Mike Blumenthal (Co-founder Of Near Media)

Mike Blumenthal is one of the internet’s leading experts on local SEO, and indeed is one of the people who helped pioneer and establish the field. Blumenthal is the co-founder of Near Media and a contributor at Search Engine Watch and shares his insights on local SEO from his Twitter account.

“Technical SEO is just that, technical, and as such it is often beyond the scope of what most small business owners can do on their own.”

“Every business should invest in a great website and a way to capture the email and cell numbers of every prospect and customer.”

“Local SEO and local search marketing are about owning your backyard (on the internet) it’s not about owning national or international search results.”

“You need a great website that tells users who you are, what you do, AND where you do it, you need to be engaged with your community and be sure that the engagement is mentioned online, and you need to be in touch with your customers to ensure that your reputation off-line and online is stellar.”

“Having great images help with conversions.”

“Clearly businesses need to realize that images need to both satisfy users AND be understood by Google.”

“Having the “right” photo helps with rank and more importantly conversions.”

“Even though Google encourages you to ask for reviews, doing so with too much frequency appears be a trigger.”

“The increasing role of images in the local SERPS is driven by Google’s rapidly accelerating “understanding” of images.”

“Google incentivizes quantity over quality with user-generated content.”

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