Just as I whining about Google Image Search again today and ironically saw the new Sort by Subject option, it occurred to me that I had forgotten about an important topic relating to a different type of search: local search. When optimizing for a specific geography, the question always comes up, “should I optimize for service then geography or geography then service?service then geography in most cases (if you had to choose just one).

Let’s Lay This to Rest

In taking several super competitive industries, specifically in the Los Angeles, CA area, we weighed the sequence of geography + service and service + geography using multiple exact match queries in the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. Services we chose included:

• Locksmiths
• Plumbers
• Florists
• Chiropractors
• Cash for Gold
• Pizza
• Title Loans

If you’re in the Local SEO industry, you know quite well that these are several of the most competitive service industries online. In fact, they are so competitive, when I decide to retire from SEO, I’m going to hire a locksmith that ranks well in the Google O-Pack to handle all my SEO (I am 100% serious).

Here’s a table of the results:

Inferences from the Data

Though I’m sure there are going to be anomalies, in our study every instance of service + geography had more search volume or tied with the geography + service, with 9 wins and 3 ties.

Since we’re obviously going to optimize our HTML titles for the service + geography sequence, we should focus link building efforts on both sequences, because 2,976 possible searches for geography + service is a lot of traffic to just throw away.

You Get Dyslexia, You Get 7-Pack

For those who still insist on searching backwards, against the grain, 7-Pack lovers, the search rebels among us, we’ve learned something fascinating about you. According to our research, you geography + service folks, may actually enjoy the 7-Pack much better than the new integrated search results. See below the age old universal search results:

What’s Your Experience?

As you start on your adventure of optimizing your titles for service + geography and your backlinks for both service + geography and geography + service, you may find other interesting data. Please let us know what your experience has been and is as you practice local search engine optimization. Please use the comments form below. Thanks for reading!

Topics that will be covered in the post are listed below. Feel free to JumpTo the section that interests you the most.

1. Introduction
2. Google Places Examined
3. Google Hotpot & NFC Technology
4. Google O-Pack Ranking Strategies
5. Smart Google O-Pack Optimization

Introduction

As the evolving world of local search engine optimization continues to become the cornerstone all local business marketing efforts, it’s evident that we as marketers must improve not only our knowledge of local search, but become better at responding and reacting to its endless pattern of change. In October of 2010, Google began another round of critical enhancements to it’s universal search results, replacing what had been known as “The 7-Pack” of local listings with what Local SEO Expert David Mihm coined as “The O-Pack“, a hybrid of Google Places (formerly Google Local Business Center) and natural search results, as shown below.

In this post, we’ll explore the new O-Pack and strategies you can implement to improve ranking and click-through from the new hybrid results.

Google Places Examined

Formerly Google Local Business Center, Google Places is a free advertising platform for businesses to increase visibility online. By just claiming a listing, a business has the opportunity to enjoy free calls and visits to their website from patrons looking specifically for business name.

Tack on a little search engine optimization, a business also has the opportunity of appearing before competitors for geocentric keyword themes such as “dentist los angeles”, “plumber new york”, or both without requiring city names in the query, in Google Maps and universal search results (as shown above). Google Places is quickly becoming the most important online advertising channel for businesses that serve one ore more specific service areas.

There are many ways to find a Google Places page, such as simply searching Google for a service and choosing Places Page next to a listing that appears with a red pin, navigating Google Maps from a computer, mobile device or mobile application. All roads in local search within Google now lead to a Places page.

