Inspired by Jennita's post, 10 reasons to submit to YOUmoz, this is my first post so I hope everyone likes it. I am fairly new to my SEO career, after being laid off from a totally unrelated field in December 2008 I was asked by a local business owner, whom I knew socially, if I "knew anything about Internet marketing" because he needed help. My answer was a resounding yes, even though I didn't. The following week I spent devouring everything I could on the subject and of course got a SEOmoz PRO membership. A month later I had my first client to my own budding SEO business.

This client is in a very competitive local ad space and is spending 10K/month in Yellow Page ads in one city. While we have employed some "traditional" SEO techniques I saw a great opportunity for him in the local space. This client is a mobile service provider, servicing an area roughly 50 miles x 50 miles. However he only has 1 single location in the southern most portion of the county, which is not in the most ideal location from a local search perspective. (I like locations in the center of town for geo targeting)

His Google Maps listing was coming up on the second page (or not at all) for all of his keywords when combined with his city name or his zip code and not appearing in the 10 box for his keywords + any geo info we tested. The problem he faced is that being a mobile business and serving such a large area, he needed to always appear to be "down the street," even when he wasn't. We developed a strategy on how to increase his exposure in local search. Below is a review of some of the techniques we have employed and a few we are still developing and the results so far.

Keep in mind some of these techniques are a bit extreme and not for everyone but if you have an adventurous client, a budget and it and makes sense I hope some of these techniques can work for you.

1.)   Local Listings – Since he only has one physical location to cover such a large area even if we were to get his original listing to rank well for all of his keywords, it was very unlikely we would get any local rankings 10 miles away, where the city name changes and local competition is still ripe. To solve this we obtained 12 PO Boxes in geographically diverse neighborhoods across the county. We used these to create listings for his business and verify by mail. Note Bing and Google both offer verification by mail, Yahoo doesn't appear to have a verification process but takes a long time to approve, I am guessing there is a manual review proves. I recommend submitting and publishing the Bing and Google listings first, as well as any local directories for each location before submitting to Yahoo. At first I was worried this would be spamy, and initially it did appeared spamy in the local search results. His listings sometimes appearing 6 or 7 times for all surrounding neighborhoods in the 10 box, but after about 2 weeks Google worked it out and now usually only the appropriate listing appear. DO NOT use USPS PO Boxes. They aren’t considered a physical address and use a different zip code scheme. Use UPS Stores, Postal Annex or similar service. They are more expensive but you get a physical address. Below is a screenshot of our listing profile in Google Maps. Some locations don’t show unless you zoom, but you get the idea.

2.)   Geo-targeted Landing Pages – For both regular SEO and local search we developed 12 separate landing pages specifically targeted to the corresponding localities across the county. We optimized each page for the keywords he is targeting and included geo-information. I found that adding a list of competitor’s names and addresses separated by a Google maps box showing all of his listings really helps in the geo targeting due to zip code information appearing several times on the page. By putting competitor info below the Google Maps box it is below the fold, so to speak, and not very visible unless you really look for it. Additionally by providing the information so prospects can feel free to "compare our service" I don’t think it takes away from the user experience if they even look down that far. Don't put links to your competitors though (DUHHH). A nice side effect is we are coming up organically in searches for competitors by name now too. In each local listing we used the unique landing page address as the website. Google Maps is nice because it truncates the full address to only show “www.domain.com” even though it links to “www.domain.com/locations/area.shtml”  Additionally you may want to consider listing the PO Box address associated with the listing on each landing page. If you have a business where people are likely to walk in without calling first you may want to leave it off, but this was not a concern for us. If you do include address information on landing pages, I recommend using the hCard format as Google seems to do better with this information.

