Mike The Internet Guy’s Blog

Steve Perlow contacted me today about a new site he just released called CheckLocal.com. The site uses Ajax and other technologies to allow a user to search multiple local search sites at once. Pretty neat if you need to quickly check statuses for a new client or something like that. I suspect an end user might find it useful as well for a ‘local search’!

I asked Steve to give me a little background on CheckLocal.com and here is what he said:

“I started thinking about how to offer results from the best local search
engines all at once, and quickly realized there were even more of these
sites out there than I knew about. As a result, I think checklocal.com
works great to research stops on your next trip or find things near your
home, but I also think many users will discover something new, like
Mojam (concert listings) or outside.in (local news and blogs).
Checklocal.com is where you can come back to find all the best local
search tools all in one spot.”

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I know my coverage was mostly quick notes etc, but others have been posting full articles, insider tips and more. Here are some other bloggers with coverage to checkout. I’ll have a wrap up article about the second day probably tomorrow (I am pooped!) For now check out these folks!

Marty Wientraub - AimClear
Mark Barrera - covering for Marketing Pilgrim David Dalka - David Dalka.com
Scott Clark -SiteCreations
Andrew Shotland -Local SEO Guide

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Speakers:
Dan Gilmartin, VP Marketing, uLocate
Lee Ott, Director Mobile Web, Yahoo Inc.!
Mark McCormack, CMO, CallGenie
Sumit Agarwal, Product Manager, Google Mobile

Mark McCormack
What we’ve heard at the conference
-if you don’t have an iPhone you shouldn’t be here
-Yellow Pages will be dead in 4 years
-Microsoft is target of many jokes
-local success requires a local sales force
-what everyone said is CRAP! (Paul Ryan)
-I hope you boss isn’t here
-merchant’s don’t understand ROI
-this content is rich in attendees and content

Call Genie is not a moble or local mobile solution, they are a local search solution and value added technology partner
-customers like directions with landmarks
-call genie overlays neighborhood info and landmarks on top of maps etc

Lessons learned
-you need thick skin to be a transcriber
-place is relevant, local knowledge trumps technology
-voice in, voice out is good, but multi-modal is future
-merchants get voice search if packaged correctly
-taking credit for calls you deliver validates ROI

Lee Ott
-2 to 1 ratio moving to 3 to 1 of mobile devices vs computers
-Yahoo is focusing on taking advantage of mobile devices while being careful of limitations
-users want instant gratification, or users or bored
-shows demo of m.yahoo.com, and what search results look like
-Yahoo is classifying ‘query type’ to produce relevant results
-appears to try and give answers not just links as much as possible
-shows another example of searching for movie title (results show reviews, show times, etc) , location is derived
-challenge: 89% of mobile users don’t know how to access/use search on their phone
-Yahoo wants to improve usability of devices
-challenge: Mobile web pricing is complicated with variable charges, 64% of users believe there is additional cost
-challenge: it is hard for publishers to develop for mobile due to device types
-Yahoo wants to move towards more standard technology formats
-challenge:How do you monetize? lack of global advertising standards, limited experience in mobile
-Yahoo wants to educate and enable advertisers, help MMA standardize formats, provide full ad suite

Dan Gilmartin
-uLocate creates applications that run on mobile devices
-what.com was too expensive so they went with where.com
-provides library of GPS enabled widgets that allow users to personalize where

Sumit Agarwal
-iPhone made visible impact on blended mobile product usage with in 15 days
-2 orders of magnitude better than any other device!!
-Google places emphasis on local content (used in search and modules, precconfigured)
-You can use iGoogle to perform PC-Mobile integration
-if you say “Map it” on an iPhone while calling GOOG-411, the mapping application appears with locations!

