Interview mit David Mihm, Director of Local Search Strategy, SEOmoz, und Sprecher auf der SMX 2013
„Es gibt keinen Grund, warum sich nicht jeder Tante-Emma-Laden die Superkräfte von Inbound Marketing zunutze machen sollte, um ihre größeren, reicheren, aber letztendlich langsameren Wettbewerber zu überflügeln“ schreiben Rand Fishkin und David Mihm in ihrer burlesken Ankündigung der Fusion von SEOmoz mit dem Local Search Spezialisten GetListed.org von Dezember letzten Jahres. David Mihm, Gründer von Getlisted.org und heute Director of Local Search Strategy bei SEOmoz, ist einer der profiliertesten Experten für lokale Suche sowie für digitales Marketing für kleine und mittlere Unternehmen. Wir freuen uns sehr, dass wir ihn für die SMX 2013 als Sprecher gewonnen haben und haben schon einmal ein paar erste Fragen gestellt:
How many of the companies you talk with have a thorough understanding of local search marketing?
Well, my sample of companies is a little skewed — most folks I talk to are already seeking out more information about their local search campaigns, so they’re better informed than most. Judging by the search results I analyze, though, the number of large companies who are dependent on brick-and-mortar business for their locations without a clear understanding of how Google ranks physical businesses is substantial. For some reason this lack of knowledge seems to be more widespread in Europe than the States, even though you are probably 1-2 years ahead of us in smartphone adoption — where Google has said that nearly 50% of results are Local.
What has changed in local search marketing in the last 12 months?
Nice segue from my last answer 🙂 Mobile has *finally* taken off here in the U.S., so I’d say that technology and user behavior is really the biggest shift. Obviously, Google+ Local isn’t quite one year old, so that’s been a big shift from a UI/UX perspective [User interface / user experience], and the types of local search results we see continue to fluctuate between packs and blended results. But we haven’t seen too many algorithmic changes in the last year on the mobile side.
Do you think Google’s algorithm for local search has matured by now or do you expect major changes in the next year?
I think Google’s fundamental algorithm has matured, and Google is largely waiting for its own technology (the long-awaited „Business Builder“ dashboard) and small business data to get better. Believe it or not, we’re actually starting to see more small businesses with decent websites over here in the States–Flash and 1990’s-era HTML are gradually being replaced by scalable CMS solutions like WordPress–many of which come with responsive templates for mobile baked right in. So there’s more small business content out there for Google to crawl, and as a result, I think we’re seeing consistently better Local results than we used to.
Wer selbst Fragen an David Mihm stellen will, hat auf der SMX 2013 zwei Gelegenheiten: Am 9. April um 16.35 Uhr in der Session „The Voice of The Consumer – Social Media & Consumer Reviews” und am 10. April um 9 Uhr stellt er die Ranking-Faktoren bei der lokalen Suche vor. Nicht versäumen!
