Regional / Local Search Engine Marketing Tips and Strategies

SEO Question: I have primarily a local based business. How should I do SEO / SEM for my site?

Answer:

Organic Local Search Engine Optimization:

These tips will help you rank well for local search results in the global search databases, such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

With local SEO you do all the same stuff you would do with global SEO, like:

Listing in local directories and advertising on local portals can be a cheap marketing spend that provides a solid ROI. It will take a bit of research to analyze the value, but if pages are ranking well in relevant search results on Google then they are great places to be listed.

You can think of relevant web communities in terms of location or topic. If a site is relevant for broader queries about your field or broader queries about your location it may be a great link buy.

If you local chamber of commerce has a site that provides listings don't forget to submit there. You may also want to consider submitting your business to sites like your local Better Business Bureau.

Why Getting At Least a Few Links is Important:

It is important to build at least a small amount of editorial linkage data pointing at your site (through directory listings and other related link building activities), because if you chose to list in business directories like Verizon Superpages some business directories charge you by the click.

If your site does not outrank them then it is worthless being forced to pay a recurring click cost anytime someone is already searching for your brand name.

Yahoo! also offers a paid inclusion program which charges you by the click to be listed in their regular search results. I generally do not recommend paying for inclusion as getting a few links is typically far cheaper than paying for every time someone searches for your name. Plus if nobody links at your site it is hard for search engines to gauge how much they should trust your website.

As compared to Yahoo!'s paid inclusion Google offers a program called Google Sitemaps, which is a free program that makes it easy to see what traffic you are getting from Google. It will also show top search terms that you ranked for and if Google had any crawl issues with your site.

Leveraging Well Trusted Local Hubs:

In some cases if you are in a competitive field and are starting a new site from scratch it may be worth creating a temporary site in conjunction with your main site. Sometimes Google can take a while to trust new sites in competitive fields, and creating a mini site on an already well trusted and well established site can have you seeing positive ROI quicker.

For example, Maui.net costs $20 a month to establish a business account on their server which leverage their Maui.net domain trust. This one is a bit out there, but in some small markets the hosted content pages cost next to nothing. For example, in Kaitaia (the northernmost town in New Zealand) you can get a lifetime hosted page on kaitaia.com for $10.

Local Domain Registration and Hosting:

If you primarily cater to a specific market foreign to the US it may be worth it to buy a local domain (.co.uk for the UK for example) and / or host it on a server in that country. Building links from other sites that are deemed to be local to a specific region in nature should help get your site included in those search results.

If you are trying to build a strong global brand or are in a hyper competitive field it is probably worth the extra $8 per year to register the global .com version of your domain to prevent someone else from cybersquatting you.

If you are targeting multiple local markets in different languages it probably makes sense to use subdomains by language or different domains for the secondary markets.

What's Your Address?

You should post your business address on at least the home page and one other page of your site, perhaps sitewide. You should format it like 1 Microsoft Way Redmond, WA, 98052. MSN has a search near me feature which may give you a boost in their results if you are deemed to be close to a searcher.

One Page Per Location:

If you are targeting multiple towns it is likely best to focus your homepage on either the most competitive town or the entire region. Use interior pages to target the other towns. It is possible to target many towns on a single page, but the problem is that when people find your content it may seem less relevant if you try to target 5 towns on one page than if you target 1 town per page. The smaller towns may also be easy to rank for by using good page title tags and internal linkage. The more relevant your page seems to a searcher the easier it is to convert them into a buyer.

Local Search Engine Advertising:

Many search queries are local in nature, but the outlay for a professional SEO provider could cost well into thousands of dollars, and even then results take time and are typically not guaranteed.

If you want to test market demand using Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and MSN AdCenter allow you to quickly and cheaply buy relevant traffic on a pay per click basis.

I could write a 30 page post on PPC right here, but it would be beyond the scope of this post, so I will recommend my free ebook on pay per click marketing [PDF]. As an overview of a few things to consider with local pay per click:

  • Are you bidding on ads relevant to your area?

    • Are you bidding on ads for each relevant town (with relevant ad copy and sending them to the most relevant page)?

