"Google is getting better at detecting location at a more granular level—even on the desktop. The user is the new centroid." - David Mihm
The history of the centroid
The above quote succinctly summarizes the current state of affairs for local business owners and their customers. The concept of a centroid— a central point of relevance—is almost as old as local search. In 2008, people like Mike Blumenthal and Google Maps Manager Carter Maslan were sharing statistics like this:
"...research indicates that up to 80% of the variation in rank can be explained by distance from the centroid on certain searches."
At that time, businesses located near town hall or a similar central hub appeared to be experiencing a ranking advantage.
Fast forward to 2013, and Mike weighed in again with an updated definition of "industry centroids",
"If you read their (Google’s) patents, they actually deal with the center of the industries … as defining the center of the search. So if all the lawyers are on the corner of Main and State, that typically defines the center of the search, rather than the center of the city… it isn’t even the centroid of the city that matters. It matters that you are near where the other people in your industry are."
In other words, Google's perception of a centralized location for auto dealerships could be completely different than that for medical practices, and that neither might be located anywhere near the city center.
While the concepts of city and industry centroids may still play a part in some searches, local search results in 2015 clearly indicate Google's shift toward deeming the physical location of the desktop or mobile user a powerful factor in determining relevance. The relationship between where your customer is when he performs a search and where your business is physically located has never been more important.
Moreover, in this new, user-centric environment, Google has moved beyond simply detecting cities to detecting neighborhoods and even streets. What this means for local business owners is that your hyperlocal information has become a powerful component of your business data. This post will teach you how to better serve your most local customers.
Seeing the centroid in action
If you do business in a small town with few competitors, ranking for your product/service + city terms is likely to cover most of your bases. The user-as-centroid phenomenon is most applicable in mid-to-large sized towns and cities with reasonable competition. I'll be using two districts in San Francisco—Bernal Heights and North Beach—in these illustrations and we'll be going on a hunt for pizza.
On a desktop, searching for "pizza north beach san francisco" or setting my location to this neighborhood and city while searching for the product, Google will show me something like this:
Performing this same search, but with "bernal heights" substituted, Google shows me pizzerias in a completely different part of the city:
And, when I move over to my mobile device, Google narrows the initial results down to just three enviable players in each district. These simple illustrations demonstrate Google's increasing sensitivity to serving me nearby businesses offering what I want.
The physical address of your business is the most important factor in serving the user as centroid. This isn’t something you can control, but there are things you can do to market your business as being highly relevant to your hyperlocal geography.
Specialized content for the user-centroid
We'll break this down into four common business models to help get you thinking about planning content that serves your most local customers.
1. Single-location business
Make the shift toward viewing your business not just as "Tony's Pizza in San Francisco", but as "Tony's Pizza in North Beach, San Francisco". Consider:
- Improving core pages of your website or creating new pages to include references to the proud part you play in the neighborhood scene. Talk about the history of your area and where you fit into that.
- Interview locals and ask them to share their memories about the neighborhood and what they like about living there.
- Showcase your participation in local events.
- Plan an event, contest or special for customers in your district.
- Take pictures, label them with hyperlocal terms, post them on your site and share them socially.
- Blog about local happenings that are relevant to you and your customers, such as a street market where you buy the tomatoes that top your pizzas or a local award you've won.
- Depending on your industry, there will be opportunities for hyperlocal content specific to your business. For example, a restaurant can make sure its menu is in crawlable text and can name some favorite dishes after the neighborhood—The Bernal Heights Special. Meanwhile, a spa in North Beach can create a hyperlocal name for a service—The North Beach Organic Spa Package. Not only does this show district pride, but customers may mention these products and services by name in their reviews, reinforcing your local connection.
2. Multi-location business within a single city
All that applies to the single location applies to you, too, but you've got to find a way to scale building out content for each neighborhood.
- If your resources are strong, build a local landing page for each of your locations, including basic optimization for the neighborhood name. Meanwhile, create blog categories for each neighborhood and rotate your efforts on a week by week basis. First week, blog about neighborhood A, next week, find something interesting to write about concerning neighborhood B. Over time, you'll have developed a nice body of content proving your involvement in each district.
- If you're short on resources, you'll still want to build out a basic landing page for each of your stores in your city and make the very best effort you can to showcase your neighborhood pride on these pages.
3. Multiple businesses, multiple cities
Again, scaling this is going to be key and how much you can do will depend upon your resources.
