Entrepreneur: Optimizing Your Website For Local Search: A Primer
The author argues that local search engine optimization is essential for many small businesses in 2011. Many of the principles of standard SEO apply, but they need to be tweaked.
“Local search engine optimization can be just as time consuming and competitive as ‘regular’ SEO. The same rules apply — you need to have good content and quality links. However, the tactics are slightly different in specific areas.
Local search is essential to small businesses. In 2010, Google revealed that the proportion of Google result pages that show a map is one in 13. A few months later, Google changed from its Local Business Center (LBC) to Google Places, which enables businesses to communicate with customers as well as supplement their Google profile information to include hours of operation, photos, videos, coupons and product offerings. We assume Google is serving maps more than 1 billion times a month.”