Local Search

Whenever you’re searching for something local in Maine, you’re sitting far off on the long tail of things. From pet stores to restaurants to barber shops, most times I’ve tried to find a local company on the web I find it nothing short of a miracle if I find anything at all, let alone the exact information I’m looking for.

Nothing made this regional obscurity more glaring than this week, when I desperately sought out concrete contractors in the area where I’m building a house. A so-called yellow and white pages directory on the web that shall remain nameless (okay, it was SuperPages) returned me results from hundreds of miles away, and some as far away as Massachusetts! Sorry, but I’m not entirely willing to take out a second mortgage just to get that truck up here.

Another problem that besets local results is the inability to differentiate qualitatively between entries. For many searches I’ve done, some that actually did return results for a variety of shops in an area, there was absolutely no way to compare the listings against each other. Now, I know this is shooting high — after all, you can’t expect this even from regular yellow pages — but impatient web searchers, of which I am often one, don’t want to have to take ten comparable looking listings and call up every single one of them to determine which will be the best match for their needs. Even if it’s only a scant amount of information, any site that had even the remotest web presence got immediate preference over a site with a phone number and address only.

This may be a terrifically unfair methodology — both for me and the service professionals I’m looking for — but I fear that’s just how the web works. Which wouldn’t be a big deal, except for the reality that the web is rapidly becoming the first thing potential customers use when looking for goods or services. Consumers expect that the web is going to have up to date information about whatever possible service they can imagine, overlooking any resources made available by traditional media, and sometimes even by word of mouth. So your competitor, who may have a vastly inferior product, but a website made by a friend-of-a-friend, is getting qualified leads by default. It’s ugly, but utter reality.

So now it’s time to get to the good stuff. Here’s some things you can do to maximize your business’ exposure for local search results with hardly dropping a dime:

• Sign up for Google Local Business Center to see if you have a listing, updating or adding it either way. It may be creepy how much information Google is collecting about, well, everyone, but a proper entry here may get you a listing ABOVE the #1 search results — even without a website!
• Make sure your address is listed on your web site. It seems obvious, but many companies have a site which talks about their services without talking about where they are or the regions they serve. While you’re at it, make sure your preferred keywords are in there, too.
• In addition to your address, write a page specifically about your local area, and another with directions written in colloquial language using landmarks for how to find your location rather than obtuse language pulled from Mapquest.
• Put in other information too. Phone number, hours of business, services/products offered, etc. Google happens to like the item: description form, such as phone: 123-4350-430. It may seem awkward to cater to search engines, but regular people will understand it and get benefit, too.
• Get some reviews. This is a tricky and contentious one, as the ability of people to either write angelic content about themselves or devilish ones about their competitors has very limited restriction on the Internet. Yet, search engines use this information to rank you (and I admit, as a consumer, I sure read them). The best suggestion I have is solicit your guests, patrons, or clients to write a review for you on sites like TripAdvisor, CitySearch, Yahoo Local, or whatever directories may be pertinent to your industry.

These tips may only take a couple of hours to set up, but will go a long way to improving the ability of search engines to figure out where and what you do, and help your customers learn that information easier as well. Which is the reason, above all else, why you should care about local search.

No shortage of Internet-related news this week: one of the top 10 spammers was arrested, meaning inboxes can rejoice, YouTube will be offering up music videos by EMI artists, and Google raises privacy advocate eyebrows again with street-level photographs that get too close for some to be comfortable.

This week has also seen us spending a lot of time getting to grips with the ever-shifting sands of search trends, the latest being maximizing the way we take advantage of local search. Thanks to some extraordinary articles by SEO by the Sea, I think my mind has stopped spinning about this increasingly important complementary aspect of Internet Marketing. What have I learned? Well, let’s see if I’d pass the test.

Put your company contact information on the web.

Seems like a no-brainer, but Google Local can’t figure out where your business is without you telling it (sort of reminds me of Google Can’t Index Your Intentions). However, we’ve been very good about this, for a variety of reasons throughout the years not related to local search. Yet, our local search results just weren’t popping off the page. What gives?

Define your company contact information properly.

Ahh — the secret revealed. Google prefers you to say field: value, i.e. phone: 123-456-7889 rather than just listing your phone number, so something like this:

Hall Marketing Web Services
15 Pleasant Hill Rd. — P.O. Box 6877
Scarborough, Maine 04070-6877
1-877-HALL-WEB (Toll Free)
207-885-0694 (Local) - 207-883-8189 (Fax)

Becomes:

Hall Marketing Web Services

Physical Address: 15 Pleasant Hill Rd. Scarborough, Maine 04070-6877
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 6877, Scarborough, Maine 04072
Phone (Toll Free): 1-877-HALL-WEB
Phone (Local): 207-885-0694
Fax: 207-883-8189

A little clunkier, but we’re opting to use the format only a page specifically targeted for local search anyways.

Then there’s the issue of user intent.

Another challenge to Local Search at the moment is the fogginess when completely different words may mean the same thing, or determining whether a user is searching for a business name or a general category. At the moment, this is something Google is running at full speed to try and improve upon, which may end up being quick a shake-up for search in general, not just local.

At the moment, we’re shooting to cooperate with Google as much as possible, and if we’re rewarded with a One-Box result at the top of our major keywords, all the better. While Local Search is still incredibly rough around the edges, it keeps improving at an astonishing rate and soon will be regarded as important as traditional organic search, if not more important (for certain kinds of businesses).

And what about Viral?

Finally, I stumbled across Eric Klintz’s blog, the Vice President of Global Marketing Strategy & Excellence for HP. It’s a pretty impressive title, and while generally major corporate blogs are a little on the tame side, his blog has some really great insight on marketing strategy, as well as generally interesting analysis of things like Web 2.0, viral marketing, quality copywriting, etc. A notch above, and it certainly succeeds in making me think about HP a little differently.

So, keep your eyes on the YouTube, keep at your business blogging, and link out and be linked alike.