To those familiar with sports, the name “Secretariat” is synonymous with greatness in horse racing. Secretariat still has the record for the fastest times in the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont Stakes. To keep a horse focused on the race, blinders are put on either side of their eyes so that they can only see what is in front of them and focus only on the race.

Similar to a horse race, many times businesses owners are focused only on one or two parts of a Search Marketing strategy and have put blinders onto the other elements that are important in order to rank higher in the Search Engines.

The Role of Local Search in the Search Engine Race

In previous articles we have mentioned the importance of optimizing a local search campaign since 1 out of every 5 searches is deemed to be of local intent. Local search campaigns have had a major impact on organic rankings within search engines. Google has now integrated organic listings with local listings when displaying search results. The search engine race is changing daily so what might have worked last year may not necessarily work this year.

New Kids on the Search Engine Block

There are also some new players on the field that have proven themselves to be authoritative in the search engine race. Players such as social media platforms, review sites and a hybrid of the two. These sites/platforms are used not only to communicate your value proposition but they are also used to impact your search rankings.

For example, if a site has too many negative reviews, your site may get penalized in the search results. And a Google penalty is very hard to recover from. In addition, clients and customers are on social media websites sharing information with their friends and family about different business experiences. Business owners must look to these sites and keep content fresh and updated, interact with their customers and synchronize all listings.

While you are at it, you need to throw in some social bookmarking, analytics, testing, and continuous optimization to be competitive in the SEO Race. To find out how competitive your web business is, contact us to set up your consultation.