I was sitting in one of Jill Whalen’s SEO workshops waiting on my turn to present when an interesting email popped into my inbox. Search Engine Land ran a report by Matt McGee that outlined Google’s new practice of showing local results on the search engine results pages (SERPs) even when the search was for a non-local term.
The announcement came at an opportune time as Jill was just finishing the keyword research portion of her workshop and I was about to begin the copywriting session. In a rather stop-the-presses moment, we discussed with the group the possible implications of this new development.
The first question they asked was do we still need to do keyword research?
Answer:Absolutely!For one reason, this practice only applies currently to specialized products and services such as appliance repair, restaurants and attorneys.In addition, they are only giving a top 10 in the local listings section.If you don’t make the top 10, you won’t be seen.
What’s more, national chains can possibly hog all of the top 10 local listings. A search for [office supplies] yielded local results that included one Office Max, two Office Depots and five Staples locations. That only leaves two spaces left in the local section for independent businesses.
Secondly, attendees wanted to know if they still needed to optimize their web copy.
Again, the answer was absolutely for the same reasons above. In fact, when you add a geo-locator to your search query, the local listings section of the SERPs actually disappears. Search for [web design] while you’re sitting at your computer in Boston and you’ll see the additional local results Google in now including for local-area web design firms. But type in [Boston web design] and the local section vanishes.
Is this good news for local businesses? Is it an added incentive for local businesses to sign up for Google Local? Certainly! But it does not – by any stretch of the imagination – replace the need to research quality keyphrases and optimize your copy.
