Although their relative importance is likely to decrease over time, citations – defined as “mentions” of your business — are still the bread and butter of local SEO. In David Mihm’s comprehensive list of Local Search Ranking Factors, citations come in at number four, surpassed only by having a physical address in the city of [...]

Over the past 30 years, California Closet Company has grown from the brainchild of a college student organizing his dorm room closet to a successful business with more than 77 franchise locations. To reach customers across the U.S. and internationally, the company centered their digital marketing strategy on creating locally relevant campaigns. It’s no surprise [...]

Most local search professionals will tell you that citations and site relevance to the target geo are the keys to ranking in local search engine results pages (SERPs). Testing and retesting old methods is part of maintaining SEO strategies so it seemed a smart choice to take a closer look at one of these key [...]

While some in the brick-and-mortar business world still believe that the web is only for global corporations and eCommerce sites, most have come around and realized the importance of online marketing. Of course, knowing how to market your business online isn’t quite so obvious. While there are several best practices, one that we’re focusing on [...]

Google Maps nowadays is full of bad data, or outright spam and scam. Google management seems to not really care that much as these have been around for years. However, there are a few volunteers out there who dedicate uncountable hours to fighting against the spammers. It is almost as the battle of Good vs. [...]

A business owner recently asked me how to go about building positive reviews in a way that would "optimize" their Google Maps listing. This is about as provocative a topic as it gets in the Local Search community, I know, but it’s also an unavoidable subject worth addressing. Search marketers ponder the same "How To" [...]

Local and mobile search is being used more frequently by customers on their smart phones and other devices now more than ever.  As local search becomes more and more prevalent, marketers must ask themselves what can they do to incorporate this marketing strategy into their arsenal. According to a recent release by ComScore, nearly 3 [...]

Our goal to create a digital representation of the real world doesn’t just mean a birds’ eye view through Google Earth, or a street-level view through Google Maps. It means providing a local view as well, and tools like Google Places help people across the globe learn about and connect with the places and businesses [...]

If you’ve worked with Google in the past you’ll know just how hard it is to rank for Google Places for many searches. It’s also apparent how important Google Places have become – they often take up the top parts of the page for a search term. So even if you rank first for a [...]