- The minimum requirement will be a landing page on the site for each physical location, with basic optimization for your neighborhood terms.
- Beyond this, you'll be making a decision about how much hyperlocal content you can add to the site/blog for each district, or whether time can be utilized more effectively via off-site social outreach. If you've got lots of neighborhoods to cover in lots of different cities, designating a social representative for each store and giving him the keys to your profiles (after a training session in company policies) may make the most sense.
4. Service area businesses (SABs)
Very often, service area businesses are left out in the cold with various local developments, but in my own limited testing, Google is applying at least some hyperlocal care to these business models. I can search for a neighborhood plumber, just as I would a pizza:
To be painstakingly honest, plumbers are going to have to be pretty ingenious to come up with a ton of engaging industry/neighborhood content and may be confined mainly to creating some decent service area landing pages that share a bit about their work in various neighborhoods. Other business models, like contractors, home staging firms and caterers should find it quite easy to talk about district architecture, curb appeal and events on a hyperlocal front.
While your SAB is still unlikely to beat out a competitor with a physical location in a given neighborhood, you still have a chance to associate your business with that area of your town with well-planned content.
Need creative inspiration for the writing projects ahead? Don't miss this awesome wildcard search tip Mary Bowling shared at LocalUp. Add an underscore or asterisk to your search terms and just look at the good stuff Google will suggest to you:
Does Tony's patio make his business one of Bernal Heights' dog-friendly restaurants or does his rooftop view make his restaurant the most picturesque lunch spot in the district? If so, he's got two new topics to write about, either on his basic landing pages or his blog.
Hop over to Whitespark’s favorite takeaways from Mike Ramsey’s LocalUp presentation, too.
Citations and reviews with the user centroid in mind
Here are the basics about citations, broken into the same four business models:
1. Single-location business
You get just one citation on each platform, unless you have multiple departments or practitioners. That means one Google+ Local page, one Yelp profile, one Best of the Web listing. etc. You do not get one citation for your city and another for your neighborhood. Very simple.
2. Multi-location business within a single city
As with the single location business, you are entitled to just one set of citations per physical location. That means one Google+ Local listing for your North Beach pizza place and another for your restaurant in Bernal Heights.
A regular FAQ here in the Moz Q&A Forum relates to how Google will differentiate between two businesses located in the same city. Here are some tips:
- Google no longer supports the use of modifiers in the business name field, so you can no longer be Tony's Pizza - Bernal Heights, unless your restaurant is actually named this. You can only be Tony's Pizza.
- Facebook's policies are different than Google's. To my understanding, Facebook won't permit you to build more than one Facebook Place for the identical brand name. Thus, to comply with their guidelines, you must differentiate by using those neighborhood names or other modifiers. Given that this same rule applies to all of your competitors, this should not be seen as a danger to your NAP consistency, because apparently, no multi-location business creating Facebook Places will have 100% consistent NAP. The playing field is, then, even.
- The correct place to differentiate your businesses on all other platforms is in the address field. Google will understand that one of your branches is on A St. and the other is on B St. and will choose which one they feel is most relevant to the user.
- Google is not a fan of call centers. Unless it's absolutely impossible to do so, use a unique local phone number for each physical location to prevent mix-ups on Google's part, and use this number consistently across all web-based mentions of the business.
- Though you can't put your neighborhood name in the title, you can definitely include it in the business description field most citation platforms provide.
- Link your citations to their respective local landing pages on your website, not to your homepage.
3. Multiple businesses, multiple cities
Everything in business model #2 applies to you as well. You are allowed one set of citations for each of your physical locations, and while you can't modify your Google+ Local business name, you can mention your neighborhood in the description. Promote each location equally in all you do and then rely on Google to separate your locations for various users based on your addresses and phone numbers.
4. SABs
You are exactly like business model #1 when it comes to citations, with the exception of needing to abide by Google's rules about hiding your address if you don't serve customers at your place of business. Don't build out additional citations for neighborhoods you serve, other cities you serve or various service offerings. Just create one citation set. You should be fine mentioning some neighborhoods in your citation descriptions, but don't go overboard on this.
When it comes to review management, you'll be managing unique sets of reviews for each of your physical locations. One method for preventing business owner burnout is to manage each location in rotation. One week, tend to owner responses for Business A. Do Business B the following week. In week three, ask for some reviews for Business A and do the same for B in week four. Vary the tasks and take your time unless faced with a sudden reputation crisis.