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Speakers:
Cindy Krum, Sr SEO Analyst, Blue Moon Works
Gregory Markel, President Infuse Creative
Rachel Pasqua, Director of Mobile Marketing, iCrossing

Cindy Krum
-industry in its infancy
-different bots and crawlers
-slower connections and dropped connections
-very different results pages (check out the chart on BlueMoon’s blog)

Development Best Practices
-code in XHTML for best results
-use external style sheets
-use the link element to attach style sheets, (some don’t recognize @media or @handheld
-use a screen sheet and a mobile sheet
-use display none property to show only on web/mobile.
-iPhone ignores handheld media designation
-there is an iPhone metatag for display

Mobile SEO Best Practices
-follow traditional & Local SEO Best Practices (addresses, etc)
-submit your site to mobile search engines
-don’t rely on embedded images, objects, scripts, frames, flash, pop-ups, mouse overs
-test,test,test simulators and live (http://www.skweezer.net, http://www.opera.com/download)
-test transcoded and non-transcoded versions
-validate your site

Mobile Navigation
-JS navigation will appear in its entirety (not a good user experience) adjust with positioning
-use optimized internal jump links at the top (through mobile CSS)
-have a mobile sitemap
-make telephone numbers and emails clickable with tel tag and mailto tag inside hrefs

Gregory Markel
-no longer a WAP/MOBI world, true web browsers are we we are heading
-opera has a good resource for tweaking existing site to be mobile friendly
-also maybe mobile search is really about voice and not web browsers at all (Goog 411, Tell Me, 800 Free 411)
-.mobi has basically been ignored and disappeared, just check mobile search results on Google, Yahoo
-mobile is is a ‘one-web’ experience
-most companies taking a ‘m.’ subdomain extension in place for a mobile site (check youtube for example, m.youtube.com)
-data speeds are increasing, therefore making it better to take the traditional web ‘mobile’.
-provides many resources in his slides, will try to download soon

Rachel Pasqua
-2.3 billion mobile subscribers globally
-Is there a mobile audience? 22% of mobile users are according to iCrossing study
-The mobile users are strongest in 20-29 age group
-the users wanted maps/directions, weather, local information (entertainment), sports
-study showed users were going off deck to search (Google, or Yahoo)
-you shouldn’t try to squeeze all of wireline site into mobile site, you need to show content and context

When Building Mobile Site
-code to W3C standards
-seperate content from layout
-keep file size under 20k

Best Practices for Copywriting
-shorter copy, keyword rich opy 3-7% density
-use descriptive navigational links

Best Practices for coding and structure
-meta tags and on-page content is very important since links are less reliable in mobile
-but you should build links
-don’t place content in JS

Best Practices for Design
-streamlined design
-observe 3 clicks rule
-utilize handset access keys for navigation
-contact info in global footers
-avoid linking mobile site to non-mobile site (very questionable in my opinion)
-test on live handsets and live networks (same phone could be different via different carriers)

Getting Found
-84% of people expected frequently visited sites to have mobile version
-you need to avoid the transcoding trap, transcoded versions exist on Google rather than your site
-you can alert the engines by using mobile sitemap and also code in head section of site (see slides for snippet)
-you need to either use device detection with redirects, promote a separate URL, or …
-you can also submit to mobile sites (gave large list)

MMA will release best practices for mobile search soon

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Overall this has started out as another excellent search conference. Congrats to Greg Sterling and Chris Sherman for putting it all together. Here are the ‘tasty treats’ I took out of the sessions.

1. Place location addresses on your pages twice (Chuck Aikens)
2. Use the h-Card format on your pages as well (panel from SEO Local Best Practices)
3. Minimal on-page SEO can lead to large growth in international markets (Jenny Halasz)
4. 70% of internet users performed local search queries, 68% would use the phone number to contact business (Neilsen), also a high percentage would bookmark only 11% would fill in online form. (Chuck Aikens)
5. Don’t bother making kw with zipcodes (Matt Van Wagner)
6. Include city names in ultra targeted ppc campaigns (Matt Van Wagner)
7. Using the state spelled out outperforms abbreviation in PPC (Matt Van Wagner)
8. Copy your reviews from community driven sites and put them on your site. Include member names and photos. Include links back to sources/pages (add nofollow tags) (Andrew Shotland)
9. User generated content can drastically increase organic traffic (Brad Jaehn)
10. Review sites (except done right are crap) (Paul Ryan)

