The Future of Local Search: 5 Layers of Local

Local search is broken. To improve your local search strategy for both now and the future, you need to understand the growing importance of local data, personalization, emerging technologies, new transaction methods, and delivery.

During a session at SES San Francisco, The Future of Local Search: 5 Layers of Local, Gregg Stewart (@greggstewart), president of Geary LSF explored the five layers of local:

• Data
• Algorithm
• Interface
• Transaction
• Delivery

Here are details of each different layer and how this is going to affect your local strategy both now and in the future.

The 5 Layers of Local Search

1. Data

Data should be synced across all platforms and sites.

The currency in local is a lot messier than the currency for SEO (backlinks). Name, address, and phone number, referred to as NAP, is the currency for local, and even something that seems this easy can be confusing.

Let's say your company is located on West Garfield St. What happens if you just put W Garfield St. or West Garfield Street? There are hundreds of data points for local (inventory, pricing, promotion), so when we look at data it's a very complex issue that is going to remain a big part of local search in the future.

Takeaway: This information isn't easy like it is when working with a URL, so NAP needs to be synced across all platforms and sites. Work on citation building and monitor your ratings and reviews. Check all of your business listings (Yahoo Local, Google Places, etc.) as well as distribution networks (Yext, Localeze, etc.). and make changes as needed to keep your NAP information consistent.

2. Algorithm

Algorithm varies based on device and platform, so you need to focus on data and distribution even further when making improvements.

What consumers want when searching for a local business is proximity and relevance, but we're not quite there when talking about the algorithm. Over 60 percent of people say they want reviews and ratings to pick businesses, but only 20 percent of people actually do because there just isn't enough content. They want a rich data experience, but today's reality doesn't really support that.

Stewart gave an example of a search query for "brain surgeons in San Francisco." When you dig deeper into the results page you actually see that "car accident attorneys" comes up and has you wondering: Do I really want to trust a search that pulls up car accident attorneys for a brain surgeon? Consider the screenshot from the presentation:


Takeaway: The future will be a lot more personalized than it is today. Today we're putting out mass information, but tomorrow it will be customized better for users. It's also worth noting that algorithm does vary by platform and device, so you need to put a greater focus on data and how you're distributing your content and message.

3. Interface

Devices are continuing to shrink, which fuels the need for responsive design.
Interface means understanding which devices your brand is being activated on, and you can't take a one-size-fits-all solution. According to comScore, there has been a 41 percent increase in the number of people who use their smartphones for local search. Tablets are growing at an even faster pace, already with 100 million device owners.

Takeaway: It's also important to realize that there are many different emerging technologies such as Google Glass and other wearables. Responsive web design is going to be incredibly important in the future as all of these different devices begin to grow in popularity.

4. Transaction

There is now an increased ability to capture data.

We're seeing rapid growth in the adoption of self-service check outs and devices that help you check out a customer on a cell phone or tablet. With things like GoPayment, more businesses are starting to turn cell phones and iPads into cash registers.

Sometimes companies will even do in-store mapping based on the GPS in smartphones. Transaction is something we're moving toward, so that adds another layer onto something that we need to understand as marketers and/or business owners.


Takeaways: New transaction methods give us the ability to improve customer service, become more efficient, and increase our ability to capture data. The better you can understand how these new methods of transaction work, the easier it will be to improve your local business.

5. Delivery.

There isn't much new in the way of delivery, but we're getting smarter.
Stewart stressed the idea of ROBO --> BODO, or research online buy offline --> buy online deliver offline. The focus is different now because delivery is highly localized. You have to understand route dynamics.

Takeaway: You should focus on street by street then neighborhood by neighborhood, not market by market. Use delivery as a differentiator in order to really win in the future.

How to Win in the Future of Local Search

Our biggest problem today is that we aren't agile enough, Stewart said. Data and algorithm are both opportunity areas where most brands are not taking advantage. We have lots of data and we just don't know what to do with it.

The key is to prototype and deploy – what didn't work 6 months ago could very well work now. If you say "I tried that" then you have to make sure you go back and try that again.

You also want to keep in mind the idea that the local marketplace changes quickly, so if you have to plan an annual budget you should set aside extra dollars and be prepared. Innovation, testing, and budgeting require agility.