You can take some additional steps to "hyperlocalize" your review profiles:
- Write about your neighborhood in the business description on your profile.
- You can't compel random customers to mention your neighborhood, but you can certainly do so from time to time when your write responses. "We've just installed the first soda fountain Bernal Heights has seen since 1959. Come have a cool drink on us this summer."
- Offer a neighborhood special to people who bring in a piece of mail with their address on it. Prepare a little handout for all-comers, highlighting a couple of review profiles where you'd love to hear how they liked the Bernal Heights special. Or, gather email addresses if possible and follow up via email shortly after the time of service.
- If your business model is one that permits you to name your goods or service packages, don’t forget the tip mentioned earlier about thinking hyperlocal when brainstorming names. Pretty cool if you can get your customers talking about how your "North Beach Artichoke Pizza" is the best pie in town!
Investigate your social-hyperlocal opportunties
I still consider website-based content publication to be more than half the battle in ranking locally, but sometimes, real-time social outreach can accomplish things static articles or scheduled blog posts can’t. The amount of effort you invest in social outreach should be based on your resources and an assessment of how naturally your industry lends itself to socialization. Fire insurance salesmen are going to find it harder to light up their neighborhood community than yoga studios will. Consider your options:
- Check out this intro to social-local platforms here on Moz.
- Get inspired by this up-to-date article from StreetFight Mag, How Small Businesses Can Nail Social Marketing.
- Use Followerwonk to discover your nearest neighbors on Twitter.
Remember that you are investigating each opportunity to see how it stacks up not just to promoting your location in your city, but in your neighborhood.
Who are the people in your neighborhood?
Remember that Sesame Street jingle? It hails from a time when urban dwellers strongly identified with a certain district of hometown. People were "from the neighborhood." If my grandfather was a Mission District fella, maybe yours was from Chinatown. Now, we’re shifting in fascinating directions. Even as we've settled into telecommuting to jobs in distant states or countries, Amazon is offering one hour home delivery to our neighbors in Manhattan. Doctors are making house calls again! Any day now, I’m expecting a milkman to start making his rounds around here. Commerce has stretched to span the globe and now it's zooming in to meet the needs of the family next door.
If the big guys are setting their sights on near-instant services within your community, take note. You live in that community. You talk, face-to-face, with your neighbors every day and know the flavor of the local scene better than any remote competitor can right now.
Now is the time to reinvigorate that old neighborhood pride in the way you’re visualizing your business, marketing it and personally communicating to customers that you’re right there for them.
Very interesting breakdown Miriam! Some points that really stood out to me and that I will keep in mind are the importance of specificity ("Tony's Pizza in San Francisco" versus "Tony's Pizza in North Beach, San Francisco") Also utilizing photos and alt tags to zoom in on a particular location helps Google better identify your business's relevance. Thinking hyperlocally, as you've demonstrated, is the secret to shifting in the right direction. ~Vishal
Exactly, Vishal! The shift is a small but important one. Thanks so much for reading.
Hi Miriam,
Your post is spot on. I think too often we get caught up chasing algorithms that we forget that Google is chasing after user behavior. It makes perfect sense that users would want to know the highest concentration of car dealerships when looking for a new car. I would add that area specific content should be used in moderation and not at the expense of regular service specific content. If you can blend both the better. I've seen accounts that took this method too far and hurt their rankings because they were talking more about everything but their services as it was easier content to create. I know you know this but wanted to bring that up for the readers.
Good point, Chris. You are quite right ... it's necessary to get your basic ducks in a row first. Thanks for mentioning, and for reading!
Holy cow, we are struggling with this right now. The law firm where I work covers a 60-city metropolitan area with three physical locations (no more than a 30 minute drive to any of our offices). The rankings change in every single one of those 60 cities, and not just the listings. Organic varies in each one. Our top organic competitor in our home town is a site with 12 backlinks (total). We have a hundreds of times more backlinks, and yet they outrank us for some terms (no social media presence, no optimization, no backlinks). There are at least 3 other firms in our same city with more backlinks who are below both of us. It is uncanny to me how much things have been shaken up.
I can always count on the Moz blog to cause me to think. Great post Miriam. I'd be interested to see more people write about how location affects organic rankings on keywords with location-intent (sans geo-keywords even) though, as I haven't seen much written about that (I've been doing a lot of research). I'm formulating local SEO strategies now.
Hi Dustin!