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Speakers:
Gary Price, Director of Online Information Resources, Ask.com
Omar Tawakol, Chief Advertising Offer, Medio
Matthew Snyder, Head of Business Development, Nokia
Brendan Benzing, VP Mobile Search and Marketing, InfoSpace
Matt Tengler, Sr Product Manager, Jump Tap

Gary Price
-everyone is not like us (they don’t know what they can do with the mobile phone)
-need to explain to others why this is important

What Does local actually mean?
-are you organizing for resident for the area, or the visitor - these are very different needs and wants
-interactive voice response is on the way and will lead the development of mobile application (get people into front door of mobile search)

podcasting soon to become phonecasting, cellcasting
-easy to use
-easy to place advertising in phonecast
-listen to daily search cast 1 512 6960723

Shows Ask Mobile Interface
-does not have search box, because it lead to users giving up on long queries (example ‘weather in san francisco’ was 69 key strokes)
-organized by information need
-aerials available without plugin

Omar Tawakol
Mobile is a New Media
-Medio’s focus is mobile search is not web search, very different beast
-serves T-mobile, Verizon, etc
-besides messaging, most other mobile activity is downloading (wallpaper, ringtones, pictures) adult is also big (gotta love porn on a 1 inch screen)

What does it mean to provide search for a carrier?
-you can search for contacts on your device
-you can search for downloadables through an app
-you can search for info like weather, scores etc
-off -portal, the mobile web etc

How do you monetize mobile search?
-sponsored links (search ads are not ads because consumers don’t perceive the difference)

Matthew Snyder
-trend: Ad $$ are shifting
-trend: Rise of advertising and mobile (more ad funded business models based on mobile)
-trend: Mobile as a cross-media local interactive medium is emerging. Mobile is the “cross-screen”
-trend: Shift to multimedia computer

Opportunities for Mobile Search
-ads will be embedded in content
-but more phones will come online with more full web browers
-but most users with browsers right now are not active

Types of Web Search
-in channel (shows Windows live screen inside mobile)
-map search
-image search
-image search and local search are stickier than web search and more than 60% of the traffic

Mobile is the ultimate advertising platform
-personal, however double edge sword
-always on
-always with you … serendipity of finding things
-billing and payment possible
-pay per call and pay per action tremendous opportunity of mobile

Brendan Benzing
-(Sorry had to answer emails and missed Brendan’s presentation)

Matt Tengler
-Jump Tap’s products include mCommerce operator storefront, and operator deck solutions
-full ‘off-deck’ search capabilities across the mobile web and web
-deliver all content that is relevant to the user and capabilities of their handset.
-you can sign up as a keyword based advertiser to Virgin and AllTel subscribers
-Jump tap is a white label solution
-processing 50 million searches per month
-16 million pages per month of quality content for mobile banners

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Alex Porter, Location 3 Media
Alan Beiagi, Mapquest
Michael Jones, Google (sub for Bobby Figueroa)

Alex Porter
-82% of users make contact with business after seeing local listing
-Yahoo has lead in local listing
-4-8 weeks for listings to go live on Google, includes postcard with PIN
-need to self-update listings on local sites or outsource
-track by unique phone number, track URL, or coupon/offer (still not great indicator of ROI)

Alan Beiagi
-12 million people paying for and using GPS currently, projected to 315 million in the next five years
-6% of poeple who received a mobile ad took action,
-Currently 15% of 233 million cell users use data services.
(gives many examples of ways people will use mobile search/maps on their portable devices)

Michael Jones
Michael demoed many of Google’s latest innovations on Google maps including live traffic, dynamic rerouting, 3d buildings (zoom in closer you’ll see), and more

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Pete Flint, CEO, Trulia
Andrew Shotland, Proprietor, LocalSEOGuide.com
Brad Jaehn, Directory of Product, ShopLocal
Paul Ryan, CEO, Done Right!