Advertising Options on Google Places

Within Google Places, a business may advertise in a number of ways, including:

• FREE: Offering coupons, discounts, and special offers on the fly
• FREE: Posting descriptive information about products and services
• FREE: Listing geographies served, such as cities, counties, and regions
• FREE: Listing hours of operation
• FREE: Posting imagery and YouTube videos
• FREE: Customer testimonials and reviews
• FREE: Google Maps embed codes to add a Google Map to a website
• PAID: Paying a fixed rate for yellow Google Tags to appear under the listing
• PAID: Paying a self-determined rate for Google Boost Ads, where Google chooses which keywords your business will appear under
• PAID: Google AdWords offers an extension to local businesses, allowing an address to appear under an ad within Google-only search results

Example of a Google Boost Ad and Google Tags

According to David Mihm’s Local Ranking Factors, there are number of criteria that may or may not help a business move up in position by enhancing profile attributes Google Places. A few are listed below:

• Associating Place Page with Proper Categories
• Volume of Citations from Major Data Providers + IYP Portals
• Product / Service Keywords in Place Page Description
• Associating Photos with Your Place Page

It’s thought that more interaction with Google Places pages and encouragement of use by customers may improve overall online visibility and brand credibility.

Google Hotpot, QR Codes & NFC Technology

We spent a significant amount of time studying Google Hotspot to better understand its purpose and value. Here’s a quick overview of what we found and why you should care:

In effect, it’s trying to fill in the holes left by Yelp and others. Hotpot seeks to cover a lot of ground without going into too much depth about any given business, whereas Yelp and Citysearch are known for the detailed, thoughtout and – perhaps most importantly – screen reviews.

In plain English, Hotpot lets you “check-in” to places you patronage, share your location with friends, and post business reviews in real-time using tricked out smartphones that actually verify that you are where you say you are using new GPS-type technology.

Use of Near Field Communications with Hotpot allows visitors to “check in” only when they are actually on location (unlike Foursquare, which allows you to check in even if you’re not actually at the business location). Additionally, a quick scan of a QR code printed on a window poster from a smartphone (such as the Nexus S featuring Gingerbread VoIP) allows businesses to essentially barcode their establishment and allow visitors to scan the barcode upon entering using a smartphone that offers an app similar to Google Goggles.

The technical term for the barcode is QR-Code, or Quick Response Code. The value? If a business has 100 customers “check-in” at their location during the course of the day, they have the opportunity to capture 100 reviews that get posted instantly to Google and Google’s universal search results, adding massive credibility and influencing ranking (see animated GIF above for circled stars that represent reviews).

Google O-Pack Ranking Strategies

Up to this point, you’ve learned about Google Places and know where to look for optimization criteria to improve visibility in Google Maps. You’ve also learned how to capture your customer’s reviews nearly instantly with NFC technology and a QR-Code on the window in front of your store. There is still so much yet to explore and opportunities to consider to truly maximize ranking and placement in Google’s new O-Pack local/organic hybrid search results.

Here are a few possibilities that you might want to ask your webmaster and/or SEO resource:

1. Does my business information sync verbatim across the Web?
2. Is my address listed clearly on my website or within individual facility pages?
3. Do I have a Google Places page for each facility linking to the facility page on my website?
4. Do my pages load quickly and offer detailed information about my products and services?
5. Many people are using Google Earth now, have we included a clickable (crawlable) KMZ file on the website?
6. Do we list our credentials and qualifications? (aka: licenses, certificates, BBB rating)
7. Are we listed with the BBB, local chambers, and city/region-specific business directories?
8. Do we handout postcards and send emails asking for business reviews in Google Places?
9. Have we registered and tricked out our listings for mobile apps like Foursquare, Yelp and Gowalla?
10. Do we link to our Google Places page and possibly a few other citations on our website?
11. Is our address listed in our page meta description or in facility page meta descriptions?
12. Is our local number the same number used in Google Places and other citations?
13. Have we completed our Google Places profile 100% with videos and images, and additional details?
14. Did we analyze and compute the categories used by competitors in Google Places?
15. Do we list an hCard or other microformat for the search engines and advanced users?
16. Have we downloaded, read and implemented recommendations from Google’s SEO Guide?
17. Are we using some_name@ourdomain.com or some_name@hotmail.com with our Google account?
18. Have we analyzed our website using Google Webmaster Tools, Bing Webmaster Tools, or a 3rd party service?
19. Did we use Steve Wiideman’s Best SEO Audit List?