Good comment. So basically, if this were my client, I would be suggesting a strategy something like this:
1) Become dominant in the local results for the 3 physical location cities. In an industry as competitive as yours, this will be a big task. Legal is always tough unless you are rurally located.
2) Discover if there is a genuine connection between the legal practice and the other, non-physical cities. You can't expect to rank locally for these cities where you don't have a physical address unless you're in one of those industries or geographies where Google is reaching beyond city borders for good results (which does happen, but probably not very often in an industry as competitive as legal). If you can discover a genuine connection between the business and some of these other 60 cities, then you have a reason to create content around these themes. But, if not, then you are likely back to just trying to dominate for your services terms in your physical cities.
Thank you for taking the time to read the article!
Great post on a lesser-known and even lesser-optimized area of search that is hyper-local optimization.
One small spelling issue that is bugging me though, especially because it is an anchor text link:
Should be*Followerwonk. Simple typo, but thought I'd point it out.
Fixed, thanks for letting us know!
Oops! Thanks Joseph and Keri!
No problem guys! It made my inner SEO cringe and I had to point it out! #SEOProblems
Thanks for this MIriam, especially for the focus on the lowly world of SAB's. Quick question: do any of your recommendations change when the goal is to perform across multiple cities/towns vs specific neighborhoods within a city? An example might be suburban NJ, where a typical SAB might serve 20+ towns, all of similar population.
Hi Peter,
You would be talking about Business Model 1 in this older post of mine:
https://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide
It's talking about regular Local SEO, rather than hyperlocal SEO. I think you might find it helpful.
Thanks much Miriam. Shame on me for missing that other post--it's excellent.
We still see a lot of downtown businesses ranking higher in certain local search results, but this is definitely the better 'model' moving forward for local searches.
Fantastic post Miriam, the toughest vertical in local seo is service area businesses, it gets ridiculously difficult to gain the exposure in these areas but again if we can use our digital marketing tactics it can be done though it definitely needs some patience
Hi Salman!
Yes, patience is very important. Creating a realistic plan for each business, that they are capable of either accomplishing or budgeting for, which slowly gets them to where they're hoping to be is a wise approach. So glad you enjoyed the post.
Hey Miriam,
Great post. Do you know if the Individual user as centroid overrules town/city boundaries? For example if I'm searching in City A, but near the boundary to City B, will City B options appear (because they are closer) or will only businesses from City A likely appear?
If they are still more likely to be City A, have you seen anything to suggest that this will change in the future?
Hi Brent!
That's a really good question. I'm not actually sure of the answer, because I've observed some interesting behavior from Google in the past half year or so in which they are sometimes including a broader radius in some 7 packs, going beyond city borders to grab results, rather than narrowing things down. This has always been the case to a lesser or greater degree over the years, but it has always seemed to me to occur in more rural areas.
So, I don't have reliable data with which to answer whether, if Google perceived a hyperlocal intent when someone is right on a city border, how many of the results would they pull from City A vs. City B, especially in a metropolitan area. Dallas/Fort Worth would be my pick for testing something like this out physically with a cell phone (if you happen to live there - haha) but wherever you live, it would be something I would evaluate on a client-by-client basis. My gut feeling is that if you're in City A, City A results will usually trump, but there could be numerous exceptions to this.
I can field this one... I do local in Dallas/Fort Worth.
Brent,
Yes and No to question 1. My appliance site company location is in Richardson, but I rank for Dallas (well, and Richardson). BUT, it really depends on the search query & whether they include a Geo-locator term.
If you don't include a Geo-Locator -- Sitting where I am now in Plano, I get Plano results for "Appliance Repair".
If I include "dallas" with "appliance repair" I get Dallas results regardless of my own centroid of location... without the Geo-Locator, it truly depends on whether you're getting personalized results, your connections on G+ (personalized results...), and user behavior reinforcement of that personalization (on page analytics, bounce, etc).
I'd pull you some screen shots... but I have yet to figure out how to do that with my Android. (Please feel free to educate me on that if you have one!)
Miriam,
Are you baiting me to answer this one? LOL. I do live there. :)
The post is very completely! Congratulations friend
Thanks for sharing your valuable information on your site, I will share your article to my friends also so that they can understand about in this huge market
Very interesting article on local search . It makes me want to test a couple of local SEO things on one of my sites. I don't do much local SEO stuff any more. I get carried away and end up wanting to "own" cities and states for keywords.
