In an ideal world, personalized search would be the rule and the only button that anybody would need on Google’s home page would be this one:

Any time you entered a search term (if that was even necessary in the ideal world); Google would magically read your mind and produce the exact result you want. Sadly, this world is far in the future and even if it were possible now, how often do we ourselves really know what we want? Personalized search results may be the answer to a better search experience. 

Search engine efforts to personalize search have been fraught with difficulties. Of course, as just noted, it’s very difficult to guess what someone wants. To try to improve their guesses, Google has been collecting information about users’ search histories and when they input a search query, they rank those queries based on the past behavior of the searcher. They do this by tracking your Web History when you sign in for their services. However, it’s fairly easy to disable this – just sign out - and this has always frustrated Google’s efforts to consistently collect this valuable information. A fairly reliable and robust set of data from a variety of searches would be necessary to make really informed guesses about what a user wants. Furthermore, Google (along with other search engines) has been under fire from Privacy advocates for using this data to tailor their advertising to user preferences.

Now, Google and the other search engines appear to be taking a new tack in their efforts to further personalize search and encourage us to let them keep our data. Recently, Google has been adding a link in the top right corner of a personalized search result:

By adding a warning to the personalized search results, Google lets users know that their results are filtered and gives them the opportunity to see the results without personalization by clicking on the More details link.

Google’s announcement also made it clear that they do not restrict search personalization to users that have volunteered their information by signing in for the service. They are using cookies to track a user’s behavior in addition to the IP address of the user. While this may be good news for users, it does make things a little tougher for search engine optimization because search engine rankings are obviously much more relative than we thought. Ranking number one without personalization does not necessarily mean ranking number one with it. What does this mean for search engine optimization? While we cannot control what results will appear in any one personalized result, we do have some measure of control over whether or not a user will click on the result if offered it. By creating good title tags that closely match the intended search query and entice the user to click through to the page with matching description tag text that further convinces them that your page is what they are looking for, you can increase the chances that your pages appear in any one user’s web history and therefore increase the chances that your pages continue to appear in their search results.

By giving users the ability to peer inside the search engine and get a glimpse of where the result comes from, Google also opens up opportunities for website owners to further enhance the personalized search results for their more dedicated followers. If more searchers are willing to opt for personalization services, it will become more important to take advantage of opportunities like Subscribed Links or Yahoo’s Search Monkey to make your links even more attractive to those users. This week, Yahoo added the enhanced results for Yelp, LinkedIn and Yahoo local search to their default search results:

Ultimately, what will get visitors to your site is proper promotion whether through search engines or other methods, including increasingly popular social media sites like http://www.facebook.com/ and making sure that you have good quality and relevant content for your visitors when they get there. Personalized search is here and the only thing to do is get ready.

Making sure that your site is optimized for your geographical location and the locations where your business operates is just one aspect of optimizing for local search results. Another good way to build local relevance for your site is by encouraging links from other trusted and relevant websites operated by businesses and organizations in your area. This establishes keyword relevance for your site, for the name of your region and, if these sites are hosted in your area as well, establishes that your website is well-linked physically to that region.

One good way to find sites that could give your site some local relevance is to search for “your location” and “business” in Google, Yahoo and MSN as well as any other popular search engines and see what comes up. A search for “Boca Raton business” found these listings:

 
Any one of these sites would be a great link to have for a Boca Raton Business. Once you have located some potential sources of valuable links, go to the site and see if there is any place on the site that might offer an opportunity to get a link.

Another good search term to use for geo-targeted link building would be “Your Area Directory” – in the case of Boca Raton – “Boca Raton Directory”. If there are any local business directories, it would be a good idea for my Boca Raton business to be listed. Just make sure that any directory pages that come up are truly local as some larger directories may have a section devoted to your area. By choosing carefully, good sources for local links can be found.

Of course, not all links are necessarily going to be valuable for increasing search engine rankings. Some top ranking local business sites will provide links to local businesses, but the links may not be direct or they may have a rel=”nofollow” attribute on them advising search engines not to count them, as in the case of the Boca Raton Chamber of Commerce site. When evaluating if a site is a good source for a link, consider the potential for traffic before considering search engines. If the site has a good potential for providing your site with direct traffic, then getting your site listed is a good idea – even if search engines do not value the site. If they do count, then it’s all the better.

As Mike Buczek pointed out in a recent post, the need for websites to be mobile ready is increasingly important. The advent of new mobile phone technology making the mobile web more accessible has big implications for how websites are targeted to position in natural search results. Users of the mobile web are increasing daily and besides using different technology, they are also likely to have different search behavior than those on the regular web. Someone surfing the web from their phone is likely looking not just for a website but a location and this means that the rise of number of users on the mobile web makes good rankings in local search results even more important. Having a local search marketing strategy now could make sure that your site is not left behind. So, what can you do? Well, start by making sure your site is listed in local search listings. Here are four top ways to help boost your local search rankings:

1. Make sure you are listed.

• Look for your listing in the local search sections of Google, Yahoo, MSN and any other top search engines. If it’s not there, submit it.
• Make sure the address and phone number on your site is complete and matches what the local directories like superpages.com and any other sites like www.alexa.com or www.aboutus.org are listing.

2. Match your listing to your site.

• Make sure there is a link to your website in your listings. You don’t need a website to appear in local search but internet visitors will be more likely to visit your site and then visit you if they have easy access to your link.
• Put your full address and phone number on your website in a prominent position – either on the homepage or at the very least, on your contact us page.

3. List your site on local search engines like:

• www.superpages.com, www.yellowpages.com, www.citysearch.com
• MSN Local & Maps
• Yahoo Local & Maps
• Google Local & Maps
• And any other regional or industry-specific directories that your customers might use to find you.

4. Encourage your happy customers to give you a good review. This may or may not get you a better ranking but visitors who see a good review are more likely to click on the link and visit your business.