Archive for July, 2010

Getting to know you: Elise Redlin-Cook

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

In the next edition of our monthly VM interview series, I sat down with Vertical Measures’ content strategist Elise Redlin-Cook to discuss why she’s the glue guy that makes Vertical Measures tick, her baby girl Coya and her former life training tigers.

Elise Redlin-cookMichael Schwartz: You are now the first three-time winner of Vertical Measures’ Employee of the Month award. How does this three-peat compare to other life accomplishments?

Elise Redlin-Cook: Well, to be honest, it’s a little awkward…since in my opinion there are other team members who deserve it just as much if not more. Although, it IS really nice to be recognized by both my peers and superiors. EOM here at Vertical Measures is determined by the full office participating in an anonymous vote and it’s incredible to be recognized by a team of such talented people. I’m astounded by their creativity, ingenuity, and expertise on a daily basis and am so relieved that they haven’t voted me off the island yet.

Michael: How would you describe your job responsibilities at VM?

Elise: Ah, now THAT’s a tough one! My title is Content Strategist, and I struggle to effectively define that role every day. The best definition of the role that I’ve found thus far, was coined by Rachel Lovinger when she described content strategy as using “words and data to create unambiguous content that supports meaningful, interactive experiences.” I’d add that at its core, content strategy isn’t necessarily about content inventories, copywriting, publishing or editorial calendars, social media, marketing messaging or governance policies although admittedly these things often consume my day. To me, it’s more of a state of mind. One that has a direct impact on the way we at Vertical Measures do business. We know that we must clearly focus on how we create, deliver, and govern our content because more than ever before in history, content has become one of a business’s most valuable assets. Luckily, I get to do this with the help of an outstanding group of specialists with expertise ranging from search engine optimization, copywriting, public relations, conversion optimization, social media marketing, analytics, and so on. All these disciplines make up the pieces to the puzzle. I simply facilitate the act of putting it all together.

Michael: As a board member of the Arizona Interactive Marketing Association (AZIMA), what kind of things do you do to make that group tick?

Elise: At AZIMA, I’m the VP of Administration and my duties on a monthly basis range from managing the website content, including the AZIMA blog, to working the registration desk at the monthly social events. I’m also on the Marketing/PR committee so, I take part in creating and distributing the AZIMA marketing messaging such as the e-blasts, press releases, social media messaging, and so on. Oh and I better not forget, I order the food for the monthly Board of Director’s meeting each month, and I’m darn good at it…I might add!

Michael: Around the office you are known as VM’s glue guy, which kind of means you do all the little things to keep the office humming. What does that title mean to you?

Elise: Actually, I must admit after looking up who the “glue guy” is (I’m not terribly familiar with sports terminology) promptly after hearing it, I was totally flattered. I determined long ago, that for whatever reason, being the team “star” wasn’t in the cards. The spotlight just doesn’t suit me. Yet, I just love being a part of whatever I can and often it’s the little or seemingly menial tasks that others miss or avoid. To me it just feels natural to hop in and take care of them, if I can. I get real satisfaction out of seeing others, and projects in general meet success and it’s a good feeling to know that I’ve been assisted, in whatever way possible.

Michael: For a while you were widely known as ERC5K thanks to your voluminous 5,000-plus Twitter following. What’s your secret to building such a robust following?

Coya CookElise: First of all, I don’t know how WIDELY I was known for this but if I did have the opportunity to give some advice to someone just getting started on Twitter or in social media in general I would say one thing: just care. By that, I mean care about the people that you follow and who follow you, who you meet in real life and who you don’t because they are REAL, too. I think people can sense when someone actually cares, and ultimately that’s why people tweet to begin with… because they hope someone CARES about what they have to say. So, I care about their tweets and they seem to return the favor and care about mine. Law of attraction, I guess.

Michael: You are also known around the office as having the cuuuuuuuuuutest 3-year-old in the world. Tell the people a little about Coya Cook.

Elise: Ah, yes…she IS mighty cute, isn’t she? All I can really say about her is that she is the reason I wake up every morning. Since I was blessed with having her in my life I’ve found new drive to be a better person in general. I’m not sure that there are even words to describe my devotion to helping her succeed in life, and trying to make the world she lives in a little better.

Michael: When I first met you, you told me you were approaching your 10-year wedding anniversary. I’ve known you for over a year and you still haven’t been with your husband Jeremy for that long yet! How long exactly have you been married and why all the confusion?

