Coconut Headphones

Jockeying for Position. *click to enlarge*

As an SEO practicioner, you will often find yourself in the position of having to estimate traffic potential.  If you’re like me, you’ve probably used the AdWords Keyword Research Tool to do this.  Most people do this with “Exact Match” turned on and use the “Local Searches” number, then make assumptions about what position they might be able to obtain on average, then they assume an average click-through rate based on various studies that have been done on click-through rate versus position.  For individual keywords, the click-through rate in reality will vary widely from the average, but if you’re doing estimates for hundreds or thousands of keywords this should “all come out in the wash”.

I’ve done this exercise numerous times but have always had the sense that I’m probably overestimating, because the traffic amounts predicted didn’t materialize, even when positions were achieved.

These two postings will identify the reasons for this, and we’ll construct Read on »

This guy had some pretty good advanced tricks too

Important note – before reading this article, read the previous posting “SEO for Local Search: The Complete Guide“.

Before going into the list of advanced ranking techniques for Local Search I’ve uncovered reviewing a myriad of other folk’s postings, let’s talk about what proof is available first.

David Mihm does a *great* yearly survey of local search experts on what variables they believe are important for Local search, very similar to what SEOMoz runs for overall organic search.

It’s important to note that it’s well established (read the book “Supercrunchers” if you’re not convinced) that experts are great at determining what variables matter, but figuring out importance or weightings is best left to machine-learning, or statistical reverse-engineering exercises.

Fortunately, the folks at SEOMoz have done some correlation analysis of some of the Local Search ranking factors Read on »