That may be changing with Verizon’s release of a white pages business directory of mobile numbers for 12 states. It’s not just for Verizon customers, but for all mobile numbers regardless of the provider. In addition to being included in a national 411 online directory, you  choose one or more print directory to be listed in, as well.

The minimal cost of less than $5 per month per print directory certainly isn’t much of a barrier for spammers. There is some type of phone verification, but I haven’t tried it so I don’t know what is involved. Hopefully it’s enough to make it a trusted source of business data  for Google Places.

We don’t really know where this might lead. The idea is a good one and for true local businesses, it could definitely help them to be found in the print directories of the areas they serve, as well as online. (Yes, some people still use those fat books.)

If you’d like to give it a whirl, go to https://www22.verizon.com/multimedia/listings/ , where it says:
Wireless Listings

Get your business cell phone number listed in 411 and the print directories – no matter which wireless carrier you use.

You get listed in our 411 national database
You get to pick the print directory that best meets the needs of your business
You make it easier for customers to find you – 24X7

Make your number available right away! Go ahead and sign-up now and you will be contacted to confirm and complete your order.

The Burley event is being held on Tuesday September 27 and the Western NY event is on Tuesday November 1, 2011.

The Get Listed Local University seminar series was started in February 2010.  With so many scam artists and wannabe internet marketers out there, we felt it was important to offer solid advice to entrepreneurs about how to effectively  promote themselves online. There are absolutely no sales pitches or teasers, just up-to-date real world insight and detailed advice from a group of experienced local marketing experts.

Here’s a press release with more details about the Ellicottville event, if you’d like to learn more:

“ELLICOTTVILLE, N.Y., Sept. 14, 2011 — Some of the nation’s leading online marketing experts will be in Ellicottville this fall
to offer an intensive crash course in Internet marketing. And thanks to the world’s most popular search engine, 25 area
college students will get to attend for free.

Google has signed on as a presenting sponsor for GetListed.org’s “Local University” seminars — identical four-hour morning
and afternoon sessions — at the Holiday Valley Resort on Tuesday, Nov. 1. This will be the 11th Local University event
GetListed.org has hosted across the nation since February 2010.

Google’s sponsorship has allowed GetListed to offer 25 free seminar tickets for area college students. Students or college
faculty members can inquire about the tickets by emailing localu@getlisted.org.

The event is designed to show Western New Yorkers, especially small businesses, how to navigate the endless possibilities
for marketing on the web, with an emphasis on local discovery.

“The course will show local businesses how to get found by Internet users, both local and worldwide,” said Mike
Blumenthal, an Olean-based web design and search consultant. “

“For Google to support our event, especially for the benefit of area college students, is a terrific added bonus.”

Community Bank, N.A., Cattaraugus County Industrial Development Agency, Cattaraugus County Economic Development
Team, Olean Area Federal Credit Union, MetroWNY and Holiday Valley have already signed on as corporate sponsors,
and several area chambers of commerce have partnered with event organizers to promote the event to their members,
including Hamburg, Ellicottville, Olean, Wellsville, Niagara Frontier Tourism Task Force, Chautauqua County, Seneca
Salamanca, West Seneca, South Buffalo, Bradford (Pa.) and Warren (Pa.).

Presenters include Blumenthal; GetListed.org co-founder David Mihm, a Portland, Ore.-based search engine consultant;
Mary Bowling, a search engine specialist and corporate trainer since 2003; Matt McGee, executive news editor for Search
Engine Land and an independent online consultant specializing in small businesses; Ed Reese, a Spokane, Wash.-based
Internet marketing consultant specializing in organic SEO, local search and analytics; and Cecelia Stewart of Google Places,
who works on product marketing for Google’s local products.

The seminar costs $129. Early bird and special chamber discount codes are available for members of the sponsoring
chambers. Registration for the course is available at getlisted.org/wny. Space is limited.

Blumenthal stressed, “As a purely educational event, no sales pitches will be made” at any time during this seminar.

“We’ve seen too many people being taken advantage of by people who are making outrageous promises about search
engine optimization (SEO),” Blumenthal said. “This is strictly informational, but so valuable to business owners trying to
navigate this massive thing called the Internet. These are some of the leading people in the SEO world who will be speaking.
We’ve had people come from Japan to attend this seminar.”

In addition to the seminar, the Local University “faculty” will be offering free website reviews for attendees in an adjacent
room at the Holiday Valley Resort from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 1:30 to 6 p.m. Slots are available on first-come, first-
served basis in 15-minute intervals. Send an email to localu@getlisted.org with a preferred time for a consultation.