3.)   Informal Keyword Rich Business Name Change - While we do use the actual business names in the listing (luckily he has some keywords in his business name) we added a " - location + keyword" after his business name in all of the listing titles. (ex Acme Plumbing in San Marcos targeting the keyword “24 hour plumber” would be listed as “Acme Plumbing – San Marcos 24 Hour Plumber”)  If you are worried about violating TOS by not using the actual exact business name in the title you can register a fictitious name or DBA with you Secretary of State to make it legit. It is pretty inexpensive in most states but I don’t think you will run into any problems as this is a fairly common practice.

 4.)   Add Video and Pictures to listings - We produced a short "elevator pitch" commercial about his business which is featured on his site as well as in all of his listings. Additionally pictures help his listings stand out and it is my opinion helps with the local algo too.

 5.)   Unique Phone Numbers - We are currently experimenting with this. The local teleco sells a service called a Market Expansion Line. This is a virtual number pointing to you main number. I know you can get similar services from different providers. They are usually VoIP and a bit cheaper. The reason we chose to go with the more expensive service from the incumbent phone company is you get a free white page listing and you can choose the exchange (NPA-NXX) where the number originates from. Both of these will help you in the local algo. Additionally I believe Google can tell if it is a VoIP number. Due to the disposable nature of VoIP numbers and spammers use of them for verification they are downgraded by many services. Craigslist won’t allow VoIP numbers for verification period. If CL can figure it out I am sure Google can and will if they haven’t already. The SE's view listings in local directories as highly authoritative and having the correct NPA-NXX and a unique number for every location on your listings is a huge plus.

 6.)   Customer Reviews - The jury is still out, but I believe that reviews do help local ranking. So far quantity seems to outrank quality. We have introduced a program to ask customers to review us. Offering a discount to review seems to work. We have no way to track it but you can hand pick the customers you ask in hopes to affect the outcome. We are careful not to ask for a positive review in exchange for a discount coupon as we want to keep it ethical but encouraging your clients to review you will help. Even if it doesn’t help in the rankings it really makes your listing stand out in the crowd when you have tons of reviews and none of your competitors do.

Seems like a lot of work and expense? So what are our results?

Currently we are targeting 12 areas X 4 key phrases per area = 48 search terms.

• We appear in the 10-Box for 16 queries
• We appear in the 3-Box for 8 queries
• We appear in the all authoritative 1-Box for an astounding 18 queries
• 6 queries either do not display box results or we are just not showing up yet.

Ironically enough we are performing the weakest in the area where the business is physically located, but were working on it.

So far the custom landing pages are also displaying highly in organic results for many queries (we’re in the top 10 in Google for 24 of the queries and of those 24, 12 are in the top 3 listings). This in addition to being in the box results has us dominating in many areas in a very short amount of time.

How about impressions and actions?

Below is the data on Impressions and Actions from Google LBC In June, July and August (1st through 15th only as that is the only data available at the time of this writing)

 

Observations – The market has lots of opportunity for Local optimization as it seems to be less competitive space. There is opportunity for QUICK impact relative to regular SEO. Additionally the hardest part of traditional SEO (a robust link profile) seems to have little effect on local search except for the most competitive of keywords. There is lots of low hanging fruit by targeting smaller neighborhoods and areas. Most of the competition seems to be targeting the overall larger metro area. By narrowing it down to smaller more targeted areas you can easily pick up traffic. It is almost analogous to the long tail of local search if that makes sense. In addition to increased impressions, actions and web traffic, there is a more anecdotal benefit of an increase in calls from people who see the listing and call without visiting the website. We won’t know the extent of this until all the local tracking numbers are setup but my client has reported a significant pickup in calls from people who say they found him on the Internet.

Word of caution – Make sure if you employ any of these techniques that people finding your site are looking for your service and that you can service them. Some people may consider this to be somewhat gray hat our intention is to attract users who are looking for this service. My goal here is not to create search or local spam, so please don’t let it be yours!

About rstellers - Roger Stellers is the president of Blink Web Technologies and specializes in e-Commerce solutions, Search Engine Optimization and Local Search Optimization.