LOC@L SEO GUIDE

Just got off the phone with Robert Silverman of Statepoint Media, a service that distributes advertorial to local newspapers, who claims that while the big dailies are busy falling off a cliff, local newspapers are thriving.  He’s talking about the kind of local papers you pick up in the hotel lobby or in a box on Main St.  His point was that while national and regional news is pretty much a commodity, the local paper is still the only place to find out about where the Livermore annual rubber duck races are going to be.

There is a ring of truth to this as just this morning I was in a hotel lobby waiting for my parents and I picked up a copy of the Livermore Independent so I could find something for my parents to take my kids to this weekend.  So all of you local guys out there check out what you can do both online and offline with your local dailies and weeklies.  My guess is that they will be pretty easy to work with and it might pay off well.

Tim Nash has a great post on social media image optimization. He has figured out the image sizes that produce the best results on social media sites. This makes a huge amount of sense. If you are trying to maximize your posts’ power you could do worse than follow Tim’s lead.

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about the Best Passover Book Title Ever. I thought the book cover was such a classic that it deserved a submission to This Is Broken, a site I found several years ago that I loved. It features bone-headed product design choices such as this classic playground location. I submitted the link to my post and it has stayed at the top ever since as the board is not too active. It is active enough to generate traffic and I have been getting a nice steady stream of clicks every day for the past three weeks. Nothing that is going to change my business but every little bit helps right?

You might do well by looking for relevant online groups that have been around for a while so they have a lot of content to attract searchers, but are not too active so you can put up a post and have it stay on top for a few months.

Ok I’ve gotta go hit the playground now.

I just discovered a new social media blog, Social Media Influence. You would think I would have known about it because it was started by my friend, Matthew Yeomans of Custom Communication.

Maybe Matthew needs to work on his social media marketing skills.

The blog is full of interesting stuff. This post about the top 10 brands that are being influenced by YouTube is excellent. I recommend you adding it to your feed reader.

Have a nice weekend.

I was having a conversation today about the importance of social media marketing with a guy who has a very big social network.  He’s all over Twitter, Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. And it occurred to me that the size of your online/wireless social network and the influence you hold over it is and will continue to be an extremely valuable personal asset. I imagine that the post-undergrad interviews of the future are going to focus less on what your major was and more on how many times have you hit the front page of Digg.

While at the Kelsey Local Search Conference last week I was talking to some folks from the local search group of one of the major search engines and they asked me if I knew any good sources of local content to add to their service.  They were already familiar with a lot of the sites we all know about.  They were looking for undiscovered gems.

If any of my readers feel you are an undiscovered gem, with an emphasis on the “gem” part, with a font of customer reviews, unique meta data, whatever,  feel free to drop me a line and I can probably hook you up.

According to MyBlogLog…

I have received a bunch of requests for the presentation I gave at Friday’s morning session at the Kelsey Group’s Drilling Down on Local Conference so I thought I would post it here.

Thanks again to Peter, Mike, Matt, Neal, John, Pam, Bobbi and the rest of the Kelsey gang for putting on a great conference and for including me in their party. Check out their blog for more on the conference.

Just wanted to finish off the week by thanking the Kelsey Group for putting on another great local search show.  I took away four big points:

1. SMB video is hot and while it’s still in its infancy a lot of people think it’s going to be a big winner

2. Search marketing is still a huge pain in the ass for SMBs but demand is still growing like crazy.

3. A number of big media companies are starting to get local on the brain

4. I am schmoozed out.

Have a great weekend.

I just gave a talk on top SEO tricks and now Erik Jorgensen of Microsoft Local is going to blow our minds with some great mapping tricks.  Here’s the stream of consciousness:

One size does not fit all when it comes to local. 3 modes of website use:

1. Find - looking for quick answers

2. Research - specific search intent but exploring to find answers. Long time investment and emotional investment.

3. Explore - Having fun. Seeing where information takes you.

Search engines provide entry for 70% of local queries v. portals but it’s hard to distinguish the mode of the user based on how they ente.

The user task happens across devices and beyond sessions. If you’re at Best Buy you want access via your mobile device to the comparison shopping data you were looking at on your PC at home.

MSN uses NetPromoter to measure how likely your users are to recommend your site. Focus on how to turn your users into evangelists.

Evolution of Local Search

Early focus on speed evolved to focus on speed and accomplishment: They have made a huge investment in helping users figure out traffic patterns and offering tips on routes to take.

Breadth evolves to breadth and depth:
Depth of data without requiring work. If you are looking for a business they add one click directions, related businesses, etc. Adding these features has resulted in 40% increase in click-through off these pages.

10x growth in “Collections” (UGC). Over 18 million comments on the listings - greater than the their total business listings.

Utility

3D Maps. Erik is now showing us a very cool 3d view of the Space Needle. They now have 270 cities in full 3-D. Time to add some memory and horsepower to your computer. Now looking at Dallas with meta data/UGC. You can look at the building from where JFK was shot and click on meta data that tells about the history. You can capture your experience and turn it into a video which you can then show on YouTube. Pretty cool. So Gib Olander could put together a tour of Seattle dive bars and instantly broadcast.

Coming down the pike: “street-side quality” 3D models of street views. We are looking at an external view of a movie theater. It looks sort of what Main Street would look like if Pixar did it. They can dynamically add movie times, ticket purchase, ads, etc.

Mobile: Real time location based search is the killer app. If I am a restaurant I can broadcast a promotion that hits people walking by my place. It needs to be automated so that it does not require a lot of work by a business.

Ok, this is cool. They are working on adding “smart gesture recognition” to the phone. Think of your phone as a Wii controller so if you have it in camera mode you can use a gesture to zoom or pan, etc.

Microsoft wants Virtual Earth to be the platform that other companies build there businesses on.  Showing examples of RedFin, FedEx, City of Miami, Washington State Tourism, Yellowpages.com, the Harley Davidson Ride Planner.

Performance is still an issue but Microsoft is betting that performance will improve exponentially over the next couple of years. I am wondering once the fun of trying these types of tools out how practical they will be in helping users accomplish their tasks.  Who knows?

It’s great that there are companies out there that can afford to make these huge bets to develop these amazing technologies.  Very cool stuff.