    • For large cities are you bidding on relevant neighborhood related or zip code related terms? (these will likely be low traffic and have little competition than the core related terms, but because of those two factors they are often underpriced, and they are ultra targeted leads)
    • Think of alternative ways to describe where you are (ie: Raleigh-Durham is also called something like Research Triangle park).
  • Are you bidding on core terms and alternate ways to define your products?
    • For a qualified real estate agent terms like [my town realtor] makes sense.

    • Most realtors will also bid on [my town houses] and [my town homes].
    • The smarter realtors will also bid on more descriptive lower searched phrases like [my town town homes], [my town condos], [my town condominiums]. You can use our free keyword list generator to generate these sorts of lists.
    • In some cases it may make sense to bid on terms related to moving or things like [my town home buying guide].
    • If you do not sell commercial property make sure that you use commercial (or other words that would indicate a demand for commercial property) as a negative word.
  • Is your ad copy for each keyword group relevant?
    • As you expand out your campaign you want to keep it organized in neat groups where possible.

    • Make sure your ad copy is as relevant as possible for your core terms.
    • While some dislike using it, Google's dynamic keyword insertion may make your ad seem more relevant than competing ads because it puts relevant copy into your ad.

Google AdWords (and some of the ad systems) allow you to set up ads in multiple ways.

  • As described above, you can use modifiers to target your local ads.

  • Google also looks at the IP address of web surfers, and can allow you to set up additional regional ad groups targeting the same terms, but instead of using the local modifying terms (such as my town keyword), you can filter the town or regional aspect of the targeting via Google understanding where a web user is located from their IP address.

Google is also getting into partnering with companies to offer free WiFi (which will increase Google's usage AND make it easier for them to target local ads) and Google is also testing using pay per call listing in the search results. Expect the local search marketplace to have significant innovation in the near future.

Google's Vertical Local Search Engine Marketing:

Google seems to go back and forth with their names on the product that integrates local search and Google Maps. I think the key point to consider is that they do want to make people think that local and maps are one and the same.

In the same way that they are trying to integrate the idea of maps and local they may also point more of their global search queries at different verticals. Google is testing a new interface that suggests different vertical databases (like news search, image search, shopping search, Google Groups) on some global searches. Google also sometimes places what they call a OneBox result at the top of the search results. These results are also pulled from vertical search databases.

The Google Local Business Center allows you to list your business on Google local / Google maps for free. Google Local also pulls results from Verizon Superpages and other trusted sources. Google is also testing AdWords ads that allow you to buy local ads on Google Maps.

Google also offers a product called Google Base. It allows you to upload listings of free information or items for sale.

Yahoo! Local:

Yahoo! Local offers free basic listings and monthly flat rate advertising based on your category and local market size. They also integrate some relevant Yahoo! Search Marketing ads into their local product. You need to have a physical address to list your site in Yahoo! local, but you do not need a website. They offer a free 5 page website with your listing.

If you are paying a flat rate fee or are looking to maximize how much traffic you receive it may make sense to keyword stuff your title or description if they let you get away with it. From my experience paid ads seem to be able to get a bit more leeway than free listings.

Pay Per Call:

Earlier in this post I mentioned Google was testing pay per call ads. In some verticals calls are much more valuable than ad clicks. Verizon also intends to auction off some of their offline print catalog ads using phone numbers that are auctioned off in a pay per call manner.

Ingenio is a technology market leader in the pay per call space, offering ad distribution on AOL and a few other major directory sites.

Other Local Search Sites & Local Directories:

A number of well known directories get significant direct traffic from global search, searches on other local databases, and direct traffic. A few of the top players are:

Many directories and local search products are powered from Acxiom, infoUSA, GeoSign, or Amacai. Stunty pointed me at a couple resources showing the relationships.

If you do not want to need to submit your data at many locations RegisterLocal allows you to submit a profile and have it syndicated to many local search sites.

Local SEM Help:

As far as I am aware Local Launch and Reach Local are the two most well known companies targeting the local SEM market.

I have not hired either, but I know Local Launch has some of the brightest minds in SEM working for them. ReachLocal offers this video explaining how they work.

Verizon SuperPages also signed up with Google to become a Google AdWords reseller.

