With the implementation of Google place search, websites with a local focus are now reaping the rewards. Google place search means if you perform a search with a location keyword e.g. “accountant London” “organic food London” “gym Manchester” the search results appear with place holders. This has created some real waves within the SEO community and has been a bit of a shock for some SEO who haven’t been preparing for the dawn of local SEO. For instance, web directories that previously relied on simply listing locations are now faced with an uphill struggle when competing with sites that are locale specific. Having a local address is going to push you higher as Google will see this as evidence that your company is trading out of your area. Using location specific keywords in the domain is even better; Google will think you are specifically searching for that website.
Lets take a closer look at location based search phrases. For example “Plumber Brighton”:
We can see that sites which have been added to Google Local Business appear in the Search Results, but what are the secrets to achieving the highest results in Place searches?
Have up to date addresses and phone numbers in directories across the web. Remove any old phone numbers and out of date information.
Make sure your website has been correctly categorised with your top keywords in Google Local Business, for example: “bathroom fitter brighton, bathrooms brighton, bathroom installer hove, Bathroom Design and Installation, Bathroom installer brighton, bathroom fitter hove, Bathroom Remodeler, plumbers hove, plumbing brighton”.
Make sure you partner with local websites associated with the keyword you are trying to rank for and get a localised keyword rich link from these sites e.g. “Plumber Brighton”.
Be sure to fill in all possible details on Google Local Business, add pictures, offers and persuade others to write positive reviews.
Have the local destination within the domain name. This is a very powerful factor when ranking a site for local phrases.
In all the tweeting and blogging about Google’s new streaming search there’s a very real risk you may have missed out a tragic death in the world of search. When Google announced their new streaming search, where as you type the results begin to appear they killed of one of their oldest friends – I’m feeling lucky button.
Okay you might still see it when you visit the home page, and it might be there in a hidden way when search suggestions appears, but what use is a button when it’s never gets clicked? I for one am gonna miss ol’lucky, he’s been a friend through the years and we’ll all be sad to see him go. So join me in raising a glass to our fallen friend.
Today Google began to roll out their ‘Bing-Esque’ Background images. After a little digging and detective work I can exclusively reveal that they are going to change their image daily (after todays selection of dozens) and these are the background images they intend to highlight over the next seven days.
Friday
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Well what do you reckon, I think they’ll go down well…
On Monday last week I had a little experiment with uStream and livecasting. I broadcasted a short ten minute riff/rant on how you can make you search strategy work in the age of personalised search.
You all know how much I love creating presentations, here’s one that formed part of a crash course in social media which quickly introduced the main networks and sites with a very brief intro to the functionality.
I know most of you are a dab hand at social media but thought it might prove useful to some of you.
We’ve worked on lots of successful SEO projects for ecommerce companies over the years and wanted to share a few of our most succesful techniques that have helped companies punch above their weight against bigger or more established competitors.
If you can implement these kinds of techniques on your ecommerce site you’ll quickly discover some quick wins that will help with your SEO performance.
If you work on an ecommerce site do you have any suggestions for easy ways companies can improve their SEO?
I love the process of putting together a whitepaper,
You can take processes you use internally and package them up to share with the industry, you can use the opportunity research new areas and strategies or, in the case of our latest whitepaper, take some complex ideas and synthesis them into a coherent whole.
We’re exhibiting next week at TFM&A where we’ll be sharing our new whitepaper which is a guide to Search for Marketing Directors. You can pick up a copy at our stand H32.
And if that wasn’t reason enough to come visit us we’ll also be giving away a pair of Sennheiser noise cancelling headphone each day of the event. The perfect set of cans to listen to the world’s second most listened to Marketing Podcast.
Brighton is a hotspot of SEO talent, you only need to look at the pages of the WiredSussex directory to appreciate that. But unlike our cousins up in London it’s rare we get to sit down together, talk a little shop, gossip about other companies and generally have a good chinwag.
