For the last three years, David has sough out, compiled and published his Local Search Ranking factors that are the read in local search.  In bringing together a great group of local search experts together you get more than one opinion, rating and thoughts on over 60 elements that are part of local search (good, neutral or bad).

Many of my favorite local search gurus are included in the panel including Mike Ramsey, Paul Jahn, Ed Reese, Mike Blumenthal, Andrew Shotland and more. Over 30 experts, all in 1 post.

Thanks again to David Mihm for this incredible resource and having myself and Five Technology be a part of it.

Here is one of our clients, a CPA firm with 2 offices that have earned top rankings in both the local and organic results.  Their positions are boxed in red.

Consider that the user not only has 2 links to click into to bring them to their website or more information on their business, but they greatly climb the user’s trust curve by being seen multiple times on the page.  Here are the results for their 2nd office.

Occupying more of the search results page real estate should be the goal of any business.  The first step is understanding that local search and organic search are two separate things with separate elements and ranking formulas.

Your local search listings are generated from how your business is registered with the engines as well as other online resources. A great step to start with for many businesses is using GetListed.org to verify if you have claimed your local business listings with the major search engines.

With the combination of local search and organic search results working together, you can greatly increase your website’s exposure.

Two packed sessions of Minnesota business owners, marketers, web designers and more soaked up an incredible amount of Internet marketing knowledge from leading experts as well as staff from Google and Bing.  GetListed.org’s Local University delivered as promised with solid education, best practices, approach, tools and more that anyone can implement at some level for marketing online.

Personally, in helping bring the Local U event to the Twin Cities it was satisfying to hear so many of the positive comments following each session and read all of the tweets.  Below are just a few Twitter comments from the day:

This is one workshop that is only out to educate it’s attendees, not sell.

Thank you to all involved, local sponsors Deluxe & ReliaCloud, the attendees, speakers, promotional partners and friends that help me pull this together.

The amount of valuable local search and online marketing information that was shared is awesome.  Smart people that enjoy sharing their vast knowledge is what Local U is all about.  How great is that?  I’m proud to have been part of this great group and event.

Here are a few photos from the event ….

Learn more on GetListed.org and the Local University series, who’s next stop is Cleveland, Ohio in June.

Who is this conference for?

This has been a big question I get when talking about the event.  I thought I would offer a small summary of what I feel every level of business owner, marketer or SEO can get from this great opportunity.

Entry Level - If you are a business owner, running a business or a small business marketer you may very well get the most out of Local University.  A solid amount of the information and sessions are gear toward baseline education, do-it-yourself tips and giving you a clear understanding of how things work and how you can benefit.  Confusion on Internet marketing will be replaced by clarity.

Intermediate Level- Where some of the information covered might be a good refresher, you’ll still get some new angles and information.  There is no doubt that the local search expertise presenting will give you more insight into this exploding area of the web and business.  The Q & A sessions will also give you access to ask questions in some areas that might be of specific interest to you.

Expert Level- Here is a great chance to support the industry you work in.  The chance to learn may still exist within the local search presentations, but the chance to network with other great Internet marketing minds as well as business owners and other local marketers is fantastic.

This 4 hour workshop will cover fantastic information on search engine optimization, local search , social media and more.  It’s a jam packed line-up that can benefit all levels of Internet marketers.

• Register now and use the code five2010 to get $40 off, dropping your cost to just $89 for this event.

Thank you to the local sponsors helping make this event possible, Deluxe and ReliaCloud.

Organized by GetListed.org co-founder David Mihm, the seminar featured a great line-up of experienced Internet marketers as well as Google and Bing representatives.  The Local University seminar will be heading out to other cities in 2010, bringing a fantastic wealth of information for any business or organization looking to improve their online marketing knowledge.

In just a 4 hour session, attendees took part in detailed presentations, real world case studies, Q & A sessions, how-to’s, do-it-yourself tips, resources and more.  Overall it was some incredible search, social and local/maps information, from talented presenters, all for $129. A complete steal to get a ton of  basics, the best practices and the baseline to market online.

The panel of speakers form left to right were Mikko Ollila of Bing, Ryan Hayward of Google, Matt McGee of Small Business SEM, Mike Blumenthal a local search expert, David Mihm of GetListed.org and Mary Bowling of seOverflow. Not pictured above was Spokane SEO expert Ed Reese.

Local University is a must for any business that wants real answers, real examples and access to grasp the opportunity to succeed online.

In addition to attending the seminar it was a chance for me to finally connect in person with other search marketers I have read, done business with and interacted with for some time.  I had a great time meeting a few new ones too like Mary Bowling, Mike Blumenthal (aka Professor Maps) and Mike Ramsey as the presenters took in dinner the night before.

Minneapolis In The Local University Future?
The one last piece that put me on a flight to Spokane was to attract the Local University offering to the Minneapolis area later this year.  The amount of information, the level of expertise and the complete offering would be perfect for the local business community here in the Twin Cities.

I can tell you that the event left Spokane buzzing, satisfied and hoping for another one.

Hopefully I’ll have some good news soon, but don’t hesitate to let your voice be heard with a comment below.

