SMX and Local and Mobile and Puerto and Rico
For most companies and organizations attending search conferences the benefits are clear to them.
But what about people who have not attended conferences or do not see a direct benefit? In many cases the people who “would like to go but can’t afford it, or can’t justify the expense” are the exact people who can benefit most from it.
I remember a few years ago when I was working with hostels on their websites I told them all the same thing, the search engines want to rank highly the actual local businesses, but often don’t. The search engines would prefer to list the actual local business, but can’t do that very well because of the nature of their algorithms.
Well that was a few years ago, and the search engine still want to show the local businesses, and they now have ways to do it.
The example I used back then still works today. I used to live in Old San Juan in Puerto Rico. Old San Juan is very small, and is surrounded by an massive stone walls, the architecture is Spanish from hundreds of years ago.
There are only 5 hotels actually in Old San Juan.
If you search Google for “old san juan hotels” you get almost three million results.
Where, oh where did those other 2,999,995 websites come from? Why are only two of the top ten results actual hotels?
The answers to those questions are the reason that SMX Local and Mobile in Denver is worth it.
I know how to do things for cheap that simply amaze people. An example using Old San
Juan again - I lived in an old and lovely building on a gorgeous and charming street with a large stone patio which over looked the sea.
It cost me less per month than one night at the hotel on the same street cost. (my rent was 350 dollars)
What I am getting at is I know how to get my bang for my buck, and I have mucho experience with local businesses and search engines.
If I were Danny Sullivan, I wouldn’t call this event “SMX - Local and Mobile” I would call this event “SMX - Screw the schmucks that have been screwing you for years“.
Local search is often talked about, but I do not think that small businesses are getting the picture, the picture for small and local businesses is…
Search engines want you to rank well
If you have a business that suffers from search results full of larger companies, business directories, and people you have to pay some way to mention you then 1000 dollars isn’t crap much to pay to learn how to use local search opportunities to your advantage.
Example?
Let’s take a small hotel in Miami. It doesn’t rank well for the terms “miami hotels”. Because it doesn’t rank well it has put it’s property on places like Orbitz and Expedia, heck, they can even even in Hotels.com and all they have to do is pay 10-20 percent of the reservation price, and since it makes good sense to keep the beds full, whats wrong with that?
Hmmm…
A small hotel in Miami probably costs 150 a night at least. Let us say this small hotel has 25 rooms.
Thats about 4000 a night in the beds are full. Hmmmm, that 1.5 million dollars a yearish.
Hmmm, that means that the 10 to 20 percent a year you give to booking engines is costing you 150,000 to 300,000 per year.
If you are an enterprising hotel manager, you may want to recoup some of that dough.
Local search is the way to do so.
Local search is money in your pocket that used to be in other people’s pockets.
I used a hotel for an example, but just about every small business in just about every sector knows the frustrtion I am talking about. The whole “Why do those $%#@’s outrank me?” for my own ^%&$# city????”
Did you know that with local search there are steps you can take in less than two hours that will significantly improve the direct traffic your website gets?
The tools exist right now to outrank the bastards that used to outrank you.
If you are not familiar how to best use Local Search to your advantage you will benefit from SMX Local.
Wanna know something else?
Many of your competitors are basically at the same place you are, they are also thinking that they “would like to go but can’t afford it, or can’t justify the expense”. The majority of them will not attend.
This is good.
For you.
Go.
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