seOverflow Blog
New Local Search Tool Kit from seOverflow
August 30th, 2010Like everyone else who works in the Local Search space on a daily basis, we’ve often wished we had more tools to help us with some of the tedious aspects of competitive analysis for Local Search. So, we decided to create our own Local Search Tool Kit. 
Give our tool a local keyword and it gathers and organizes information on the businesses that rank in the Google Local Pack for it. You can take a tour of it here.
Right now, we have limited its use to a small team of Local Search experts who are beta testing it. But please can sign up for our new Local Search Tool and when we are ready to add more users, we’ll let you know!
Getting Permanent Links That Hold Value Forever
August 20th, 2010I didn’t attend the SES San Francisco conference, but I did catch a few live blogging sessions throughout the week. One of the best ideas I’ve heard in a while comes from Jim Boykin, which I found via the “How to Become a Link Magnet” live blogging post from Ontolo.
Will Google Force Local Results on Searchers?
August 17th, 2010If being found by searchers close to your business location is important to your bottom line, then this may be your last warning to very pay close attention to Local Search.
For the past few years, Google has really been struggling to get local businesses to participate in its Local Business Listings in Google Maps, aka Google Places. It offered a spliff to anyone who would visit local enterprises and get them to sign up. It continually dangles seductive new features in front of entrepreneurs, such as the ability to add coupons, videos and events. Most recently, it began allowing businesses to respond online to poor reviews. It offers local-specific analytics dashboards, emails monthly reports and repeatedly communicates directly with business owners to entice them to try out new ways of advertising.
Last week, Google was spotted testing search results that barely included any organic results and those that were included could not easily be identified as such. With this interface, Local Search results go beyond prominence and absolutely dominate the Search Engine Results Pages for Universal web searches.
Google wants to find a way for Local Search to pump up their coffers with advertising money. The stakes here are enormous. Will Google Places results be forced upon searchers? Will Google cease to show any organic results whatsoever? Only Google knows. But I’m betting that businesses who are not yet paying much attention to Local Search are about to get a rude wake up call.
SEO from the Get Go
August 11th, 2010It’s often hard for business owners to understand why they need to have professional SEO’s involved in website design or redesign almost from the moment of conception. They tend to think that Search Engine Optimization something that can easily be added on after their website is completed. While this may work okay for some businesses in less competitive spaces, when the stakes are high those that take this approach are doomed to struggle playing catch up to those taking a more wholistic approach.
As an example, we recently had a developer come to us at the initial stage of website redesign for our optimization expertise. She had a wireframe of what she and her customer envisioned for his new site. We were able to guide the site structure to show the Search Engines which pages were the most important; we suggested new pages to include on the site based on our keyword research; and we advised that certain pages be dropped from the design for various reasons. These changes will make the overall website optimization much more effective as we move forward.
If we hadn’t become involved at the first stages of the design process, the overall optimization would be weaker and changes requiring additional time and expense would likely need to be made later.
Here’s a great article from SEOMoz that can help you explain to your clients the importance of incorporating SEO into web design from the ground up: Reversing the SEO Process-The Chocolate Cookie Mistake.