There were some great Buffalo and Wright County businesses / organizations in attendance and I enjoyed the 45 minute presentation. Getting to share my knowledge and passion for the web is one of the best things I get to do at Five. Thank you to the Chamber for the invite to speak and present!

Speaking of presentations, we will be announcing a business blogging seminar soon for late May.  We should be getting the details out next week.

Thanks to Five web programmer @travisneids for taking the photos.

A New Top Keyword
I thought I would update that post with how this new Google search feature has effected our search engine traffic.  Prior to this local feature, our top terms of referral traffic were our company name and then “web design MN”, “Minnesota web design” and other variations.

In the past week we have a new top term for bringing traffic to our website, “web design”.  Prior to the Google change, we would have never even dreamt of competing for the term of web design without a location or another term attached. In doing just some minor research, we appear in the local search results for 11 different zip codes.  With our office being rurally located, we bleed into other areas results from as far as 20 miles away.  If we were right in Minneapolis this wouldn’t be the case, but the search volume for “web design” would be much higher.  Not too bad of a trade off.

This new local search feature creates a lot of opportunity for small businesses to attract more buisness from Google.  It also shines a much brighter light on local search, a focus we will see increase in the coming months for sure.

Instead of having to search “Dentists in Delano, MN”, you can just type “Dentists” and get local results on page one. Google is using the location of your Internet provider (ISP) to determine where you are, so there will be some variables and inaccurate results, but local search results are there.  Google is trying to improve your search results, feeling that your search probably has local intent.

Local search blogger Paul Jahn weighed in on the new local search feature and the change location ability.  Having an ISP that is local is one hurdle, but Paul points out the “change location” feature to help correct that.  As my example above shows, my results are for Maple Plain which is 10 miles from where we actually office in Delano.  There are still a few Delano results though.

Matt McGee also put together a great post over at Search Engine Land on this and gave some examples, the positives and the challenges.

Local Search Is Important & Improving
The biggest takeaway here is that local search is getting easier for the user.  Google is working to understand what you want.  It is also going to become even more important for the small business to make sure they are represented in the Google 10 pack of local results.

Small business now have the chance to compete for popular one keyword or two keyword searches.  This opportunity shouldn’t be ignored.  This addition is great on many levels and I’m sure we’ll be posting on it more in the coming months.

The Blackwater web project included the following:

• Custom design elements over an existing CSS layout
• Full CMS back-end for updating of all website content
• Easy to use menu admin that allows for creating unlimited menus, categories, sub-categories, item name, description, pricing and pricing options. We’ll be adding a photo element per item in the near future as well.
• SEO Friendly URLs, on-page optimization, local search optimization
• Email marketing set-up, e-letter design and support
• Interactive calendar that Blackwater will start using next month

Here is a screenshot of their food menu.

The Big Future of Restaurant Web Design

Last year we decided to start building an industry web and marketing solution for the restaurant, bar, cafe, coffee shop, bakery …. any type of food or beverage service business. That solution is called Taste Trend and Blackwater is the first client. We are just shoring up the Taste Trend website that will allow food service businesses to buy a web and Internet marketing package online and get started. Stay tuned for more on that launch next week.

Taste Trend will provide an affordable web solution for the small food service business. The set-up fees are as low as $450 and monthly fees starting at $75, anyone can use this service. We feel we’ve created an easy to use, great looking, value stuffed, SEO friendly web and marketing tool.

Here is just some of what a Taste Trend website package offers:

• Initial consulting and recommendations
• Semi custom design with desired elements over CSS layouts
• Full web management of content and pages
• Robust menu administration
• SEO friendly design & local search help
• Email marketing set-up, service and support
• Detailed web analytics on traffic and sources
• Ongoing support and education
• Many add-ons for photos, video, calendars, gift certificates and more.

All of these great features will be accessible through the Taste Trend account dashboard, called The Kitchen.

So as you can see, we have a lot going on here and we’re super excited about it. Stay tuned for next weeks roll-out of the website. If you are interested in being a BETA client of Taste Trend, let us know. We have a few spots left!

I’m old school on Sunday mornings and almost always head out to buy the Sunday paper (Star Tribune) to read while having breakfast. As a gadget and tech guy, I usually look forward to the Best Buy insert.

As I flipped through the first pages and entered into the TV section I was intrigued by what I saw. A main focus of the TV’s featured were their customer review rating from BestBuy.com.
Below is the newspaper insert.

You can see as circled above that each of the three TV’s highlights a review quote and their average customer review rating. Online reviewers are supplying a piece of the feature/benefits for these products. Best Buy is leveraging the mass approval of these products having a 4.7 star or higher average to win trust and product confidence.

Small Business Review Idea
It also started me thinking of how local business reviews could be leveraged by small businesses. An auto repair shop could communicate their “Over 50 Positive Reviews on Google” to build instant credibility. The ability to position the consumer opinion to sell for you is an interesting one. The crew at Precision Auto Repair out in California could use customer quotes and their 5 star rating to it’s advantage offline (and on their website!).

Have you seen other examples of this? This Best Buy use is the first I’ve seen and I think it’s pretty cool. I would guess a few others have done it too. It really speaks to the change in marketing we continue to see as consumers and marketers.