Local Biz Bits
Local Search Marketing Information for Small Business

I was not able to go to ILM conference this year but from what I have heard it was good. Just wanted to bring to your attention a couple of nice posts on the conference for those who could not make it.

Closing The Book on ILM:07  by Peter Krasilovsky at The Local Onliner

Six Takeaways from Kelsey ILM 07 by Sebastien Provencher at The Praized Blog

Best Practices for Using PPC for Local Targeting: Kelsey ILM 07 (and others) by Andrew Shotland at Local SEO Guide.

Kelsey ILM Coverage: Tidbits from the Analyst Overview (and others) at Local Point

In addtion to ILM, there was the SES Chicago

SES Chicago 2007 Wrap Up by Thomas McMahon at the TopRanks Online Marketing Blog

and PubCon in Las Vegas:

Pubcon Las Vegas 2007 events list by Tim Dineen at Exposureonline.com

Pubcon 2007 Round-Up by Dana Larson  at the TopRanks Online Marketing Blog

After reading all that I did on the conference, I spent some time pondering it all.

The other website I would recommend you to read on the SMX Local Search conference is Andrew Shotland’s blog on local search optimization. Andrew was to be the official reporter for LocalBizBits but in his own words, he was “schmoozing most of the time.” He was able to provide me with a few thoughts.

“For the local search professionals it was a good time for relationship building and business development (as most conferences should be) and for the for small biz it was good for getting a broad picture of the landscape, opportunities and key players in local search.”

Also “One tidbit I heard in one of the mobile search panels was that you should have your entire address on one line so that it can be recognized as an address in a mobile browser but you should also have it in the more traditional mailing address format on the same page for Web SEO.”

Andrew did put together some informative posts on his blog:

Vanessa Fox Says Make Sure Your Data Matches 3rd Party Data: SMX Local Update

Local Search Boyz & The Hoods - The Value of Neighborhood Names on Your Site: SMX Local Update

This is part of what Andrew was speaking on at the conference:
Take Back Your Reputation From The Online Yellow Pages: Just Say No to NoFollow!

Thanks Andrew!

I have been furiously reading everything that has been posted about this new local search conference SMX Local and Mobile Search that was held in Denver Oct1 & 2.  I am beat!

From what I have seen and heard it was a very successful conference. Instead of simply repeating what is already out there, I have put together 2 posts on the conference and recommend you head over to two blogs that I will cover.

Mike Belasco, of Mike The Internet Guy’s Blog went to the conference and I asked him what his thoughts were on it.

“Larry, I thought the conference was very well put together. I got more out of the first day in terms of hands on tactics. As is usual with conferences the networking opportunities were abundant and fruitful!  I was not as interested in mobile since I really don’t see how it is appropriate for most of my current clients…I think for certain industries / business types it is great, but certainly not for everyone. Overall I would recommend going to this conference to anyone interested in Local search next year!”

Mike did a nice job of posting on specific panels and has links to other blogs/panelists. The three posts that I thought were particularly good were:

SMXLOMO - Top 10 Things You Missed at SMX Local and Mobile Day 1

SMXLOMO - Introducing the Mobile Search Engines

SMXLOMO - Community Driven Local Search

There is tons more. Thank you Mike for your great coverage!