After a networking break featuring awesomely big cookies, sessions fired up with Optimizing for Local Search, Keyword Research & Selection, and Twitter Landscape: An In-Depth View of the Twitter Ecosystem.
It was all I could do not to stay planted in Salon C and absorb yet another social media session…but I managed to pull myself away and step into Salon A for a little Local Search schooling.
As I situated myself, I sent out a tweet to Chris Brogan and Guy Kawasaki, to express my sadness at missing the Fireside Chat earlier in the morning. Guy smoothed my feathers by tweeting back :)
After reading an article about PubCon earlier in the week by (Michael Dorausch) @chiropractic (and telling him how much it rocked in a tweet), it was cool to see him on the Local Search panel. I sent him a shout out saying “Dude, I didn’t know you were coming to PubCon!” which was pretty dorky, considering I had read that article and all.
Eric Bramlett (who showed very little resemblance to his Twitter Avatar) opened the session with information about Google and area industry search. He said old-school was reciprocal link exchanges (remember those?), directory submissions, and advertised link buys.
Eric mentioned that good sources of local link exposure is business associations (websites) & local charities (donation recognition). He said that editorial links were good link bait and to link out to other bloggers (and let them know). Perhaps a reciprocal relationship could occur.
Dorausch was up next and opened up with granular data (I’ve linked to one of his blog posts about granular information). His information was about capitalizing on local events, landmarks and things of interest. He did a search on flikr.com for Austin (not sure of the exact terms) but came back with a picture of Woodrow’s. The point being, think outside the box. Use resources like flikr to upload your own content and tag it with relevant tags, which will in turn link back to you and your business.
He gave examples of things Austin business could create content about, such as all the marathons and 5k’s going on here or about downtown Austin going “green” with neon. I hadn’t heard about that, so I did my best to Google it and Twitter search it, but came up empty on something specific at the time of writing this post. I did find a new neon light alternative called LED Flex that is perhaps related, but if you really want to find out, perhaps you could contact Ilios Lighting here in Austin to see if they know. Then you can blog about it.
Dorausch went on to talk about trends, searching words & related searches to research topics and find information to create local content. He said to use locations & landmarks in your articles & use streetview pics from Google to add a multi-media element to your content, along with pictures, video & recordings (consider creating live, while you are out and about in town).
I was clearly positively overwhelmed with Justin Sanger of LocalLaunch as I sent tweet, after tweet, after tweet, after tweet during his session. The first line of my notes say “Holy moly stats”. Then I noted that the internet will drive a trillion dollars of offline, local spending in 2010/11 (which was one of my tweets).
Unlike people who use/used the yellow pages for need-based reasons (broken pipe, call a plumber), people are using local internet searches early in the buying cycle to get information and become educated before making purchases.
Today’s local search is about atomization, structured content and stimulation of UGC (user generated content). Sanger urges local businesses to think of what they can do to influence what the internet knows about your business. Think local score, base data, business profiles, local references, authoritative coattails, ugc, social & video. Collective intelligence, conversation – take control.
