Local SEO Q&A with Andrew Beckman

In 15 years, Andrew Beckman and his team at Location3 Media have seen a lot happen in the interactive marketing industry. As a regular SES conference speaker, Andrew aims to share his knowledge of Internet marketing with attendees eager to know what to do to boost business through the tools of technology.

At SES New York next week, Andrew will be speaking at the session Local Myth Busters – Local Optimization Facts Proven or Debunked, which promises to deliver hands-on tactics for local listing optimization and local SEO. I asked Andrew to give me a preview of what his session will entail.

Who do you expect to be speaking to and who would benefit from attending your session at SES NY? Local biz DIYers? In-house? Agency?

Anyone who wants to drive more visitors to store locations would benefit from this session. I hope it will be really in-depth, but also accessible for many levels of marketers.  We’ll be going into optimization on Google Places and how traditional SEO signals are helping local ranking.

What are you doing in response to the Google Venice Update? What are the implications for SEOs?

We are helping our clients with their site structure to ensure they are properly indexed in Google. We are aware of the changes occurring, but many of our strategies were already in line with them, including content strategies and link acquisitions for optimized positioning. Many recent Google updates are about improving user experiences and SEOs should be focusing on that right now.

What’s really challenging in the application of local listing optimization and local SEO right now? Do you find yourself following any issues closely?

One major issue I find myself monitoring is speed of citation updates. Business owners can now pay a fee to the IYPs/directories to get immediate update on location data. Without the fee, it may take 45-60 days for a change to show. My question is whether or not this affects how quickly Google crawls the citation and updates the local listing. We are analyzing the data to get a definitive answer.

What new marketing tool/channel/strategy is just arriving on your radar right now?

I believe the integration of search and social is the next major shift coming our way. Search Plus Your World and the implications that has for further integration with local listings can really shake up the landscape.

What do you recommend to a local business owner who wants to start marketing through social media but doesn’t know where to start?

Your main goal should be to build a one-on-one relationship with your consumers. Develop your own guidelines for your voice and brand. Optimize your Google+ page for SEO and try to develop your circles along with other channels.

Virginia Nussey is the director of content marketing at MobileMonkey. Prior to joining this startup in 2018, Virginia was the operations and content manager at Bruce Clay Inc., having joined the company in 2008 as a writer and blogger.

See Virginia's author page for links to connect on social media.