All posts in local search

Local business success story Naked Pizza

Update July, 3rd 2009: Added 12 local SEO & search resources suggested by readers in the comment section and on Sphinn + some newly researched links.

The most obvious trend when it comes to SEO is “going local”. Ever since Google introduced Google Maps and Local Business Center and later added local search results to Universal Search displaying them on top of everything else businesses everywhere strive to be there. Additionally the proliferation of smartphones and netbooks accelerates this development even more.

You have to perform in local search and on sites that enable users to find local businesses in their respective area. Classic SEO is just not enough anymore for small business owners and location based big business.

Roughly two weeks ago I elaborated on the 10 non-Google SEO ways to promote your business online in 2009 and presented a list of 35 non-Google SEO how tos, tutorials & other resources. They covered only half of the strategies I suggested as the non-Google SEO ways.

Today I collected links for the remaining 5 non-Google SEO strategies:

  1. Shopping search engines
  2. Yahoo Answers
  3. Review sites
  4. Local sites and local search
  5. Niche communities

A common question we’re asked by clients is how can they improve their rankings for Google Maps local searches?

Oxford Pubs

Having analysed many listings, in my opinion the main factors to Google Maps listings in the UK are as follows:

  • 1) Proximity to location – The closer your registered business address is in distance to the centre of a town or city, the more relevant Google will find your listing to a locational search.
  • 2) Keywords within company name – Using product/service keywords within a business name appears to be a very important factor towards obtaining an improved Google Maps ranking.
  • 3) Categories selected – Being listed in a relevant or closely related category to a keyword can make an impact. Keeping the number of categories selected concise should also improve the likelihood of being listed for relevant searches.
  • 4) Local telephone numbers – This may be coincidental, but I’ve noticed local telephone numbers such as 01865 (Oxford) appear to outrank listings which use 0845 style of numbers. I’ve just updated the SEOptimise listing so will test this out.
  • 5) Having a full profile/reviews – Listings which use images, descriptions and contain reviews generally appear to rank well in Google Maps. A high number of positive reviews is also likely to have an influence.
  • 6) Locational information on website – Ensuring your website address details correspond with the companies Google Maps listing.
  • 7) Strong SEO – This doesn’t appear to be of high importance at the moment, but as the Google Maps algorithm develops we may see the relevancy and quality of a website’s content and link popularity becoming a major factor.

If you’re feeling sneaky you could always add a slightly inacurrate business name, so that it contains important keywords, and register a PO Box address located in the centre of your city! ;)

Robin Goad from Hitwise posted an excellent report today looking at the search engine market share in the UK.

What I found interesting is that the “Pages from the UK” search option accounts for 13.6% of Google traffic. When you consider that in the UK www.google.co.uk has a 73.74% market share of UK searches (www.google.com has 13.77%) then 13.6% is a very significant number of searches!

Google UK Market Share

Many UK websites are also more likely to convert into sales and leads from referred UK-based traffic so it’s essential you’re listed and ranking well for relevant searches to maximise your exposure from Google UK.

Below I’ve listed 5 important steps to consider towards localising a UK website:
1) Get Indexed: The first step is making sure your site is indexed for “pages from the UK” searches, in order to achieve this a domain name should either use a .co.uk TLD or be hosted in the UK.
2) Set location: Set your geographic target to the UK in Google Webmaster Central. You can even set individual locations for sub-domains or sub-folders if you have a uk.domain.com or domain.com/uk international website.
3) List address information: Ensure your address details are listed on your website, using this in the contact page and footer will help to show Google your physical location and may also boost rankings for “[keyword] in [town/city/county/UK]“.
4) Sign-up for Google Maps: Adding your business to Google Maps is unlikely to improve your rankings but it can’t do any harm and can get you listed for local searches on Google UK and Google Maps business searches.
5) UK link building: Building UK specific inbound links can also help to improve the relevancy of your website for Google UK searches.

I just noticed this new suggestion on Google AdWords:
Google Maps local business ads
Google Maps is a great way of getting your ads displayed online to a local audience so I’d recommend taking advantage of this and setting up your own local business ads.

While performing a search today for Bondi Beach I noticed a Google Maps location URL appeared as one of the normal listings in the Google.co.uk SERPs, as shown below.

Click image for full-size screenshot
Bondi Beach Google Screenshot

This is the Google Maps result which is displayed:
Google Maps Bondi Beach

Over the last few months Google have been using OneBox results to display maps at the top of the SERPs for local searches. They have also began using an embedded map link, but as far as I’m aware individual Google Maps locations shouldn’t be indexed and listed as a regular search result. Looking into the cached copy of this page shows that it is not indexed, this seems very strange as somehow it’s managed to get into the SERPs.

I haven’t seen this appearing for any other location so far and it doesn’t make sense that a page which isn’t cached is ranking for this term so could this be a test by Google?

Update: I’ve just noticed my own Bondi Beach rankings improve so Google seems to be doing a good job with this search after all!

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