Facebook Graph Search: Local Search Ranking Factors. On January 15, 2013, Facebook released Graph Search, which is the social network's first attempt at a serious search engine. I'm glad Facebook launched Graph Search, since I often joked that the previous search functionality was so bad, you could barely find yourself. I gained access to Graph Search on January 17, and have completed an enormous amount of research since then. In my first post on Graph Search, I explained its potential impact to privacy, reputation management, local search, and more. You should check out that post to gain a better understanding of how Graph Search works and the challenges that Facebook is dealing with. While completing my research, it didn't take long to dig deeper into local search, and to realize the potential impact to local businesses (if Graph Search truly takes off). 4 Focus Areas and Local Graph Search Graph Search currently handles four key areas: photos, people, places, and interests.
SES New York and My Presentation on Graph Search 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 10 LinkedIn Groups for Local Businesses. Harness The Power Of Twitter For Local Marketing. The Twitter social networking and micro-blogging service was launched only two years ago, but it’s rocketing up in usage numbers quickly, and it seems likely to turn red-hot. Many companies are rapidly cluing into the promotional value, but smaller businesses appear slow to hop on the bandwagon. Here are a few tips on leveraging Twitter to help your locally-oriented business. As oft pointed-out among search marketers, Twitter links do not pass “link juice”—that is, they don’t transfer PageRank value from Twitter to linked-to sites. Even though links in Twitter are nofollowed, there still could be some small value in real ranking terms, according to the theory that “citations” or “references” appear to sometimes help improve rankings in local search. So, at the very least, it’s a good idea to claim a profile in Twitter and link back to your business site.
Even better, if they endorse the business to their followers, this becomes an online species of word-of-mouth-marketing. How To Use Pinterest For Local SEO. Looking for a little extra lift for your holiday season local search rankings? Instead of relying on some elf-magic, consider making your own ranking magic through using Pinterest, a young social media site that is rising in popularity faster than Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve! There’s a growing buzz amongst search engine optimization (SEO) circles at the moment that Pinterest is rapidly gaining traffic and traction (see Pinterest Gaining Traction for External SEO and Pinterest: Link Building & SEO Strategies).
You can see its virtually astronomical rise on Google Trends, compared with other popular image-sharing sites: The cool thing is, the rising popularity of Pinterest is from real users who like the service and not just from marketers or spammers. I’m seeing many everyday users requesting invites (the service is still in beta), perhaps drawn to it by its attractive user interface coupled with social media features. Related Articles:
Social Media is a Waste of Time. If you are like most small businesses, you and your team are stretched thin. If you even have a team. All day long you are servicing customers, delivering products, managing finances and doing whatever it takes to keep your business up and running. The last thing you need is to waste time. But for many small businesses, that’s exactly what they are doing when it comes to marketing with social media. The typical small business Facebook page is a ghost town. It might have some pictures of the business, a few posts about an event six months ago, and a handful of followers who joined when the page launched. On Twitter, there might be a couple posts a month and none of them are related to any customer question.
It’s hard to resist the promise of marketing in social media. To make the most of your social media marketing, you need to have a plan. Here are six steps to make sure you don’t waste time in social media: 1. 2. 3. Everyone loves a deal, and they love to share it when they find one. How To Find Local Twitter Users Using Social Bro - Vertus Digital. This post is aimed at anyone wanting to learn how to find local twitter users, using Social Bro, a brilliant and free app for managing twitter.
If you don’t have a Twitter account I recommend you head over to Twitter and sign up for one now, you’ll defiantly need one to follow this tutorial. Twitter is a brilliant place to find prospects, build friendships and engage with existing customers in your local area, but before you can start building relationships your going to have to find them. Luckily for us it’s not difficult to find twitter users by their location and start engaging with them. How To Find Local Twitter Users Step #1 – Downloading Social Bro Head over to Social Bro and download the version you prefer, I prefer the web based chrome version, but they all do the same thing, so take your pick and install it.
Step #2 – SignUp. Twitter Local: How to Geo Target Tweets for Small Business. Click Image to read why we need Geographically Targeted Group Blogs Small businesses and bloggers are missing enormous opportunities that can be easily accessed by creating geographically targeted Twitter accounts and blog content. By adding a local component to your social media accounts and blog, or creating accounts specifically to reach a location based audience, your Twitter account becomes far more valuable – for you and others.
Any business that operates in a limited geographic area will want to implement these tips as will all bloggers – whether you think this applies to what you are doing or not. Read on to find out WHY your geolocation is your strongest niche. Small businesses probably already realize that a Twitter account with followers scattered around the world is unlikely to increase their local leads or sales. They will understand why the people they most want to reach are their neighbors who could be interested in their products or services. WHY should anyone recommend you? Local Marketing & Search Marketing Best Practices #SESCHI.
Proper execution of a local and social media strategy is still a head scratcher for many internet marketers. The session on “Local + Social: the Future of Promotion” featuring Gregg Stewart and Benu Aggarwal at SES Chicago was a must see to answer several important questions. A Best Practices Approach with Gregg Stewart Did you know that roughly 20% of all Google searches have local intent? When you look at mobile data that number is even higher. These statistics alone should show us as marketers how important a online local strategy is for improving engagement. Checking the Box Won’t Work While website All Facebook says that 96% of small businesses are on Facebook, Mashable.com says that 64% of small businesses think that social media is unnecessary. Caution: Mistakes Ahead Stewart stated that the biggest mistake that advertisers trying to go local make is focusing on the wrong data.
Local + Social Best Practices AccuracyDistributionSignal StrengthEnrichment Exploring Local Trends on Twitter. Local Tweets: 9 Ways to Find Twitter Users in Your Town. The Twittering Towns series is supported by the Comcast Town Design Showdown. Thousands of people created and submitted their apartments, and the judges have narrowed it down to four finalists. They're all vying for the opportunity to win a prize worth up to $30,000, including a room remodel, 40-inch Sony Bravia® HDTV, a Sony VAIO® AW laptop and a Philips digital phone. Submit your vote today! The number of people visiting and using Twitter has nearly quadrupled over the past few months, and as more people sign up for the hot social networking service, it becomes more useful. Finding local Twitter users to connect with is great for networking, but also for getting relevant, real-time, local information about things like jobs, news, politics, weather, food, and more. 1.
One of the best ways to find local Twitter users is simply to search for them on Twitter Search. This search, for example, reveals all the tweets coming from anyone within 25 miles of Boston. 2. 3. 4. iPhone Apps 5. 6. 7.