Andrew Shotland
Customer reviews grew the traffic of InsiderPages exponentially (via organic)
-did this by adding ‘review’, ‘best’, ‘top’ to ordinary keyterms like plumber
-adds unique content to generic business pages
-generates links (users link to reviews from blogs or MySpace pages)
-improves user experience

(shows list of social IYPS, Verticals, Regionals, Social Networks) (ADD LIST LATER)

Take back your reputation and get some traffic
-copy your reviews and put them on your site
-include member names and photos
-include links back to sources/pages (add nofollow tags)
-this is probably not illegal(google does it, yahoo does it,)
-put services and city pages on your site
-create your own mini IYP a couple pages on your site
-create your own community (blog, ning, etc)
-contact your friendly local search co and ask why they are putting nofollow on the links to your website (citysearch,insiderpages,Yelp,DexKnows)
-add name to your petition at www.localseoguide.com

Pete Flint, Trulia
-Trulia Voices uses community driven content
1) an interactive dialog between consumers and real estate pros
2) opporortunity for RE pros to position as a ‘local’ expert and post free profile which helps SEO!! (hint hint realtors)
average response time is 20 minutes. 75% questions by consumers, 80% answers from RE pros, 4.6 responses per question

Lessons learned
-requires different product mindset search vs user feature set
-provide unique value to the niche
-think incentives and scalability
-can reduce product research and customer service costs
-build broad feature set

Brad Jaehn
-invested in social media because it made since for customers, advertisers and business model
-consumers spend more on electronics if studied first on the web
-65% increase in organic traffic (from community)
-4x the page views
-35% decrease in abandonment better than non-registered customers.

benefits of social content at Shoplocal
-increased ability to dialog with customer
-reinforce missions of helping local shoppers save time and money
-organic traffic improved acquisitions costs

Preparing for Challenges and issues
-prepare company for participation
-be ready for critisim
(more but didn’t catch them all)

Paul Ryan
-everything said before Paul was crap his quote not mine
-problem with user generated content on plumbers doesn’t show that they are
a) real
b) have proper licenses etc.
-ask questions about reviewers (who are you?, Did you actually use the service?, Are you an expert? Would a reasonable person disagree with your rating? Do you have a financial or personal stake in the outcome? What do you want to happen as a result of the review)

Problems with reviews
-anonymity
-real money is at stake
-easy to game the system
-myth of the noble amateur
-number of reviews required for statistical validity
-see published.com to boot amazon reviews
-contractors are now suing people over false reviews
-advertisiers won’t pay for bad reviews
-no recourse for advertisters

A better approach
-editorial oversight
-expert ratings
-consumer guarantees
-qualified consumer feedback

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SMXLOMO - SEO Best Practices for Local Search

Gib Olander, Business Development Director, Localeze
Matt Van Wagner, President, Find Me Faster
Vanessa Fox, Product Team Lead, Zillow
Chuck Aikens, SEO Director, The Booyah Agency
Moderator: Chris Sherman

This session will focus on hands on activities to optimize for local search.

Chuck Aikens
Assumptions: You understand SEO basics, you get location page value, you will do local registration.
-70% of internet users performed local search queries, 68% would use the phone number to contact business (Neilsen), also a high percentage would bookmark only 11% would fill in online form. (this is good info)
-49% of search users put in geo-modifier, 23% use a specific business name
-Top Search Categories Travel, Services, Entertainment, Places, Brands (from mapquest)
-put business locations on right hand side and in footer.
-gotta use local link coverage with on-page SEO: Local Links from IYPs, Zvents, Local Media Sites, Local Bloggers, Regional PR

Gib Olander
-Local search is not just a vertical.

The Why Of Local Search
-close loop on buying cycle
-creates engagement at store level
-local is where the buying power is
-supports all other forms of advertising and marketing

What Are the Two Types of Local searches.
-Recovery for business name, phone number, address
-Discovery Search - search for specialty service, particular brand or product

What are the Components of Local Search
-orangic web crawled index
-business listing database index (google local)
-advertising generated index (PPC)

4 Tactics for Organic Listings
-Microsites
-Profile Pages
-Dealer Locator Page
-Directory inclusion

-Create cloud of content for each individual business location, must answer discovery and recovery searches.

