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Posts Tagged ‘local search’
Sunday, May 1st, 2011
When it comes to ranking your web pages for local search traffic, it’s easy to assume that the same factors affecting global search rankings will also affect local search rankings, but that may not be the case. Certainly, I think on-page content is one factor, and inbound links, to a certain degree, are also a factor. But what else can be a factor?
It seems obvious – at least to me – that local links are more valuable than what are generally termed “relevant” links. In other words, if you are a local real estate broker, a link from your Chamber of Commerce will likely carry more weight than a link from a national real estate website.
I also believe Web citations could prove a factor as well. A Web citation is any place off of your own website that mentions your business, web address, or Local business listing information without an accompanying link.
So how can a non-link affect your search rankings? If you’ve claimed your business listing in Google Places, Bing Local, and Yahoo! Local, then the search engines know your business address and phone number. They also know some other basic information about you. If that information also appears on another website – say, your local Chamber of Commerce or BBB website – then it adds a level of credibility to your business. A link isn’t necessary.
So here’s my tip for today. If you are a local business trying to rank better for your search terms and a geographical targeting metric, see if you can get a few local Web citations, with or without a link.
Tags: inbound links, local search, local SEO, search rankings, small business, web citations
Posted in Local Internet Marketing | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, April 13th, 2011
If you are a veterinarian or pet doctor, then you now have a new way to market your practice. It’s a search engine for veterinarians powered by Google.
The concept is nothing new. There have been search engines launched for specific professions for years. And the benefits are always the same.
By listing your veterinary practice in a profession-specific search engine like MyVeterinarian.com, you increase your chances of getting found by local people in need of your services. This happens in a couple of ways.
First, if someone finds the MyVeterinarian.com website and performs a search for vets in your area, they are likely to find you. Here’s the catch: That’s IF they find the MyVeterinarian.com website, which doesn’t have particularly high rankings at Google for the search term “veterinarian.” But that could change.
Secondly, with your listing in the search engine, if your website is linked to in the listing, then you’ll receiving better link popularity as a result, which can increase your own website in Google’s listings for the search term “veterinarian” and your local geographic search terms.
I always recommend listing a business in a professional directory or search engine. Unless there are serious issues with the site, it’s usually a positive. In this case, I’d say it’s definitely a positive.
Tags: geotargeting, local search, profession-specific search, search engine
Posted in Local Internet Marketing | 3 Comments »
Saturday, April 9th, 2011
No one likes to receive bad reviews, but did you know that bad reviews can actually help you?
It’s true. Bad reviews = content and content is good. There are several websites online where you can have your customers go to write reviews of your business. I highly recommend that you invite your customers to do this. And if you’d prefer to receive good reviews, just provide good customer service and you are more likely to attract positive reviews rather than negative.
Google Places, Yahoo! Local, and Bing all offer reviews of local businesses. Let your customers know you have a listing at these sites (you do, don’t you?) and invite them to review your business. The more reviews you have, the more likely your local listings will appear in the search engines.
Other sites like Yelp and CitySearch offer local business listings and a way for customers to review a business. You can also add a page to your website that allows customers to review your business.
If you have a reviews page on your website, that’s content for your site. It can appear in the search engine listings for any search involving the name of your business plus “reviews.” That could mean additional traffic to your website and if the majority of your reviews are positive, it could mean more business.
Reviews are good for your business, positive or negative. While positive reviews are best, negative reviews can still help.
Tags: businesss, local search, negative reviews, reviews, small business
Posted in Local Internet Marketing | 2 Comments »
Saturday, April 2nd, 2011
Frank Reed has a thoughtful post at WebProNews about Bing, Google, and Local Search. His premise is interesting and it leaves me wondering. He says that Bing can lead in local search by being the “anti-Google.”
I was particularly struck by this paragraph:
So spend the money you have wisely by investing in the human side of the Internet. Hire people to be city managers. Give them a more than fair wage plus the chance to earn commission based on reasonable metrics like number of verified business accounts in the portal and other things. Let them earn the right to hire more sales people and be entrepreneurial in their market but with the backing of a Goliath like Microsoft.
If Bing, or any search engine, took that approach, it would be revolutionary. By posting this to the world, Frank Reed runs the risk of Google picking up on the idea and implementing it. But that likely won’t happen. Google have their own ideas.
Still, we are human, are we not? Would you respond to a search engine taking this approach? Would the “human side of the Internet” tickle you pink?
As a small business owner, I think this would certainly get my attention. I’d also be likely to experiment with Bing products for small businesses and see how they could help me in my business. Right now, Google is doing a fairly adequate job of helping small business owners, but they could do more. Do you think strong stiff competition from Bing would up the ante?
Tags: bing, google, local search
Posted in Local Internet Marketing | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, March 30th, 2011
Trends come and go, but not all trends end up going. Some end up sticking around for a long time. I predict that the following trends are here to stay and that you should seriously start thinking about following them now that you’ve brought your business online.
