latent Dirichlet Allocation does not conform with Google’s primary goal of serving the most relevant result to a query. LDA is an extension of the classic “bag of words” concept that ignores word order and proximity — both …

So with no inbound links to our test page and competitors apparently doing a lousy job of optimizing for our targeted phrase LDA must be at work here?

Post from: Denver SEO - Local Search Enthusiast

Latent Dirichlet Allocation Optimization

Nofollow Attribute and Internal Site Sculpting

Greg — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 15:57:51 +0000

The discussion around the nofollow attribute and internal site sculpting seems to be a common topic when talking about SEO. The most current talking point on the subject is whether or not the attribute works as it has been reported and actually nofollows.

Should I use the nofollow attribute on internal links?

Regarding “nofollow” on internal links: Does it hurt? Does it help? I read different comments from Matt on this matter over time. What’s the latest? I know that the attribute use to work but I’m wondering if it does what it was intended to do anymore? Some of my testing suggest that nofollow actually hurts your sites indexing more than it helps.

Post from: Denver SEO - Local Search Enthusiast

Nofollow Attribute and Internal Site Sculpting

Sitelinks in Google

Greg — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 05:30:06 +0000

I recently watched 2 really great SEO tip videos about sitelinks and thought it would be a good idea to share them with you. Both are great videos and the best part is they are very short and to the point.

The icing on your SEO cake

When a site is online for a while (about a year usually) and becomes the number one result for certain keyword or phrases that a user types in, search engines will assign sitelinks to display under your organic search engine results.

How are sitelinks generated?

When you search for something, lets say “LinkedIn,” you will notice there are some quick links on the search result such as “Jobs, About, Advanced” etc, how does that work?

Assuming my website is #1 on the search results, how can I do that?

Post from: Denver SEO - Local Search Enthusiast

Sitelinks in Google

Top Local Search Ranking Factors For 2010

Greg — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 05:51:58 +0000

David Mihm has done it again and has published Volume 3 of Local Search Ranking Factors. This year David surveyed 34 local search experts to get their opinion on the top factors for ranking high in Google Maps.

The participants were asked to rate the importance of 69 criteria with respect to their influence on rankings in the Google, Bing and Yahoo Local “Universal” search algorithms.

Top positive ranking factors

General Importance of Claiming Place Page / Local
Business Address in City of Search
Associating Place Page with Proper Categories
Volume of Citations from Major Data Providers + IYP Portals
General Importance of Off-Page / Off-Listing Criteria

Things that work better than in 2009

Associating Photos with Your Place Page
General Importance of Claiming Place Page / Local Listing
Volume of MyMaps on which Your Business Is Included
Age of Place Page
Associating Local Area Code as Primary Place Page Phone Number

The results of this survey are truly invaluable and is well worth the time to read for any business that wants to do well in local search.

Post from: Denver SEO - Local Search Enthusiast

Top Local Search Ranking Factors For 2010