Book Title: Get Found Now! Local Search Secrets Exposed

Authors: Richard Geasey and Shannon Evans of Practical Local Search

Subject Matter: This a great book focused on the Local Search silo of the larger Search Engine Optimization (SEO) discipline with a step by step approach.

Publisher: Create Space https://www.createspace.com/ a DBA of On Demand Publishing, 2009 (Amazon)

ISBN: 1448614643, 9781448614646

Complete Review:

Background

I was very fortunate to have a good friend of mine, Denise Barnes introduce me to Shannon Evans via Facebook. Soon after we are "friended" I get an IM from Shannon, asking if I would like to review her latest book. That is like asking a book worm if it wants to eat! So I get the signed book as promised. I love signed books as to me it is like getting a Gold Star on your paper! Wow, was I amazed that Shannon and Richard had put in one nice handy source what most of my small business do it yourself marketers needed. So after 58 minutes cover to cover with 4 pages of notes of great points and tips I was ready to write the complete review below with key take aways, my feedback and my editorial edits. I have added this book to my Google Library and my LinkedIn Amazon book list.

Key take aways by page of what I thought was great that I didn't know or validated what I did know:

Page 29: Photos and Video - Great, I missed this in my own listing

Page 30: 10 Listings for the same company! Whoa, I missed that one too

Page 34: Okay, don't go overboard on the duplicate listings - Warning Google ban hammer

Page 36: Free Google Analytics from your listing, even if you don't have Google Analytics setup for your site

Page 55: Virtual Office via UPS Store, yep I do this and I avoid the customer walk in by adding "by appointment only" and list my virtual office in the "Carmel Art's District" where I live.

Page 56: Skype, another great tool for the virtual office

Page 70: Dear client, please make a standard Company Bio and associated keywords, so you can cut and paste at each site to maintain consistency. This should come from your business plan ;-)

Page 72: Twitter, if you don't have your account, get it now, use it latter - I love ping, as you can send to all your platforms your "status update" daily with one button.

Page 79: Business Listing Hijacking, way worse than your neighborhood wifi squatters, so great point on looking at your existing listings even if you didn't create them, as somebody may be using yours

Page 87: Yelp, great new resource to use, I wasn't aware off

Page 96: Great reference to InfoUSA if you didn't know about them, I used to get the CD's for the data :-)

Page 112: Google news for your press releases! I missed that one completely

My feedback:

1. I would love a roadmap with value metrics aka doing these this gets you 50% of the bang, then this will get you another 15% as we are all limited on time, and who else but the author can really tell you the path of most results with least amount of effort?

2. How does Cha Cha figure into the local search space?

3. How do Navteq and InfoUSA reinforce Points of Interest integrity with Google, Microsoft and Yahoo Maps?

4. Overall Stats and focus on how each piece reinforces reputation and integrity

5. Don't forget how your blog plays into this as well as your YouTube channel

My Editorial edits and comments:

Page 9: Clarify how a website is an advantage as it definitely is!

Page 8: I would like a reference with all figures (images) from all the pages for make references in research and why not show Bing and Yahoo as well?

Page 10: Add screen shot of Google Text Entry

Page 11: Odd orphan Image and paragraph

Page 13/14: Odd space to short of Chapter

Page 15: Mobile/PDA impact and point to page 59 where discussed latter

Page 60: Picture to Dark

Page 87: Point out citysearch can be backdoored by insider pages on page 90

Paragraph review or Conclusion:

Okay - 58 minutes cover to cover with 4 pages of notes of great points and tips. Okay I read fast, but I think most should be able to read, absorb in 4 hours. My initial estimate is this book will save the average do it yourself (DIY) small business owner/marketer about 60 hours of research at the library (I have done this without Shannon's book) and they are in my Google library. This is a value of $3000 if the person brings $50per hour they spend on their business selling, managing, etc. I suspect they will be able to implement the sample walk thru's in 8 hours and see results in 24-72 hours. So for a similar investment of $50 per hour, they will spend $400 in results bearing work and if they get 1 new sale per week with a net sale profit of $50, they break even in 2 months for their time, 1 more week for the book and miles ahead in profit by the end of one year. Net, net, net is no need to invest in $3000 of research, use $400 of DIY time to get $2500 back in a year minus the book and DIY time, net $2050. Yes, I like numbers that involve time and money. I will be posting a "Book review" on my site and blog, so you can see my references and why this book is such a brilliant concise "head shot" for the DIY Small business and pros of the IT community that do this day in and day out.