Ten percent of all profits from the event will be donated to a charity in Western New York.”

URLS Have Changed

URLs that used to be http://www.google.com/portland and http://www.google.com/austin/ are now http://www.google.com/city/portland and http://www.google.com/city/austin.

There is now a “home page” for the City Pages at http://www.google.com/city/

Google seems to be setting things up to create pages like http://www.google.com/restaurants/portland and http://www.google.com/hotels/austin OR http://www.google.com/city/portland/restaurants and  http://www.google.com/city/austin/hotels, which comes as no surprise. I expect any new pages for the cities to closely follow the categories you can now choose from on the City Pages:

As those categories expand to  things like professional services, the possibilities for new pages will expand, as well.

New City Pages Added

There are now new City Pages for Charlotte and San Francisco .  The San Francisco page has the Offers and Community tabs, while the Charlotte page does not.

Since City Pages seem to follow on the heels of  Google “community building”, I expect the next City Pages to be for Seattle, Brooklyn and Manhattan.

City Pages Toolbar PageRank

I don’t know if my toolbar PR is out of whack, but have you looked at the toolbar PR of the City Pages lately?  Mine reads:

• Portland 4
• Austin 6
• Madison 5
• San Diego 4

The new pages for San Francisco and Charlotte are not showing any PR on the toolbar, yet. Neither does the main /city/ page.

I entered the City Pages “home page” into SEOmoz to get a peak at the authority of the /city/ subfolder. Here’s what I got:

It’s going to be pretty darn difficult to beat Google at this Local Search game!

Why would businesses need both a Business Profile and a Places page, when the Place page is essentially already a business profile? Because Google’s always  made a big deal about Places being free, so if it wants to get revenue from them it needs to shift to a paid inclusion model, similar to Yahoo Local’s enhanced listings.

The only person who I’ve heard making announcements about Google Business Profiles is Christian Oestilen, the ads manager for Google+. That alone is a obvious clue.

Google is stripping information from Place pages:

• The owner-provided Descriptions are gone.
• The More Details section (where you were able to provide discreet links to your website and give useful information to visitors) is gone
• Third party review sites have lost their prominence – maybe those sites will have to pay for placement- or prominent placement-as advertisers. Maybe those with paid profiles will be able to feature chosen review sites or even individual reviews on their pages.
• More About This Place listings (citations) have disappeared – maybe those sites will have to pay for placement- or prominent placement-as advertisers, also
• I wouldn’t be surprised if Events also disappeared soon, since for some types of businesses, these could easily be incentivized.

Google+

We also have to think about all the ways Google will be able to integrate Google+ activity into Business profiles. It’s mindboggling and business owners will definitely be willing to pay for certain features, like the ability to respond to reviews and post marketing messages to Circles of customers.

Conclusion

Google has expended a significant amount of effort over the past year persuading  small businesses to drink its local koolaid, but chances are, there aren’t as many of them jumping on the Boost/AdWords Express advertising bandwagon as Google anticipated. (Maybe you’ll only get a Business Profile if you do paid advertising.) Google has given businesses free things (like discreet links and photos in the Blended Local Listings) and is now taking them away.

With Business Profiles, Google is creating demand for what is essentially an unknown product. Google Place Pages may very well become like basic listings in the Yellow Pages – just the bare facts- while the new Google Business Profiles become like display ads in the Yellow Pages – big and colorful with a fat dose of marketing messages.

Most marketers will gladly pay for Business profiles, IF and its a really BIG IF, they get reasonable control over what is shown and decent support when they have problems. After all, this is what we’ve always wanted from Google Local/Maps/Places, isn’t it?

The only thing I am certain of is that Google is making an incredibly aggressive play to make as much money as it can from the Local/Social space as quickly as it can as Business Profiles seem like an ideal opportunity to help that goal along. The rest is just my personal opinion, but I expect it to unfold fairly quickly, so hang on!

Now the Portland City Page is showing a toolbar of PR3. Yeah, yeah, I know toolbar PR is junk, but it is telling us that these pages are very much going to be contenders for rankings for relevant locations terms.  Check out it’s backlinks .

All of the live Google City Pages – Portland, Austin, San Diego and Madison – link to each other, so the juice is flowing. Although none of the others has any toolbar PR, yet, it’s just a matter of time. As Google adds more and more City Pages, all linked up together, we’re looking at a local directory juggernaut marching over the horizon. (The pages also link to the offers page for that city, so Offers will probably be lifted with the tide, as well.)

