The following is a great post from SEOMoz on how to get your local Google business listing to rank better. The tactic essentially involves doing some competitive intelligence on your higher ranked competitors and replicating their proven strategies. I have been taking this approach with our client listings and can attest that it absolutely works. So go do it!

This post is short and easy to follow, just like the tactic it recommends. Most everyone who optimizes for Google Local (aka Google Maps) is familar with David Mihm’s excellent and oft-referenced Local Search Ranking Factors. In that document, and in many places where local results are analyzed, it’s clear that getting your business/website into more listings, in a consistent fashion is a very good thing.

Yet, somehow, this obvious tactic has gone missing from many GG Local optimization recommendations. Either that or it’s so obvious that no one feels the need to mention it. Whatever the case, it’s available now

Step 1: Do Lots of Searches Related to Your Business & Region

Let’s say you’re working on local SEO for a Thai restaurant in Seattle, WA. Searches you might perform include:

• Thai Seattle, WA
• Thai Restaurants Seattle, WA
• Seattle Thai Restaurants
• Thai Food Seattle

You’re seeking results that show competing or closely related businesses, so get creative.

Step 2: Identify a Handful (or a Few Dozen) Businesses that Consistently Get Top Rankings

You could build a formal spreadsheet and perform tracking to identify these or start with gut feel and expand later on in the process. For less competitive listings, an informal approach may work just fine.

Step 3: Go to the Local Business Profile for Each of These

Don’t click the name of the listing itself. Instead, follow the links to the “reviews” about each of your competitors’ businesses. You’ll get a page with information about the business, reviews and lists of data that Google has found about them.

Step 4: Click on the Links to “More About this Place”

The “more about this place” section of the business listing shows brief snippets, titles and URLs where Google has found relevant information pertaining to the business. This is your potential goldmine for discovering listing sources.

Step 5: Go to those Sites & Get Your Business Added/Updated

 The domains that are listed are places where Google is pulling information about your business. This is where the Maps algorithm comes into play – it relies on not only the number of listings, but the quality of the sources and the consistency between them. You want every listing to perfectly match one another, right down the the suffix on the reservations phone number and the formatting of your suite number (e.g. 1221 E Pike Street vs. 1221 East Pike Street vs. 1221 E Pike Street Suite 200 vs. 1221 East Pike Street #200 are all DIFFERENT – don’t make that mistake).

As an example, I visited a link from Thaiku’s listing in the example above to Intuit’s Local Business Directory (I didn’t even know they had one until now) and could then add/edit SEOmoz’s listing:

In addition to the potential local ranking boost, a majority of these sources offer the potential to earn links! Even if you don’t care much about the local results themselves, this is a pretty terrific way to get some good quality, trusted sites linking to you.

Step 6: Repeat Step 4 & 5 for the ”Reviews” and “User Content” Sections

If you’re hungry for even more sources, you can look at where listings come from on other competitors and/or go back to the business listing’s page in Google Maps/Local and choose from the “reviews” and “user content” sections for even more potential spots. Much like manual link building back in the late ’90′s, perseverance and careful attention to detail will take you far.

There are automated services out there to help with this process, but I haven’t yet seen one I feel completely comfortable about. The biggest issue is the dramatic value of and need for consistency in the listings. When automated systems submit, they can mix in a suite number in the wrong place, cut off a phone number because the form doesn’t accept hyphens or confirm a URL that doesn’t match what you’ve submitted elsewhere. For now, I recommend playing it safe and spending the hours (even if that’s a dozen or two) to get those 50-250 listings correct. Google will reward you with local rankings and high quality traffic.

p.s. Next week I’m down in Portland for SEMpdx’s Searchfest and hope to spend time with some true local search experts and perhaps share some more cutting edge tactics

Over two thousand marketers surveyed by Marketing Sherpa listed their top social media marketing challenges for 2010. Based on the results, the most important items appear to relate to measuring performance and ROI, as well as converting social media fans/friends/prospects into paying customers.

MerchantCircle has registered its millionth SMB, Nassau Avenue Nails of Islip, NY. Owner Danielle Biegler found out about MerchantCircle after searching for other local businesses nearby, and will receive a lifetime MerchantCircle tools, cool MerchantCircle gear and a new sign.

The million number represents roughly 6.7 percent of U.S. SMBs. It may not mean much in the context of Merchant Circle’s success, given that some SMBs unintentionally signed up for the service and may not be regular users.

Yet the service has also built an undeniably impressive track record. Its merchants have written nearly 400,000 blog posts using its publishing platform, uploaded 1 million+ photos, and created more than 350,000 local coupons.

On the consumer side, the service, largely relying on search optimization, currently attracts 20 million unique visitors per month, making it akin to a large Internet Yellow Pages. Users have contributed more than 650,000 local business reviews.

Merchant circle is a great directory for small businesses to use in the quest for better Google local business rankings. Citations from Merchant Circle and other authoritative local business directories (superpages, YELP, etc) can help boost Google local rankings as well.

How would you like to launch a social network and instantly amass more than 150 million monthly users?

Well, Google just launched Google Buzz and it’s going to be tied into its existing Gmail user base–all 150+ million of them!

How smart is that?

Google has failed to gain traction with any of its previous social networking efforts. How many of you are active Orkut or Google Wave users? So, instead of trying to build a new social network from scratch–and likely failing–it’s tying Google Buzz directly into its email offering.

Genius!

It’s built right into Gmail, so you don’t have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch — it just works. If you think about it, there’s always been a big social network underlying Gmail. Buzz brings this network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most. We focused on building an easy-to-use sharing experience that richly integrates photos, videos and links, and makes it easy to share publicly or privately (so you don’t have to use different tools to share with different audiences). Plus, Buzz integrates tightly with your existing Gmail inbox, so you’re sure to see the stuff that matters most as it happens in real time.

I added the bolding for two reasons. One to show you the features Buzz brings to Gmail, but the other is to point out the Jedi mind-trick that Google is pulling on you. You see, you thought your inbox was all about sending emails. Nah ah, apparently you’ve been sitting on a vast social network and–whether you like it or not–Google’s about to tap into that network.

Even more clever on Google’s part, is that it’s not reinventing the wheel. In fact, it wants you to bring all of your existing wheels to Google Buzz.

We’ve relied on other services’ openness in order to build Buzz (you can connect Flickr and Twitter from Buzz in Gmail), and Buzz itself is not designed to be a closed system. Our goal is to make Buzz a fully open and distributed platform for conversations. We’re building on a suite of open protocols to create a complete read/write developer API, and we invite developers to join us on Google Code to see what is available today and to learn more about how to participate.

Does this sound like any popular service you know that was recently acquired? *cough* Friendfeed! *cough*

Of course, like any new Google product, you’re going to have to wait for Buzz to rollout to your Gmail account. Fortunately, unlike the Google Wave invite fiasco, you should see Buzz automatically appear in your Gmail account over the next few days.

Speaking of Google Wave, is that now dead in the water? I mean, did anyone really ever figure out how to use the thing anyway?

It seems to me that Google Buzz is exactly what Google Wave should have been in the first place!