Possible Breakthrough in Local SEO, Need Input!!

Yes, I was thinking of that in the past week or so since I do Google Places Optimization. I think it's something to keep in mind and explore further.

It is my understanding that having more backlinks to your website can boost your places listing - so I don't see why it wouldn't work the other way around, but with citations.

Kind of a captain planet thing.

Due to the recent shift in Google Places i.e. only counting Google reviews, it has also shifted what helps the listing. From my experience normal website SEO and local listing based SEO do complement each other. I've ranked websites for local listings and local listings (which had a website linked to that) in normal SEO.

Citations are kind of the new back link guys. Make sure they are accurate though.

Citations are very important. There are many that question the value of "directory" submissions these days... for local SEO, I firmly believe that business listing submissions is extremely important. Imagine you were Google and you see a local business website with hundreds of backlinks from blogs, forums and social media, but just a couple of local directory site listings. Not much local clout there.

None of us know the way google programs the search engine.

But we all know how we search. We all know what we expect to come up when we search.

Now think about it if I am seacrhing city dentist I expect to find dentists that are in city, right? So normal backlinks might not be the best way for google to do it since those can be gamed, right? See where I am going? If you think about what you want to find on a search that is how google wants to program the search to work. So stop and think if I was google what would I do?

Notice why forum posts and stuff like that would make no sense to have weight but articles and stories and citations with the address would? if you were the guy programing the search at google which would you give weight to? If you always following that rule in your head you will be ahead in the SEO game. SEO isn't about gaming google it is about understanding what those searching are looking for and making sure you provide it. because if you do google will always be working to make you come up first because you have what those searching for want.

In the end you are not working for the client, you are not working for google, you are working for the end customer. The one who is searching. If you provide them what they are looking for it is only natural as google makes changes that you will rank better and better.

It's like the old Sam Walton statement and I paraphrase, "There is only one boss. One person who can fire everyone from the cashier to the CEO and that is the customer." We all need to remember that no matter what we do the end customer is who we are trying to please. It works in SEO because that is what google wants to do please the customer. So if you get ranked #1 in google and people don't bounce off your site they know they got it right. But if you are ranked 6th and the number 1 rank has a higher bounce rate they know they got it wrong. So they will try to get you and your site to be higher. if that means lowing the value of spam links they do. If it means making citations more important they do.

If you use SEO methods that will get you customers outside of google searches it will help google searches. That means putting up links where and when they make sense. If you are placing links for a lawyer does it make sense to put them on IGN's forum? of course not and google over time has learned that. But if you are a new gaming company would being active on IGN make sense? Will it bring you traffic? Yes and google knows it makes sense.

People will always "game" the system but when google understand what they are doing they drop in rank. But if you provide quality SEO services that go beyond just link blasting everywhere you and your clients will rank well. In many ways good SEO is similar to good PR. And if you explain this to your customers you can ask for more money because they will see you offer value not just a bunk of links they could have bought for $5 themselves.

ok? Thanks for quoting me?

I think it works both ways, especially since Google is putting a big emphesis on local. Think about it, Google can tell if a site is based upon a local company based on the keywords, places/g+ local accounts, etc... So if big G knows it's a local business it's inevitable that they will start taking local citations and reviews into consideration. One question I have yet to be answered is how to build citations for those local businesses that don't have an actual physical business address. If a plumber works out of his home and doesn't want to list his home address on every directory out there is there a way to build citations? Or is he just screwed...

Well citations usually include links back to the website. Citation websites are usually kind of powerful so yeah of course they will increase organic ranking.

Never judge a website's power or strength by number of backlinks. I can get 5 backlinks that will be stronger than another site having 1,000.

Yeah, what he said. I don't see the revelation here. Almost all citations are backlinks and many from authority sites so why wouldn't it boost your rankings.

As for only having 63, they are quality backlinks I imagine. Relevancy, PR and page authority are much more important than quality. Just speaking of PR, a PR5 is equal to 32,768 PR1 links.