I haven’t spotted the pages ranking in the wild for anything other than “portland city page” and “portland city page”, but how long will it be before they begin appearing in the local pack – or even in a one box – for such coveted terms as “portland restaurants” and “portland hotels”? Will Google then claim these are the most relevant pages to show for those types of searches because they’ve algorithmically earned their rankings?

As a consolation prize,  if your ratings earn you a spot on a City Page, the link to your own Place Page contains your business name and address, making it a decent citation for your business.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all of the factors that are considered in the survey, but here are the key things you need to get right to ensure a strong foundation for Local Search success:

You need a website. Yes, your own website on your own hosted domain. Google now creates blended local listings in their results pages that include information from both a business’ Place Page and its website. No website, no blended listing.

You need to optimize your website for local search. Your website’s optimization now plays a huge part in ranking well for local searches. It needs to send the right signals to the Search Engines using sufficient, unique, key-word-rich crawlable content and metadata.

Your website  needs “authority”, most of which can be gained through links from other authoritative websites. In the simplest terms, you need good links pointing to your pages. If you don’t know what good links are, it’s time to find out.

You need to claim and update your Google Place Page. Don’t know what this is? Go here now!

You need to clean up your NAP. You need to make sure your business name, address and phone number (NAP) are consistent across the web. If the search engines see varying information, it can suppress your rankings, despite everything else you might be doing right.

You need a review and reputation management strategy. People are probably talking about your business on the web, whether you are aware of it or not. You need to monitor and become part of these conversations.

Consumers are looking online for opinions about local businesses before they make purchasing decisions. If they are not finding plenty of good opinions about your business, they may not consider it. So, you need to make sure that happy customers are spreading the word about your enterprise online.

Once you get these basics right, then you can worry about working to improve some of the other factors in the survey.

Type “I hate CAPTCHA” into the Google search box and you’ll find over 30,000 web pages that contain that exact phrase. Entering “CAPTCHA sucks” shows over 19,000 web pages ranting about it. I’m certain many more people hate it, too, but they either don’t know what it’s called, don’t know how to spell it or don’t do web rants. You can bet they are frowning at their pc monitors whenever they are presented with one, though. And if you find CAPTCHAs difficult to solve, think about the effect they may have on your coke-bottle-glasses wearing grandpa.
If you type “impossible CAPTCHA images” into the Google search box, you’ll find 638,000 examples of CAPTCHA images that humans have labeled as impossible. While some of them don’t really look hard to solve, you will be simply amazed by others. Here are just a few examples:

Here’s a link to other unbelievably crazy CAPTCHAs found in the wild by Ann Smarty.

It’s annoying and frustrating to be slowed down by jammed together,  slashed-through, distorted, blurred and otherwise obfuscated letters while I am trying to use a tool or make a comment or submission of some kind.  I realize that website owners need to protect themselves from automated spam, but in a way too many cases these visual puzzles are a barrier to humans, as well as to bots. What do you think this one says? (I have no idea!)

Some sites, like Yahoo, use fairly simple versions of CAPTCHA – 5 or 6 letters and numbers that are usually, but not always, decipherable on the first try. On the other hand, I often find myself cussing and squinting at the Google CAPTCHAs, which seem to keep getting longer and more complex and confusing.

The now-ancient Search Engine, Alta Vista began working on a solution to automated spam submissions in 1997 (Remember when SEO’s used to submit to a bazillion Search Engines every month?) In 2001, they received a patent for CAPTCHA. By 2002 Alta Vista reported “add url” spam had decreased by over 95%. Yahoo was one of the early adopters of CAPTCHA, as it attempted to thwart the creation of spam Yahoo email accounts by bots.

The term CAPTCHA was coined by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. Wheeew!

Effective CAPTCHA must prevent bots from using dictionary-based attacks – where the bots try every word in the dictionary – and also against computer image attacks – where the bots attempt to read and replicate the letters and numbers in the image field. Some of the early techniques for doing so included letter strings that created words that are unpronounceable in English and image masking. Some of the modern versions use these two techniques together to thwart spammers.

Some websites can keep most of the spammers out by using simple, more human-friendly forms of CAPTCHA. Examples are easy mathematical questions, like How much is 2 plus 3?, or real life questions, such as What color is celery? Or What’s a three letter synonym for canine? Strive for a similarly simple way to keep spammers from causing havoc on your website, if you can. In other words, don’t use a sledgehammer where a light tap will do.

However, if you have a very popular site, you may find yourself the victim of more sophisticated attacks. Nearly every type of CAPTCHA puzzle has been broken at one time or another, so your web team may regularly have to step up its defense efforts with tougher and tougher security weapons.