The Local Search Wars

Howard Lerman (@Howard), CEO of Yext, continued from where Stewart left off, breaking up the five layers of local into winners and losers, but first the backstory on the war.

A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away…

There is a huge war going on regarding local search, and the cause of that war is simple: It's because of mobile. We have huge platforms fighting for mobile dominance – Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yelp – and location is the key.

If you look at the top iPhone apps, those that aren't games all use location services. You therefore have to offer both developers and users outstanding location and mapping services if you want to win the war.

The five layers of local discussed above can also work as the five battlegrounds of the local search wars. So who's winning and who is losing these battles?

1. Data: Winners & Losers

Location data is not a file that can be sent on a CD. It is now a live cloud of always changing information, so the key to winning the battle is being self-sustaining. Those who are self-sustaining have an advantage.

Location data also makes it possible to merge different sources together. For example, Google bought Waze and Facebook partnered with Yext.

Winners: Nokia, Google, Foursquare, Facebook
Losers: Groupon, Apple, Amazon

The winners and losers are quite surprising (it's not often you see Apple in a "loser" category). Nokia's business is basically all location data now whereas Groupon and Amazon aren't location data but rather product data.

2. Algorithm: Winners & Losers

You can win this battle with expertise in search and hordes of data. Again we see Apple in a losing category, and what is interesting here is the idea that Yahoo is its own winner because they don't outsource local to Microsoft. Smart move.

Winners: Microsoft, Google, Yahoo
Losers: Apple, Groupon

3. User Interface: Winners & Losers

Winning this battle means having control of proprietary OS, real-time traffic data, and excellent design and imaging technology. The social places have a huge disadvantage because it is basically all a directory. Consider the victories:

Winners: Nokia, Apple, Google
Losers: Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare

Facebook needs a UI and not a social network to push it into a win, and Yelp looks the same as it did 10 years ago (not to mention they use Google Maps and not their own system). Foursquare uses Google Maps.

4. Transaction: Winners & Losers

The winners here are going to be those at the bottom of the purchasing funnel. Traditional search engines lose this battle because a searcher will start there but not finish there.

Winners: Groupon, Amazon, Yelp, DemandForce, Square
Losers: Google, Yahoo, Bing

5. Delivery: Winners & Losers

The key to winning here is simple: proprietary distribution network. If you control the delivery of the service you will win this battle (even if you don't control the upfront search). Facebook loses, for example, because they only offer virtual gifts, which of course isn't a real delivery.

Winners: Amazon, Groupon, Walmart, Target
Losers: Apple, Facebook, Google

So who is the winner of the local search wars? According to Howard, it's you the consumer who is the winner. We are the primary beneficiaries. Hopefully in the future we will see a social map from Facebook or a product map from Amazon, but only time will tell.

What Do You Think About the Future of Local?

What do you think about the five layers of local? Do you think any companies belong in a different category when it comes to the local search wars? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Original Article Post by Amanda DiSilvestro @ Search Engine Watch

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How to Build Links With Location Relevance

Searcher locality is starting to influence regular search results for almost every query. Because this location is auto-detected you can't omit it from a search. You can only change is to another location within your country.

Even very generic searches are influenced in extreme ways. That is why local links are getting more important, also for your important keywords.

The example below shows how a very generic search for "www" (which I use to get generic authorities from Google) returns "dortmund" specific authorities first, just because my proxy is located there.


You can try your own examples in English on Google.co.uk (Google.com only works for US readers, while UK allows locality for everyone). Set your "Search tools" -> "Search near …" to any UK city to see how that influences the results. https://www.google.co.uk/#changed_loc=1&q=www. Non-UK visitors need to set it manually, but UK visitors aren't able to get results without their locality as a personalization factor.

How Does This Change SEO

To dominate a search theme for every visitor from any location, adding city-specific pages and texts to your website increases your chances. City-specific links also seem to increase your chance, even when you leave out any textual reference to the city on your site.

So what is local link building and how do you acquire locality relevant links? For years I've been active in local link building for websites like job portals, business listings, and other sites that cover multiple locations.

Link Building for Location Relevance

Location relevance needs to be addressed city-by-city. Some cities will have a positive effect on their boroughs and neighboring cities, so it is logical to focus on larger cities first.

