How Did I Optimize For Local SEO? 
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Posted by: Joe: Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 | 
The search landscape continues to mutate and Google devises new curveballs to throw at SEO’s, webmasters, and website owners. Therefore, what I call the “echoes” you create in the web will continue to become increasingly important for search rankings especially for people looking to rank in the local results.
From my own experience I have noticed that trying to get into Google’s coveted local map results is quite a different animal compared to traditional SEO. For example, Exclusive Concepts has been working with a law office that ranks for many competitive terms in their niche. A few months ago this attorney made it a priority for us to get him listed in the Google maps results for his key term/city. No problem, right?
The problem with the Google local listings is that it is still such a new technology that I am not sure even Google knows the best way to rank these sites. Plus, there is so much contradictory information on the web that I honestly did not know where to start. The good news is, we eventually got the client listed in the Google local map results and here is how we did it.
- Luckily for us the Law Office has a location near center city. As there is a buzz going around the internet that Google weighs this factor heavily it was important to have this to start with.
- Next, I began submitting the client to every possible yellow page directory on the web. It may seem tedious and repetitive but I believe this adds to what I call the echo effect.
- After that, the most obvious step is to create an account in the Google local business center. It wouldn’t hurt to somehow acquire a few reviews as well once this profile has been created. You can do this by either asking your patrons or offering some sort of incentive for a review.
- Next, we submitted the client to the yahoo local directory.
- Finally, while performing a back link analysis on my client’s competitors I noticed that several of them were included in an industry directory for lawyers. Not only was this a PR5 law directory but it also gave several “followed” links back to the clients website. Within a couple weeks, our client’s law firm was listed in the local results. A celebration ensued.
It is hard to pinpoint which actions were effective and which were not as they were all done relatively at the same time. But one thing is for sure is that it worked and it was no easy task.
