January 23rd, 2012 
Lyena Solomon Guest: Darren Shaw – @EdmontonSEO. For more info on our guest check out: http://t.co/WD3M4MqD .
With the launch of Search Your World, how do you think this will/has affected Local SEO
Not seeing much local G+ integration, but it’s coming. Current theory is that Google Place Pages become G+ Pages. Timeline: If I had to guess, 6 months to a year. I’m really not a fan of “Search Plus Your World” though. Makes search results worse in every case I have seen. I don’t have much more to say about SPYW other than it’s crap, and it’s not going away, and we’ll need to accept it. 
@bryantdunivan: It seems to have limited the amount of local space on a serp, but that will be shortlived – maybe pages replace local ads.
How do you find great keywords for local SEO?
Great question. I start with standard KW research. Adwords tool, google suggest, & google related. Build out a huge list. Then I take that list, sort it by Local Monthly Search Volume. Then I manually go through the list and pull out the main terms, the locational terms, and the descriptors.
Ok, hmm, there is too much to it, and I don’t want to burn up the time. Check this doc – How To Build a Localized Keyword List: http://t.co/HEs44cEh .
@markalves: Sources for local SEO terms? Local blogs, forums for neighborhood synonyms.
@aknecht: I dig into geographical segmentation of existing analytics data. Lots of wonderful stuff there and search on them to verify. Another tip, read local newspapers. They tend to use the terms local people use or will influence the terms they use.
@kmullett: What they said + don’t forget WMT. Don’t forget brain power…talk to some people.
Do you have any pro tips for Local SEO Link Building?
Yes! Well, *I* don’t, but the rad folks at SEER do. Have you seen this? – 35 Local Link Opportunities You Missed (from SEER): http://t.co/rpkaV7Yz .
In local, since the biz is often not very link worthy (think small town electrician), I usually to go a little grey-hat and get hooked up on some private blog networks. Then I build links to the posts to keep them indexed. I don’t want to say much more about it. Keywords: “private blog networks”. You need to talk to the right people.
@aknecht: Local chamber of commerce have directories unfortunately many don’t are not public. Need to join & get made public.
@bryantdunivan: Use BBB, local rotary clubs, local orgs to build your links through, guest blog and provide comments to your news provider.
@shuey03: If you can get a creative piece of link bait and get it pushed, it will get links for local businesses.
@lyena: I also recommend getting on customer blogs and vendor blogs.
@kmullett: Local PR releases are good. If your town has a newspaper/radio/tv, create event/news to be on their sites.
What is the most valuable thing you can do in a local SEO campaign for local rankings?
NAP Consistency is #1. If you have incorrect NameAddressPhone data all over the web, you’re not going to rank.
So, here’s what I do to find all the inconsistent NAP data.
- Step 1. Go to factual.com, and search the business name. Click on the business name in the results, and choose explain. Poke around.
- Step 2. Assuming you find variations of the phone number out there, plug them into the local citation finder & find all occurrences. If you find variations of the address, search Google for them. Put everything into a spreadsheet.
- Step 3. Go through the spreadsheet, and do whatever you can to try and get the sites to update the listings.
Hat tip to @daveminchala for showing me factual.com. He’s a local seo pro. Follow him.
Hundreds of sites?! Painfully go through them one at a time, OR @nyagoslav tried Yext for a client and was pretty happy.
NAP cleanup is one thing I can’t outsource. Needs serious attention to detail and client collaboration. When you’ve got everything cleaned up, next step is hyper-local citations! But blogs, business associations, local newspapers, gov sites, etc are all great citation sources.
I do this detailed local competitive analysis report for every new SEO client. See section 1 on this page: http://t.co/B1TX62bK . Almost every time I aggregate and sort all that data, the top rank businesses seem to align with the ones with the most citations. This of course is more important for “pure” 7-pack style rankings, as opposed to blended. With blended, it’s more about links. We recently did some hyper-local citation work for a client, and he skyrocketed in rankings for hundreds of terms.
Here’s how to find hyper-local citations.
- Step 1. Run a LOT of KW queries on the local citation finder in the city/niche and associate them all with a project. My system for competitive citation analysis: http://t.co/C9BHqK3b . So, for a lawyer in chicago: chicago lawyer, lawyers, attorneys, dui lawyer, robbery lawyer, criminal lawyer, etc.
- Step 2. Go under “Your Projects” and ALL the citation sources from all the queries will be listed under “view sources”.
- Step 3. Ctrl-f in your browser for “law”, “legal”, “chicago”, “illinois”, etc. Any niche or location related terms. Copy all the domains that match the Ctrl-f searches into a spreadsheet. These are your hyper local citations.
We did this recently for an hvac client in NYC and found 60+ hyper-local sources. After getting those citations, rankings took off.
@bryantdunivan: How do you get incorrect addresses changed when there is no way to get them updated?
@EdmontonSEO: If there is absolutely no way, and they don’t respond to emails, they’re probably not an important site to Google.
@bryantdunivan: Its imperitive to link to a contact page, so they go to contact you – they know what they are looking for.
@kmullett: Another one we send non-seo clients to is getlisted.org. A simple free route to get started.
Skitzzo Do you consider a link w/ a local modifier in the anchor a citation as well?
@EdmontonSEO: Nah, I consider that a link.
How can you get more reviews to boost your Local SEO?
Best post on the topic: bit.ly/ogt1pq
Get one of these handouts made: bit.ly/wOfpIO
Also want to mention the Link Prospector we built with @GarrettFrench. Awesome for guest blog prospecting: http://t.co/rjyqS8Qs . Coming soon! A couple weeks from launch.
Guest blogging works SUPER well for link building in local.
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