Local SEO
-
Would like to read articles on local SEO that have been recently published in the past few months. Has anyone come across good articles on this topic?
-
Hi Brett,
To be honest I think I learned most by really taking the time to read through David Mihm's "Local Search Ranking Factors" for 2011 and 2012.
This information compiles the industry's expertise, resulting in quite a good hypothesis as to what one should do in order to rank with guidelines as to your website, Google+ Local page (even though introduced after the 2012 survey), citations, link-building, etc.Lock yourself away for an hour or two... an open plan office is not ideal to chew through all the info
http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml
http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors-2011.shtml
Hope this helps?
Cheers
Greg
-
We're looking a Local SEO expert who can assist us.
Please feel free to get in touch.
-
My pleasure, Brett. Happy reading!
-
thanks Miriam, a great list
-
Hi Brett,
You've gotten some excellent replies here. Let me give you a list of my go-to sources for excellent reportage on this topic, some of which have already been mentioned. Put these in your feedreader and you will have a blow by blow account of the constant changes going on daily in Local:
Mike Blumenthal's Blog
Mike is considered by most Local SEOs to be the godfather of the industry. He is also a Google Top Contributor (in the Google and Your Business Forum). If you read nothing else, read Mike's blog religiously.
Nyagoslav Zhekov's Blog
http://www.ngsmarketing.com/blog/
Also a Google Top Contributor. Extremely smart guy with very important, factual blog posts.
Linda Buquet's Blog
http://marketing-blog.catalystemarketing.com/
Another Google TC. Linda's blog is very active and she is also now running her Local Search Forum. Expect lots of breaking news here.
David Mihm's Blog
http://www.davidmihm.com/blog/
David doesn't blog as often as the above 3 bloggers, but when he does, his stuff is must-read. Also, as the founder of GetListed.org and the annual Local Search Ranking Factors report, David is definitely and industry leader...as well as being a really nice guy!
Greg Sterling's Blog
An extremely intellectual man who gives best-in-industry commentary on industry news in Local (who just bought who, what is this new technology, etc.). Greg brings a unique perspective to Local.
Matt McGee's Blog
http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/
Matt is a marketing veteran and is the Executive News Editor at Search Engine Land and Marketing Land. He often blogs about local issues and I always really enjoy his commentary on the review aspect of Local. Matt's writing style is truly lay-person-friendly and I value his voice.
Andrew Shotland's Blog
Andrew is a no-nonsense local blogger with a gift for irony and a ton of experience. He's very respected in Local and while his blog isn't updated daily, what he writes is well worth reading. Another very smart fellow.
Search Engine Land
http://www.searchengineland.com
Regularly publishes good local news, often from some of the bloggers listed above.
Google and Your Business Blog
http://googleandyourbusiness.blogspot.com/
This is where Google tends to make most of their announcements about Local issues, so definitely be aware of this.
We also publish some great Local articles here at SEOmoz from time to time, and in our YouMoz section as well. You're welcome to check out my blog at http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/ but I confess that, of late, being busy has kept me from blogging half as much as I'd like to. There are many other talented bloggers in Local, but what I've listed here are my most-visited sources.
I hope these resources will be just what you're looking for, Brett!
Miriam
-
Andrew Shotland is my local info go-to guy - http://www.localseoguide.com
-
thanks Marie. An interesting forum and lots of changes at the local search level
-
Linda Buquet who is well know in the Local SEO field just started a thriving new forum: http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/
-
thanks Gyi
-
thanks Roberto. A great resource and it also answered an unrelated question on google place pages
-
Not specific articles, but some great local search sources:
-
This is the guys I follow. He is very informative and always on top of any changes. I highly recommend him. http://blumenthals.com/blog/
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How do you manage phone verification when claiming listings on behalf of clients (local and remote)?
As the top competitive difference maker, Quality/Authority of Structured Citations is pretty important. That being said, I spend a good deal of time manually running around to different citation websites and jumping through their hoops to get my clients' websites listed properly. I've been using getlisted.org to check my sites, and a lot of the citation sources out there require phone verification. Now I was wondering how you professionally manage the phone verification step for your own clients. I've found it a bit difficult getting my clients to reliably get the PIN numbers for me. I've even had problems with clients checking the mail for the post cards that get sent! At this point in time, I try to schedule a time (not during business hours preferably) to go into the location and answer the phone to get everything verified in one shot. For remote clients however, I just have to hope that they are on board with answering their phones and getting the PIN numbers back to me. Lastly, how do you manage to reduce the amount of sales calls that your client receives from these listing sites? I currently register accounts under a separate email address, for example, [email protected]. This cuts down on the email marketing spam, and it obviously helps me stay in control of the listings. How do you handle the phone calls though? Especially from some of the more aggressive companies like Yelp? Personally I've just been 'briefing' my clients on how to respond to these sales calls, and I've educated them on the importance of these listings so they aren't too annoyed with the assault of sales reps calling their business constantly. Are there any magic words that my clients can use with these sales reps to make them stop calling? Sorry for the long post, if you've made it this far thank you for reading!
