One of the questions that clients are always asking is how they can use social media optimization tactics and techniques to drive traffic to their web site. At Braveheart Design we have found that local search provides a great opportunity to web site owners to rise to the top of the search results page through social media tactics.
So I was not surprised to see that SuperPages.com has now introduced user-generated content into their site. As their press release pointed out:
“Local search is hot and so is social networking, so it makes sense that we combine the two,” said Robyn Rose, vice president of marketing for SuperPages.com. “Whether you’re talking about finding the best Italian restaurant or a reliable plumber, SuperPages.com provides robust local search capabilities, along with ratings and user reviews, to connect circles of trusted individuals.”
While the SuperPages.com press release is nice, if you are interested in being visible for local search results, you still need to focus on Google and Yahoo local search., and the social media opportunities that they both present.
For example if you do a regular Google search for Hotel Boston MA, the first three organic listings on the page are pulled from Google’s local search. If you look more closely at the local; search results, you will see that the top results all have links to hundreds on user-generated reviews from TripAdvisor. For a hotel or motel, asking a guest to fill in your guest book has become so outdated. Savvy hotel owners are now providing guests with directions to web sites like TripAdvisor so they can leave a comment there as they know that will benefit them a lot more than a guest book on their property.
Yahoo local works in a similar way. At Yahoo if you do the same search, the results page is dominated by user ratings and feedback. In this example, nine of the top search results all have user ratings. Yahoo uses a combination of Orbitz comments and its own member feedback and it appears that you are not appearing on the first page of Yahoo for this kind of competitive search without community feedback
Another great example of user-generated content is for restaurants. Valentine’s Day is coming up so I was looking for a restaurant to take my wife too in Manchester, NH. I did a Yahoo local search and then I was able to narrow my search for an Italian restaurant with five stars based solely on user-generated reviews. The top site on the list was the Piccola Italia Ristorante . What is interesting about this restaurant is that the web site has a flash intro page, making the site very difficult to find via a regular web site. But because of user-generated content, they are able to rank first for a highly targeted Yahoo search.
Whether you are a hotel, pizza restaurant, or auto repair shop, user-generated content is impacting whether people are finding your site online. Asking your guests and clients to provide feedback and recommendations online about your business is a tactic that all businesses should be doing.
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