Loading ...There are certain myths associated with local search that many businesses unfortunately, get wrapped up in. Bruce Clay, the President and CEO of Bruce Clay, Inc., talks with WebProNews and explains why these theories are false.
First of all, small businesses do not always realize that they are competing with businesses with large budgets. Small businesses naturally have small budgets, but they need to provide the same level of optimization as their competition in order to adequately compete.
Secondly, small businesses think that they only need to do local search optimization. Clay points out that, just because a business is small and local, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t need to fix its entire website. He says:
“No matter what, the work is pretty much the same. No matter how you want to cut it, SEO is SEO.”
Small businesses still have to do technical work, build links, provide good and relevant content, and demonstrate that they are experts in their field. To help small businesses with their local efforts, the search engines offer many tools to assist them, such as maps.
At a local level, Clay says businesses need links from other people and businesses in their same region. In addition, the content should be specific and localized. However, if a business wants to rank internationally, then it needs to have links from other countries.
Local business can easily appear in the local top 10 (now 6 I think) box at the top. While a lot of those bigger nationwide websites find it harder to appear there.
Surprised citations were not mentioned either.
Optimizing business listings for Google Maps is a completely different animal than optimizing web pages for the organic results of geo-targeted search. When local businesses see the Google 7-Pack results for their keywords and community, they immediately understand the importance of being at the top. Local Listing Ads will provide another option as well.
Nice video. I’m interested to see what the impact of Local Listing Ads will be and how they will effect the current “free” option.
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awesome awesome -awesome …… these seo vids are thee best ever ………….. I total agree on the local search ethics …. 100%…… living in Hawaii as a local Honolulu handyman allows me to offer a localized website, that locals can find easily …..
Bruse Clay thank you on making my theory a plus sign on Google Yahoo and MSN ………….
Everything discussed here is so true……. even localized website SEO has it’s pain staking effort.
The search for businesses in the Bay Area is being disorted by Yelp, with their paid reviews and phoney reviews by a cult of people more interested in destroying businesses…pl ease go to http://www.yelpscam.com and get the total true story on yelp.
I’m amazed that people are having so much trouble getting local website listed on the search engines. I think it’s more of an obstacle to let your clients know that what they think for their keywords versus what should be used and what should be used for the local keywords is more of an issue and trying to get rank locally.
I didn’t even watch the above video, I just look at the comments. From what I see I think people are forgetting the most important key elements. Content, content, content. Structure, usability, and speed.
Just my two cents.
A great have a great weekend.
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local SEO is a type of SEO that focuses on the common search engine optimization techniques.
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Nice video. I’m interested to see what the impact of Local Listing Ads will be and how they will effect the current “free” option.
ocal SEO is a type of SEO that focuses on the common search engine optimization techniques
In dealing with local and regional businesses, many get the basics of on-site SEO wrong (Page Titles, Headings, Using images for Navigation, Site Structure, Inter-page linking, Alternative text, no Sitemaps, etc.) I wrote an e-book back in 2008 to try to help small businesses and entrepreneurs.
In addition to the on-site problems, small businesses tend to launch a new Web site and then let it sit. They don’t launch fresh content often enough for many reasons (e.g. lack of employee resources) and don’t tend to even do basic off-site SEO, such as listing their businesses in business directories and Web site directories.
Thanks,
Craig
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I dont agree I think all paths lead to rome.
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