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Ten great ways to optimize your internet presence

Remember: all search is local

By John Faris

Former U.S. Congressman Tip O’Neill famously coined the phrase “All politics is local.” In much the same way, retail and service companies are quickly coming to realize that all marketing is local. With the recent rise - and soon to be explosion – in GPS/mapping-enabled smart phones and drastic changes in the way Google searches trigger local results, local search is rapidly becoming a critical marketing channel.

The concept is more evolutionary than revolutionary; most marketers are savvy enough to already claim their listings in Google Places. However, that’s only the first step in a comprehensive strategy, since the majority of location-specific searches don’t take place on Google. Many consumers use other outlets such as online yellow pages, local directories and city guides like CitySearch or Yelp as well as search engines, including Yahoo and Bing, to conduct their searches for local businesses. Even if Google were to start dominating local search like they dominate general search queries, their results are heavily influenced by these other local sources.

So before missing the boat entirely, here are 10 things marketers can do today to optimize their Internet presence for local search queries.

Read the rest of the article here.