This week I attended Local University WNY in Ellicottville, NY.  Throughout the week I will be recapping that event through a series of blogs. The event takes place throughout the country, hosted by SEO and Local SEO presenters.  Presenters at the session that I attended included: Mike Blumenthal, Mary Bowling, Matt McGee, David Mihm, Ed Reese, Cecelia Stewart and Aaron Weiche. One of the best sessions that I attended was Mary Bowling’s on technical SEO ideas. Bowling laid out technical SEO in an easy to comprehend way, which is very difficult to do. Below are some of the important points that she made.

The red site represents general SEO and the yellow side represents Local SEO. Mary dedicated some time to meta tags, shedding light on how they’ve evolved. Meta tags are no longer used by search engines to determine ranking. An SEO tactic in the early 2000s, meta tags, such as the description tag, should now be treated like ad copy. Here are the three examples that Mary gave during her presentation. The example above is a 2000-esque description tag. The tag screams keywords; although it incorporates the services offered by this business, it does not do so in a human- friendly format. This example, above, is formatted much more like an ad; the intent of which is to have the viewer click through to the site. As is shown here, the main purpose of the description tag should be to increase your click through rate. This final example is a great one. Here call-to-action language with a clear value statement and localized content is used. I love how they use the phrase “Car Insurance in San Diego”, not because it’s the keyword, but because it’s relevant to the search. Locally relevant data will always trump non local content. Bowling presented a complex concept with relative clarity. Up next: SoLoMo

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Phil Britton- Product Manager, Location Based Services