This is a follow on post to Do You Do Business in Richmond discussing the effect of location on local area search results.

The posts come from some research I did with local search terms and locations. I chose three search terms likely to have local intent: "pizza", "women's clothing", and "car repair", and searched them in Mechanicsville, Henrico, Short Pump and Chesterfield by varying the location with the change location feature of Google search. As a control I also did the searches in Richmond and cross checked the results by adding "Richmond" to the root search term.

Retailers have always known that location matters. It’s easier to do business where there are a lot of people around. For a while, it became possible for businesses to break out of their location with customers searching for products and services in yellow pages that spanned an entire metro area.

But with yellow pages increasingly consigned to the trash can and people turning online to find things, location is asserting itself in an unexpected way. As you might expect, this is due to Google. Specifically, Google Maps.

Blogging is difficult. It takes time, thought and dedication to turn out posts with any kind of frequency. Why should a local business bother?

You should blog because it works-- in several different ways. Here are the main reasons businesses blog:

Blog To Enhance Credibility

Do you really know what you're doing? What sets you apart from your competitors? Why should I believe you?

These are all questions prospects ask before they do business with you. Most of the time the questions aren't asked explicitly, and if they are, they wouldn't believe your answers anyway. There's only one answer you can give, isn't there?

Titles are of increasing importance. A good name has always been a plus, but with search, feeds that show just a bit of information, and the increasing amount of information people are expected to process, having a good name or title is essential to being read.