Tag Archives: local search engine optimization

According to AT&T’s Local Insights Report, restaurants and automotive are the most popular local search categories in online and mobile searches. Other popular categories are movie theaters, beauty services and hotels as well as real estate, finance and legal services. The top growing search categories are pharmacies, toy stores, department stores, travel agencies and shoe stores.

Mobile searches now represent over 30% of all searches across the YP Local Ad Network and mobile search will continue to grow as more people upgrade to smartphones.  The Local Insights Report found that most mobile searchers used the “click to call” option to get more information about the business where users who were searching online visited the website to further research the business.

For more details, read the full Local Insights Report.

Google logoAccording to SEO.com, Google recently announced its newest algorithm update. Matt Cuts, head of Google’s web spam team, made an announcement at SXSW during the Q&A portion of his session that Google has been working on a new algorithm that will reward websites with great content and websites rather than those that are using too many keywords or exchanging too many links. Google is working to make GoogleBot smarter and improve relevance so websites that are trying to “over optimize” won’t rule over truly great content.

Google has been stating for a long time that it prefers and wants to give higher rankings to content-rich websites. The new algorithm update, which is being referred to as “the over-optimization penalty” reflects Google’s long-term goal. So what does this mean for business owners? It means they should figure out exactly what constitutes useful and relevant content for their target audience and deliver it on their website. Producing great content that engages your target audience will help your business get on the first page of the search engine results pages (SERPs) and compete with big companies that have bigger budgets for their SEO efforts. One tip from SEO.com is to vary your content types; use video, photos, text, bulleted lists, headers to break up your paragraphs and more in order to add interest to your content. The more interesting and helpful your content, the more people will want to share, increasing your relevance and page rank.

With social media networks like Facebook and Twitter dominating the space, why should your company pay any attention to the new kid on the block, Google+? Here are 10 reasons why Google+ is great for businesses.

  1. Google+ has only been around a few months but already has 170 million users. Clearly the network is growing rapidly and is on its way to being the new place to be for brands and individuals alike.
  2. Google+ is indexed by Google, which means using Google+ can help customers find your business faster and easier.
  3. Creating a business page on Google+ will help increase your online visibility.
  4. It’s easy to share and rank other people’s posts and comment on Google+.
  5. Google+ offers a variety of sharing options including posts, photos, videos, etc.
  6. You can use Circles on Google+ to target your audience better so you’re always sharing the most relevant content to the people who will be interested in seeing it.
  7. 60% of Google+ users log in every day, compared to only 50% of Twitter users who log in every day.
  8. Google Hangouts can be used to host Q&A sessions or other educational events with customers via video chat.
  9. Sites on Google+ tend to be indexed very quickly and +1 links may rank higher in the search results.
  10. It’s easy to create multimedia posts on Google+ because of its integration with YouTube and Picasa.

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