The list goes on, but you get the idea. There’s never enough you can do to earn credibility and trust with users and the search engines.

Smart Google O-Pack Optimization

Now that you know how to get your customers who are equipped with smartphones to check-in easily and be encouraged to write reviews, how about a little Creative Search Strategy? Have you considered the fact that all of your competitors will be following suit with the above optimization strategies? That’s right, this means that all of their customers will also be checking in and leaving their contact card wide open on Google Hotpot (I can see the light above your head turning on). Connecting with these users in the Hotpot social network with promotions and incentives to give your service a try when you already know that they utilize a similar service seems like fairly brilliant targeting.

Also consider some of the tools available online that allow you to essentially scrape the web for destinations your competitors have been acquiring citations. One tool in particular caught our attention this month; a service by whitespark appropriately labeled “Local Citation Finder” allows you to search by business name and/or phone number to basically index every citation earned by a competitor. This service is also great for verifying that your business data is listed verbatim to what is recorded in Google Places (data validation may be a critical element to local SEO).

The best recommendation we can provide would be do simply do something everyday for at least an hour, such as ask for reviews, discover where competitors have citations and acquire your own where they have them, ask for profile page, mention, blog post or other attribution from partners, vendors, and affiliates. Avoid automated programs, be cautious of local SEO firms (use the word scam when you research them), and try to connect with at least 2-5 customers each day from a social network such as Hotpot, Gowalla, Yelp, Foursquare, or even Twitter.

Most of all, offer something on your website that no competitor could compete with. It could be a daily deal (think Groupon), free sample, appreciation events calendar (31 Flavors gives away ice cream once a year), or even a free downloads with tips, recipes, bonuses, and membership incentives.

Creativity wins every time. Best of luck!

Additional Resources

• 7-Pack Versus Hybrid Results – D. Rodecker
• Near Field Communication (NFC) – Wikipedia
• A Cornucopia Full of Local Search O-Pack Advice – G. Ramsey, SEJ
• Google Places User Guide
• Come to Our Local SEO Strategies Workshop

Remember that kid who always mimicked everything you did, back in grade school? It sucked.  And what did your mom say when you complained about this leech?

Odds are it was something like “copying someone is the highest form of flattery.” That probably got your mom a massive, accomplished eye-roll.

But what happens when you’re dealing with the same situation as an adult…and this time, the copying hurts more than your sense of individual badassery? Ask Groupon.

Why Did the Deal Fall Through?

It has been over a month now since the favorably-anticipated Groupon buyout by Google deal fell through. We’ve seen a lot of speculation as to why this happened, but we here at SEO Steve are curious about something else: with all the copycats cropping up, and the overall trend moving faster and faster in the direction of Local, how is Groupon going to stay competitive? Is the hubris (if it was, in fact, a factor in the breakdown in the deal with Google) of the company going to seal its fate?

You don’t need us to tell you about Groupon’s meteoric rise in popularity, market share and profitability. Those numbers are everywhere. But with all the fame of being such a star company comes the exposure to knock-offs. There are too many to mention, but some of the bigger ones are DailyDeals, BuyWithMe, LivingSocial. Even Yelp has joined the action. It’s so easy now to take advantage of the “group purchasing power” model, and as social media takes over more and more of the average person’s internet usage, this model isn’t going away.

Now, I’ve seen arguments that Groupon will always be king of this market share (it currently holds 70%, even with all the competitors that have cropped up) because they have very recognizable branding, still highly competitive deals, and are perceived as a “great company.” But are they good enough to stay on top? And why not merge with Google?

Some speculate that Groupon feels their value can only increase right now, and that a deal with Google was premature. But Business Insider had an interesting article on the subject: “This [Groupon] source says the view on Groupon’s board was that a Google-Groupon merger would draw more regulatory scrutiny that any other deal Google has ever done [...] Because of this view – that Google-Groupon might not be allowed to go through and that it would take months and months to find out the bad news – board members decided they would need a significant break-up fee if they were to accept Google’s offer.”