When you Google for just a city name you get results like:

• Local government and public services (e.g. town hall, fire department, and local transport).
• Universities and schools.
• Tourist information.
• Sport clubs and associations (e.g. football club, hobby clubs, and churches).
• Local news (e.g. papers, radio, TV).
• Recurring local events (e.g., marathon or conference).

These websites are the most important link partners for a city name. A strategy focused on a service in one city can probably be copied to the same service in each individual city. Here are a few examples:

• Sponsor the local fire department: For a job portal I created information about hiring volunteer and on-call firemen that can be summoned at any time for emergencies and need to train often and hard. This requires a lot of flexibility from employers, so we created a list of attractive employers that would hire on-call people. Many fire department websites added our information and links to their "join the brigade" sections.
• Sponsor a couple of smaller local events: Bigger events might bring you more link value, but their sponsorship can also become very expensive. If link value is the thing you are after you can probably sponsor smaller material things that the organization needs and still get a link in return (just not on the main sponsor page). Smaller events are often much happier with your sponsorship and they don't realize that they can bring you some hard to grasp concept like local link value. You can ask for almost anything on their website.
• Buy old campaign websites: Local government often links to information campaigns that are no longer active and local elections also involve domains with no future use. Contact the current owner and take control over all that link value.

Be Local

Even if you offer your services nationwide, Google has hereby declared being local an important ranking factor. Do whatever you can to cover the most important cities before some smaller local player takes your place. Prepare for the increasing role of local!

Original Article Post by Peter van der Graaf @ Search Engine Watch

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The Mobile Local Opportunity, By the Numbers

The excitement and attention paid to mobile local search continue to ratchet up. But we still haven't seen the equivalent ad dollars follow. Mobile local search is now $1.3 billion in the U.S., according to BIA/Kelsey, but that pales in comparison to the overall $132 billion local ad pie.

Panning back from mobile local search, the broader U.S. mobile ad market – including display, video, and SMS – is $5.4 billion, compared to a $40 billion online ad market. This slower than expected advertiser adoption is represented in Mary Meeker's famous slide that shows mobile share of media time spent (12 percent) outstripping it's share of ad dollars spent (3 percent).

In supply and demand terms, that has led to an oversupply of ad inventory (represented by the usage) relative to demand (ad dollars). This has kept mobile ad rates depressed, which is great for early advertisers who get undervalued ad inventory. But it isn't so great for mobile publishers and media companies looking to monetize mobile apps and sites.

This is one reason behind Google's enhanced campaigns, which have gotten lots of coverage here on SEW, including a few of my previous columns. Pushing more advertisers – especially SMB laggards – into mobile will improve these supply and demand economics that have erstwhile tempered mobile search's revenue potential. We're already seeing higher CPCs.

Panning Back

But there are other factors contributing to advertisers' slow adoption of mobile; and in publishers' sometimes disappointing results with mobile monetization. Equally in search and in other forms of mobile advertising (display and rich media), this results from mobile publishers, advertisers, and ad networks simply measuring the wrong things. In other words, campaign objectives, ad targeting strategies, even ad copy, are misaligned.

There's a certain desktop way of thinking that has plagued the mobile ad environment in its adolescence. That's opposed to the native and "ground up" thinking required for an inherently different form factor, use case, and content delivery paradigm.

It isn't the first time that's been said, but we're seeing new evidence of its effect, and a greater demarcation of campaign strategies. There are lots of KPIs supporting winning strategies such as ad performance and logical ROI assessment. But another correlation that hasn't really been explored is mobile company valuations.

Pre-enhanced campaigns, Google's stock price was shaky due to CPC declines. Those resulted from a continued user migration to mobile where bid pressure and CPCs are lower. Facebook faced something similar – at least before its recent Q2 earnings announcement when it proved that a more native mobile ad strategy was finally bearing fruit.

Others like Millennial Media have likewise faced investor unease due to doubts surrounding entrenched footing in traditional mobile display among other factors (and then there's Velti). A move toward a more native and intent-driven mobile ad formats like Facebook, Google, and a handful of others is how this could turn around.

More specifically, premium ads will result from higher performance. And one of the highest performance-driving factors will be effective location targeting a la xAd. That's not just geotargeting, but a holistic location strategy, including things like ad copy and tangible calls to action like phone calls and directions.