- Mobile Search – Seriously, mobile phones have hit the market big time. People are buying on their phones, reading blogs on their phones, and updating their social media on their phones. Mobile search is big and I predict it will get bigger.
- Facebook and Twitter – If you thought social media was a trend that would go away, you’d better face it. Not only is it not going away, but it’s getting bigger and better. Today, if you have an online presence with your business, you’d better be on Facebook and Twitter – at a minimum.
- Blog Marketing – Blog marketing came on strong, then it dipped. I mean, it slowed down. Businesses lost interest. But it appears that blog marketing is experiencing a surge again. I think this trend will continue for a long time.
- Local Search – Local businesses have discovered the Internet. Whether you are in a large metro area or in a small rural town, local search is going to be huge.
- Longer Content – It seems that the search engines are favoring longer content. Can you blame them? I think longer content is in, and to be truthful, longer content will always have great benefits.
Catch the wave of these five trends right now. They’ll be major influences to online marketing for a long time.
Tags: blog marketing, content, internet marketing, local search, mobile search, Social Media
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | 3 Comments »
Monday, January 31st, 2011
Last Thursday, I wrote a blog post titled “Where Does Your Google Snippet Come From?”
To summarize, I mentioned three distinct places where Google takes your search page snippet from:
- Meta Description
- ODP listing
- On-page content
Alex Hawkinson asked this question on Twitter:
Isn’t it all about micro-data vs. the things that you mention?
First, I’d like to say great question, Alex. Thanks for asking it.
Let’s start by defining “micro-data.” This is what Google calls microformats, or rich snippets. Alex himself wrote a short primer on this topic here.
In short, micro-data is on-page content that is structured for the purpose of alerting the search engines that particular text or other content on a page is more search-worthy than the rest of the content. It’s a way that you as a website owner can attempt to influence the search engine’s algorithm in obtaining information to be included in the search page snippet.
Taking that definition, I’ll now answer Alex’s question with these three observations:
- Microformats, or micro-data, aka rich snippets, are a part of on-page content and as such fall into the third category from which Google takes information for your search page snippet. In other words, it isn’t “all about micro-data,” but it does include micro-data.
- Currently, most small business websites are not using microformats, and of those that are, I’d say a small percentage are using them effectively. Therefore, they are not as influential as they might be with regard to local search algorithms.
- And thirdly, there is no guarantee that using microformats will result in your preferred search page snippet being published. The search engines have the final say.
Consider this, taken directly from Google’s own website concerning rich snippets:
If I mark up my pages, does that guarantee I’ll get Rich Snippets?
No. We will be rolling this out gradually, and as always we will use our own algorithms and policies to determine relevant snippets for users’ queries. We will use structured data when we are able to determine that it helps users find answers sooner. And because you’re providing the data on your pages, you should anticipate that other websites and other tools (browsers, phones) might use this data as well.
Consider that Google rolled out its microformats support on May 12, 2009 (the date of the above published material). At that time, the only microformats Google supported were reviews and people. Now, the search engine has expanded its support to include products, businesses and organizations, recipes, events, and videos. Google also has a rich snippets testing tool so you can be sure that your microformats are working properly.
I highly encourage small businesses to use microformats. I believe they will only get better and the future certainly belongs to this form of on-page content. But the present still belongs to traditional modes of content. If you start using microformats today, you’ll be ahead of your competition. That doesn’t mean you should abandon current on-page techniques – they can be used together, the new and the old. And you just may influence your search page snippets for the better. But realize that rich snippets, or microformats, or whatever you choose to call them, are indeed a part of your on-page content.
Tags: google, local search, micro-data, microformats, on-page content, Rich Snippets
Posted in SEO for Small Business | No Comments »
Sunday, January 23rd, 2011
Local search is great if you service just one geographic area. If you service an area that is greater than 50 miles in radius, then you’ll find that local search is good for delivering local customers, but useless for delivering customers from further afield. At present, there is no easy way around this so you need to start thinking outside the square.
To target search results from another town, without setting up a physical presence in that town, needs at the very least a digital presence. You can achieve this by having pages on your website that are dedicated to the areas you do serve. Each page needs to be well optimized with particular attention being paid to including regional place names in titles, URLs, and headings. Each page should outline the services you provide and when you provide them – for example, if you visit that town once a week, then specify those days and your service hours.
You can reinforce those pages through social media. If you can encourage your customers from those areas to ‘like’ those particular pages, so much the better. The bottom line is, you are going to have to compete in search results for those areas as an outsider. For specific searches, you should still find it relatively easy to gain a good position, although it may well be below the local search results.
Local offline marketing can also help to deliver you customers. However, this of course will do little for search results. Over time, Google will no doubt discover ways that will allow local businesses to compete in local searches in areas away from their geographic center. When they do, those dedicated pages will make a great starting point.