Clearly, the proposed fee was not to Google’s liking.

Oops…now what?

Which brings us up to date, with Groupon still going strong despite all the local whippersnappers popping up around it. And they’re highly competitive, too. All of the previously mentioned sites average between 50-90% savings on deals, offer deals in the same categories, and incentives for you to invite your friends to purchase deals.

And let’s not forget that everything is moving fast to local, and Google is working hard to get a piece of that pie.

So that’s where we stand. Can Groupon handle all of the competition with its brand alone? It’s only going to get more crowded in the pond; in September, a WordPress plugin for daily deals became available (insert link: http://groupbuyingsite.com/wordpress-group-buying-plugin-daily-deals-theme/)

Genius…or Not

What do you think? Did Groupon make a fatal mistake, or was it a stroke of genius?

In case you missed it, Google launched its newest venture, an extension to Google Places: HotPot. Not to be confused with the term given to a style of cooking, Hotpot just went live officially late last week, but chances are you’ve seen some of the promotion long before now. Starting November 15th in Portland, Oregon, Google began allowing businesses to order free business kits, which included a bright red “Recommended on Google” window sticker that has Near Field Communications (NFC) technology built right in, allowing people with advanced smartphones like the Nexus S to simply touch their phones to the sticker to find out more information about the business. The question now remains, could HotPot put other local review sites and applications like Yelp, CitySearch and Foursquare out of business? Let’s not forget Gowalla and hundreds of other similar business review destinations.

Judging from HotPot’s user video, it looks like they’re betting on the the social networking aspect to be the key to domination in local and mobile search.

That seems a little risky (remember how big a failure Buzz was? They’d prefer you didn’t). Basically, it works like this: you rate a new local restaurant, or maybe a mechanic. The ratings show up on local searches, but you can also add friends – if you have a gmail account, the list will populate automatically for you, so all you have to do is select which friends you want to follow. You can then see where your friends like to eat, who they trust to color their hair, etc.

In effect, it’s trying to fill in the holes left by Yelp and others. HotPot seeks to cover a lot of ground without going into too much depth about any given business, whereas Yelp and Citysearch are known for the detailed, thoughtout and – perhaps most importantly – screen reviews.

Seems like a decent theory, right? Merging a local engine with social networking seems like a pretty perfect combination. After all, how much more weight to you place on a recommendation from a friend, versus a stranger? But David Mihm brings up a valid point in his write-up of HotPot:

A friend of mine may have very different taste from mine. And therefore, his recommendations would mean, at best, nothing to me. At worst, a place that got his vote of approval would be one that I avoid.

It could go either way with HotPot. On one hand, its had a very aggressive marketing campaign (especially in Portland, OR – any local readers are encouraged to tell us what you thought of it!) with less-than-stellar results.

Mihm snapped a photo of a kiosk in an airport…which didn’t receive much attention from passersby. Yet it does have the ease of use for which Google is known, particularly with the apps for Nexus, Android and iPhone. Everything is in place to make it as inviting as possible. And If successful, this could be another big change in the world of local, and yet another conquest for Google. In this video, you’ll learn just how powerful the on-location technology is, and possibly how passé Yelp and Foursquare may have just become:

Privacy Implications

For many of us, you’re so hot on the new technology and the marketing potential, that you’re more interested in how to get a business kit then this boring section on how the service affects your privacy. Google probably stores more information about you then any other online company, particularly those of us who use services such as Google Voice, Gmail, Google AdWords, Google Analytics, Google Checkout, Google Places, and Google Docs (where do you store and share your business login information?). Add Google Hotpot to the mix, or Latitude if you’ve had the service active in the past, and now Google hears and reads your conversations, crawls your documents, knows your web traffic data, and knows where you are in near real-time.

Of course, it’s unrealistic to imagine that Google would actually formulate an algorithm (or allow the government to) specifically create inferences about your intentions or persona. That would be something from The Minority Report, which was just a movie, right?

