Why Local Matters - Playing the Local Search Game

Kimberly Kay Dillon, Marketing Manager

If you are paying attention to anything in the search marketing realm (SEO or SEM), you may notice that “local search” is the new search marketing “buzzword.” A number of recent studies suggest that local search delivers more relevant results and, naturally, more relevant results mean more conversions. So what exactly is local search and is it just an overhyped buzzword? The Wikipedia definition of local search says:

"[It] is the natural evolution of ‘yellow pages’ directory advertising moving to the internet. Some of the local search data used online comes from yellow page publishers. Telephone directories still attract a significant amount of advertising, though this has recently lost ground to internet local search. A variety of search engines are currently providing local search, including efforts backed by the largest search engines, and new start-ups. Some of these efforts are further targeted to specific vertical segments, and several are tied into mapping products."

To explain it in terms of an accessible example, let’s say that we are looking for something to eat, such as pizza. Many of us would go to Google or Yahoo and enter the keywords “Pizza in Atlanta,” “pizza+Atlanta,” or some variety thereof. That search by definition is called a local search because Google and Yahoo are assuming that you want to find out about your pizza options as they relate to the region of your IP address, in this case Atlanta. If you consider the majority of your searches, a significant portion of them are in fact local searches. Searches for schools, dentists, and even flat screen TVs are all things that most consumers will purchase locally.

It may seem like local search is about local business and that there are few implications for large companies; however, if we go back to our example and now search only on Google for the keyword “pizza,” we will find that the first search result is for Pizza Hut. If we were to compare the search results for “pizza” and for “pizza+Atlanta,” we would see that Pizza Hut is not on the first page of the returned search results for the local search yet it is for the overall term “pizza.” This could signify missed opportunities for the company.

Local search is important because our goal, as marketers, is always to be in the back of our consumers’ minds and to provide the best experience at the exact moment in which the consumers are looking to find our products and services. Another telling fact is that 63% of U.S. internet users conducted local searches last month and 47% of users are more likely to visit a brick and mortar store as a result of their search behavior (Source:’06 ComScore).

In the rest of this article, I will present an overview on local search and also five considerations to think about as you enter the local search game.

A Primer on Local Search

The Players

Some of the players in the local search game include the big names, like Google and Yahoo, but smaller and newer sites are becoming increasingly important, too. For illustrative purposes we have mapped out these different players in the chart below. Here key players are sized by Alexa traffic rankings and are grouped by category; thus, the larger the circle, the more traffic the site received.

The Search - Many search engines have recently integrated local search into their search offerings, while a few market themselves exclusively as local search portals, such as Local.com. When a user is searching for a local service or product, all of the engines will return a basic business listing which, just like the White Pages, includes company name, address, and telephone numbers. In addition to these basic business details, many search engines include a map view, community rating and reviews, and a summary with a link to the official website. Leading search engines include:

City Review Sites - City review sites are directory sites that provide "best of" city listings, such as the best restaurants or best home builders in your city. A very familiar site is Citysearch.com. While the majority of these sites have editorial content, most of these sites also allow readers to submit their own reviews and ratings. Sites like Citysearch.com and Yelp.com rank noticeably high in search results because they provide a vast amount of content and, more importantly, because the content is fresh. These are two things that search engines rank highly. An example of the integration between a large search engine and a local review site would be the relationship between Kudzu.com and Google.com. Kudzu is an Atlanta business directory that allows users to find information on Atlanta’s service providers. Kudzu encourages its users to rank and review the businesses and then returns a star rating for the business. Even though Kudzu is much smaller and newer than Google, its reviews are integrated into Google's local search listings whenever you search for an Atlanta based business. Popular city review sites include:

Vertical Sites (Travel Industry Examples) - For every industry there are few websites that really matter in terms of their organic ranking strength. For my purposes, I looked at a few travel verticals sites. These sites typically include some form of user generated content, whether photos, ratings, or reviews, and have gained popularity because of the “trust” factor associated with community reviews. Prominent vertical sites in the travel industry include:

Data Service Providers - The data service providers have a key role in local search because they provide the majority of basic data for both national and local businesses. This data, such as business name, address, industry category, contact details, and summary text, are included in the databases that feed into local search engines and on local review sites. Most of these data providers pull information from telephone companies such as Yellowpages.com. Well known data providers include:

How to Play the Game

1. Know where you stand

First, walk in the shoes of your customers. Where are they searching? What are they finding? And who are they finding besides you? At one end of the spectrum is completing a full scale environmental scan of your online presence, your competition, and your industry. At the opposite end of the spectrum is the weekly and monthly review of the sites that you have determined matter for monitoring.

In this example, let’s say that we are a national hotel chain with multiple properties in Atlanta. If a user was to search for us on Google using the geographic indicator Atlanta, here is what they would find in the search engine results:

2. Control your business data

In the screenshot above, notice the section called “local business results for Atlanta" (highlighted with the red box). That is Google's local search results, conspicuously embedded into the overall search listings. Notice that it even sits higher on the page than the natural listings and, consequently, may cause users to be more inclined to click there. Now, notice the basic data in this section. All of this information, such as phone number, web address, and physical address, is being pulled from one of several data providers. Pretty innocuous information, but what happens when your industry category is wrong? What if you were listed as a hospital instead of a hotel? Then, it is safe to say that your listing would not return highly in Google’s local search. If your information is listed incorrectly, you or your interactive agency will need to contact the various data providers to update your listing.

3. Review your Reviews

You may have noticed that reviews are a key part of this section. If you wanted to learn more about this hotel, you would click on the link "for directions, review and more” highlighted with a red arrow in the screenshot above. In our example, the Omni Hotel has 335 reviews and, it should be noted, not all of them are positive. It will be increasingly important as we continue in this “web 2.0” environment that online marketers pay attention to the conversations that are being had about them online. In the case of local search, users’ conversations are alongside your business listing. While this is the kind of stuff that causes traditional brand marketers to cringe, it is important to note that this is ultimately next generation “word of mouth.” What is being said in these online conversations, both positive and negative, should be interrelated as valuable feedback that should drive your marketing efforts. Hint: Google Alerts is a free tool that will allow you to be alerted via email when users search for specified keywords, such as your company name or industry keywords.

4. Maximize Your SEO

Let’s return to our first example. Let’s say that you are looking for a pizza spot, specifically one near work. You go to Google Maps, search for the keyword “pizza," and search on the map by city, state, and zip code. A list of all the local pizza spots are returned, plus pictures of the business, hours of operations, and menus. Pretty neat, but there is a catch. Those pictures and menus are not provided by the company but instead are from users, data providers, and industry directories. In this example, if we choose to look at the menu, we would be taken to Zagats.com, where there is the potential to have user abandonment since this path is not controlled by you.

Remember how, in the earlier example, local pizza shops returned higher than the national chains? In this last example, the national chain Papa John’s is returned as a sponsor listing at the very top of the page as well as within the actual map, designated by a pizza marker. This shows that national brands like Papa John’s are beginning to pay attention to local search by using campaigns with local keywords as well as geo-targeting their campaigns.

5. Work with Vertical Engines

Understanding what vertical sites matter to your industry is key to winning the local search game for two reasons. First, a vertical engine can be an industry specific content rich site or it can be a plain directory with listings. In the pizza example, Zagats.com would be a key site to monitor as they are the ones providing menu content to your users. The second reason why vertical sites are so important to your business is that they rank high in terms of natural search results. This means that if you were searching for a specific restaurant, the vertical site that mentions the restaurant’s name may rank higher than the restaurant’s own domain. It is key to note which vertical sites matter in your industry, consequently (1) making sure that you are listed within the vertical site and (2) considering targeting your advertising dollars to these sites.

To summarize, last year 42% of search marketers used local search in their search marketing campaigns. Even more significant, 78% of them are planning to use this tactic during the remainder of this year. That is more than any of the other search marketing tactics.

Paying attention to these advancements in local search will reap rich rewards for small and large businesses alike.

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