Tags: google, local search, offline marketing, social media marketing
Posted in Local Internet Marketing | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, January 5th, 2011
This article at WebProNews isn’t really about how offline news affects search rankings, but it made me think about it.
From the article:
“Some trends have continued over the years, for example pop-princess Britney Spears made the list every year, while some trends changed drastically, largely thanks to new technology like mobile devices,” a spokesperson for Yahoo tells WebProNews.
Back in 2001, the top ten list featured things like Napster, NASCAR, the IRS, and of course the World Trade Center. In fact, there had not been another news event to reach a year’s top ten list of Yahoo searches until the infamous BP oil spill of this past year.
The decade in search was largely dominated by entertainment and celebrity queries like Spears, Kim Kardashian, Megan Fox, Miley Cyrus, Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton, Lady Gaga, Eminem, Justin Bieber, 50 Cent, etc.
Yahoo! search trends have always been about what is popular offline. Celebrities usually hit the top search lists. Notice that the World Trade Center and the BP oil spill are the only two hard news items in ten years to hit the top search list. That’s not surprising. But those two made the lists because they are super huge news items that affect a lot of people. But you can generally expect the most popular celebrities, books, music, and movies of the day to dominate the Yahoo! search results.
That’s also true of search engine Bing. It’s less true of Google, though it is true to some extent. I believe when local search is as big as general search is today then it will likely be true of local search as well. In other words, when offline news on the local level is popular, you’ll be able to expect that people will search for information on that local news through one of the popular search engines.
So, how can marketers use this information? For starters, pay attention to the news. What is important to people offline? Figure that out and you can predict with some reasonable accuracy what the short-term search trends will be.
Another thing you should do is watch the online search trends. This will clue you in to what is important to people offline. Adjust your marketing aim based on that and conduct your search engine marketing to reflect the reality of the news cycle. Whether it is hard news, business news, celebrity news, or something else, you can target the trends with astonishing success.
Tags: internet marketing, local search, offline marketing, search marketing, SEO
Posted in Local Internet Marketing | 3 Comments »
Sunday, December 26th, 2010
On Christmas Eve, SEOMoz posted the Top 10 Things We Learned About SEO In 2010. While I wouldn’t necessarily have spent a paragraph on all 10 of these, there are some very important lessons here. I’ll list the top 3.
- Search and social are fully integrated. For SEOs who do well at social media, this is good news. For social citizens who bump into SEOs trying to push their agenda, this is bad news. It means more spam – both on social media sites and in the search engines. But it also means that really good social content gets pushed up in the search engine rankings where it belongs. And, by the way, social is not replacing search so stop saying it.
- Local search still has room to grow and it will be a major area of growth going forward. Google clearly intends to focus on local. And whatever Google decides to focus on will be important. That means we can expect local search to be important in 2011 and 2012. That doesn’t mean Google will dominate local search, but it does mean it will be an important factor for most of us trying to market our businesses online.
- Paid search is still big. When you consider that only 15% of the clicks go to paid search listings while experts predict that $20 billion will be spent on it versus only $2 billion for SEO, well, that means there is still a big incongruency there. But it’s an important one. It means that business marketers have a lot more trust in paid search than organic search. There are certainly reasons for that. Paid search is more immediate and easier to understand.
These three lessons show that the future is not all that different from the past. Maybe local search will be more prominent than it has been and social will be more integrated, but all in all, SEO hasn’t changed much. That’s good news.
Tags: google, local search, paid search, SEO, Social Media
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | 5 Comments »
Friday, October 29th, 2010
You’ve likely heard of Google Places by now. But have you heard of Google Boost?
Currently, Google Boost is only available in Chicago, San Francisco, and Houston. But it should soon be available everywhere. And you’re going to love it when it is.
Essentially, Google Boost is paid search for local search. In your Boost ad you can put your business name and phone number, address, a description of your business, a snippet from your Google Place page along with the number of reviews you’ve had, and a link to your Google Place page. That actually seems like it’s a little more than an ordinary pay-per-click ad.
With a Googe Boost ad you stand a good chance of getting more traffic to your website. Like traditional PPC, you only pay for the ad when it’s clicked on. Unlike traditional PPC, you’ll be able to order your Google Boost ad directly from Google Places. And, of course, you get analytics with that as well.
The way pricing works for Google Boost is you set yourself a monthly budget then your ads run and when you’ve hit your budget they stop running.
One of the unique features of Google Boost is that your ads will run on Google Maps pages. So if people are performing a local search for your product or service then you stand a good chance of having your ad seen for those more narrow local searches. It’s a great advertising platform for local businesses.
Should you use Google Boost? Well, yes. But right now you can’t – unless you live in Chicago, San Francisco, or Houston. When it rolls out publicly everywhere, you should be one of the first businesses in your local community to try it out.
Tags: Boost, google, local business, local search
Posted in Local Internet Marketing | 1 Comment »
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