This is a Local Search 101 presentation I gave at SEO Grail in Philly. It includes a couple pro tips as well but it's mostly beginner stuff as to why you should use local search over traditional advertising. Also has links to get more in-depth knowledge on Local Search.

1. Put Your Business on the Map with Local Search Michael King | SEO Manager / Publicis Modem | @ipullrank

2. Traditional Media Doesn’t Cut It Anymore Traditional Marketing Channels simply do not have what it takes to compete with Online Media’s ROI or measurement capabilities.

3. Traditional Media vs Paid Search With traditional media you get very high untargeted impressions and a very low response rate. Whereas with Paid Search you only pay for the click-throughs or responses and your ads are placed in front of people who have displayed interest.

4. The Yellow Pages are Dead.

5. Inbound Marketing Wins > Inbound Marketing beats Northbound Marketing by allowing you to engage a more qualified target audience and definitively measure the success.

6. Learning by Doing The Local Search Tactics you will learn in the next 30 minutes come from years of practice for small businesses not just conjecture from blogs.

7. Meet Parker’s Barber Shop Parker’s Barber Shop came to us as a 2-chair operation and is now considering opening another location

8. We Encouraged Social Engagement We put up posters with QR codes to encourage reviews on Google Places & Yelp, check-ins on Foursquare and Likes on Facebook

9. Location Demographics Our efforts resulted in Parker’s Barber Shop appearing regularly in searches by people in the target Service Area.

10. We Helped Parker’s Business Grow The efforts resulted in 488 clicks for driving directions, 214 Facebook fans, 587 Foursquare check-ins, 500 new customers and the hiring of 2 additional barbers – in one year.

11. Meet MyPoolGuy In his first year of business Jason from MyPoolGuy came to us with a small client base of 25 and a small marketing budget opting to place it in a website rather than traditional advertising.

12. We Made MyPoolGuy a Busy Man Since mid-March 2011 the site has generated over 100 leads at a near 10% conversion rate and he receives 3-6 phone calls daily from the website. 9 months into Year 1 Jason currently has 130 customers. His Year 3 Projection was 125.

13. TALKING ABOUT BEST PRACTICES

14. Keyword Research Use Google Insights, Trends and the Adwords Keyword Tool to determine the search volume for broad terms in your local area in addition to geotargeted keywords.

15. On-Page: GeoTargeting Include the target towns, cities, counties and states in your copy, filenames, anchor text and alt tags.

16. On-Page: NAP Include the Name, Address and Phone Number (NAP) in crawlable text throughout the site and ensure exact consistency within external sources such as Google Places, Yahoo Local, et al. For example “3rd FL” & “Third Floor” are not the same.

17. On-Page: KML GeoSiteMaps Create KML GeoSitemapswith: http://www.geositemapgenerator.com/ by informing rich snippets. and submit them with Google Webmaster Tools. More on KML Sitemaps: http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation/kmlSearch.html

18. On-Page: Microformats Implement the LocalBusiness Schema.org Microformat to increase visibility. Specification: http://schema.org/LocalBusiness

19. Multiple Locations Each Location needs its own landing page on your website with a crawlable NAP.

20. CITATIONS & REVIEWS SHOW GOOGLE WHAT YOU GOT

21. Off-Page: Claim & Complete Listings Claim your listings to ensure that they are accurate and that no one else can edit them. Complete listings adding pictures, keywords and relevant categories and ensure accuracy across the web to send strong signals to Google. This gives a strong validation signal to Google.

22. Off-Page: 5 Steps to Eliminate Duplicates Choose the listing that you’d prefer to keep in your account. Make sure that you have all your enhanced content (photos, business hours, description) attached to this listing and this listing only. For duplicates of this listing in your account (the ones you want to remove), remove all enhanced information. Keep only required information, like the business title, address, and one phone number. Submit these changes and verify as necessary. Now, sit tight for a couple of weeks – just for good measure. Delete the duplicates from your account, choosing Remove this listing from my Local Business Center account. From Mike Blumenthal: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2009/05/08/google-maps-how-to-remove-duplicate-records-in-the-local-business-center/

23. Off-Page: Encourage Reviews Encourage reviews on relevant sites. Hyperlocal review sources such as PhiladelphiaRestaurants.com are have more impact than Yelp so find relevant review sites to your niche and area.