Elise: I’m starting to feel that this more of a roast, than an interview! ;) The confusion is mainly related to the fact that I can’t do math properly in my head. We were married on New Year’s Eve, 2001. Though, I’ve been with my husband since we were 17 years old, so we don’t really pay too much attention to when we actually got married. We lived together for years prior and not too much changed after other than a few extra letters on my last name.

Elise Redlin-CookMichael: In your other life before VM you used to train tigers. What was that experience like?

Elise: It was both the most amazing, and one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done for a number of reasons. It was the realization of a long kept dream to work with exotic cats, and when I ended up actually having the opportunity to I found that it really wasn’t what I expected it to be. I realize that I was fortunate because it was an amazing experience, and not many people can say they raised a litter of baby tigers like they were her own. I’ll never forget that. But they grew so quickly that by the end of the six months they far outweighed me by 3-4 times. It was extremely physically and emotionally taxing work. Just on accident they’d come over to show me affection and brush against or snuggle me and I’d be pinned to a fence, bruised and a toe broken. Eventually the negatives began to simply outweigh the positives. So, I moved on.

Michael: Another one of your hobbies is photography. What is it about taking pictures that appeals to you?

Elise: I would love to be a better photographer, and hope that one day I can devote more time to honing that skill! I love taking portraits of people, and capturing honest moments in their lives. The opportunity to tell an entire story with one click just entrances me.

Michael: Finally, what makes you so passionate about Internet marketing?

Elise: I think, above all else is that there is so much opportunity to grow and learn. I’ve been involved in some aspect of technology for the internet or marketing since I returned from working with the big cats in ‘99, and having gotten my degree in business management and marketing it’s seems to be the perfect culmination of all of my interests and skills wrapped up in one big package. I’m thrilled to be able to be a part of the growing interactive marketing community here in Phoenix, that’s for sure!

Michael Schwartz

Michael Schwartz is an Internet marketing strategist at Vertical Measures as well as an accomplished reporter, blogger and editor. He covers the link building beat.

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Links are Proof that Google Loves Us and Wants Us to be Happy

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

So much of SEO success is off-page, which means you must have high-quality links to your site from a variety of places. If you’re new to link building, you probably have some questions regarding this process.

  1. Where should these links come from?
  2. How many links are enough?
  3. What does PageRank actually mean?
  4. What is considered high-quality?
  5. If only PR 10 .edu sites link to me, will I be forever golden in the eyes of Google?

These are tough questions to answer. Even veterans of the link building services industry may have a difficult time explaining the do’s and don’ts to clients in a way that makes complete sense. In fact, at Vertical Measures, we have had the same issue more times than we can count. That’s why we have created an infographic, or “linkfographic” if you will, to better explain the challenge of developing that natural dispersion of links.

If all of this is giving you a headache and you’d rather just give up and have a beer, then this infographic may be the answer to your problems. After much linking and drinking (much more linking), we decided that comparing beer to links makes more sense than you may think. Cheers!

Check out our Linktoberfest infographic!

Jason Hendricks

Jason got his start in search engine optimization with his first company, Tidal Wave Media, and achieved top rankings for his clients and his own websites since 2001 before joining Vertical Measures. He handles technical SEO as well as web development projects for the company.

Calculating Your ROI on Internet Marketing

Monday, July 19th, 2010

If your business is pursuing any form of online marketing, then it is likely that you have tried to work out your return on investment; the amount of sales that you can directly attribute to certain activities versus their costs. Whilst this kind of activity isn’t simple, it is possible to get an approximate figure and justify your online advertisement spend as you move from offline advertising to online, where people are spending an increasing amount of their leisure time.

Like with almost any kind of advertising, the results cannot be wholly measured. In the same way that it is hard to measure the effectiveness of a TV spot or newspaper print advertisement, it can be hard to completely measure the impact of online advertising. For example, web users may see your brand in a number of locations, building up an idea of your business and visiting an offline location as a result.

However, online marketing is more quantifiable than the ‘traditional media’ methods of advertising. With Google Analytics, businesses are able to track visitors from other websites and search engines to get an idea of the amount of traffic and sales that can be attributed to online marketing, depending on the type of internet marketing service being performed.