Scan This Into Your NFC App

Whatever you decide to do will affect your ability to remain competitive online. Google retains a very high market share in search (66% and growing). That’s enough to make us yelp with anxiety. Pun definitely intended.

We took a trip down to Santa Ana to visit our friends at JMD Marketing Group. Watch the video above to learn more about JMD and what they offer from beginning to end when it comes to Local SEO Services and Web Development. This video features Steve Wiideman and JMD President Jeff Driscoll discussing results-based SEO.

If you missed the last Internet Marketing Strategies for 2010 webinar we did on February 4th, we’ve posted it here for you to view. Local Search Engine Optimization is one of the main topics of Search Marketing at the moment. As stats fly in from the search engines, comScore, and other sources, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that many searches performed online or from a mobile device have a local intent.

In fact, according to DM News in 2009, 35% of all local searches do have a local intent. Google made some major moves in 2009 with their universal search results by including maps in non-geographic searches, launching “Place Pages”, and giving local businesses the ability to see data such as impressions, visits, directions viewed, and more. Local SEO is without a doubt becoming more of a necessity then a want, and in some cases can even be a business-killer.

Case in point, I have spending a great deal of my time working with the good folks over at Local Splash where I get to hear a lot of conversations between customer service and customers. I recall a conversation where a new customer signed up who had hired someone else to manage his local listings. He was in hysterics about his loss in ranking and was looking to us to restore it. My first thought was, “calm down dude, it’s just a local maps placement, not organic or paid search”. Well apparently he was #1 organically and he did have AdWords running, yet he was still distressed. As it turned out, he had been earning well over $10,000 per month from calls sourced from his local ad and he had the data to prove it.

The Customer Service rep passed the customer over to one the Local SEO Experts who optimized the customer’s categories, adjusted some of the business data, added attribution to prove that we were the ones making changes, then BAAM! within an hour the customer was right back at the top and a happy camper. I asked the rep who did the calibrations if he could do that for any listing, and the answer I got was “not all listings, but many of them”. Wow, now that’s awesome!

Take a look at the video above and learn how you can make some of those same changes to your business profiles on Google Local Business Center, Yahoo! Local and Bing Local to start getting higher placement in the maps sections of the search engine results.

Please do comment and ask questions below. We always answer.

As you may have read on a previous post we did, business reviews are on the top 10 list of David Mihm’s Top Local Ranking Factors, a study that included a handful of the SEO industry’s top Local SEO Experts.

Reputation is important to Google, but we all know that reviews can be faked, which reduce the ranking power of this known local SEO tactic. I believe it’s not the actual number of reviews that influence the ranking but instead it’s the click-through rate (CTR) created by the user’s trust of the business holding those reviews.

Think about it: You have 2 minutes to search and make a call, because like the rest of the world you have a life to live. In that first Google, Yelp, or online yellow pages (OYP) search you see 10 listings and one of them has far more 5 star ratings than the rest. Which would you choose?

Google has already admitted that the greater part of their paid search algorithm is Quality Score, which is most impacted by CTR. I also know from experience that CTR helps sustain organic ranking (not links or content, which are the factors that get you to page 1). Based on the pattern of what Google considers to be relevant to ranking, why wouldn’t CTR be just as important in local/maps ranking?

How to Get Business Reviews

There are a million and two ways to get positive business reviews. The easiest is to simply ask for them. Local Splash launched a webpage over the past weekend that offers businesses a template for creating their own postcard/review card, which can be stapled to receipts or handed out prudently to get the best possible reviews from happy customers. Visit Get Business Reviews to download the template and to see a list of all the major business review websites.

Rotating the review cards could help level out the distribution of reviews being performed and the cost can be whatever coupon/discount/offer you might already have in play in your offline advertising efforts.

Getting business reviews is one of many factors that could improve how much traffic a website receives as a direct result of higher ranking within local search engines and business directories. Be sure to also include your address on your website and do some research on competitors who are also being found where you want to be.

