SEO for Local Search – David Mihm

A nice 10 minute-ish video with David Mihm on SEO strategies for Local Search:

[Vimeo 5119126]

Click here to access David Mihm’s articles at Search Engine Land.

glenn

Hyperlocal – Core Dimensions (Part 2)

This is the third in a series of posts on key dimensions of Hyperlocal. Other posts in this series are:

• HyperLocal – a Framework
• Hyperlocal – Core Dimensions (Part 1)
• Hyperlocal – Key Technologies

In the previous post, we explored the dimensions of Hyperlocal News and Commerce. In this post, we will explore Local Advertising and Hyperlocal Community.

Local Advertising

Local Advertising is definitely a key part of Local Business/Commerce, which I explored in the previous post. But local advertising can also be embedded within Local News and Local Community portals. Thus I’ve chose to deal with it as a separate topic.

Insights into Local/Hyperlocal Advertising

First off, I have a few favorite resources for keeping informed in the Local/Hyperlocal advertising space. These are:

• Borrell Associates blog
• BIA/Kelsey blog
• Screenwerk – Greg Sterling’s blog

Borrell Associates – headed up by CEO Gordon Borrell – also sponsors the Local Online Advertising Conference, which was held in New York city early this month.

Jeff Jarvis also frequently has compelling insights into Advertising strategies for Local News Media. For example, see his recent blog posts from February 2010: Stop selling scarcity and NewBizNews: What ad sales people hear.

Search Engine Marketing/SEO for SMEs

Obviously, SEM strategies are critical for any local online business on the web. My top go-to resources for local SEM/SEO insights are:

• Small Business Search Marketing by Matt McGee
• SEO by the Sea – Bill Slawski’s blog
• Understanding Google Maps and Local Search – Mike Blumenthal’s blog
• Chris Silver Smith
• The Noisy Channel – Daniel Tunkelang’s blog
• David Mihm
• Local SEO Guide – Andrew Shotland’s blog
• Search Engine Land
• John Battelle’s Searchblog

Big Ad Networks

On the solution provider front, you have the big ad networks around Search Engine marketing, some of which include:

• Google AdWords and Mobile
• Yahoo!
• Microsoft
• AOL

Local Advertising Media/Platforms

A number of application/media providers – many with a mobile focus – are positioned to be significant players, including:

• Twitter
• Foursquare

Niche/Regional-based Ad Networks and Services

Increasingly, however, you also have your niche/regional-based ad networks and service providers. Here’s some examples:

• Adify
• Clickable
• GrowthSpur
• ReachLocal
• Yodle
• WebVisible
• Spot Runner
• Sacremento Press
• Village Voice Media

Bargains and Deals

Numerous vendors provide applications to notify consumers of bargains and deals in the local vicinity, including:

• Forkfly
• Foursquare
• Spreezio
• Google
• 8coupons
• RetailMeNot
• Coupons.com
• Groupon

Additional Local Advertising Solution Providers

One more advertising solution provider I’ll mention:

• PaperG

So there you have it, a sampling of Local Advertising solution providers. Local Advertising should be a very interesting space to watch in 2010, particularly when it comes to mobile, location-based tools and technologies.

Local Community

The Local Community view of HyperLocal is about information and events of interest to the Community. Information and Events around the Local Community may be contributed by businesses, community organizations, or municipal governmental sources, or it may be user-generated content contributed by the Community.

When you talk Community, by definition you are talking about Social Networks. Therefore, you have to consider the various social networking platforms, and particularly those that host large social graphs. I’m thinking here most specifically of:

• Facebook, and
• Twitter

Many of the HyperLocal News platforms are also positioning themselves as Local Community platforms. For example:

• Patch
• Outside.in

You also have open city initiatives/discussions such as those initiated by:

• Vancouver
• Toronto
• NYC Data Mine
• DataSF
• Next Amercian City

For additional information on open city initiatives, see here.

Then there are do-it-yourself City initiatives and tools, for example:

• DIY City
• SeeClickFix
• CitySourced

You have Local Event platforms, such as:

• Zvents
• when.com
• Trumba

And finally, organizational and community tools around local causes. See:

• The Extraordinaries, also see here
• Localgiving

This is really just a very small sampling of possible ways/platforms for organizing people within a geographic community. I look for a lot of innovation in this space over the next several years.

HyperLocal Business Models

This viewpoint explores various ways to make a HyperLocal business commercially viable. There’s some great pioneering work being done by Jeff Jarvis and the folks at CUNY here – see the New Business Models for News Project at CUNY, and Jarvis’ overview of the work on HyperLocal business models here.

More on this to come.

Categorization in Local Business Search – Thoughts

A couple nice blog posts on the topic of Business Categorization in Local Search:

• Thoughts On Categorization In Local Search – David Mihm, September 2009
• How Many Categories Should A Local Business Have? – Hanan Lifshitz, July 2009

glenn