One particularly diabolical and effective method of breaking CAPTCHA codes is to relay them to super-cheap off-shore workers who are paid by the number of CAPTCHAs they solve. The going rate is rumored to be under $2 per thousand, which certainly sounds more cost effective than building CAPTCHA-circumventing software. It’s also incredibly difficult to protect yourself against.

Audio alternatives, where you hear something and are expected to type it into the CAPTCHA solution field, are also frustrating and annoying. Many times you cannot understand what is being said and in other cases, you are expected to type 7-8 words into a box.

There have been plenty of efforts to make CAPTCHA less of an obstacle for humans and more of an obstacle to bots, with photo images, audio, javascript, data hashing, invisible-to-human CAPTCHA fields (if it gets filled out, it must be a bot) and other weirder types like this one developed by researchers at the State University of New York that mimics human handwriting. Unfortunately, it mimics illegible human handwriting. Maybe they just could use doctors signatures?

If you use CAPTCHA on your site, it is most certainly an obstacle to goal completion. Measuring the abandonment rate of the pages that require CAPTCHA should give you a sense of just how it is effecting your conversions. I’ve seen estimates that as many as 25% of solutions fail on the first try and that up to 10% of potential customers presented with a CAPTCHA, simply give up and move on without completing it.

If you have an online banking site or an application that’s juicy bait for spammers, you need sophisticated spam prevention and probably can’t avoid frustrating your users to some extent. But if you don’t really need top level security, consider using something simpler or try eliminating CAPTCHA altogether to see what effect it has on website conversions. If you must use something, try to imagine a test that could be fun (or not quite so annoying) for your visitors, like the test on this electronics site and the simple CAPTCHAs beneath it:

At Planet Ocean this month, Travis Wright and I just completed our first Advanced Tactics for Local Search webinar series.  This was an exciting series, since the participants were all advanced SEOs already well-versed in Local Search. We went way beyond the basics, with discussions of ways to provide more geographic context to web pages,  specific methods of uncovering and correcting data confusion, paid advertising options for local businesses and the best ways to use them, and much, much more.

Participants now qualify for certification in Local SEO through Planet Ocean. They may also join the Local Search Mastermind Group, if they wish, which offers a help forum, chat group and a monthly mastermind call where changes are discussed and members help each other by sharing their knowledge and experiences.

If you already know the basics of Local Search and are ready to ramp up to the next level,  get on the list for our next Advanced Local Search series here.

SEO for Beginners

When I first got into the internet marketing business, I was handed a copy of what is perhaps the most well-circulated SEO eBook of all time, The Unfair Advantage Book on Winning the Search Wars. This was my primer and reference for learning as much as I could about Search Engine Optimization as quickly as possible. Every time a new edition came out, I poured over it to learn about changes and updates and I also read the companion newsletter Search Engine News religiously every month.

If you’re just getting started in Search, you owe it to yourself to read The Unfair Advantage Book. Expect comprehensive, actionable  advice from Stephan Mahaney and his experienced staff of top experts in every aspect of internet marketing. I cannot recommend this book highly enough! You can learn more about this excellent SEO manual and get a free 7 day trial here.

If you’d like to get a jump start on learning SEO, then consider taking an SEO for Beginners course at Planet Ocean. You’ll participate in a live webinar series with ample time to ask questions and discuss problems. This popular series now includes a session on Local Search, as well, taught by yours truly. Learn more about SEO for Beginners here.

Local Search Engine Optimization

Travis and I have been teaching Local Search Engine Optimization for Planet Ocean for over a year, now. Everytime we offer a new session, we need to drastically update the information we present because things change dramatically and continually in the world of Local Search. If you’re feeling a little lost and are unsure if you’re staying up with all the changes and opportunities in Local Search, this is the class for you. Your class will include a series of live webinars and Q&A sessions and the latest Planet Ocean eBook on Local Search, along with other perks like membership in the Local Mastermind Group and access to Planet Ocean’s toolset.  Learn more about our Local Search Engine Optimization course here.

Local Search Manual

You’ll need to be a subscriber to Search Engine News to get your hands on  The Professional SEO’s Blueprint to Local Search Optimization but there’s no doubt you’ll benefit greatly from both! Learn more about this comprehensive and up-to-date (2011 Edition) Local SEO manual here.

Disclaimer: I have a business relationship with Planet Ocean.

REVIEWS
Google obviously knows the importance of reviews to Local Search and has instituted review response capabilities, review removals and new review filters as well as their own Recommendation Engine, Hotpot. In December, it began a new type of offline marketing campaign in Portland, buying billboard space and newspaper ads to promote the use of Hotpot in conjunction with popular area businesses. In 2011, I expect Google to:

• Continue to wage war against review spam.
• Heavily promote reviews directly on Google.
• Get pickier about which other review sites it deems worthy of inclusion on Place pages – this will likely be based on the real or perceived authenticity of the review sources.
• Integrate Hotpot recommendations into all things local and mobile.

