Website Promotion is not Voodoo

Local search experts share secrets, tips and tools to dominate local on March 23, 2010 at SES New York.

Local search marketing is a different animal than typical search engine optimization. (Is there such a thing as “typical search engine optimization”?)  The semi-annual Local Search Summit will be held March 23, 2010 at the Hilton New York, and provides an opportunity to listen in as the top thought leaders in the industry discuss the most up-to-date local search techniques and tricks.

Super SEO secrets being shared …

Local search ranking factors can rock the search results.

Your Google listing and its Google Place page is a great central depository for all information about your business.  It is the compilation of business owner provided data as well as user-generated reviews. The Place page is an incredibly valuable tool for a small or medium size business owner.  The Places page URL is friendly to users, easy to share, and easy to find …

You will want to search for your company + geo modifier.

For example, “Search Influence, New Orleans, LA” will get me here:

Google’s idea of giving small businesses their own page through their project, Place Pages for Google Maps, has got local search buzzing with the SEO implications of this move for small business websites. Could Place Pages provide competition in the SERPS for the small business website? It’s possible. Will they be bad for business? That’s not so clear.

For one, a business without a high ranking or optimized website would benefit from the obvious boost of having Google display “all the information for that place in one place” on its very own Place Page. On the other hand, the fact that Place Pages also provide user-generated content, in the form of reviews, has just made the task of online reputation management that much harder.

I’ll be making a very quick trip to Chicago on Monday to do a couple presentations at the Local Search Summit.

I’ll be solo presenting with Steve Espinosa moderating on uses of Social Media for local search.

And, I’ll be jointly presenting with Steve on Mobile applications and their importance for local search.

Sadly I won’t have any time to spend with Mat Siltala who will be there Monday, but is leaving Tuesday AM. Perhaps a little dessert!

SEO experts are almost unanimous in their agreement that customer reviews play a crucial role in boosting visibility and rankings in the local search results. So how can you use this information to leverage local search rankings for your own business?

In a previous post, we discussed how a pro-active approach to customer service and feedback can boost your business reputation online. Positive reviews are a sign of trust, and that carries a great deal of weight in search rankings. Happy customers are an excellent source of positive feedback and reviews.

For online businesses that depend on customer reviews to improve visibility in local search, social media engagement has become even more relevant with companies like Yelp giving reviewers the option to seamlessly broadcast their Yelp reviews to Facebook and Twitter.

According to the official Yelp blog, any photos that reviewers upload to Yelp.com will also be included when sharing reviews for that business via Facebook Connect. Users also have control over which reviews they want shared and which ones they don’t.

This is the slide deck from my presentation at Local Search Summit “Using Facebook & Twitter to Drive Local Leads” this afternoon.

We had a great crowd and I enjoyed the heck out of putting this slide show together. I was trying to position some real tactics in using Twitter for local business.

I’m hopeful that it was tactical versus theoretical and I look forward to your feedback.

Please, please, please ask questions and let me know what more you’d like to know.Fireproof trailer

I’m proud to announce that I have been asked to take part in a new Local Search News site http://www.localsearchnews.net/.

And, my first post is live!

Barnacle SEO Image

In this post I argue that with a judicious application of Barnacle SEO

even the smallest budgets can have an impact on small business website promotion.

Small business owners are generally a frugal lot.

Of course there are some who’ve got the budget to invest heavily as long as they see a return, but what about those who don’t?

I’ve been so busy with the turn of the year that I forgot to mention that I had a rare opportunity to contribute to Mike Blumenthal’s Loci 2008.

For those of you who don’t know, Mike is THE authority on Google Maps and Local.

I’m very proud to have been asked to take part and would gladly do it again!

My contribution is here, excerpt follows:

Search Influence has been in business since 2006 but 2008 is the year I realized there is a community of like-minded folks and engaged with that community.