5 things To Improve Your Local Search Marketing

Posted on March 13, 2012 by admin

Google is always working to improve its search results quality. One way it does this is to look at where the person searching is from and to provide results from businesses that match that location. This is called Google localization and to have to your company better rank you need to know these 5 things to improve your local search marketing.

1) Get listed Google Places
Probably the most obvious but least taken advantage of tip in local search marketing is Google Places. Google Places allows you to tell Google that your business is in a local market. Your listing can include videos, pictures, reviews, hours of operation, and the area of service. Sites that appear in Places will appear at the top of any localized search. It is like a free top 10 ranking. Though it only may show a a hand full of sites for a particular term there are many categories that have only a few businesses listed.

2) Add a local phone number and local address
Google uses your address and phone to determine where it is. Having a local business number and address on your site helps it to associate your site to a local market. Best practice is to address a phone number to the top right corner of every page. This is not only good for Google but makes it easier for people coming to your site to contact you because the ultimate goal is really to get people to contact you about your business. Most people will want to deal with a local business and when the see a phone number they recognize as a local one they will be more likely to call. Also, put your address at the bottom of the site. With SEO, a well themed page usually has the keyword at the top, middle, and bottom. By having the address at the bottom of every page your local term will be themed on every page. This goes a long way to making your pages look more localized.

3) Add a page about your community or service area
Creating a history page or about your local market gives the user and search engine useful information which helps to creating a local theme to your web site. When I create real estate sites this type of content is must because local buyers will need to understand the market and what the neighborhood has to offer. For other types of businesses, you can try creating a service area page where you list out your target markets. One trick I like is using a testimonial page to show localized reviews where I state the area where the reviewer is from (i.e. Bob from Woodbridge, Ontario). Creating localized content adds creditability with Google and users will feel that they are dealing with someone nearby.

4) SEO for your local market
Many of the previous points will really help you to optimize your site for local terms. To go further it is important to do keyword research. Often different markets will search differently and you must target the keywords based on how local users search. An example of this is Canadian spelling verses US. Local expressions or terminology is important to use. In England searches might type flat, estate agent, letting agents where as in the US it would be apartment, real estate agents, and rental agents. Another common difference between localities is word order or singular plural usage. Do exact keyword research to find out how people search in your market and pepper your site with those terms.

5) Get in local directories
Links play a big role in search engine rankings. Getting links from locally themed sites helps a lot when trying to rank for local terms. Local directories are the best sources of these types of links. Directories often have strong page rank and good theming. A directory’s authority can be a big boost to a site’s local rankings. To find local directories it is as simple doing a Google search for “your city/town + directory”. The ones near the top of the rankings will be the ones that Google gives the most value. Also get into local review sites these will help with both your Google ranking and Google Places ranking, since Google often uses reviews from external sites as a measure of a business’s quality within Places. There is an added bonus that these directories can provide local traffic to your site as well. Personally I prefer not to be solely dependent on Google.

I hope my tips help you with your local search marketing. If you have questions or comments, please feel free to connect with me.

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February Update and Google Localization

Posted on March 6, 2012 by admin

In 2011 worked on a site for a Cambridge Ontario photographer. When I checked her site’s rankings, I was pleased to find her in the top ten, but was not pleased to see what was ranked above her. While searching on Google.ca, the sites above her were from Cambridge England and US. As a Canadian this has always been a pet peeve. In February of 2012 Google worked to improve this in their project code named “Venice”. Now as a result searching locally has been greatly improved. Google can use searchers IP addresses to provide more relevant localization.

What does improved localization mean for Google search and rankings?
This update increases the importance of target local search terms. The localization effect means that even when people don’t use a city term they will be more likely to find businesses near them. So if you want to target a local market is essential to appear to be in that local market. Now it more difficult for businesses to rank beyond their local markets. Though this ends up helping local businesses because national companies will have a harder time ranking over local businesses. Google now prefers to show sites that match the location of the searcher. This will be good for Google’s bottom line too because national companies usually have larger budgets and will be forced to pay for ranking when targeting localized terms. So ultimately I see this as big win for the little guy.

See my next article on: 5 things you can do to improve your local search marketing

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Social Signals and Google Rankings

Posted on February 14, 2012 by admin

If you ever watch American Idol, the judges always seem to mention an X-factor. Something special and somewhat intangible that makes one singer better than the other. Google works in tangible ways but sometimes understanding why one site ranks above all others seems to be governed by some mystical x-factor. Usually within seconds of looking at a site I can guess how well or not it will rank. This might all change if Google starts using social signals as a ranking factor. Social signals add an x-factor to rankings because it is something not measured by page content or traditional backlinks. Social signals are tweets, likes, diggs, Google pluses, etc. which socially judge the value of content. The more socially positive the content the higher it will rank.

