The Science of Local Search

1. Landing Page Control. The ability to make changes across all landing pages simultaneously is critical to keeping pace with the needs of the marketplace. Many clients have told us this is the critical must-have piece of the search locator puzzle. All of the quality data, interactive mapping, video and other components in the world are useless unless you can quickly and easily apply them to all of your landing pages.

2. Quality Data. Location data needs to be scrubbed regularly, removing duplicates, adding new locations, ensuring grammar and punctuation are correct and providing current address and contact information.

3. Clean User Interface and Visual Appeal. A Locator must be easy to use, enabling consumers to intuitively find what they are looking for. Web 2.0 technology has allowed for ease-of-use functions to be built in almost automatically.

4. International Support. There are varying data format standards across the globe. A Locator should support all of these standards. Users will expect commonality between the different international locators.

5. Mapping. Maps provide instant validation that consumers can find your products in their geographic area. GeoIP provides instant search results based on the users IP address. Consumers should also be able to search by zip code, city/state, address or neighborhoods. It's important that new locations show up on the map when users pan (move) the map. Driving directions are a good sign of conversion, as they will most likely visit your location. Offering locations along the way allows consumers to find you between two points. For landing pages it's crucial to include what's nearby, meaning cities, zip codes and neighborhoods.

6. Site Architecture including Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Follow best practices in on-page and off-page SEO. On-page factors include proper formatting of URL's, unique Title Tags and descriptive content such as neighborhoods and points of Interest (POIs). Off-page factors center on link building. Remember to keep your copy clean and crisp with relevant keywords.

7. Conversion Tools. These include driving directions, send to email, send to phone, send to printer, coupons, lead generation forms, reviews, and call tracking. Analyzing the behavior of consumers will give you greater insight into their intent.

8. Store / Product Attributes. Such critical information as hours of operation, credit card policy, forms of payment accepted, parking availability, Wi-Fi access and inventory availability help validate your store with consumers. If they can't find this practical information, they will look elsewhere. Include as much of this information as you think is relevant to consumers. If you need to drop some of your boilerplate marketing copy from the page in order to fit store attribute information, so be it!

9. Tracking & Reporting. Understanding where the traffic comes from (search engine, IYP, etc.) and what factors influence conversion rates (coupons, newsletters, send to phone/mail) requires detailed reporting. Good Keyword analysis tools are also a must.

10. Video. Of growing importance as an SEO tactic, video can lead to increased consumer engagement. Some sites have seen up to a 30% increase is website traffic by adding videos, which increases your chances of a higher ranking organic search result. Recent studies also point to increased conversion rates when video is present on a landing page.