Mary Bowling's presentation from SMX West 2011 on local search engine optimization.

1. Competing in Local Search Mary Bowling www.seOverflow.com @seOverflow @MaryBowling

2. Small agency in Denver SEO and Local SEO Linkbuilding Local Search Training and Consulting PPC Specialists in doing outsourced work for other agencies, web designers and SEO’s Always looking for a few good partners! seOverflow is…

3. Know the local search ranking factors, but also know that these have changed and will continue to change. http://www.davidmihm.com/blog/google/local-search-ranking-factors/ Know the Google Places Listing Quality Guidelines, but also know that these have changed and will continue to change, also. http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528 http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/static.py?page=checklist.cs&tab=1012251 Pay Attention, Be Flexible

4. Do the basics first: Claim, verify and build out your local listings at Google Places, Bing Local, Yahoo!Local Optimize your website for local terms. Associate your website with your Places listing. Clear up any data confusion that may be suppressing your rankings. Then, you can think about what the other guys are doing right that you may want to emulate. First Things First

5. Not the same! We’ve long known that a business’ website could positively influence the local rankings within web search, but now that influence appears very powerful. Concentrate on the top ranking businesses with map points in the web results for your competitive research. Places results and local results within the web (or everything) results are closely aligning. Web vs Maps Rankings

6. Web vs Places vs Maps

7. Categories What are the Places categories of the top ranking sites? Reviews What are the best sites on which to encourage reviews? Citations What are the best sites on which to get listed? Links What are the best links to build for your website? Local Ranking Factors

8. Concentrate on the top ranking local sites in the web results for your competitive research. Focus first on ranking for the “fat head” terms like dentist, cosmetic dentist and orthodontist first. These will bring you the most traffic. Then, go after “longer tail” terms that are highly profitable parts of your business, like lumineers, invisalign, porcelainveneers, dental implants. These may be easier to rank for, but bring fewer searchers. Local Strategy

9. Categories are often overlooked, but… Critical in Local Search Categories are how local business information has always been organized Greatly influence relevance to search queries Being in the right categories makes it easier for the SE’s to associate your business with what you do: Dentists clean teeth Plumbers repair leaky faucet Plastic surgeons do nose job Landscapers install lawn sprinklers Categories and Local

10. Google Places allows you 5 categories: Get your first category right! Choose as many preset Google Places categories as are applicable to your business. Try to find at least 2-3 before you use “custom” categories. Then pick custom categories based on: Does the query result in a local pack in the web results? How important/profitable is this service/product to my business? How many people search for the term? Categories and Local

11. Support your Google categories with the right categories in other directories Yelp category: Avoid non-related categories If you do unrelated things (landscaping in summer, snowplowing in winter) set them each up as their own business, with a unique name and phone number. Categories and Local

13. Look at their Place pages Competitors Categories? #4 #1 #2 #5 #6 #3 #7

14. Competitors Categories? Categories of top ranking San Jose dentists: Dentist– all 7 General Dentistry, Dentistry – 4x Dental Implants Periodontist, Dental Implants, Periodontist– 4x Cosmetic Dentist– 3x Invisalign – 3x Health and Medical-Dentists, Dentists – 2x Endodontist– 2x Orthodontist, Orthodonics – 3x Porcelain Veneers, Dental Veeners– 2x Pediatric Dentist – 1x Teeth Whitening Service – 1x Oral Surgeon – 1x Sedation Dentist – 1x Google categories Categories from other sites Custom categories

15. Look for: Any good categories you may have missed Custom categories they’re using that may be good for you. Categories pulled from sources other than the owner. Look for the source of that category to see if you can get listed there – in that category - as well. Competitors Categories?