Before we get into the specifics, first note that to get the best results either e-commerce or goals should be set up correctly in your Analytics program. Even if your site isn’t e-commerce in nature, it should still have clearly defined goals and have a dollar value attached for each conversion. If the goal, or purpose, of your website is to have people sign up for a newsletter, and you know that 1 in every 50 subscribers will purchase a $50 service offline, then you can value each new newsletter subscriber at $1. Without having a dollar value attached, your analytics program can only calculate the number of customers gained, not their value.

Pay Per Click

PPC or Adwords campaigns are the most quantifiable form of advertising and can be easily tracked by linking your Adwords and Google Analytics accounts. This then produces a new report within the ‘Traffic Sources’ section aptly called ‘Adwords’ to review the traffic sent from paid Google listings. By clicking on the ‘Clicks’ tab of any of these reports users can get a complete breakdown of revenue, costs and ROI;

ROIPPCthumb

However, even this information isn’t entirely accurate and needs to be understood in context. What if searchers see your listing and go to your site directly or remember your brand name, for subsequent visits, without clicking on the advert? What about visitors who click the listing, but don’t purchase until several days later on a different computer or having cleared their cookies?

The information is by no means 100% accurate, but it is certainly a good starting point.

Organic SEO

Of course at Vertical Measures we’re more interested in the results of organic listings in search engines (we don’t offer PPC services here), which is trickier if only for the fact that Analytics doesn’t know how much you are spending on your efforts to rank for different keywords. However, if you keep track of how much you are spending on your organic SEO campaign, you can use this data in conjunction with the information in Analytics to get similar data of PPC.

So that you can be sure you’re only looking at organic search traffic, you need to select the ‘Non-paid Search Traffic’ from the Advanced Segments in the top right corner of your screen. This will update every report you look at to include only this information, so be sure to change it back to ‘All Visits’ when you are done.

ROIOrganic1thumb

Now that you are looking at only this information, find the value of this traffic by going to your E-Commerce or Goal Value reports to see the number and value of visits attributable to your organic effort.

You can then get even more granular by looking at individual keywords in the Keyword Report within ‘Traffic Sources’ in the left hand navigation. This report should look very similar to the reports you have for AdWords – only without your costs. Using this data you can see the value of each visit, the number of visits you received and how well they converted. You can then combine this with your separate SEO spending figures to see your cost per click and ROI for each keyword.

ROIOrganic2thumb

However, where it gets difficult is in the long tail, or terms you are not directly targeting. Having great content is likely to bring in traffic from a variety of keywords; don’t neglect to include this in your calculations! If you have been targeting just the keyword ‘desks’ and ‘mahogany desks’ is bringing in traffic, don’t exclude this from your ROI calculations.

In exchange for the slightly less measurable results of organic search results compared to PPC, it does have one huge advantage in that it is a long term strategy that will continue to pay dividends. As we like to say here, PPC is renting the house, SEO is owning the home. Whilst you may spend a lot one month on SEO and not see traffic increase accordingly, being ranked highly in SERPs will last for the foreseeable future and continue to send traffic to your site. You will then continue to receive traffic even if you don’t invest in SEO one month, whereas with PPC once you’ve spent your budget the traffic comes to a grinding halt.

Social Media

Another area of Internet Marketing that many businesses would like to see a measurable return on investment is in their social media efforts. As with PPC and SEO, It is  possible to get a rough idea of how your efforts in this area are performing via Google Analytics. Make sure you are looking at ‘All Visits’ in the Advanced Segments, and then go to the Referring Sites report in Traffic Sources. Next click on the Goal or E-commerce tab for the following information;

ROISocialMediathumb

This report again shows the number of visits, the conversion rate and per visit value, helping you to identify where the best traffic is coming from and understand the return on your investment for your efforts in these areas. When you scan this list of websites look out for not only websites like ‘twitter.com’ but also any URL shorteners or twitter clients such as ‘hootsuite.com’, ‘ht.ly’, and ‘ow.ly’ in the screenshot above.

Again, the area where this kind of quantitative return on investment calculation falls down is that sometimes the rewards of social media aren’t always obvious. Much like TV advertising, the goal in having a strong following on social media is primarily to build brand awareness that may then result in customers knowing your brand to help you to stand out from your competition. Judging your efforts by direct goal conversions alone can be dangerous and lead you to cut back in areas that are meeting their goals.

Conclusion

To conclude, measuring ROI for your internet marketing is possible, but it isn’t an exact science. Like with TV and print advertising of the past, the full rewards are not directly attributable, such as brand awareness and recognition. You also need to fully understand how Google Analytics (or your analytics program) treats campaign conversion attribution (Click here and watch Slide 10).

