When Local Loves Links-That-Aren’t-Links

Writing by Brick Marketing on Wednesday, 30 of July , 2008 at 12:57 pm

The “Big” search engines generally treat Local SEO differently than they treat standard SEO. The question is, if you are a local business, what can you do differently from standard SEO to increase your rankings for Local?In the Local algorithm, links still bring you direct traffic from people who click on them, but the links in question don’t always have to be the standard links to other sites and pages and content. In fact, sometimes they are not links at all. In many cases, Google for instance, is highly ranking Local sites that have many citations from geographically related sites. The citation, in these cases, is usually only the business name, address, and phone number. So in standard definition, these ‘links’ aren’t links or ‘votes’ for your site’s popularity at all, but simply citations or references to the local physical address. While it isn’t a vote for popularity, the link-that-is-not-a-link is actually giving your local website a vote of relevancy. It’s an important distinction for SEO specialists and business owners, because if the Local algorithm thinks it is important for your site, so should you.SEO gurus that are treating Local SEO the same as standard SEO should look into using this citation relevancy as a way to help their Local clients out.

One of the easiest way to increase your Local site’s relevancy is by making sure the site and business name, address, and phone number are included in the Local Government and Town websites.

Google tends to weigh government and town website citations as highly important and *relevant* by reason of their location. And location is what Local SEO is all about.

                      Category: Local Search Engine Optimization