16. Number of reviews has lost some of its influence as a ranking factor: Try to have at least as many reviews as the average of the top rankers Perceived authenticity of reviews has kicked in Look for sites that have some type of review vetting process – this is the future of reviews Don’t neglect Hotpot – number of reviews there is exploding! Reviews and Local

17. Where to encourage reviews for San Jose dentists? Google/Hotpot Yelp (7x) InsiderPages (3x) DemandForce (2x) JudysBook (1x) DoctorOogle (1x) These are probably the best review sites to start with. Competitors’ Reviews?

18. Competitors’ Reviews? Then, look at the top rankers Places pages

19. Even if reviews were not a ranking factor, you still need an ongoing, sustainable review strategy to: Keep getting more good reviews. Drown out bad reviews the crazies. Respond to bad reviews to gain future customers. Improve your business and get more good reviews. Attract new customers to your business! Reviews and Local

20. Citations are the “links” of local. The more citations you have from trusted sites, especially trusted local sites, the better. Quality and quantity both seem to matter. The more consistent the data is across those pages, the more it helps Google to trust the information it has about your business. Citations with inconsistent data will hurt, rather than help you, especially on trusted sites. Different citation sources matter more than others in specific industries – research these for your industry! Citations and Local

21. Look at their Places pages: Competitors’ Citations?

22. Competitors’ Citations? Find the most common citation sources and look for gold nuggets.

23. Find the most common citation sources: Look for gold nuggets. Ignore scraper sites. Create a prioritized list and get listed. Competitors Citations? Review your own citations to see if you can improve them in any way.

24. Think about links differently for Local Search: Links that you would normally ignore due to low quality, by conventional standards (nofollows, tiny PR), can still be helpful for Local Search Rankings. Sites where you can get a link or citation andcustomers can leave reviews do double duty. Look for opportunities to improve links and/or citations you already have. Links and Citations

25. Good Local Links Links that convey location (location prominence) Links that convey products/services (relevance) Links with the business name in them (trust) Links with phone/address in them (trust) Links with the URL in them (trust) Local Links

26. Get Links from different domains: Local authority sites - those that rank for your location. Industry authority sites - those that rank for “head” product/service terms regardless of the location (plumber, lawyer) Trusted local directories (CitySearch, Angie’s List, Yelp, etc.) Local Links

27. Get Links from pages with: Your location in the title tag Your business name in the title tag Your business address and/or phone number in title tag and/or URL Local Links

28. Get links to the “local” pages on your site: Links to Contact, About, Maps and Review/Testimonial pages. If you have multiple locations, build links to all of the individual location pages. (You can also pass that some of that PR on to pages about you in directories to help them rank better.) Local Links

29. Free Category Suggestion Tool http://Blumenthals.com/index.php?Google_LBC_Categories TOOL:

30. Enter search term, scrapes the phone number of the top local rankers in web search: Searches for those phone numbers in the Google Web results and shows you the URLs on which those phone numbers are found. Organizes the data to show which websites may be most helpful to list your own business on. TOOL: http://www.Whitespark.ca/Local-Citation-Finder/# Free Local Citation Finder Tool

31. Whitespark Local Citation Finder

32. Enter search term, scrapes data from Place pages of top local rankers in web search, including: Categories Review sources Citation sources View data online or export into excel to organize it to suit your needs. TOOL: http://www.LocalSearchToolkit.com/ (Note: This is an seOverflowtool) Free Category, Citation and Review Finder Tool

33. Local Search Toolkit

35. Yelp

36. TheCityofDenver.com

37. Yellowbot

38. MerchantCircle

39. HelloDenver

41. Angie's List

42. Superpages

43. BBB.org

44. Yellowbot

45. DexKnows

47. CitySearch

48. InsiderPages

49. Judy's Book

51. Avvo.com

52. AttorneyHelp.org

53. HG.org

54. SuperLawyers.com

55. Dex Knows

56. FindLaw.com

58. Bing Local

59. Bizjournals.com

60. Brownbook.net

61. CitySearch.com

62. CitySquares.com

63. DiscoverOurTown.com

64. Facebook Pages

65. Foursquare.com

66. Google Places (Hotpot)

67. Gowalla.com