Local Search | Mike Wilton

Archive for the ‘Local Search’ Category

Why Giving Some Direction Might Help Your Local SEO and Your Customers

Monday, April 8th, 2013

GPS, Smart Phones, Google Maps…its hard to believe that we needed a map or a Thomas Guide to get from point A to point B not too long ago. But unfortunately we’ve become too reliant on the digital age, so much so that our dependence on new technology to navigate us can hurt not only consumers, but also the businesses that serve them.

This past weekend my family and I headed out to the Louis Rubidoux Nature Center for the annual butterfly festival. We’ve been to the nature center in the past, but its been about a year and so our directions were fuzzy at best. So we did what most people do and turned to the center’s website for some direction.

When we reached the site they had both an address, and what was supposed to be directions. Unfortunately the directions widget on the site wasn’t working so we had to rely solely on the address provided and Google Maps on our phones.

We plugged the address in and when we “arrived” at our location we were actually in the middle of a nearby residential neighborhood. Needless to say, Google Maps didn’t get it right.

The Benefits of Providing General Directions On Your Website

Getting us to where we needed to be proved to be a bit difficult. Google struggled to find the address and it was really hard to navigate from satellite imagery on our phones. Ultimately I had to try and remember roughly where the Nature Center was located in order to get us there.

There’s benefits to including general directions to your location within your website. First, it helps lost visitors like my family and I find your location in the event our means of navigation fail us. Additionally it can generate some additional localized content for your website.

By including directions from different regions in the area you can help to build local content around other areas you may be interested in targeting, as Doug Antkowiak of Portent suggested in his Local Business SEO Q & A late last year.

A great example of this is the directions page from a seasonal favorite of mine, Riley’s Farm. While the site itself is a bit dated, and they lack the latest mapping technology to help you find your way, they do an awesome job at explaining how to get to their location from nearly anywhere here in Southern California.

As you can see in the image from the site, Riley’s Farm does a stellar job calling out major cities in the surrounding areas and calls out specific landmarks and street names in its directions. This helps build additional local relevance by referencing locations located in and around the location.

Takeaways

If you use a Google Map on your website for the purpose of directions, make sure the widget works.
If its working, make sure that it is giving people accurate directions to your location
In addition to giving people a means of getting directions from Google on your site consider adding additional written directions to help grow local content and help visitors in the event their means of navigation fails them.

Posted in Local Search | 2 Comments »

Digging Up Local SEO Keyword Gold with the Google Places Dashboard & Google Analytics

Monday, August 6th, 2012

As a local business there is always the desire to drive business from neighboring cities. When it comes to local search, its no different. In most cases the clients I talk to would target every city within a thirty mile radius for their local SEO efforts, but as we all know, this probably isn’t the best strategy. But how do you know what local areas to target, especially when keyword tools struggle with low volume searches in local search?

The first and most obvious choice is to look at your analytics. Are you driving search traffic for keywords that include neighboring areas already? This will oftentimes turn up some exciting opportunities that you can imrpove upon and gain more traction for. But if you’re not quite ranking and drawing traffic from neighboring areas, how can you get a feel for what areas you should be thinking about? One option would be to use the Local Marketing Source Local Keyword Tool, which will give you an extensive list of zip code and city based keywords based off a set radius to work with. But unfortunately there is nothing to back whether people are actually searching from those areas, or if those keywords would drive traffic.

Enter the Google Places Dashboard

When it comes to localized keywords there is a high probability that Google probably isn’t reporting data for them, but Google Places has a feature that can give you some ideas on where to target simply based off of where people are getting driving directions from. If you look in the bottom of your Google Places dashboard you will see a section called, “”Where driving directions requests come from”.

This section displays the top ten cities/zip codes that were used when getting directions to your business. By using this information you can get a feel for some additional cities worth targeting simply based off of existing interest from customers visiting your location from outside your city limits.

Google Analytics for Local Keyword Ideas

In the beginning of this post I mentioned Google Analytics is a good place to start when it comes to finding opportunities for localized keywords. The initial suggestion was to look at existing traffic data over a period of time and see if users are already finding your site when doing searches for neighboring cities (you can do this by filtering results using the name of the city), however there is another section of Google Analytics that features some juicy local keyword ideas.

Under the “Demographics” report in Google Analytics you can drill down to the city level of where people who have visited your site are searching from. This is another tool that can give you a starting point when trying to come up with other areas to target. If there are already people visiting your website from neighboring cities, these might be opportunities for local areas to target on your website or in your marketing efforts. As an added bonus you can set the secondary dimension to “Keywords” and find out exactly what term they used to find your site (assuming its not listed as “not provided”. Grumble, grumble.)

Local keyword discovery can be difficult since even tools from the search engines can be unreliable due to low volume searches, but by utilizing local data from a couple of Google’s location based tools you can get a decent starting point for your research and test a few different areas surrounding your business to work with. You can test these on your website, or even better, run small pay per click campaigns to test the traffic and conversion of these keywords.

Tags: Google Analaytics, google places, Keyword Research
Posted in Local Search | 1 Comment »

Why Google Search Plus Your World Won’t Impact Local Search…Yet

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

Yesterday I outlined why Google+ matters regardless of user engagement thanks to Google Search Plus Your World. Today I want to look at how Search Plus Your World is impacting local search currently and why we probably won’t see much of an impact on localized search in the short term.

