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Posts Tagged ‘notebook-forums’

Laura Alter on Local SEO Search

Longtime blog readers will recognize Austin, TX-based Laura Alter as the co-owner of laptop forum NotebookForums and might recall the launch of her blog last year.

Recently, Laura has been more proactive moving from the forum management/marketing side of things to becoming a SEO evangelist of sorts.

She recently organized an Austin SEM meetup, with a presentation on local search (aka geotargeted search engine optimization).

Optimizing your website for local traffic, especially if you’re mainly a geographically-fixed business like a hair salon or ice cream parlor can pay off with big dividends regardless of whether you go down the free search engine optimization route or the paid search route.

A number of factors work in your favor:

  • Highly relevant and targeted traffic since the campaigns specially target consumers with specific needs
  • Generally lower bids, as the pool of advertisers is smaller (even in a metropolitan area like New York City or Los Angeles – it’s a more viable prospect compared to facing bidders all over the world)
  • Higher conversion ratios
  • Ease-of-followup and greater opportunities to build a continuing relationship (especially if you employ email marketing and/or direct mail in your customer relationship management efforts)

Obviously SEM/SEO is not going to be your end point, it’s merely going to be your start point to generate leads. Building the relationship and establishing trust, credibility, asking for the sale and asking for the repeat sale are going to be the bedrock of your business building efforts.

For the local SEO side, here’re some slides from Laura’s presentation:

3 formats for localized SERP (search engine results page) display:

10 Pack

10 pack

Authoritative OneBox

authoritative onebox

Integrated Map

integrated map

I remember getting (more…)

Affiliate Summit West 2008…A Story In Images

Affiliate Summit co-founder Shawn Collins has got the pictures from the professional photographer from the recent Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas last month (all 630 of them) and has mentioned them on the Affiliate Summit blog. You can check out the Affiliate Summit West Flickr photostream.

Here’re some of my favourites:

julia stead

With the ShareResult affiliate network affiliate manager Julia Steat at the Great Affiliate Road Rally

laura alter

With Notebook Forums‘ Laura Alter (yes, she is 6’ and wearing heels…)

tris hussey

After talking to him for about a year, I finally got to meet B5 blog network’s training manager Tris Hussey

social media justine ezarik tris hussey

At the social media session with Justine Ezarik and Tris Hussey

zac johnson amit mehta

Zac Johnson and Amit Mehta at the Super Affiliate session

engaging the media

At the “Engaging the Media” panel session with Lisa Picarille, Anik Singal, Valerie Stevens and Jim Kukral

jim kukral

I don’t know about you, but I think Jim Kukral deserves some type of award for being the most photographed!

Be sure to check out the other pictures at the ASW photo collection.

Affiliate Summit as always was a blast (I still have about 500 of my own pictures to put up somewhere…).

If you’re keen to bring your affiliate business to the next level, be sure to check out Affiliate Summit East from Aug 10-12 in Boston, MA.