Category Archives: Local SEO

Local SEO Speaking Gigs

I’ll be speaking on Local Search this month at #wmwott

November 17, 2011 – 2:59 am
Google map pin

Local search is an important facet for any small to medium sized business. The online marketing industry is constantly evolving and it brings both opportunities and challenges for owners of all types.

I personally have never given a talk on search engine optimization (SEO) to an audience in Ottawa before, but I'm extremely excited to share the knowledge and experience that I've built up over the two years working in this industry with those who want know learn about it. The title of the event is "The State of Local Search". My goal is to put a story around the search engine marketing landscape on a local level, and to provide some input and maybe ideas on the table for those 'keeners' that may want to do something big in this space.

Web Marketing Wednesday (formally called Web Analytics Wednesday) is run by three Ottawa marketers; Ben Myers, Jackson Lo and Tyler Gibbs. Our group is called the Ottawa Web Marketing Group. The purpose of our group is to given you an opportunity to meet other Ottawaians who are passionate about Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC), Web Analytics, Social Media and other topics relating to Internet marketing. Web Marketing Wednesday is a free local event in Ottawa and we plan to keep our meetups a tradition, so one meetup every month, with the exception of December of course… because we know you'll be home with family and enjoying delicious meals with your close ones around the fireplace :)

I hope you can join us next week on November 23rd. If you cannot join us, you can follow the hashtag #wmwott where I'm sure some of our keen attendees will be tweeting away on their smartphones. Be sure the join our group to stay updated on upcoming events! If you have suggestions on topics, or if you wish to present something, please leave a comment below or contact me directly and we'll arrange some spotlight time for you in 2012! 

Hope to meet you all soon!

Update: Here are the slides that were presented at Web Marketing Wednesday this week. 

[slideshare id=10309616&doc=stateoflocalsearch-111124092657-phpapp01]

 

Tags , , , , , , , | Permalink | Comment (0)
Local SEO

GetListed.org Comes To Canada! Eh!

February 18, 2011 – 8:15 am

A couple months back, I heard GetListed.org had been working on a 'surprise' project, but didn't know too much about the details until a few days ago. David Mihm sent a few of us local SEO'ers access to try the new Canadian version of GetListed.org! (jumps for joy) For those who don't know, GetListed.org is a resource for small business owners to learn more about their business and how it is listed online. It was created in 2009 but only had two versions available: the US and UK versions. Along with David is community of local search marketers who contribute to the overall success of GetListed.org, as well as those awesome Local SEO'ers between Canada, US and UK! 

Here's a screenshot of the GetListed.org homepage, for Canada:

GetListed.org Homepage

Just to run through a quick example with you so you understand how this can work for your business, I will use a Boston Pizza chain in Ottawa to illustrate what you will find with GetListed.org's tool. 

GetListed.org Listing Snapshot

The Listing Snapshot section details information about their business including the name of the business, address and phone number. It also calculates your listing score, which is a number on a scale of 1-100 explaining how complete your business profile is presented in the major search engines. Along the right side are other local business services that you could potentially list your business in. Some of those include Google Places, Yelp, YellowPages, HotFrog, Foursquare and Brownbook. 

GetListed.org Details

Now, if you dive deeper into the page, you'll find the Details section, which pulls your listing information from various sources like Google Places or Yelp and displayed them within this handy tool. As you can see above, this listing is claimed by the owner, their information is filled out completely, there are 6 reviews, the categories they are listed in, photos they've uploaded, and the list of citations pointing to the business. Clearly, the owner of this Boston Pizza's done his/her homework and made sure their listing was completed and optimized. 

That's it! Fairly simple tool to use and I will let you explore the rest on your own.

There is huge opportunity for growth for small businesses on the web, and in the past I've explained the benefits of local search marketing and what it could mean for your business. Now it's up to you to get'er done!

Tags , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink | Comments (5)
Local SEO

Google Places SEO: What’s New and What to Consider

December 11, 2010 – 7:45 pm

Since the new Google Places rolled out in October 2010, many people have seen their pages rising and falling in the search engine result pages (SERP). A recent article was published on the SEOmoz blog about a research which was conducted on Google Places SEO. If you took statistics class back in school, you may be able to piece things together quickly here, otherwise read through the results slowly as there are a lot of statistical terminology to digest.

But to summarize their findings and keep things to the point,

  1. Domain-wide link popularity seem more important than page-specific ones
  2. Using city name + keyword in the page title and the listing name will give you a boost in rankings 
  3. More related maps, more reviews and more 'about this page' seem to do better than a profile that is no mentions 
  4. Closer you are to the center of your city, the better it is for your page rankings 

So, those are the result we saw from the experiment, but what is Google saying about their ranking factors? 

Relevant factors that Google explains it uses when determining what shows up in the results are:

  1. Relevance - showing only 'coffee shops' if you specify coffee shops are what you are looking for in your search
  2. Prominence - how well known your business is 
  3. Distance - closer you are to the center of the city you are searching in, the higher you appear in the results, or whatever is closer to the general location of the person searching

We've seen these relevance factors before, so what is new to Google Places? 

Google HotpotGoogle Hotpot – this feature allows you to rate businesses from your desktop and mobile device, easily. Google states that putting your reviews into Hotpot will affect  your rankings in search results, goodie. I can see this new feature being quite useful to local business owners and to customers. Check out these cool Google Places Hotpot Kits they will be distributing to businesses too! We will see how it plays out in Portland, but I see Canadian businesses making a kick out of such feature when the time comes. 

The other two features that are new to Google Places are Tags and Boost. These do not affect your rankings in the search results. 

Google Tags - this is a flat fee advertising option that will make your listing stand out from the rest. 

Google Boost - this helps promote your listing to the top of the SERP, in the Ads section above the organic and local map results. 

Part of this data was extracted from a comment on the SEOmoz blog by Bill Slawski. The comment included a link to a video which Google put up earlier this month, explaining a few of the new features in Google Places, as well as tips on how to optimize your Places profile to see better results. Here is the video: 

 

How do you see these new features adding value to these local businesses?

How effective do you think the Hotpot feature will be in determining where a Places profile will be ranked in the top 10 of the search results?

Share your thoughts in the comment box below, please don't be shy :)

Tags , , , , | Permalink | Comment (1)

Next Page »

Next Page »