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Over at SearchEngineJournal there was an interesting post analyzing Googles latest local search changes. Now they show local results for statewide searches, this is an interesting concept and one that I can already see ways to take advantage of for some of our customers.

Here are a few quick tips they pointed out on how to take advantage of this:

Check and see if your Industry and State are showing local listings.

Make sure you aren’t stuffing location keywords into categories. If your category is city + keyword then what happens when someone does a search for state + keyword.

Do keyword research for city vs. state terms. Your business might benefit by trying to go after one or the other.

Look at citations from businesses in other areas of the state and see if you can use them.

I think number 2 is very important in this, in most cases people go straight to city level categories or keywords, but with Googles shift to show local search for statewide a business that is trying to take advantage of this is going to have to think a bit differently.