However, despite these few restrictions, by digging into your analytics you are able to directly attribute revenue to your internet marketing. With information on clicks and sales from PPC, organic search, and social media, you can allocate spending to only the beneficial areas to get the most impact on your bottom line, gaining a competitive advantage over your competitors.

If you would like to see greater ROI on your internet marketing efforts, you could contact us or look at our website marketing services to identify the areas where your online business can be improved.

James Constable

James is a Campaign Manager at Vertical Measures, looking at client’s Internet Marketing from a strategic viewpoint to get them the best possible results for their business needs and budget. His blog posts revolve around strategy, analytics and keyword selection.

SEO Celebrity Look-Alikes

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

The world of Internet Marketing is full of celebrities. From Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz, to Mashable’s Pete Cashmore, our industry boasts some pretty popular folks. We thought it would be fun to match up these celebs with their Hollywood celebrity look-alikes. You be the judge: who is the best pairing below? (poll at the bottom)

Matt Cutts a.k.a. Rick Moranis

matt-cutts-rick-moranis

Matt Cutts is considered the human face of Google.  It’s the perfect setup for a good joke, but we’ll  leave it at that as we prefer to stay on Matt’s good side at all costs. We will say, however, that Matt bears quite a resemblance to the iconic ‘80s movie star Rick Moranis, who starred in films such as Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Cutts to star in Honey I Dropped Your Rankings….?

Rand Fishkin a.k.a. Matthew Broderick

rand-fishkin-matthew-broderick

Known affectionately as “The Wizard of Moz”, Rand Fishkin might well have been separated at birth from a young Matthew Broderick. As the founder of SEOMoz, this yellow-Puma-wearing SEO-er travels around the world sharing his knowledge with fellow search marketers at conferences from Seattle (his hometown) to London, and unlike Ferris Bueller, Rand never takes a day off….

Chris Brogan a.k.a. Seth Rogen

chris-brogan-seth-rogen

The ever so talented Chris Brogan is quite unique on his own, but might just be mistaken for an actor who even bears a similar last name: Seth Rogen. As a bestselling author, social media maven, and all around expert in the search world, Chris has been featured in the WSJ, US News & World Report, and Newsweek. We have no punchline, so we’ll end on this Brogan-Rogen slogan.

Joanna Lord a.k.a. Emmanuelle Chriqui

joanna-lord-emmanuelle-chriqui

Social media and search engine expert Joanna Lord certainly looks like she should grace the covers of magazines, or have an Entourage of her own. With her job based in L.A., the dark haired beauty could easily be mistaken for Emmanuelle Chriqui who also lives in L.A. and plays Sloan on the hit HBO show Entourage.

Pete Cashmore a.k.a. Brad Pitt

pete-cashmore-brad-pitt

The pretty boy of social media, Pete Cashmore, could only be paired with the two time winner of People’s Sexiest Man Alive award, Brad Pitt. Pete Cashmore is the founder and CEO of Mashable.com, a Technorati Top 10 blog about all things in the online world, and was chosen by Forbes magazine as one of the Top 25 Web Celebs. While Brad Pitt’s success came later in life when he turned 30, Pete Cashmore started Mashable at the impressive young age of 19.

Lee Odden a.k.a. Garth Brooks

lee-odden-garth-brooks

As the best-selling solo album artist in the US, Garth Brooks certainly has achieved success in his field. So has his look-a-like Lee Odden, from Top Rank Online Marketing. In the SEO world Lee has taken the industry by storm with his guest blogging, speaking engagements, book contributions, and participation with industry associations like MIMA and SEMPO. He may have friends in low places, but not with low rankings.

Joe Pulizzi a.k.a. Andre Agassi

joe-pullizzi-andre-agassi

Joe Pulizzi, the content marketing evangelist and force behind Junta42 and the book ‘Get Content Get Customers’ bears an uncanny resemblance to the ‘90s tennis powerhouse and ‘Career Golden Slam’ winner Andre Agassi. As well as being a successful author and entrepreneur, Joe is also an accomplished speaker who travels around North America and making quite a racket in the SEO world.

Anne Kennedy a.k.a. Kathy Bates

anne-kennedy-kathy-bates

Not only is Anne Kennedy a search marketing maven, she also could be award winning actress Kathy Bates younger sister. Don’t expect Kennedy to give you Misery, with more than thirty-five years of experience in marketing and PR, she is an industry thought leader and sought after speaker.