So how do you see social signals?
One way used to be Google’s social graph api which showed social connections and allowed developers to use the social information gathered by Google. However, Google’s social graph will be retired on April 20, 2012. However, another Google tool might be help, Google Alerts. By creating specific alerts about your brand or web site you can monitor your social signals. You can even set up alerts to monitor your competitors. The goal is to understand the social activity regarding your business and perhaps encourage it to grow. Another tool is Klout, which gives a score of your personal social significance.

There is a spin-off benefit that by becoming more social active you not only might improve your Google rankings but drive more visits from social media itself.

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The Truth About SEO

Posted on February 4, 2012 by admin

Search engine optimizers (SEOs) have been compared to snake oil salesman. With the huge amounts of money to be made online there are thousands of people claiming to be SEO experts. I was listening to the radio and heard ad by Yellowpages where they were looking for people to join their business and to become SEO experts with no experience required. They hire these people not to be SEO experts but to be phone reps that sell the services regardless if they can provide it or not. Even though I am a SEO and my business clearly states that is all I do, I still get calls from companies guaranteeing top positions on the search engines. As a joke, I ask them a few basic SEO questions which takes them off script and the answers they provide are usually very humorous. These are the snake oil salesman that give the industry a bad name. The truth is there are many really good and honest SEOs out there that live and breath search engine optimization just as I do. Sad thing is we are the exception and not the rule.

Here is something all people should know about SEO. People at Google please listen to this as well. SEO is not evil. SEO is not trickery. SEO, when done right, is about helping the search engines to improve their quality by getting sites that should rank for a term to rank for a term. Often a good SEO must trouble shoot to find out why a site isn’t ranking for a keyword. A good SEO knows and understands the search engines’ guidelines so they can make sure their clients’ sites follow them. Sites don’t rank often because they break the rules. A good SEO fixes these mistakes. So you may think SEO is all about breaking the rules, but the opposite is actually true.

This is the truth about SEO. I hope this helps to set the record straight.

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3 SEO Words That Should Make You Weary

Posted on February 1, 2012 by admin

There are three words that you really don’t want to hear: fast, easy, and guaranteed. Some days I devote my time to building my knowledge and skills. I search the web for all the latest trends and information on search engine optimization. Often I find many articles where people claim to be SEO experts or like me, a SEO guru, but really have a very limited knowledge of the field. Often to encourage people to use their services they’ll use the three words I mentioned above: fast, easy, and guaranteed.
However, SEO is anything but fast, easy, or guaranteed.

SEO is not fast
Sometimes getting rankings does happen fast, but as a rule SEO involves a bit of patience. Content in the site must be built and links from external sites must be built. This just takes time. There are tricks the help speed up both of these processes but often they have short lived gains. The best way is the time tested true way, which is build good content and encourage people to link to it. It is a slow way but it is the right way. As the tortoise says “slow and steady wins the race.”

SEO is not easy
Often my clients will ask me what I do. They’ll believe they can just change the meta tags or repeat the keywords 1000x and get rankings. Funny thing is many SEOs do exactly these types of things and the result is no result. Creating content with keywords is only part of the battle. Understanding how the search engines and how your competition are changing is other the major part. SEO is not rocket science but it does require ever changing knowledge of the field. So companies hire SEOs because as a SEO you must constantly expand your knowledge base. Things change and a good SEO changes all the time.

SEO is not guaranteed
Often clients ask for a guarantee. My favorite response is: If I could guarantee rankings on Google, I would have to be an owner of Google and if i was an owner of Google I wouldn’t need to do SEO work any more. The point is there are no guarantees. SEOs have no control over Google and can only follow best practices and should help with rankings.

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Reducing Twitter Noise

Posted on January 25, 2012 by admin

Unless you are a rock star, celebrity, or someone truly interesting building a Twitter following does not happen over night. However, hiring someone like me can help. Recently, I helped a client building 1,400 followers targeted to their industry. The problem was also I had several non-targeted people added in the mix. To build a following means following others. If they like what you are Tweeting about they will follow you back. I had to set their account to follow back people automatically in order to help the growth. This is where the problem can happen and the client received many followers who were not relevant. As a result, their timeline was filled with both good and bad posts. This really annoyed my client. The benefits of increasing their social media presence was lost on them and they could only focus on the negative. The funny thing is if you have more than a few hundred followers your timeline gets filled up pretty quick with people Tweeting about random crap. “Random crap” is an industry technical term for junk. ;) So there is a problem for all of us. The more we follow the more noise we get.

