Posts on State of Search about ‘Local Search’

Discussion: what does the new Places Search mean?

Last week Google decided to take a completely different route when it comes to local. With the roll out of Place Search Google made huge changes to the way they are presenting local results. The “7 Pack” is gone, the map moved to the right, local results now are dominating the page on specific searches.

Google made these changes with a purpose. But why? Is Google aiming to go local all the way? Or is there something else? What do you think?

One thing which is remarkable is that Google has made the map “floating” which means that if you scroll down, the map scrolls down too, overlapping the ads…:

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A Local SEO scam

This is a bit of a rant against a certain type of SEO spam that I’ve recently come across. A big client of mine had a whole subsite full of the sort of spam I’ll be describing below, and I had to fight hard to get it removed. It was sold to my client by a third party company under the pretence of “locally relevant search engine worthy content”.

According to this third party company’s website they are “helping businesses find local customers through targeted online advertising.” Nothing wrong with that, at first glance… (more…)

State of Search radioshow – episode 9: the local show

This week the show, which was hosted by Roy in Bas’s holiday week, was all about local. Roy invited Dutch SEOs Arjan Snaterse and Martijn Beijk to discuss local matters.

Different topics concerning local were discussed: how do you set up your site for local, how does Google Places work, Monetization of Maps and much more.

The shownotes are below, all the links can also be found in the special delicious feed. (more…)

Google Local Business Listings – Will it ever be fixed?

If you “follow me” and read my blogposts (rants) you might have noticed I seem to have gotten myself into a “ranting niche” with Google Local Business Listings, and today when sitting down to write a blogpost it’s yet again Google Local that I have “a bone to pick” with.

Google Local Business Listings is Going Places (see what I did there)
First of all,  it’s now officially not called Google Local Business listings anymore, nope, it’s called Google Places.  Yep that’s right “great” name change. But if your read the linked article it’s also some new functionalities with this re-branding, albeit slightly boring updates.

In the last 6 months I’ve taken a particular interest in Google Local (damn it, it’s going to take some doing getting used to calling it “Google Places”), one of the reasons my interest has grown is admitately, entirely selfish. One of my largest clients (a hotel chain) are ideal candidates for local business listings. It was about last July we started optimising their local business listings and we saw immense growth, not just in traffic but in actual conversions. This has now become a central part of their search marketing strategy, in fact it’s kind of changed our the entire initial strategy. Local has been a goldmine for relevant traffic for this client and the focus has been turned to primarily local. (more…)

How to Use Multiple Sitemaps on One Domain for Geo-targeting

sitemap-circles

Working with websites that targets several countries is always challenging, especially from an SEO point of view, people just don’t seem to get that doing SEO in different countries goes way beyond different languages. I would go as far as to say there are probably more website struggling with geo targeting issues in one form or another than it is websites that are all ok and ranking in all the relevant countries they are targeting.

If you can imagine that the different Google TLD’s are people, you have Francois (Google.fr), Ingrid (Google.no), Helmut (Google.de) and so on. They all want to rank the most relevant websites highly  in their relevant countries. How do they do that? Well, they need to find a way to separate the listings, making sure that a website selling iPhones but only to Helmut’s friends doesn’t end up on Ingrid’s list. (more…)

SEO For Europe Is More Than Just Using Different Languages

europe_vs_us

This post was originally posted by Bas van den Beld on Searchengineland

If you ask any search marketer what the main issue is when trying to optimize your website(s) for Europe he will tell you: language. But there is more to keep in mind when trying to win over Europeans.

Europe consists of fifty countries. If you think that means you will have to optimize for fifty languages, you’re wrong. The European countries which are part of the European Union together already have 23 official languages. But that’s just the European Union. Count in the rest of Europe and you can add many more. (more…)

The Curious Case Of Google’s Bizarre UK Search Results

This post was originally posted by Bas van den Beld on Searchengineland

In Europe, SEOs are wracking their brains over what Google is up to in the UK. The Twitterverse has been buzzing over the last three months about Google’s strange search results, and many bloggers have addressed the problem since early June.

What’s happening? Last June several UK SEOs started to notice changes in the UK SERPS. At first it seemed as if the Vince Update, which hit the US last February, caused the change in rankings. But in the UK there seemed to be more than just Vince affecting results. (more…)

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