SMALL BUSINESS OUTREACH
In 2010, Google tested various forms of directly and indirectly influencing small business owners to participate in its online offerings. It tried everything from YouTube videos to webinars to email campaigns to telesales to putting up a mini site in partnership with the Small Business Administration.  In 2011, I expect Google to:

• Continue to aim directly at small business owners with their message using more traditional (offline) marketing methods.
• Create and promote more simple, do-it-yourself features for small business owners.
• At the same time, offer more support for agencies that work on behalf of small businesses in the Local Search space.

PAID ADVERTISING
This past year, Google introduced 2 new forms of paid ads aimed at small businesses – Google Tags and Google Boost. It also made  AdWords upgrades related to geo-targeting, added click to call ads and instituted special pricing ads for hotels, which sent the lodging industry on the warpath. In 2011, I expect it to:

• Heavily promote all forms of paid advertising directly to small businesses.
• Create additional forms of Local/Mobile paid advertising.
• Buy a Groupon clone and use it as a way to sell more advertising to small businesses.
• Go head to head with the Internet Yellow Pages with an expanded sales force dedicated to  the local market.
• Develop and promote a check-in service in conjunction with Hotpot so that it can precisely target advertising to the searcher’s location.

INTEGRATION
Google has also been working on new features that will enable it to appeal to even more small businesses. This includes things like Local Product Search, Send to Car, Google Checkout mobile app and the Google Places API for developers. In 2011, I expect Google to:

• Continue to develop new features that appeal to small business advertisers to bring them into the Google “system”.
• Find new ways to integrate Local/Mobile search and paid advertising into as many other Google platforms as it can.
• Facilitate developers’ use of Google Places data into new apps, platforms and layers on existing platforms.

So there’s what I see in my Local Search crystal ball for the next year. Check back in 12 months and see how I did!

Why? Consider these recent Google review updates:

• The website  is now prominently and undeniably associated with reviews of a business when it appears as a local result in organic search.
• Searchers can go directly from this local result in organic search to relevant review sites for the business.
• The sentiment (good or bad) of reviews is more prominent on Places pages and in the search results.
• Google’s released a new recommendation engine, Hotpot:
  • making it easier that ever to leave ratings and reviews on Google
  • facilitating and encouraging “quickie” reviews of just a sentence or two
  • facilitating verbal reviews directly from smart phones
  • acknowledging that the ratings and reviews of people you know are highly relevant to you and making it easy for you to see them (although this is kind of clunky right now)
• Google instituted a review filter system to try to keep review spam out of their results.

The best news in all of this is that those who faked reviews, traded reviews, paid for reviews and otherwise spammed ratings and reviews are hopefully suffering badly with the new filters. And we can expect Google to get better and better at keeping their influence out of the results as time goes on.

It’s also great news for those businesses that already have a workable reputation management system in place – listening to their customers, encouraging reviews from happy customers, responding appropriately to less than happy customers and improving their business in an effort to make all customers satisfied ones.

It’s not such great news for crummy businesses that get a lot of complaints and don’t do anything about them and for enterprises that either ignore reputation management completely or until it causes an obvious problem.

Reviews are here to stay. They have taken on an even  greater role in internet marketing. Their impact will continue to grow. You can’t afford to  imperil your business’ bottom line by ignoring them. Wake up! Get to work! And get help if you need it!

What are Citations and Why Do They Matter?

Citations are cites or mentions of your business on web pages. A citation  includes your business name and either  your address or phone number or both, but they do not actually have to link to your website or to your Local Business Listing.  Think of citations for Local SEO the same way you think about links for general SEO, since they have  a similar effect.

Links are like votes or vouches for a web page, while citations are like votes or vouches for the information Google has about your business. Both links and citations impart trust. The more often Google sees the same core business data (Name, Address, Local Phone Number) about your business across the web, the more it trusts that information and trust is a major factor in all the Google ranking algorithms.

What Makes a Good Citation?

All citations are not equal in the same way that all all links are not equal. They have more influence when they come from respected websites that have earned Google’s trust through their age, authority and popularity. And they have less influence when they come from thin directories, scraper sites and other websites that generally lack respect.

Therefore, it’s good discover which citations your top competitors have so that you can try to get citations from those same sites. And learning what citations your top competitors have in common will show you the most likely hubs of influence for your particular business and location.