Chris Winfield a.k.a. Andy Garcia

chris-winfield-andy-garcia

From the expressive nature of Chris Winfield’s personality- to his hairstyle, the similarities are aplenty when compared to his doppelganger Andy Garcia. Having recently formed the Internet Marketing agency BlueGlass, Chris continues to provide clients with overall marketing strategies in the world of search and social. Did we mention the hair? It’s fist-pumping good.

Aaron Wall a.k.a. Tim McGraw

aaron-wall-tim-mcgraw

The California based founder of leading resource and information trove SEOBook.com made us do a double take. Put a cowboy hat on him, give him a goatee and Aaron Wall would look just like Grammy award winning singer, songwriter, and actor Tim McGraw. You know what happens when you play a country song backwards? You get your rank back, you get your links back, you get your pagerank back….

Arnie Kuenn a.k.a. Dr. Evil

anrie-kuenn-dr-evil

He may look like Dr. Evil, well except he’s missing a Mini-Me sidekick and isn’t stroking a cat named Mr. Bigglesworth, but he’s far from eeeevil. President and founder of Internet Marketing company Vertical Measures, speaker at Pubcon, SMX Advanced, AMA Phoenix, OMS, and more. At this rate he may just take over the SEO world….his only demand? One MILLION backlinks.

Who is your favorite SEO look-alike? Vote in the poll below, and the winning SEO will get $200 donated to the charity of their choice. We’ve even opened up the poll for write ins in case you think there’s a better look-alike pairing out there.

Winner will be announced July 30, voting ends July 29 at 5:00PM (PST).

(Images courtesy of: PicApp.com, Steve Simon, IMDB.com, MyHeritage.com, Google Images, GoodHouseKeeping.com, Sporting-Heros.net, AskMen.com, and TopNews.in)

David Gould

David comes to the Vertical Measures team with over a decade of experience in online development. As the Web & Design Strategist, David is responsible for the look and functionality of the Vertical Measures website, blog and online applications. His programming skills allow him to complement form with function: with a strong technical background, he is able to combine innovative design with dynamic programming. David developed and maintains Vertical Measures’ proprietary project management software, EDWARD, and contributes to the design of the company’s visual branding materials.

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Local Search Optimization Interview with David Mihm

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

David_MihmTo wrap up our Local Search Optimization interview series, I thought it only fitting to get first hand advice from David Mihm of DavidMihm.com and the Director & COO of GetListed.org, an online resource that helps small business owners claim and enhance their listings at major search engines. His 2008 Local Search Ranking Factors, and recently released 2010 version is recognized among the most important studies of Local Search Engine Optimization.

Elise Redlin-Cook: There are just so many local search sites out there. I’d like to know your opinion…Do you see the market continuing to grow, or narrowing down to a few key players?

David Mihm: Unfortunately for small business owners, I see the market continuing to fragment.  15 Miles does an annual study of the space–the most recent version from October 2009 and it seems like each year Google remains below 40% in Local market share…which is pretty astonishing when you consider its dominance in traditional search.  There are a bunch of long-tail players like Superpages, Insider Pages, Citysearch, and Yelp that cumulatively make up a major chunk of the market.  Now, this year, it looks like we’ll be adding Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare to the mix as significant players.  I say it’s unfortunate for small business owners because they’re typically the ones with the fewest resources to devote to online marketing, and it’s truly becoming important to be involved in a lot of different places in Local.  Even before the addition of Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare, I illustrated the complexity of the Local Search Ecosystem last year.

Elise: What would you say are the best free local search sites today?

David: Well, I think we cover most of the big guys on GetListed.org — Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yelp, along with Best of the Web Local — and an even fuller list, for those who have the time, is on that same Local Search Ecosystem page I mentioned earlier.  It’s also important to note which directories and Internet Yellow Pages are ranking well organically for some of the keywords your business is trying to rank for & ensure you have plenty of visibility on those sites.

Elise: How about the best paid local search sites today?

David: 25 x 25 twitter iconAs with any other branch of search marketing, it’s important to track ROI…and in Local, that means tracking ROI across individual verticals (for instance, paid ads on Yelp may be terrific for restaurants but not cost-effective for plumbers) and geographies (Kudzu ads may be great for Atlanta businesses but not so much for Seattlites).  As a general rule, though, three of the most worthwhile places to spend money are on the major data aggregators for local search sites–infoUSA, which has just launched a new product called Express Update, Localeze (enhanced listings only currently available in bulk), and Acxiom–currently only accessible via Universal Business Listing.