Earlier this month Greg Sterling did a post on Search Engine Land that talked about the limited impact of Google Search Plus Your World on Local. As I mentioned in my comment on Greg’s post I think in the short term we will see little impact on local results, especially when it comes to some of the more obscure searches he ran like “Toyota Dealer” or “Window Replacement, Walnut Creek”. I feel part of this is due to the fact that most of us probably don’t have a tight knit social network made up of users within close proximity to us, as Andrew Shotland pointed out yesterday in his post “Google Plus Connections Are the New Link“, but also because people simply aren’t engaging content around these topics.

The impact Google Search Plus Your World has on local search in it’s current state is fragmented and useless at best. I ran a search for “Chinese Restaurants” on Google this evening and in the results I received a share frome a friend via Yelp for a Chinese restaurant nearly 45 minutes from my house. Not exactly close enough for take out… I ran another search for “night clubs” and received personalized results for for the top ten Los Angeles night clubs, the other was for dress codes in New York night clubs. Not exactly relevant to where I am in Corona, CA nearly fifty miles away from the heart of Los Angeles and on the opposite side of the map from New York.

In order for Google Search Plus Your World to become relevant in the local search space, Google has to capitalize on what they did well with local in the beginning and focus on location, location, location.

Google Places+

In my predictions for local search in 2012 post, myself, Andrew Shotland, and Mike Blumenthal all agreed that 2012 will be the year that Google+ and Google Places would become integrated and I feel in order for Google Search Plus Your World to become relevant in local search, this has to happen sooner than later. By integrating Google Places into Google Plus Business Pages, Google can ensure that the right local data is associated with a Page, making it more relevant to local searchers. By having this information connected it would allow for local pages to have more clout than other pages in my circles. Additionally, the most locally relevant businesses could appear in the Search Plus Your World page recommendations.

Friends In Local Places

Google+ profiles allow Google to know where a user lives. It would only make sense for them to provide content from friends in the city I am searching from more prominent than someone out of the area unless the content directly relates to a local business or service. If I’m doing a search for Chinese food in Corona, CA chances are users from that area are going to be the experts and ultimately have more relevant input that someone in Los Angeles, CA.

“We all turn to people we know and trust for great recommendations…”

Straight from the horses mouth, Google says the focus of search plus your world is to turn to people you know for great recommendations. Google put a significant focus on Google reviews on Places pages last year, I would imagine that along with integrating Places and Pages Google will likely showcase reviews of local businesses somewhere in localized search results from people within your circles. Perhaps something similar to the share on Google+ from Todd Mintz below, but with the actual review instead of the Google+ post about it. On a side note, Beaverton is in a totally different state…way to go Google!

Just Checking In

Another prominent feature Google could utilize is the check-in feature. If individuals in a circle are checked in to a local business during the time of a related search, it could show up in the search results telling you that someone you know is currently at a location in your area. Sure, it’s extra creepy/stalker like, but it’s also extremely relevant and engaging not only for Google, but for local businesses. Knowing that someone you know is currently at a location may be enough to make you join them, or simply follow in their lead.

Ultimately nobody knows the next move but Google, but I can almost guarantee that Google is working on some strategy to strengthen Search Plus Your World in the local search space. Local is the one area that Google still has a lot of pull with small businesses. By making Search Plus Your World more useful to local businesses, they can help capitalize on the invovlement from local businesses and ultimately their customers. Will it create more Google+ users or greater Google+ engagement? Probably not, but as I outlined in yesterday’s post, perhaps it doesn’t matter.

Tags: Google, google places, Search Plus Your World
Posted in Local Search | 2 Comments »

Local Listing Setup in the New Bing Business Portal: As Told By Bing

Monday, April 25th, 2011

Earlier this month Bing announced that the Bing Local Listing Center had been transition to the Bing Business Portal. The new system, which is in Beta, came with a new look, some new glitches, and individual comic frames as help tutorials for the process. Below are the individual frames combined into on single comic strip in the order they appear during setup. These details give a brief insight into how to setup a business listing in the Bing Business Portal and the benefits of completing each section. Note: All comic illustrations belong to Bing.

Tags: Bing, Bing Business Portal, Infographic
Posted in Local Search | No Comments »

Merchant Circle Makes Good On It’s Promise To Fight Spam

Friday, March 18th, 2011

It would appear that local directory Merchant Circle is making good on it’s promise to begin battling spam within its website. Following a harsh blow from Google’s “Panda/Farmer” algorithm update it was reported that the site had lost nearly 85% of it’s overall traffic. In an interview with Search Engine Land, the company argued that the drop was not that significant, but that the company was working to address concerns from consumers about the impact of the update on their site. One of which was doubling their efforts to fight span and low-quality content across their network.

In an email sent out this afternoon Merchant Circle began notifying subscribers that they would be “spring cleaning” and rolling out a site-wide system update to help the company identify listings that are not in compliance with their new Terms of Service and Community Guidelines. The email warns businesses that if they do not comply with the changes their page may be removed from search indexes like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.

The three changes outlined by Merchant Circle as new violations are keyword stuffing, placing a URL or .com as your business name or address and using inappropriate characters such as pipes, commas, or backslashes in your business name.

Merchant Circle has been a key component in many local search optimization strategies, including the efforts carried out here at Nevermore Search Marketing so these changes are welcomed. Businesses who are uncertain if they are in violation can read more on Merchant Circle’s website in their guidelines about Keyword Stuffing, URL’s as a business name, and the use of inappropriate characters in a business name. They have also posted a “Do’s and Don’ts” video to help users better understand the guidelines.

Tags: Merchant Circle
Posted in Local Search | No Comments »