For more information on business reviews, visit Get Business Reviews, for more information on local SEO, take a look at the great content at LocalSplash.tv!

The skill required to get higher ranking in local business listings and maps is called Local Search Engine Optimization and involves a complex formula that one should not try to attempt on their own. The three largest local search engines are listed below in order of audience.

The Most-Used Local Search Engines

• Google Local Business Center (GLBC)
• Yahoo! Local
• MSN Live Search Maps

How to Get High Ranking in Local Search Engines

The simple answer to obtaining high placement in these results is that is there is no simple answer. Unfortunately, there are systems and data validation criteria that a local business must pass before high local rankings can be achieved.

Secret: The local search engines already know about your business, whether you are listed or not.

Why is Local SEO So Complicated?

So why then is it so complicated to do local search engine optimization? Because existing and being a good search result are two completely different animals. Local search engines use dozens, if not hundreds of different sources that influence the ranking. These sources should all validate with the data submitted by the local business seeking placement in the search results.

Additionally, each business niche has a number of directories or authoritative “Web References” that appear (in Google Local Business Center for example) under the Web Sites section of the local business listing. By calculating the frequency of these Web References, one can make an inference on which Web References matter to GLBC and other local search engines.

Then there are local business reviews which also play a role in ranking, but not exclusively. In Organic SEO, the magic formula is Relevancy + Popularity = High Ranking, or in English: Good Content, SEO, and CTR + Quality Inbound Links = High ranking. In Local SEO, however, the formula (in English) is High Frequency Web References + Positive Reviews = High Ranking.

Use a Leading Local SEO Company First

Still want to try this yourself? I didn’t think so.

Try Local Splash to get your feet wet with a local search engine optimization program that involves trusted data feeds, directory/visibility frequency, and positive user feedback. With thousands of current customers and a formula I’ve seen with my own two eyes, Local Splash is the perfect solution to perfect placement in local search engine results.

Click Here to Visit LocalSplash.com

Our friends over at SearchEngineLand.com offered a great tutorial on how to get multiple listings and ranking within the 10-Box of the local search engine results as well as in Google Maps, Yahoo! Local and other local searches.

The three principles to muliple local listings are simple:

• Get a physical address and (if applicable) phone number in each area
• Create links and content focussed on the cities you want placement in
• Submit your listings to multiple business databases

However, before you venture off on two months of manual implementation and submission, I strongly recommend considering the outsourcing alternative. I’ve seen conversion rates improve with better web design and content, I really have seen it with my own eyes.

If you are driving traffic, don’t have your 17 year-old nephew build your website (it is afterall a marketing tool, not a brochure), have an expert designer build your website with MarketingSherpa.com best practices. This way, once you get the traffic, you have a much higher probability of turning those visitors into clients, and Google will reward your new lower bounce rate with higher ranking as well.

STEP 1:

Do it right the first time, get your website up to par with all the fundamental SEO best practices using Digital Eye, the best web graphics and tableless web design firm I have ever had the pleasure of working with. Be sure to specify the need for city visibility based on the physical addresses (PMB or otherwise) to set the perfect landscape for local placement.

STEP 2:

Don’t blow an entire month manually submitting your business listings to thousands of databases with hopes of influencing Google Maps and Google Local Business Results. Especially when firms like Relevant Ads, a local search engine optimization company, has already built half a decade worth of datafeeds that are trusted by companies such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Yelp, Clush, Superpages, Localeze and InfoUSA. Be sure to create one Relevant Ads account for each business location to get the most from the automated datafeeds and monthly monitoring.

STEP 3:

Get others to help you sell your product using an Affiliate Marketing Service such as Sulut and/or Hydra Network.

Combined, and in sequence, this strategy will allow you to have a high-converting website, promenant local placement in the search engines, and will open the flood gates to affiliates who will sell your product for a commission.

By the way, if you aren’t already following me in Twitter, I’m at http://www.twitter.com/seosteve. Happy searching!