Vanessa Fox
How can you generate local content?
-you can autogenerate content —– NOT!
-you can use user generated content - SOMETIMES FAILS MISERABLY see tips below

Ideas that could work
-partner with other sites ( be careful of dupe content)
-hire content writers
-hire internal expert
-a hybrid of the above
-create an invite only or exlusive test with industry insiders (find on blogs, flickr, social networks etc)
-5-10% of users contribute 50% of user generated content
-provide incentives
-use reputation ( people care what they look like)
-oversee quality
-your community features have to add value

Matt Van Wagner
Did I really do that?? Paid search mistakes by Matt!

case study on local MBA program with classroom only courses
-2 campaigns one inside polygon with generic terms
-one with geo-modified keywords
-received emails from india (was bug in Google)
-don’t bother making kw with zipcodes
-include city names in ultra targeted ppc campaigns

case study eldercare placements
-national provider, no brick and mortar
-lots of keywords
-create state level campaigns ,no national campaign
-traffic and conversions disappeared, reactived national campaigns

-state spelled out outperforms abbreviation
-other good keywords near, in, area
-directional terms, south west north,etc
-consider county names

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Chris Silver Smith, Lead Strategist, Netconcepts
Jenny Halasz, SEO Manager, Acronym Media
Paul Bruemmer, Director Search Marketing, Red Door Interactive
Moderated by Chris Sherman

Jenny
Local and mobile are tightly integrated.
Execution of Local and Mobile Campaign
-determine your available resources
-use simulators and tools to view your site in mobile browsers

Case study: minimal SEO can lead to large growth in international markets
-implement low resources high impact changes
-submit to lisitng sites

List biz address in single line on your site, easier for spiders
Build Mobile only site if possible, always include link back to original site.
Build out location specific content if you have it.

-onmobile site, add skip to content link
-use tel tags on your phone numbers
-add area code for 10 digit dialing
-be xhtml compliant

Mobile best practices
-clean navigation
-min images
-use css

Check on these simulators
(NEED TO ADD THESE LATER)

-adoption and use of mobile is higher that any other in the US, but SEO skills are stronger in US.

Chris Silver Smith
-Local search is fragmented, IYPs, Local Search sites, Vertical Directories
-Look at localsearchguide.org
-mobile search is growing (thinks more so this year)
-one of the top reasons users use mobile is for IYP lookups
-IYPs are valuable for referrals/conversions. Users closer to buying process (38% more) also IYPs have higher incomes than normal.
-mobile companies resist open platforms, getting harder for them to do this though due to consumer demand
-Small businesses should outsource Local SEO if not familiar
-Medium businesses could go agency or in house
-Large businesses should go in house may need some advice from outsiders, and analytics
-You need to organically optimize for natural search, make sure store locater sites are optimized
-Update and Enhance listings with major local players
-track ad effectiveness by tracking phone calls via Voicestar, eStara, Jingle Networks
-mobile search not hot yet
-411 players might be worth looking at.
-advertise as much as possible without being overwhelming

Paul Bruemmer
-because of high penetration and ability to receive input anywhere anytime mobile devices will RULE!
-some cons though, walled garden, wap sucks, etc
-more pros click through rates are looking good, high open rates etc
-more cons trial and error period due to FCC rulings, highly fragmented, reach is low, realiable measurement is missing
-more pros, build one heck of a customer database. Loyalty and retention very good, good for generating buzz

basic mobile marketing campaigns
-content sponsorships
-location targeting
-opt in SMS

Planning a mobile search campaign
-business users and youth are hot spots for mobile
-could set up an SMS campaign for $3000, mobile ad campaign for $10,000

check
www.enpocket.com
(2 OTHERS NEED TO ADD LATER)

10 Tips on Mobile Campaign
(NEED TO ADD LATER)

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