As local marketers, most of us know how to set up a Google Places for Business account or create a Facebook Page. But, these are not the only accounts you should be creating in order to get the full benefit of your local SEO campaign. Below are five trusted accounts every local SEO should have…
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Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Yelp has long maintained that the company has one of the best (if not the best) local data sets out there. There are third parties that have come up with findings that don’t agree with that claim. Recently, Yelp decided to take matters into its own hands and benchmark itself and the quality…
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Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Let’s cut to the chase: no, it didn’t (see Betteridge’s Law of Headlines). But Search Engine Land tells me the Hummingbird stuff really drives the page views these days, so you only have yourself to blame. 
That said, Google’s Hummingbird algorithm, along with all of the…
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Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
The most frequently asked question posed these days at events, webinars and new client meetings is “What is the best social media platform for my local business?” Research shows social channels are becoming more important signals in major search engine algorithms that affect the entire SEO and…
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Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
While the launch of iOS7 has received a ton of press and blogger nitpicking about every last detail, little has been said about how the new version of Apple Maps affects local marketers. I feel like most marketers are still ignoring Apple Maps because it got a lot of Apple Maps Sucks-type press a…
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Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Since the official inception of mobile voice search with Apple’s launch of Siri in 2011, consumers, search professionals and businesses have watched for the rise of voice search in local. Despite Siri’s initial inadequacies and obvious voice recognition challenges, savvy multitasking…
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Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Paid Advertising Platforms are growing exponentially on what seems like a weekly basis. What once was Keywords + Ad + Bid = Money has now become a full-time job. Bid adjustments, rules, remarketing, extensions, day-parting, local or geographic targeting, modified broad match, and more — the…
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Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Did I say the future? I mean the now.
“Local” discovery in our books has historically been highly focused on optimizing for the right category, address, keywords, location, etc. What are people searching for in San Francisco? Make a page for it!
But which one of these descriptions of the same place below is more powerful?:
It’s not the name of the place that captivates us (usually) but the story behind it; The history, the experience, the emotional connection.
Here’s a few examples of local-focused products getting it *very* right:
Sosh is a local app (and website) that lists its local spots as a thing to do or an experience first, with the venue name underneath it. Their writers are fantastic at coming up with catchy experiences and headlines.
This isn’t just Hotel Biron and Elisa’s Hot Tubs and Massage, it’s Paris in San Francisco and a Secret Outdoor Hot Tub:
I will be doing both of these things this weekend.
In print! This content isn’t made for search engines (best restaurants in san francisco, best hotels in san francisco, best sushi in san francisco). It’s made for creative San Franciscans. Best place you’d rather keep a secret? What? Yes!
As you walk your phone alerts you to interesting places and stories nearby. In my walk from the office to the train the other day I learned that there was a huge fire in 1950 in the building where a local staple Italian restaurant is. I could visualize flames billowing out of the windows because I was looking right at that picture on my phone as I walked by. It’s like looking straight into history.
On the next block I learned of a new bar around the corner and the stories of its “donut holes, on-fire cocktails, and a sort of Texas saloon-ish interior with reclaimed wood and giant mirrors on the ceiling.” By the time you’ve read this I’ll already be knee-deep in donuts and giddying up on fire. Believe it.
The cover image on this post is SOMA’s pretty little South Park. I just had lunch with a client in that dirt mound on the right and SEOgadget’s San Francisco office is two blocks to the left. An image like this with the story of how British immigrant George Gordon designed it in 1865 as one of San Francisco’s elite neighborhoods popped up in my Field Trip today, and isn’t that just perfect, SEOgadget SF being a British-born company and all. #Heartstrings.
There’s a second layer to Field Trip, in that the content is aggregated feeds from places like OpenBuildings and Thrillist and local-focused gems like For 91 Days. Want to optimize for it? Good luck. People control the backend. What does that mean? You have to have unique, valuable, high quality content. 
This is the way of local - I guarantee it.
The post The Future of Local Discovery is About the Story, Not the Place appeared first on SEOgadget.