In addition to those KPIs proving out as we speak, another supporting point for location – back to valuation – is a proxy for sustained valuations in the more mature desktop space. There, we're seeing lots of growth, positive earnings, and strong market caps from local players like Yelp, Angie's List, and several others.

Could this be a leading indicator for where long-term value lies with mobile companies? If so, will the effect be even more pronounced in a such a medium where there are even greater ties to location?

Zooming In

So what are some examples of mobile local's growth? Mobile local ad network xAd has lots of good data.

From the campaign activity on xAd's network, geo-precise ad targeting increasing 27 percent to 58 percent year over year. Geo-precision includes granular geo-fencing and geo-specific behavioral relevance.

As mentioned above, things such as ad copy and calls to action are also growing in prominence and showing clear performance deltas. This continues to be joined by emerging mobile-first tactics from xAd and other innovators in mobile local advertising, such as geo-conquesting.


A recent Pinkberry mobile ad campaign showed some of these tactics in action. The campaign's foot-traffic objectives aligned with a 1 mile geofence strategy, promotion-rich creative, and action-oriented analytics. The result was a 2x increase in the Pinkberry's benchmark, achieved within just two weeks (more details here).

As this all develops, winning strategies will be native to mobile and oriented around user intent. In that way, they'll have lots of parallels with search. But instead of clicks, it will be about things like store visits – which Google is working on in lots of ways (i.e., local extensions, Wallet). Foot traffic is the new traffic.

Article Post @ Search Engine Watch

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Local Search: How to Rank on Google in 2013 [Survey]

Moz has released the 2013 Local Search Ranking Factors, a survey of local experts that examines general, specific, and negative ranking factors. It has some interesting data about what local search marketers are utilizing and discovering when it comes to local search results.

When it comes to overall ranking factors, page place signals are considered the most important. This includes things like appropriate categories, keywords in business titles and proximity. This should come at no surprise and does highlight how important it is to ensure that when you're listing your business locally that you're selecting the most appropriate business categories as well as the keywords content.

The Local Search Ranking Factors ranks the most important ranking factors as well as the most important competitor difference makers, the things that make your site stand out more versus your competitors. For the foundational ranking factors, meaning the things you can do for your local listings, if these were the top ten:

1. Proper Category Associations
2. Physical Address in City of Search
3. Consistency of Structured Citations
4. Quality/Authority of Structured Citations
5. HTML NAP Matching Place Page NAP
6. Quantity of Structured Citations (IYPs, Data Aggregators)
7. Domain Authority of Website
8. Individually Owner-verified Local Plus Page
9. City, State in Places Landing Page Title
10. Proximity of Address to Centroid

For the things that set your local site apart for the competitors, the top 10 are:

1. Quality/Authority of Structured Citations
2. Quality/Authority of Inbound Links to Domain
3. Quantity of Reviews by Authority Reviewers (e.g.Yelp Elite, Multiple Places Reviewers, etc)
4. Consistency of Structured Citations
5. Quantity of Citations from Industry-Relevant Domains
6. Quantity of Native Google Places Reviews (w/text)
7. Domain Authority of Website
8. Quality/Authority of Unstructured Citations (Newspaper Articles, Blog Posts)
9. Quantity of Citations from Locally-Relevant Domains
10. Page Authority of Places Landing Page URL

It definitely stresses just how important the quality of your reviews are, but also the quality of the reviewer, such as Yelp Elite reviewers, which helps give more weight to refuse attributed to a person, as opposed to what could just be positive reviews from the owner or negative reviews from a competitor.

What is surprising on both lists is the domain authority of a website. While domain authority has been a major part of normal SEO, it is a bit more problematic with local businesses, especially with the number of new businesses starting up and others changing names.

Domain authority is something that a lot of local businesses are lacking, especially because many of them are newer businesses that depend heavily on local listing traffic. According to the survey, your website's domain authority could play a significant part in the ranking factors and difference makers.

Moz also lists 30 negative ranking factors, but most of them are obvious and expected, such as a false business location, keyword stuffing in the business name, incorrect category listing, and multiple place pages for what appears to be the same business.

There are also many interesting comments made by local SEO marketers on what they find is important or detrimental to local SEO. You can read entire report here.

Article Post @ Search Engine Watch

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