Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Most of our clients are local but we can not get local or regional (for example VA State or Washington DC) SERP results within SEOMOZ. it would be nice to create custom search profiles based on region (State or County) and track SERP within SEOMOZ.  Ranking reports and even keyword difficulty analysis etc. within SEOMOZ are misleading for local web sites. SEOMOZ default site setup assumes every business doing SEO serves all over the US. I think it will be very beneficial if we have a choice to select State or County of local web sites during initial campaing set up at SEOMOZ. what do you think? do you know any work around of this problem? Thanks,
Lewis

Google Adwords Keyword tool Local Monthly searches covers all US and it is misleading for local/regional companies. is there any tool and method you could recommend to find out State Level (for example Virginia) local monthly search volume for Keyword research. I think the methods of Keyword Research for National and Local (state level) level should be different. what do you think?

We have created accounts for several of our clients at www.MerchantCircle.com directory  and created blogs, coupons, etc for them but we did not get any single click or benefit from merchantcircle.com at all.  We wasted a lot of time and also monthly membership fees. I really would like to hear your experiences. Did you have any positive results from merchantcircle.com ? Did they lose their importance after Panda update? Their MOZrank also shows ZERO and we are considering cancelling our accounts with them. Thanks for your advice and help, Lewis

Since the responsibilities of SEO have increased so  much, I think there has to be a kind of basic industry wide  Certification / Degree system.   Many people may argue that experince is much more important than certification but how about like any other trade or profession; we have (1) SEO Certification PLUS (2) SEO Experience for the Internet Marketers. One of the reasons,  I get so many calls from people that they claim they are SEO experts and they are trying to sell their services to us, but when you talk with them, you can easily tell that they do not have any knowledge about it. But they sell the service to business owners that do not understand SEO.  It is very sad to see small business owners believe those people.. and I understand it is business owners responsibility to check the background & portfolio of SEO agency, but wouldn't it be nice to have another credential that they can ask "are you also certified SEO"? what do you think about "Certified SEO" or "Certified Internet Marketing Consultant" concept? can there be an international or national organization to coordinate and superwise the certifications? Thanks, Lewis