Local Business Portals - Competition?

[Richard Odell]

Hi, I a planning a move into local portal sites.

After doing a few days research, I am amazed at how some of the smaller home-made sites (that rank high on the first page of Google for local business search terms) do so with very little SEO and back-links (if any!); a lot of them don't seem even have that much of an age either!!!

Considering that they have to fight it out with huge local directory sites, how are they achieving this? Is the market that wide open?

You would think that the larger directories would be blanketing all the top results?

Any thoughts on this?

Rich

[Vince Runza Online]

In many cases, local portals and directories have "Geo-location" on their side. Most of the heavy hitters have their local directory in a sub-directory of their file structure. The really local ones are closer to the TLD (in terms of directory structure of the site). Then there's the matter of just having a few more local references, like Zip or Postal codes, phone numbers (the area code geo-locates), etc.

I've beaten major directory pages with a Page Rank of 3 with a blog post that has a Page Rank of 0 or even grayed-out Page Rank. That's because the blog itself is Geo-located, via meta tags, local content and local backlinks.

[Richard Odell]

Originally Posted by Vince Runza Online

In many cases, local portals and directories have "Geo-location" on their side. Most of the heavy hitters have their local directory in a sub-directory of their file structure. The really local ones are closer to the TLD (in terms of directory structure of the site). Then there's the matter of just having a few more local references, like Zip or Postal codes, phone numbers (the area code geo-locates), etc.

I've beaten major directory pages with a Page Rank of 3 with a blog post that has a Page Rank of 0 or even grayed-out Page Rank. That's because the blog itself is Geo-located, via meta tags, local content and local backlinks.

That's really an eye opener.

Many thanks Vince...

Rich

[Allen Graves]

I have a local site for my community and it EASILY rose to the top of the SE's. I mean like #1 in all three!

Since it was started, some other copy cats have come around, but they obviously don't know SEO.

A little SEO and some time - you'll have a winner.

AL

p.s. Even if you don't like Adsense, you'l be pleasantly surprised with it on a local portal site!

[Melody]

You will also find that many of the local directories are owned by the local newspaper or TV stations and they have done virtually zero SEO work - they know that people will come to the site because they mention it every night on the news or see it in the morning paper. It's a completely different model & mindset - they really are not concerned with being #1 in the SERPs.

How long this will last is another question....but for now, they are pretty easy to pass in the SEs.

Melody

[Richard Odell]

Originally Posted by Vince Runza Online

In many cases, local portals and directories have "Geo-location" on their side. Most of the heavy hitters have their local directory in a sub-directory of their file structure. The really local ones are closer to the TLD (in terms of directory structure of the site). Then there's the matter of just having a few more local references, like Zip or Postal codes, phone numbers (the area code geo-locates), etc.

I've beaten major directory pages with a Page Rank of 3 with a blog post that has a Page Rank of 0 or even grayed-out Page Rank. That's because the blog itself is Geo-located, via meta tags, local content and local backlinks.

Going on what you said I checked out one the sites that is in the niche and community that I am targeting. It sits at No1 in the serps and the only back-link to it is from the local soccer team it sponsors!

The site in question sits on top of all the main directories and has no page rank!!!

I shouldn't have problem deposing that - I have had to work a lot harder in other niches.

I am definitely warming to this off-line market....

Rich