Disclaimers:

I have not done a ton of local marketing, but I get asked this question often. Feel free to tell me if I am hosed up on anything. Also this post is a bit biased in that I only speak fluent English and have only lived in the US. In some foreign markets where search is dominated by other companies (ie: Baidu in China, Yandex in Russia) you may have to take a look at what other local directories and search services are important.

Some people, like the Kelsey Group, track local search much more in depth than I do, so they may be able to give you information about your local market.

Search Engine Suggest / See Also Results and Brand Value

If you can weave your name into search suggestions related to your product or field of work it helps build your brand value for free and makes it much harder for others to take your market position.

If search engines use latent semantic indexing (or some similar systems that are obviously and certainly in use) having your brand or name semantically associated with your keywords makes it easier for you to write naturally about your topic, whereas some competing sites may write in a somewhat mechanical sounding process to try to compete.

It looks like Yahoo! thinks words are related if they appear next to each other often

Yahoo! See Also result for SEO Book.

Yahoo! See Also result for seobook.

And, as linked to above, here is an example of MSN finding a document relevant when there was no relevant anchor text or page copy. Here also is a post from last June talking about when Google started placing more emphasis on the value of search engine marketing anchor text in the search engine optimization search results.

If engines think your name is synonymous with your topic so will many consumers. It is all a game of mindshare and brand equity. If you can get people to talk about you then you do great.

Now if only I could fix minkhounds...

Matt Cutts and Mike Grehan Talk PageRank

Mike Grehan's recent article linked to an audio interview of Matt Cutts on link popularity and link reputation and another with general SEO tips.

Matt, of course, hated on paid links, but other than that overtly biased hate on links his other tips are good stuff.

This Item is No Longer for Sale

Branded searches are some of the highest volume and highest value search terms. Many products or systems go out of date though.

To provide the best customer experience many websites that offered outdated products quickly remove related content. The thing is, you can't build up a billion dollar brand and then expect people to stop searching for it overnight. Many people keep on searching long after your products are no longer for sale. And because it is often hard to find information about discontinued products it is not only easy to rank for it, but people search hard for that type of information.

So if you have some content about old products don't remove it when it dates or is no longer sold. Perhaps depreciate or remove the category listings or prominent internal navigation pointing at it from your site, but still leave the page up with whatever few scraper or affiliate links it has gained over time.

Then remind the people that find those pages that the product is no longer for sale and recommend what is for sale. Do that, or maybe throw AdSense or something on it.

Also blogging about old dated stuff...I think so many people chase the right now stuff that it becomes hard to find original content when you surf from channel to channel to channel. It would be just as easy doing research or writing about old things that interest you, and perhaps looking for content sources that others are not using, like collecting junk or making 3d models of stuff.

Off Site Offsite SEO - Nuclear Waste Style

If your main site does not have a brand to the scale of BMW then maybe it is true that your site has only 1 or maybe a few lives in the search results. For your main company site it may be worth it to take the slow and steady path to the top.

If you aggressively market pages on other sites that prominently feature you then you can do it over and over again, while likely significantly lowering your risk (as compared to directly marketing your own site aggressively).

For example, looking at the Google Viagra SERPs, the SERP is about 50% spam. You got:

  • .edu subdomains

  • other subdomains of other sites
  • Yahoo! news syndication of a press release
  • humor page turned advertisement

Since Google is overtrusting root domain trust and heavily leveraging that trust when evaluating the rankings for other pages on that same site many people are simply moving all spam external to their own sites, in favor of placing it on another well trusted domain. Then some of them are creatively using aggressive link strategies to promote those pages where they are prominently featured.

For many of these types of pages the creation and redirection and link building is entirely automated. But if you take a bit longer and create something like that humor page or create a real resource page it may stick in the SERPs longer and eventually grow into a self reinforcing position.

With as wide spread as some of these off site spam activities are I would expect Google to eventually find a way to break down the domain trust scores into pieces, ie: something like only trust a page on a domain in proportion to how much link popularity from that domain flows at that page.

What held Google SERP spam back was the need for placing spam on a trusted domain. Now that many people are exploring that option the system must once again evolve.

