For local searches, Google is now including up to 10 business listings above the “organic” search results.

For high-value search phrases, organic results are heavily biased against local businesses: large companies, yellow page publishers, directories, franchisors all have a huge advantage in generating the in-bound links that drive high search engine rankings.

So this is great for local businesses, and it’s great for those searching for information on them.

It also makes clear that these Local Results are the next front in Search Engine Optimazation for small, local businesses and service providers.

So how can you get your business to a) show up in the local results and b) get a high ranking in them? Google’s not really showing their hand (beyond what they have to, like patent filings).

But Mike Blumenthal has taken an educated guess about the major factors in Google’s local results:

First, there are factors that determine whether your business is relevant to the search results:

1. Address in city of search
2. Listing confirmed by listing in Google Local Business Center or by a data licensor
3. Business categories relate to search phrase
4. Business name relates to search phrase
5. Address is confirmed by your site or a linking site

And second, there are factors that determine where your business ranks relative to other results:

1. PageRank of the business’s site
2. Number of reviews in the Google Local Business Center (quantity trumps quality)
3. Number of web references
4. Quality of web references

Take-aways?

• Get a great website
• Make sure your address is on your site
• Do best-practice SEO activities on your site (esp. focusing on “off site factors” like high-quality in-bound links)
• Create or take ownership of your business listing in Google Local Business Center
• Ask your customers to review your business on Google Local
• Get a listing with a local data provider

We’ll be paying close attention to thinking on local search rankings as it evolves.

One thing’s for sure—local results are rapidly becoming high-value real estate for local businesses.

In the on-going keyword arms race, there’s a new weapon.

Microsoft has a new Add-In for Excel 2007 that provides all sorts of cool keyword slicing and dicing capabilities.

Here’s an overview and a set of video tutorials

I got spammed today by a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firm, guaranteeing me “Top 10 search engine results within 30 days!”

Such hogwash! We’ve had several clients lose money to hucksters like this.

But then I thought, let’s be a bit more constructive. SEO is a valuable and valid discipline.

So here are my five marks of a legitimate SEO firm.

1. They should have high ranking on terms pertinent to search engine optimization, like, say search engine optimization :-) If they can’t do it for their own site, how would they be able to do it for yours? (Incidentally, the #1 result on Google for “search engine optimization” is a company called SubmitExpress)
2. Their programs should be conducted over a reasonable period of time to get results. Getting high search engine results doesn’t happen overnight—or even over several weeks. A six-month period is reasonble.
3. Results should include a broad set of pertinent search keywords. Any SEO firm worth their salt will do an analysis of keywords both on your site as well as those that your prospects are using to search. They will use this information to create a matrix of search keywords to target. Ideally, an SEO firm will target 50 – 200 keywords or phrases.
4. They shouldn’t participate in any “dark-hat” SEO activities, like link farms, hidden text, cloaking, or other activities designed to game the search engines. These techniques can get your website banned from the major search engines if you’re discovered.
5. Your rankings should be sustained for some period of time. Once you get your top search engine rankings, you want to maintain them. This can help counteract #4, as well, because a lot of the “dark-hat” strategies can get you high rankings for a short period of time. I’d look for 6 months of sustained rankings at least, with options available for longer periods.

If you’re interested in learning more about search engine optimization, there’s a great guide, Intro to Search Engine Optimization, at the highly-regarded Search Engine Watch. (The article is, by the way, result #11 on a google search for search engine optimization).

There are no secrets to Search Engine Optimization: it’s a known formula that takes a lot of work to accomplish and to maintain.

If you’re interested in getting help with it, make sure to hook up with a reputable firm.