How Can You Find Good Citations for Your Business?

Fortunately, Google has made it very easy to view any businesses citations right on their Google Places pages. Simply scroll down towards the bottom of the page and looks for the More about this place section. You’ll see snippets from web pages that mention or cite the business, although with a clickable URL that takes you to that page. At the bottom of this section, you are given a link to see more citations. There may be several pages of them.

Look at the pages where your competitors have citations to see if they are likely to be trusted sites and if there is an opportunity to get a citation for your business there, as well. Either make notes about the best sites to revisit for citations or jump right in and get them as you do your research. As you examine the citations of multiple competitors, you’ll begin to see patterns and find websites where most of them tend to be listed.

By creating a spreadsheet of the citations of each of your competitors, you can define which sites provide citations to the greatest number of top competitors. By comparing all of the citations of the top rankers, you can see which domains have the most apparent influence. I say apparent because it believed that Google is not showing us all of a business’ citations, just as they do not show all of a web page’s backlinks, but only a sampling of them. Concentrate on getting citations at the strongest citation hubs  first. Then move on to the others.

Use this Tool!

Another methodology, defined by the linkbuilding pros at Ontolo, involves searching for the local phone numbers of your top local competitors in organic web search. This will show you where your competitors are listed along with their phone number. By recording and sorting these URLs for multiple competitors, you can also find the likely hubs of influence for your keyword terms. Whitespark and Ontolo have teamed up to create a free, web-based competitive analysis tool to make easy work of these tasks.

I suggest using both of these methods together  in order to identify what the most likely places for good citations are.

• Whether Local Search even matters for your business or if you should work on your website SEO, instead ( Part 1 ) (With the recent changes in the Google Local Search results, this topic is no longer important. You need to optimize your Local Business Listing and your website to rank well in the new blended results.)
• Determining who your  top competitors are in Local Search ( Part 1)
• How to see if those competitors have claimed their Google Places Local Business Listings or not (Part 2)

What Categories Are My Competitors In?

Choosing the right categories in which to place your Local Business Listing is a critical ranking factor in Google Places, so you want to get it right!

Google Places allows you to put your business in up to 5 categories. The first one you choose must be one of the categories predesignated by Google. There’s a tool that helps you find appropriate categories by searching for keyword terms by Mike Blumenthal.

After choosing your first category from Google’s list, you may continue to choose more from the list, or you may create your own categories.  Where possible, try to use as many listed categories as are appropriate for your business and fore go creating your own, as being in the right Google categories gives your listing a head start in ranking for related terms in the Google Maps algorithm.

It can help to discover which categories your top competitors are in to see if those may be appropriate for you, as well. Fortunately, this is very easy to do. Just go to the individual listings and click on the plus box next to “Categories” in the upper right area of the page. Here are a couple of examples of categories chosen by the top ranking listings for “manhattan cosmetic dentist”:

Discovering New Categories

By referring to the Google category tool, I can see that some of these are predesignated categories and others are not.  The ones that really stick out to me are “prosthodontist”, “sedation dentist” and “invisalign”. Inivisalign is a popular and profitable procedure for my clinic, so I investigate that a little further.

The category tool tells me that “Orthodontist” is the appropriate category to choose for “invisalign”.

But when I search for “invisalign manhattan” in Google, I can see that the top ranking listings all have “invisalign” as a category. Here’s an example:

Since ranking for “invisalign” is important for my business, I may decide to designate that as one of my categories, too.

Since you are only permitted to have 5 categories, it’s very helpful to see all of the categories that your group of top competitors are in and to see which categories most of them are in . You can easily get this information (along with other valuable insight) from the Local Search Toolkit.

You can look at the categories of your top competitors individually, like this:

Or can can export all of the categories for all the top rankers into a spreadsheet so that you can organize in any way you find useful. One of the key bits of information this tools gives you regarding categories is how many times a particular category appears among those businesses appearing in the Local Pack of results (also known as the Lucky 7).

Finding Category Hubs

It stands to reason that if all the listings that appear in the Local Pack for a given search term are in a particular category, that you will want to consider placing your business in that category, as well. This category “hub finder” feature can help guide your own category selections. Here are the category hubs I found for the term “invisalign manhattan”:

I will keep those in mind as look at the category hubs for my other important search terms, too, which are “cosmetic dentist manhattan”, “teeth whitening manhattan”, “manhattan cosmetic dentistry”.  Once  all of this category data has been compiled, I can review it and decide which 5 categories will probably be the best ones in which to place my business.

Here’s a quick look at the results you can expect to see in both Web search results and in Places search results. (The old style Local Business Listing results are still being seen in the Maps search results.)