Hah - well, most local businesses would like to 'own' the town. At least when it comes to their industry in their town, I'm all for that. Glad you found the article interesting enough to want to do some tests. Sounds great!
If your a well funded business you can own your city. Just bring your well funded checkbook because it is getting more expensive as Google changes. Here is just one example of my "ownership" It took a little over year for me to build it. Of course the whole industry tanked by 2008.
https://www.prleap.com/pr/77538/largest-portfolio-of-arizona-real-estate
Thanks for sharing valuable content here. i really enjoy reading your article.
Not to rain on anyone's site redesign parade here...
But, when considering the actual searcher as the Centroid -- You really need to focus on becoming part of their personalized SERP set. The best way to do this IS NOT by changing your website...
Hey Scott!
This article isn't about site redesign, per se, but the points you raise about hoping to become part of people's personalized SERPs is a valid one. Please, share any tips you'd like to on this sub-topic. In the case of localized SERPs, Google is performing a sort of personalization based on the locale of the searcher. If you'd like to share more on what you've learned about this, your comments would be most welcome. Thanks for taking the time read!
Nice article, Miriam. "The user is the new centroid" per David Mihm is an apt statement. I actually believe this has been in the works for some time. We have regional businesses, say similar to Dustin, above, but in fact in some of them we have a main city, then somewhere in the realm of 100 different towns in the metro area....plus some smb's in different markets with somewhat fewer towns...but still a lot. Over a period of time before the last google algo change that made this more pronounced we would see stark evidence of a changing pac dependent on where within the region somebody would search.
Its more pronounced now. All of your suggestions are strong, but what happens when you want to attract people from nearby neighborhoods within a larger city and/or from customers or clients from nearby towns.
If you take Dustin's example above and there are up to 60 towns in a metro region wherein say 4 of them have larger populations and then 10 have populations a bit below the largest towns, and there are another 10 with sizable populations, you really need to have visibility to be seen by all those larger communities....let alone all 60.
One thing that does work in this regard are organic pages that reference each of the larger communities...lets say up to 24 of them. Its not going to show on the PAC....at least not in most cases.
You need unique and compelling content. You need good titles....and you need some eye catching elements for the pages...such as might show vis a vis effective use of schema for events or other phenomena. Then if you are getting visibility for schema for events....you'll have to repeat them as events are transitory.
Its a real complex issue. Additionally of note, so many smb's in particular neighborhoods really need that additional business from nearby neighborhoods. Boy restaurants are prime examples.
The entire process is daunting. It takes a lot of work. Frankly I think google is both creating a more "even playing field' theoretically but one that is difficult to confront.
Hey Dave!
Honored to have you comment here. This from you,
"One thing that does work in this regard are organic pages that reference each of the larger communities...lets say up to 24 of them. "
...is exactly what I meant in my comment to Dustin,
"If you can discover a genuine connection between the business and some of these other 60 cities, then you have a reason to create content around these themes."
We are on the same page about this. It's finding these connections that are challenging. For SABs, it's considerably easier (here are the houses we've remodeled in city A, city B, city C - very easy to find the connection). For B&Ms, it can be a lot tougher. A legal firm, for example ... the fact that customers may come to the business from City C has never struck me as a good enough reason to write content. It's just not interesting and pages I've seen over the years that have been generated on this theme always strike me as a kind of obvious reach solely for SEO purposes. As a user, I don't really care where a legal firm's customers travel from. It's not germane to my needs, right? So what can you do?
Maybe there is some connection between the legal firm and courthouses where they practice law in the neighboring cities. Maybe the lawyers participate in or host events in those cities. Maybe they sponsor Little League teams there. To me, this boils down to discovering if there is some legitimate involvement in these cities where they lack a physical location. If not, PPC may be a better option because you don't have to prove community involvement to run geo-targeted as, as you would with organic efforts.
Yes, Miriam: I believe we are on the same track. In general I have a difficult time coming up for interesting content that might connect a local smb with a distant town, certainly on face value a plumber trying to connect to a distant town and/or the law firm. My mind goes numb.
Fortunately there are clever people out there and they throw out interesting and diverse ideas....some of which could apply to either business. For me the best ideas come from people discussing just these issues and then some creative people come up with some excellent suggestions with models or themes that might apply to your particular smb or industry.
Its mostly been trolling through ideas and discussions where a gem or a spark of an idea brings up some form of content that might make for compelling content of any sort that could work.