24. LINK BUILDING YES, YOU NEED IT

25. Local Link Building is Always Important ORGANIZATIONS PROGRAMS MAKE NEWS SOCIAL MEDIA Better Business Bureau Chamber of Commerce Local Charities Professional Organizations Become a News Source Leverage HARO Become a News Publisher Conferences Webinars Referral Programs Web-Only Coupons Leverage KnowEm Twitter Search Google Alerts Social Mention All the broad link building tactics apply here they are just easier to do as a member of an actual community.

26. Social Media Use KnowEm to create a ton of Social Profiles and use Google Alerts, Social Mention and Twitter Search to jump into the online Conversation.

27. Above All… BE AGILE. Be Agile!

28. COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS WATCH THE OTHER TEAMS

29. Reverse Engineering Competitor Citations Find out where your competitors citations come from by finding aggregatorsand from standard broad searches.

30. Use Standard Search Results Perform standard searches using competitor business names and numbers to uncover the local and niche directories that the competitor is getting links from.

31. Use Standard Search Results (Co-Citations) Search for multiple businesses at once to uncover new aggregators. For more info on these tactics see: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-research-local-citations-after-google-removed-them-from-places

32. TRICKS OF THE TRADE MY FAVORITE MOVES

33. Service Area Pages Build Service Area pages that leverage location based content to ground them in cities and towns in your service area and create places for zip codes. ProTip: If you don’t have location based content, leverage events, news, gas price and weather RSS feeds.

34. Greasing the Review Wheel Segment the existing mailing list and push users to their respective services Google, Bing and Yahoo and other (for Facebook). * *Tip from @edmontonseo

35. TOOLS & SERVICES YOU DON’T NEED TOO MANY

36. WhiteSpark Local Citation Finder Find citation sources to add your site to. http://www.whitespark.ca/local-citation-finder/

37. getListed Listing Checker See what have listings you have at a glance. http://getlisted.org/Snapshot.aspx

38. MapMaker Add your business to Google’s map maker service and embed maps into your site to further associate the site with the location.

39. Localeze Get your information correct and consistent across and build citations in dozens of places. Also use Infogroup, and Acxiom.

40. CONVERSION RATE OPTIMIZATION GUARANTEED SCORING

41. Conversion Form Prominently display your conversion form above the fold on every page if possible or put it on the homepage and a “contact us” page but make the path to it obvious.

42. Building Trust Place phone numbers, addresses above the fold to assure the user that you are a legitimate business. The especially helps if you sell online.

43. Testimonials Use testimonials to further legitimize your product or business in the eyes of visitors.

44. Organizations Proudly display your Better Business Bureau badge and/or license number above the fold.

45. TURN YOUR MISS INTO A SWISH WITH LOCAL SEARCH

46. Thank You. Michael King SEO Manager www.ipullrank.com mike@ipullrank.com @iPullRank

47. Appendix A 2011 Local Search Ranking Factors http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml How to Research Local Citations After Google Removed them from Places http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-research-local-citations-after-google-removed-them-from-places WhiteSpark Local Citation Finder http://www.whitespark.ca/local-citation-finder/ Localeze http://localeze.com/ InfoUSA http://infousa.com/ getListed http://getlisted.org/ GeoSitemap Generator http://www.geositemapgenerator.com

48. Appendix B More Data Aggregators: Acxiom: http://www.acxiom.com/Pages/Home.aspx Infogroup: http://www.mybusinesslistingmanager.com/ Dun and Bradstreet: https://www.dandb.com/establish-business-credit/Experian: http://www.businesscreditfacts.com/pdp.aspx?pg=SearchForm&link=5202 Review Sites: Angie’s list: http://www.angieslist.com/bloomspot: http://www.bloomspot.com/CitySquares: http://citysquares.com/CityVoter: http://cityvoter.com/DailyCandy: http://dailycandy.com/all-cities/Eventful: http://eventful.com/venuesKudzu: http://www.kudzu.com/lilaguide: http://www.lilaguide.com/reviews/Yellowbot: http://www.yellowbot.com/ Niche Review Site Examples: hotels.com: http://www.hotels.com/grubHub: http://www.grubhub.com/Menuism: http://www.menuism.com/TravelMuse: http://www.travelmuse.com/TripAdvisor: http://www.tripadvisor.com/UserReview-e__2F__Urbanspoon: http://www.urbanspoon.com/chooseOpentable: http://www.opentable.com/