by Gloria Dufield, Marketing Specialist on January 10, 2012 at 2:25PM
Peter Krasilovsky of the Kelsey Group spoke with Maponics CEO Darrin Clement yesterday about the future of directories in local search, and how location factors into their business model. Maponics serves most of the largest online directory players by providing high-quality neighborhood and other geo data to power location-based searches.
One trend that directories – which have a fairly traditional business model – are obviously struggling with is how to incorporate discovery (i.e., mobile search, social media, and deals/coupons) into their model. As Darrin says in the interview, many are simply bolting on features, when it might be more prudent to rebuild platforms from the ground up. This reluctance to revamp is allowing newer players to claim more of the business. In fact, the leaders in mobile search, social media, and coupons/deals are using Maponics data to do just that as they master the delivery of non-search based geo-relevant content.
Geofence data from Maponics includes predefined boundaries that represent the way real consumers think about the world. With them, the entire search and discovery paradigm can reflect the on-the-ground geography familiar to consumers. In addition to struggling with the discovery-side of the equation – many second tier directories are also flagging because they skip the geo step altogether, or rely on lower quality “free” geo data that is simply inadequate for professional grade applications.
You can read the BIA/Kelsey post here.
by Guest Blogger: Andrew Shotland, LocalSEOGuide.com on June 22, 2011 at 11:37AM
I don’t have to tell you that the local search industry is growing like crazy. The competition for ranking in Google and other search engines is getting particularly fierce as more and more entrants take the field. And with the growth of smartphones, you now have to worry about your mobile rankings too. While it sounds scary, there are still plenty of opportunities for smart marketers to use data to outfox their competition when it comes to local SEO.
In local, most companies are still playing with cities and states as the base of their main keywords. For example, every yellow pages site out there has a URL called “New York City Restaurants” but not nearly as many are targeting neighborhood-specific queries. If you search Google right now, you’ll see about 1.2MM URLs in its index that target “New York City Restaurants”, but only about 4,000 that target “Tribeca Restaurants”. And if you looked for URLs that targeted similar queries for zip codes or nearby landmarks, you would see similar small numbers.
So what does this mean to you? One of the keys to playing the long-tail local SEO game is to expand your “keyword footprint” by providing URLs on your site that target niche queries such as neighborhood and zip code searches. And the fewer sites that target these queries, the easier it is to rank well for them. Now it can be tricky to add that much content to your site and get it indexed and ranked properly, but if you do not have the content, you have no chance of ranking.
In mobile, we are seeing Google in particular showing results in tighter and tighter clusters around the location of the mobile browser. This means that to rank well for mobile queries your website/URL needs to be showing signals to Google that it is in fact close to the location of the person with the phone. One way to do this is to use highly specific keywords that reference the desired location such as a neighborhood.
While SEO is an ever-evolving game, if you don’t have the data, you’re not even in the ballpark.
LocalSEOGuide is Andrew Shotland’s blog about local search engine optimization and local marketing trends. Andrew provides “national” and local seo services to enterprise-level sites, startups and small businesses around the world.