So here is the dilemma we all face we want more followers and yet we want to make sense of it all. How can we cut down the general non-useful rants and tweets on Twitter and focus on what we are truly want to hear.

Here are a few solutions for reducing the Twitter Noise:

1) unfollow everyone: hmm…I not really recommending this and if you do this too fast your account will get banned on Twitter. But if you really want, you can do this over time. 200-300 unfollows per day will not get you in trouble. However, unfollowing everyone has its consequences you’ll probably loose many of you followers. Hopefully, the ones remaining will be true followers and active.

2) create lists: Creating a list allows you to put all the people you really want to listen in one spot where you can check. add them to a list..
– click on the follower’s name
– click on the icon that looks like a person..then choose “add to list”
– click “create a list” or add them to an existing list

3) read your @ (reply) messages: Your reply messages are usually messages of engagement so fortunately they are all gathered together for you to easily check all at once. Now you would normally assume these would appear under the “messages” tab; this is not the case. The messages tab shows all your direct messages and these are usually spam. For the most part direct messages (DMs) can be ignored. To see the replies click “home” next to the timeline tab is the “@username” tab where you can see all your replies.

4) use external tools: I have mentioned this tool many times but it deserves another mention. Monitter.com allows you search for conversations that might interest you. It allows you to type in a search term and it finds all the conversations where that term is used. You can even geographically target it so you can find local people. I use it often as a means to find clients or cool things happening in the world.

5) use hashtags: Hashtags allow you to quickly check all of the conversations on a specific topic. I’ll often watch trending topics for cool and timely news. When the earthquake happened at the beginning of this year in Japan I looked about it first on Twitter. I was able to use the hashtag to then engage with people to quickly learn everything I could about the situation. Within seconds I knew more on the topic then most news stations were providing on TV.

Finally if all of these things don’t help you reduce the Twitter noise…try turning off your computer and going out into the real world. I know scary thought..just stick to trying my above recommendations.

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5 Things You Need to Know About Google Plus

Posted on January 23, 2012 by admin

Google Plus is growing as a social media contender. Google might have pulled the plug on previous social media attempts but Google plus seems to be here for the long haul. Understanding Google plus as a business owner is important because when social networks are new it is the best time to take advantage of them. Twitter only a few years back would allow you to follow an unlimited number of people per day and there were software like Hummingbird where you could follow thousands of people at once and build massive followings fast. Now such activity would result in a quick account suspension. Google plus is still young and pretty unrestricted. How long it remain this way is anyone’s guess, but it is a good time to learn the system and take advantage of what it can offer.

So here is what you need to know in order to get the most out of Google plus for your business.

5 Things You Need to Know About Google Plus:

1) When someone pluses a site its ranking goes up for any term related to it for that user. More pluses means people will see your site highly ranked. It is kind of like bookmarking but it affects the Google search results.

2) If you unfollow a Google plus page, it immediately unfollows you. So be careful about unfollowing it could result in less activity for your page.

3) You can easily add a Google+ icon to any web page. Here is the link http://www.google.com/+1/button/ There are many plugins for WordPress that help as well like social profilr.

4) Contacts in Google+ are arranged in circles. With circles you can categorize your connections by relationship: family, work, friends, business, frienemies or whatever you like. You can also import your contacts from your gmail and other social sites.

5) You circles do not impact how people categorize you. So just because you put a person into a friend circle doesn’t mean they will do the same. However, when you add people to circles they receive a notice that a connection has been made. Sometimes this can be a good way of encouraging activity from people who you don’t know but would like to know.

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SEO Secrets Revealed

Posted on January 16, 2012 by admin

Search engine optimization (SEO) is about getting your site to the top of the search engines. However, the rules for what makes a site rank are for the most part kept secret by Google. Here is what we know. Content and links to a site are the two major factors that determine rankings. Content means having the keywords within your site’s pages’ text. Having these keywords in the title and throughout the page helps theme a page toward a keyword. So best practice is to have the keyword appear in the top, middle and bottom of the page. Headings on pages add emphasis to a keyword and boost rankings. The goal for the search engines is to look relevant so when someone goes from the search engine to a web site and the keyword is large at the top of the page the searcher feels that they found the right page. Therefore the role of a good SEO is to make the search engine look good.

Here are a few secrets that you should know that will help you make your content shine on the search engines:

1) Be precise about the phrase used. If people search for “Alaska best hot dogs”, then don’t say “top hot dogs in Alaska”. You need to use the exact match for best results.

2) Theme your site. Don’t expect that just because you have one page that is SEO gold that your site will suddenly rank #1. The whole site needs to theme the keyword. A one or two page site won’t rank well. More pages are needed to back up the good page and help it to rank.

