This meeting was the monthly meeting of the DFWSEM, of which I’m a Corporate Member – Coolbubba Multimedia.  Meetings are $30 each, and free for members.  Annual Membership is $150 for individuals and $300 for corporate. Individual memberships include one attendance per month, corproate memberships include 3 people per meeting with additional seats available for I believe $50 annually.

 The meeting last night was on Local Search, and the panel of nationally known experts on the subject included David Nihm (nationally recognized expert), Chris Silver Smith – Keyrelevance – Dallas, and Brian Combs, CEO ionadas local LLC out of Austin.

The meeting bascially covered the differences between Local Search and “normal” SEO and the different approaches to take when undertaiking campaigns of each.  It answered on a basic level the questions of  “How Do I Rank in Google Maps” and “How Do I Rank in Local Search?”

 The comparability somewhat of citations in local search as compared to “links” in “normal” seo.  About keeping your information consistant with all sources of citation and your own site, advertisements, etc.  If you have your business name and address formatted in a certain way on your site, i.e  123 Main Street, don’t list it somewhere else as 123 Main St.  – be consistant with the formatting of all of your local search information. 

The topic of tracking numbers was also covered – if you are going to use tracking numbers – either include them as images or have them called externally via javascript, no inline javascript, etc.  Reason being, the most consistant your company information, including address, phone number, name formatting, etc. the higher the “trust” element with Google, and thus, in theory, the higher the ranking.

For local search links are important, but so are “citations.”  Citations are mentions of your site, URL, phone number, etc. on other websites.  Your URL may or may not be a hyperlink, as well any geo information that can be incorporated in your site as well as sites on which citations exist.  Maps, hcards, etc.

Reviews are also extremely important for local search.  Reviews by a wide variet of people on a wide variety of sites, such as Yelp, City Search, IYP, etc.

Data providers are also important. Localeze, infoUSA and Acxiom.  Get your information into these resources, which supply information and feed data to many other sites, and, again, make sure it’s formatted identically, as identical information formatting helps out with the trust factor, which is again a large part of local search. 

They went over a ton of other things, but the above being some of the basic, recurring themes.  If you are into local search, I’ll have a book coming out soon, so check back on the site for a comprehensive book on decimating your competition in local search and Google Maps.