Image & Video Optimization | | IronSummitMedia0 -
Local SEO Best Practice
Hi We currently have 6 showrooms in a geographical area (Scotland,UK) and each showroom covers a specific region within the country encompassing towns and cities. So for example showroom A based in Edinburgh covers a customer area of Edinburgh, Fife, St Andrews while showroom B located in Glasgow covers Glasgow, Livingston etc In google places I have drawn the geographical area on the map that each showroom covers making sure that they do not overlap At present some of which are ranking well in local but one is stating that 'google does not support this location' and after following previous advice on the forum this is still the case. Would I be better setting up another google account for this showroom and submit it again into Google Places or would it be better going into Google+ business pages? or are they the same thing? Finally is it worth using the following in Google Places? KML File and Geo Sitemap generation (these files are needed for Google) Address output in Schema.org format
Image & Video Optimization | | ocelot0 -
Video SEO, should I do what Roger does?
As per http://www.seomoz.org/blog/hosting-and-embedding-for-video-seo I want to rank with a rich snippet and improve my domain's overall ranking. So I am going to ignore YouTube and use Vimeo Pro (using old embed code). I will also submit a video XML sitemap and implement schema markup. Gotcha. Now let's check this strategy with what SEOmoz is doing. Let's take 5 Steps to Facebook Advertising - Whiteboard Friday it was uploaded onto the SEOmoz blog on 29 March 2013. Then on 4 April 2013 it was uploaded onto YouTube. As at 7 April 2013 (PST) I am not seeing the latest SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday Evolution of the Local Algorithm - Whiteboard Friday posted on YouTube. SEOmoz blog has a person written transcription, YouTube has an automatic transcript. There is a link to the SEOmoz comments below the YouTube Video. Cricky! They've gone all YouTube. Stop the boat. Or should I? My assumption is that SEOmoz is big enough so that it is willing to risk losing a few links to their YouTube webpages. Indeed they delay posting the video on YouTube for a week after it has been posted on the SEOmoz blog. What's more it ensures that there is a very good transcript on their blog. Top that off with comments (and I assume video sitemap and schema) and it is happy it will gain more from the traffic generated from the YouTube community than the potential loss of links to its domain, forgoing potential domain authority increases and resulting traffic. So Roger, I'm a little boat not a SEOmoz battleship cruiser, should I do what you do and wait for a week before I put my videos on YouTube? Or avoid the dangerous currents of YouTube stealing my domain authority and ignore YouTube all together?
Image & Video Optimization | | BruceMcG0 -
Local SEO company
How important it is to choose a local SEO company based on their location? How can you check their reliability?
Image & Video Optimization | | echo10 -
Video and SEO
I am planning on placing some short how to videos on my site. My question is what is the best way to implement video. Youtube Vimeo Self Hosted Video How do I ensure that the video can be viewed by all devices if it is self hosted?
Image & Video Optimization | | bronxpad0 -
SEO & Mass-Renaming of Images: Image Name, Alt Text, etc.
We are currently in the process of changing all of our image names and their alt-tags to be descriptive of their content. For instance, changing image names from image0001.jpg to blue-cell-phone-cover. We have hundreds of images on our site, would it be best to rename all of the images and update their tags in one sweeping change or trickle the changes, uploading changed images every other day or so?
Image & Video Optimization | | Buildings0 -
Google Places - Local Search - Not ranking when 100% complete?
Hi I have followed the examples set by David Mihm and fully completed a Google Places listing - with the geographical area covering the area that it serves along with lots of local citations but when searching on google for 'accountants swansea' it is way down on page 4 of the places results. Does it take time for Google to recognise these changes to Places listings or is my listing incorrect to attract a high listing for the search phrase. Looking at the competition many of them have not optimised or done anything with their listings pages so I am at a loss to explain why the listing is doing so badly. The places listing is at http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/place?hl=en&prmd=imvns&biw=1280&bih=829&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=accountants+swansea&fb=1&gl=uk&hq=accountants&hnear=0x486e45555a4e97b1:0x3d77128e2fe7cb74,Swansea,+Neath+Port+Talbot&cid=9815784575213492240&ei=UN6WTt7UJ8rasga-ocTrAw&sa=X&oi=local_result&ct=placepage-link&resnum=7&ved=0CFcQ4gkwBjge
Image & Video Optimization | | idv0 -
Listing in Local search
Hi, Are several listing in google places allowed ? I've got 1 address but with 3 differents services with 1 website for each activity . Tks a lot..
Image & Video Optimization | | mozllo0