Local Search
What is local search?
Local search is a query that uses a special type of search engine. The query includes not only information about “what” the site visitor is searching for (such as keywords, a business category, or the name of a consumer product) but also “where” information, such as a street address, city name, postal code, or geographic coordinates like latitude and longitude. These sites are primarily supported by advertising, but some accept payments from retail merchants and others wishing to be listed.
Various geolocation techniques may be used to match visitors’ queries with information of interest. The type of information and points of interest returned varies with the type of local search engine. Some sites, such as superpages.com (owned by Idearc Media) and TrueLocal, list local businesses, usually in a categorization scheme similar to (or actually derived from) a traditional Yellow Pages phone book.
Google’s changing the game of search engine optimization with their recent release of OneBox. Google OneBox appears at the top of results whenever a popular [city] phrase is combined with a popular search query.
For example: [Salt Lake City internet marketing] returns the following results.
How does this changes the game of SEO?
Well not only do you have to aim for top organic search results, but now you have a new algorithm in place to rank on local results such as Google’s OneBox. Google, Yahoo!, and MSN have always had local search but Google has been the first to implement theirs into the regular search results as well.
What can you do to optimize for local search?
- Social Local Search - Submit your company’s listing to some of the top social local search sites. This article states social local search is up 44% in the past 12 months. Yelp, InsiderPages, CitySquares, Judy’s Book, and Mojo Pages are good examples of these.
- Internet Yellow Pages - SuperPages, Yellowbook, InfoSpace, SwitchBoard are also good examples of these.
- Local Search Engines - Submit your site to Google Local, Yahoo! Local, ASK, MSN Local, and TrueLocal.
- Data Providers – Acxiom, GeoSign, and InfoUSA are two major powerhouses for supplying local search databases. Submit your company listings to these sites as well.
- Contact information – Have a dominant address and phone number on your contact page and at least one other page, preferably the homepage. This information builds trust rank value in your Website as well.
- Microformats – Microformats are an open format for data specification. hCard’s represent data about people and specifications. Visit microformats.org to learn how you can incorporate hCard’s in to your Website. One more search engines catch on to microformats this will be quite revolutionary for Local Search.
- Meta data – Use geo meta data to tell search engines your location.
Code detailed below:
<meta name=”geo.position” CONTENT=”latitude; longitude” />
<meta name =”geo.placename” CONTENT=”Place Name” />
<meta name =”geo.region” CONTENT=”Country Subdivision Code” />
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