Just get those pages titled to include the service/distant town name, though and it does give you a "fighting chance".
Dave
Like this from you very much, Dave,
"For me the best ideas come from people discussing just these issues and then some creative people come up with some excellent suggestions..."
You know, plumbers really do have it tough. My best thoughts for that industry would relate to water quality. If I met a plumber who was a water quality enthusiast, I could see interviewing him to talk about the different types of water in different areas he serves. For example, his rural customer might be really eager to hear how to get rust stains from well water out of their bathtubs. Meanwhile, his city customers might be amazed to discover that their water is full of chlorine or fluoride and would like to know if there are filters that could remove these things from their drinking tap. And do these substances affect the life of your plumbing? And what about the pipes, themselves? If you live in X historic neighborhood of X town, chances are, you've got X types of pipes which could be conducting
- heavy metals
- plastic chemicals
- other stuff
into your home. What eras of housing in which neighborhoods typically have these types of pipes and when could it be bad enough that you'd want to consider re-plumbing the house?
Plumbing is one of those things most of us only think about when there are disasters, but safe water is something we all want to have every day. If your neighborhood plumber is an expert (or knows one he can interview) that could make some pretty good hyperlocal content that could educate/benefit the community and establish the authority of the business.
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Interesting article!
As we comment in your article the centroid does not have to be the center of the city, it can be a point in the suburbs, because the browser sets the centroid in place more commented on the network or the most sought instead.The more accurate and complete the data that we can get better positioning.
Internet users increasingly rely more on user comments when making our decisions, so it is also very important to be valued positively.
Good post, many great and relative simple to implement advices. I especialy liked the advice on naming something in the business by neighborhood. For many businesses is easily applicable, and does not require much time or resources.
Also like advice about write responses: "We've just installed the first soda fountain Bernal Heights has seen since 1959." Great example how can achieve your goal to "hyperlocalize" your review profiles in a nice and unobtrusive way.
Hi Stelian!
So glad that this post gave you some new ideas. I hope if the community has other tips, they will share them here!
I think those review centric websites narrowing the local result from maps or Google business. Once it was around 4-5 now reduced to 2-3 avg. So compete with Zomato for a local restaurant is now definitely hard. So thanks Miriam for helping local business to stomp the competition.
Hi BrjjB!
In some industries, it's absolutely essential to be sure you're included on the major platforms. Zomato would be a good example of this. If a review platform or citation platform ranks highly for your main searches, you want to be sure to be on there, as highly rated/ranked as you can because supplanting this as a result will, indeed, be difficult. Yelp is another very good example of this. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. :)
Thanks Miriam - lots of tips, especially for those with multiple locations or SAB's. I always find Service Area Landing Pages to increase in their 'spammy look' with the larger companies trying to target every major area in multiple cities. It is obvious that Google are incorporating the physical location of the device when returning results, but is that physical location immediately superseded if the user adds a specific location when searching?
Hi Simon,
I believe I understand what you're asking. If you're located in New Orleans and search, for example, for 'hotels' then Google will typically show you hotels in New Orleans, but if you specify a different city, like 'hotels in Boston', then Google will show you hotels in Boston. Google gets it that people look for things in cities other than their own, like in doing research for a vacation or something like that. Is that what you meant?
I often feel the serps are unnecessarily localised, but then I wonder if that's just because I've spent the last decade concentrating mainly on the generic search phrases that drive more traffic - does anyone else have a thought on this?
This is a great post and really provides the information needed for local search to be at its most optimized point. With Google looking to serve the person searching best, having the particular neighborhood as a landing page instead of the general city was something I never considered, but now plan to implement in our local search clients. As your research has supported the more specific the better when creating search presence and content. Thank you for these great strategies, as they will be helpful to all.
Hey, Tim, I'm delighted if this gave you some new ideas for competing well!
Awesome stuff Miriam! I really liked your content tips - it can be difficult to come up with interesting and relevant ways content ideas.
This is a bit off topic, but it will be interesting to see what/if any impact the mobile update mentioned in the Google Webmaster Central blog for April 21 will have on localized search results.
Ooh, yes, Calin. That will be interesting. My basic understanding of this is that those local businesses that have made the effort to have a mobile-friendly site may see a boost as non-mobile-friendly competitors fall back a bit. I am very curious to see what things look like when the dust settles!
Local optimization is the most important and valuable assets in SEO. This is the best combination of Local Centroids and users to guide how to attract more customers through the local listing. Great news.