How Useful is Usage Data?

Features such as toolbar search suggestions and inline query suggestion show that search engines value global usage data enough to suggest alternate routes / queries. So to some extent they must trust usage data.

On an individual page or site level basis it is much harder to tell how important usage data is because it is hard to naturally create the other quality signals without creating some usage data. Opinions are as follows:

Assuming you are doing other things right (like building a citation worthy brand that people regularly revisit) then adding usage data to your site guarantees that you will gain more of virtually every other quality signal an engine can use. Even if engines do not look at clickstreams directly, then having more traffic still helps because it expands your reach and how many quality votes you get anytime you do something that is citation worthy.

The difference between an A list and C list blogger is not just content quality or originality. Just as often it is likely due to the size of their subscriber base, which grants them the mindshare necessary to quickly spread information.

I think the Google Toolbar and SERP click-through tracking can be combined with all the other forms of tracking to give them some signal of quality. Sure it can be spoofed, but the places where it is being spoofed ... most of those places probably lack the other corroborating quality signals necessary to rank.

Remember there are user accounts too. Faking user accounts with real search and usage history over extended periods of time is much more difficult than spamming Direct Hit would have been back in the day.

When you search Google for things like VOIP some sites like Skype do not show up anywhere near the top of the search results, so you know the algorithms are much more than just usage data, but usage data could be a key component to the algorithm.

Collecting Junk as a Form of SEO

Lets say you write a blog about poker. It is pretty hard to get legitimate links to a poker blog, but lets say you talk about how you met Phil Ivey but the story is not that interesting sounding. You can add a bit of authenticity to the sound of the story by buying a Phil Ivey autographed poker chip for $23 and include it in your post.

In certain markets (like poker) just about any type of link is worth $23. There are also other types of junk or collectibles that may be selling for far less than their linkability factor - weather you post about them and get a few links or you hold a contest of some sort to give them away, and get many more links.

Collecting allows you to easily create original linkable content which leverages the value of a celebrity or brand without needing to fully invest into the cost of building that brand or getting a celebrity to endorse your site. Branded keywords or celebrity keywords are typically high traffic and / or high value terms.

Sensationalism, Hoaxes, and Bogus Predictions: SEO Techniques

Internet to peak soon - the guy is full of shit with his claim, but it is an easy claim to link at.

Viagra Prank - hahaha to $5,000 a day

how many ways can an email spammer spell Viagra? - imagine that, another funny Viagra page that became a high ranking advertorial

Like humor, it is just as easy to work the ethics angle and then switch the purpose to promote what the site once claimed to hate. Even if you are creating a fake business or site that will be hated many of the people hating it will be so stupid that they link at it anyway.

penny stock scams - decent link popularity

Google is an easy target. Google China's name is no good - link link link

You can even run ads that are irrelevant or violate Google's guidelines, then claim that Google censored you as a link building trick. Just get Google in the press release and some media person will be dumb enough to pick it up.

Suing Google is, of course, easy press.

And everyone loves sex. if you link at me I win sex - long after the traffic falls the links stick, which can be leveraged in a nearly unlimited number of ways, although it helps if you can get the perfect anchor text built right into the initial marketing.

As long as you are first with the angle you take (see point #4 here) and know a few people who can help spread the message you are good to go.

New Flash Detection Script

At WMW Boston Mike Nott pointed me at FlashObject, which is a Javascript Flash detection and embed script.

It is XHTML compliant and allows you to use flash detection and is probably the best way to do SEO for a flash site. A couple old related posts:

Flowing Internal Links Popularity on External Sites

Dominic posted on DP about flowing Wikipedia PageRank internally to pages where you are mentioned.

Search wikipedia in goog for a mention of your keyword / phrase. Edit those wikipedia pages to link to the lovely wiki page that links to your page.

And, of course, if you can't get your stuff linked to then a few additional options are:

  • point Wikipedia pages to other pages that link at you

  • add links to your Wikipedia profile page (and link to your profile page by commenting on a couple high profile controvercial subjects)
  • add links with questions to talk pages for controvercial subjects.

Some people may also point Digital Point coop weight or other external links at the pages linking to them to help build up their citation value.

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