The holidays arrived early for local marketers

The holiday season has arrived early for locally focused marketers. Consider the developments that have occurred just in the past week:

• Google My Business API added new features, including the ability to manage your Google Posts.
• Facebook announced a number of tools and partnerships supporting local discovery, including booking and food ordering.
• Google said it now has 50 million Local Guides adding content to Google Maps and search.
• Yext started an initiative to verticalize local business listings syndication with “Yext for Food.”

If you spend a lot of time trying to appeal to a locals-only market, SMX East features a number of sessions that you’ll find valuable above and beyond the great content you’ll experience over the full three days of the conference.

Dan Leibson of Local SEO Guide will walk you through the results of The Definitive Guide To Local Search Ranking Factors, one of the largest-ever statistical studies of the local search ranking factors. He’ll show you what they’ve learned about the effect of more than 100 factors on the rankings of 15,000 local businesses in a hundred different metros.

If you run a local business of any type, you know the critical role that word-of-mouth endorsements play in helping spread the word about your services. In Harnessing The Power Of Online Reviews, Rob Kerry walks you through how reviews — the online equivalent of word-of-mouth testimony — can have a big impact on quality of service, customer satisfaction, customer retention and customer acquisition.

And if you’re marketing a service-based business, you won’t want to miss Top Ranking Factors For Service Based Businesses. In this session, you’ll learn:

• How to reach customers beyond your business’s ZIP code.
• What Google isn’t telling you about winning in local SEO.
• How to leverage your tools to measure your successes both on- and off-site.

Don’t delay: SMX East is next week!

To attend these and other sessions at SMX East, you can still take advantage of the best pre-conference rate. So be sure to register for SMX East now.

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