Anatomy of the New Google Blended Local Search Results

The orange boxes indicate information related to the business’ website and the green boxes indicate information related to the business’ Place Page (aka Local Business Listing).

Are My Competitors’ Google Local Business Listings Claimed?

Even though plenty of Local Business Listings rank well in the Local Pack without being claimed and verified, experts believe that doing so is an important factor in ranking in Google Maps and, therefore, in the Local Pack. You can determine if a listing has been verified or not simply by looking at it. Click on the link at the end of  the Local Pack listing. It is usually labeled as “reviews”, “more”, “directions” or a combination of those terms.

This will take you to the Local Business Listing. If the listing has been claimed, it will say “Owner Verified Listing” and show a check mark near the top right of the page. If it has not been verified, it will say “Business Owner?” in that spot, instead.

In this case, all of the competitors we are researching have claimed their listings. This tells us that, as far as that particular ranking factor goes, we have a level playing field. While claiming my listing won’t give me any advantage, it will keep me from being at a disadvantage. So, if I haven’t done so already, I need to be certain to claim my listing, too.

In the next installment, Competitive Analysis for Local Search-Part 3, we’ll look at the categories in which the top ranking Local Business Listings are placed.

In Local Search, just as in regular organic search, it helps to discover the attributes of your top ranking competitors in order to try to rank well.  And knowing which attributes are shared by numerous competitors may be particularly telling. Of course, this might all be a bunch of hooey, but this type research, known as competitive analysis, is a practice that has served SEO’s well and is still the best method we have to try to deconstruct the algorithms and improve Search rankings.

Suggested Reading

If you haven’t already done so, please study the most recent Local Search Ranking Factors Survey, in which over 30 Local Search experts weigh in on what they believe determines which businesses rise to the top in the Google Maps results. This will provide a foundation and framework for understanding competitive analysis for Local Search.

Do Local Business Listings Matter for Your Terms?

Use keyword research tools to choose the top 3 search terms for your location and industry, as those are the searches for which it is most important to be found. We’re not thinking about long tail search right now, but only about the most targeted terms for your business that also get the greatest number of searches.

Obviously, if Google does not return a Local Pack for the terms you most covet, getting your Local Business Listing to rank well will only help you when someone searches within Google Maps and not in Google’s Web Search. Since most searches are done within Google Web Search and not in Google Maps, do a web search for your chosen terms to see if Google displays a Local Pack or not within the Search Engine Results Pages.

The terms for which Local Packs are displayed can and do change overnight. Keeping this in mind, it is always best to strive to rank your website well in the organic results and to rank your Local Business Listing well in Google Maps, but we are concentrating on Local Pack rankings here. So, if Google doesn’t show a Local Pack, concentrate on optimizing your website instead of proceeding with this process.

Who Are Your Top Competitors in Local Search?

The businesses that rank in the Local Pack for the terms we want to rank for are the ones we want to research and analyze. Any that appear in more than one set of results are your strongest online competitors. (Keep in mind that your virtual competitors may or may not be the same businesses that you consider to be your competitors in real world.)

In this example, we’ll do some competitive research for a dental practice in Manhattan New York that specializes in cosmetic dentistry. I decide to check the competition for these 3 terms, which I’d like to work on getting the clinic to rank better for and search for them in the Google Web Search box (We won’t go into why I chose these particular terms here, as that’s a huge topic all by itself.):

• teeth whitening manhattan
• manhattan cosmetic dentistry
• cosmetic dentist manhattan
  

You can see from the results below that the Manhattan Dental Implants Center is the powerhouse Local Business listing for these terms, since it ranks in the top spot for all 3 of the terms for which we would like to rank. The results for “manhattan cosmetic dentistry” and “cosmetic dentist manhattan” show the same 7 businesses in the Local Pack – they are just very slightly reordered. But other than Manhattan Dental Implants Center, the businesses that rank in the Local Pack for “teeth whitening manhattan” are unique. So, we have 13 Local Business Listings that we’ll gather and analyze data for.

We’ll begin that process in Competitive Analysis for Local Search-Part 2.

One of the toughest aspects of doing Local Search Optimization has been a lack of such tools. Without automation, endless hours are spent on data collection. In an effort to make our own work more efficient, Mike Belasco and I developed a competitive analysis tool for Local SEO.

The tool collects and delivers information about the local business listings that rank in the Google Local Pack for a geographically modified keyword or set of keywords. You’ll discover the categories, citation sites and review sites of those high rankers, along with information on whether the listings have been claimed in Google Places and some other tasty tidbits that students of the Google Local Search algorithm will feast on.