Elise: Merchant Circle allows you to add coupons, reviews, blog posts, etc. Will the other local search sites continue to adopt this trend of allowing more user generated content?

David Mihm: I wouldn’t single out MerchantCircle as a shining beacon of customer service, but they surely have done a nice job with their SEO and some of the features you note above help quite a bit with long-tail search traffic.  It’s going to be more important after Google’s MayDay update for IYP’s–already sucking wind since the introduction of the 10-pack–to create as much unique content alongside their business listings as they can.

Elise: Is it more important to be listed on niche sites that are specific to your industry, or the big sites with lots of traffic?

David: Depends completely on the vertical…not only for rankings at Google Maps/Google Universal, but also for the degree to which the particular players have established themselves in a particular market.  For instance, if you’re a hotel and you have a weak presence on TripAdvisor, you’re in serious trouble–both for searches at Google, and on TripAdvisor, because Google relies so heavily on TripAdvisor ratings, reviews, and business data for its own hotel/hospitality index.  There are plenty of longer-tail examples, including HealthGrades.com for doctors and medical professionals, AngiesList.com for plumbers, etc.  You can almost always count on the major IYPs to have a solid presence across multiple verticals, though.

Elise: So, I’ve got to ask…do you see value in the paid listings versus the free listings?

David: I think Google by-and-large has done a nice job with its flat-fee product offerings via Places…including Tags.  I’m not sure that their earlier Local Listing Ads wouldn’t ultimately make them more money, since they essentially guaranteed a slot in/near the 7-pack, but it certainly is easy–and relatively inexpensive–to set up a Tags campaign for a single-location business.  I think the more complex the paid offering, and the more complicated the billing procedures, the harder it is for small businesses to understand what they’re getting.

To answer this question from a marketer’s perspective, again, it’s important to track ROI using your analytics.  On some sites, paid listings might be incredibly worthwhile, but not so much on others.  Experiment frequently and track assiduously.

Elise: If a business doesn’t actually have a brick and mortar location, should they still try to list themselves on local search sites?

David: There’s no solution (PO Box, UPS Store, fake address, etc) that will really work in the long term.  Although Tim Coleman did quite a thought-provoking post recently about some of the difficulties Google may face in combating the latter.  Yes, Google recently started allowing go-to-client and service businesses to include service areas and hide their address, but given the reliance of its algorithm on location information,25 x 25 twitter icon if the only place you’re listing yourself is Google, your chances at ranking are pretty poor.

Elise: That’s the perfect segue into my next question. What would you say are the top local search ranking factors right now?

David: Funny you should ask, given that this year’s Local Search Ranking Factors came out only a couple of weeks ago :D .  Most panelists felt that claiming your listing, having a physical location in the city being searched, categorization, and what I would call traditional citations (from IYPs and data providers) remained at the very top–where they’ve been since I began this survey in 2008.  I was somewhat surprised to see unstructured or non-traditional citations (such as those found in a newspaper article or blog as opposed to another local search site) ranking so highly since those haven’t been showing up for all that long–folks are obviously finding that those mentions of your physical location are critical for ranking, no matter where the search engine spiders find them.

Some of the other traditionally-important factors like keywords-in-business-title and proximity-to-centroid seem to be declining somewhat.  And frankly, I’m a bit surprised that review quality isn’t rated higher by the panel (positive ratings were only #42 out of 58 total positive factors)…but I can’t say I disagree, based on all the local search results I’ve looked at in the past year.

Elise: Well, thanks David. It sounds like I have some reading to do!

If you are interested in learning more about Local Search, check out our our  webinar, “Go Local or Go Home“, tomorrow, on  July 15th at 11:30 a.m. EST (8:30 a.m. PST, 10:30 a.m. CST). In this webinar, attendees will hear from Sarah Moraes, Internet Marketing Specialist, and Jason Hendricks, SEO and Link Acquisition Specialist of Vertical Measures as they explore everything from the basics of setting up a local search listing to what it means for SEO.

Elise Redlin-Cook

Elise is the Content & Marketing Manager at Vertical Measures, an internet marketing company in sunny Arizona providing services ranging from content marketing, to social media marketing, link building, and advanced SEO. She’s fully immersed herself into the world of content marketing and content strategy and is the managing editor of this blog.

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