3) Rephrasing helps. I see so many sites which try and fail to target a keyword because they spam the term in the content. Saying SEO, SEO, SEO will not help me rank better for it. In fact it will actually hinder my rankings because the search engines can recognize spam. Reinforcing a keyword is important and can be done subtly by using semantically similar words. I try using similar meaning phrase that are also popular keyword phrases. So instead of saying SEO, SEO, SEO, I could say search engine optimization, SEO, and web marketing are important.

4) Remember content is only half the battle. It used to be the case that if I optimized a brand new site it would jump to the top of the rankings. It still can happen but it has become a much more challenging game. The level of competition has improved and links are extremely important in achieving the top rankings. So building a good content site isn’t enough, you must get links to it. Social media helps in this because you can use it as means of posting your link on high powered sites. So go out and get links.

Please feel free to post your tips or questions and I’ll be glad to help.

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5 Signs of Being Addicted to Social Media

Posted on January 8, 2012 by admin

Here is a little humor…I hope you enjoy. The keyword is “little” so if you think you can be funnier please feel free to post your humorous suggestions in the comments below.

1) Most of your “friends” you’ve never actually met in person

2) You speak in 140 chars or less

3) Hanging out with friends means going to FaceBook or Twitter

4) People, whether they want or not, know where you are at all times…you even check in to your home.

5) Asking your friends on a social media site if you are addicted to social media

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Top 5 Social Media Myths For Business

Posted on January 2, 2012 by admin

Businesses are rushing to social media with the misguided believe that it is the new cure all. Social media is great, but many businesses will find it live up to these high expectations. Many companies will set up a FaceBook fan page, Twitter account, etc. then let the dust collect on these social profiles and wonder why it hasn’t resulted in any new clients or customers. Or businesses might do the opposite and avoid social media altogether because it is seen as a waste of time. Here are my top 5 myths associated to what is social media:

1) Too time consuming
Many businesses avoid social media because they feel it is time consuming. Actually, if you let it can be very time consuming. But it doesn’t have to be. Many of the daily tasks on social sites can be automated or social activity can be connected across multiple sites so communication doesn’t just happen in one place but across many social media sites. Usually, I spend less than 20 minutes a day on social sites and even with such a small investment of time I reach out directly to over half a million people and indirectly to almost a billion. There are no other means online or off that can provide such an impact that short amount of time. Social media is possibly the biggest time saver of for businesses seeking to market themselves.

2) Can’t make money with social media
I have heard said this from people, who are so-called experts, many times. It just isn’t true. Social media is a goldmine. It helps when finding clients, converting clients, and creating a network of potential clients. Social media is about making connections and the ability connect with pretty much anyone you want makes it very powerful. Doing a few searches on social sites you can very accurately pin point people interested in your product or service. I use sites like monittor.com or even the advanced Twitter search to find local people that need my help. With social media you can easily listen to these conversations then engage with them. Daily I get 2-5 clients from my social sites, so it is major source of income for me, but it could easily do the same for your business.

3) Not right fit their business
Every business relies on customers and clients. Social media can help any business to build both. If you feel that your business doesn’t need any more customers then you shouldn’t be in business. Successful businesses rely on growth and those that rely too much on their existing client base are destined to fail. Even the most loyal clients can leave. Social media isn’t only about building customers, can it also be about providing better service to them. I often use it to educate my clients so they have a better understanding of what I do. Often this leads to even more business from them.

4) Having a profile is all that is required
I’ve been doing social media for several years now and built companies’ followings on Twitter, LinkedIn, FaceBook, etc. and though I can help them all create thousands of connections some still don’t get it. One client, I built 2000 targeted followers on Twitter, never Tweeted from their account and asked why with such a large base of followers they weren’t getting more daily traffic. The reason I explained was they didn’t give those followers a reason to visit their site. Sounds simple, but if you want to get something out of social media you have to put something in. A little bit of communication can go a long way. So don’t expect that once you built a social profile that you are done, this just the starting point.

5) Social media is expensive
Social media’s only cost is time. Though time is money, it takes very little time to get a lot of return on the time spent. Keep things simple do a few updates, connect with some new people, respond to a few posts…after a while you’ll find yourself building a following and a base of connections that will build your business. I offer many marketing services and social media marketing is always the lowest priced. It is much easier then other online marketing methods. SEO, which is my bread and butter, is expensive to do. It requires constant work on the site and building links. Google ads are even more expensive with SEO approximate cost is 5 cent per visitor with Google ads on average it is $1/visitor. In contrast, social media costs about 1 cent/visitor and as it grows the price continuously drops.

Please feel free to comment…ask me about your problems with social media and I’ll try to help.

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