As is to be expected, our brief period of beta testing has uncovered quite a few unexpected bugs that we’re working to correct. But even though it’s far from perfect, we think you’ll still find it highly useful at this stage in its development. Our goal is to create a complete set of tools for Local SEO and we already have a few others in the works.

I’ll be writing more about how to conduct effective competitive analysis for Local Search, so stay tuned. In the meantime, I invite you to help us test our new Local Search Tool Kit and let us know what you think!

It’s become obvious lately that in the realm of Local Search, Google wants to keep searchers on it’s own pages as much as it can.An example of this mindset is the way it gathers and publishes snippets of reviews from other websites on the Places pages of Google Maps. Yelp does not believe this is in the best interest of its own directory and also feels it is a disservice to searchers who are not shown complete reviews, but only the parts Google chooses to show. True, searchers can click through to the full review, but how many do? Someone else will have to delve into the psychology of that behavior, but my personal guess is not many.

Google is more interested in sending search traffic to it’s listings of local business information than in sending them to the business’ own website or to information published anywhere else on the web about them. The idea is to consolidate as much information as possible about a local business in one place. It sounds like a lofty goal and Google justifies it by trying to make us believe that is what is best for searchers. But is it, really? Probably not.

Google decides which information from which websites to show – or to not show. We certainly can’t believe that the deals it makes regarding the gathering and publishing of that information are unbiased or based on lilly white motives. Neither is its Local Search algorithm unbiased, as information from some sources very likely has more clout in the formula than that from other sources.

Yet, most websites go along with it for the few crumbs they are thrown. Some directories are currently working it to their advantage, even while realizing that their favored status could disappear quickly and completely pretty much at Google’s whim. In some ways, it’s a classic abusive relationship, where the abused feels the only way to survive is by gratefully accepting the punishment.

It takes a portal with clout of Yelp to stand up to Google. It’ll be very interesting to watch how it unfolds and if others will gain the courage and follow Yelp’s lead.

Standard Program

For those of you who are unfamiliar with UBL, it is an affordable service that can help you to distribute and standardize your core business data across the internet. In their own words:

“The Universal Business Listing core service is one that allows you to enter your critical business information one time and have it posted to all the major Online Yellow Pages, Search Engines, industry directories and 411 directory assistance. UBL goes to over 250 premium publishers as verified listings, and includes delivery and reports from the underlying databases that the search engines use, such as infoUSA and Acxiom. There are Agency, Affiliate and Channel Partner programs with bulk upload and API capability.”

While it is certainly not a magic bullet – none of the data distribution services are – at a price of $30 a year, it is one of those rare bargains that delivers very high value for the price. IMO, no matter what else you are doing to market businesses online, you should have Universal Business Listing in your toolbox.

Agency Program

Now, UBL has an agency program, too, that makes it easier for marketers to manage distribution and updates for multiple businesses. They offer special discount pricing, as well as promotional materials you can white label for your own agency.

“UBL has a self-hosted API that enables data to be entered into an online form and exported in our Template. Agencies can upload the bulk file into our account management system, send the files via FTP or simply email them to us for processing. UBL will provide reports back on the submissions having taken place, plus reports on any rejections or conflicts. This provides a clear path to correcting problem listings at an early stage”

Agencies can also take part in a beta program for a new tool called Local Search Analysis here.

I am an affiliate of Universal Business Listing. I am also involved with GetListed.org through its Local University events and GetListed.org  is partnered with UBL. But I don’t want anyone to think I recommend it just so I can make a buck.  While it isn’t perfect, it is such a cost effective service that I highly recommend it!

Local Search Engine Optimization differs greatly from regular SEO. Different ranking factors come into play and, if you don’t understand the algorithm, you don’t know which strategies to use to rank better in Google Maps and in the Local Pack. Common online marketing tactics that seem harmless can hurt you immensely in Local Search.

Do you understand the new Local Business Listing Quality Guidelines? Can you perform a Local Search Audit for a business to determine where problems and opportunities lie? Can you devise a solid plan for increasing the number of new customers they attract from their internet marketing? Do you know which local businesses to target as good prospects for your services?

If not, you may be interested in a live online Local Search training offered exclusively by Planet Ocean, the publisher of Search Engine News. For the first (and maybe the only) time this valuable course is available to non members. You can learn more about it here.

Future stops are planned for Denver in mid-September and the Phoenix area sometime over the winter.  Stay tuned for events in other cities, as well.

Get Listed Local U is sponsored by Google, Bing, Universal Business Listing, Localeze and by local groups in the cities where events are held.