I hope that you’ve all been enjoying my blog interview series, thus far. I know that I have! I truly feel honored to have the opportunity to speak to the best of the best about industry related topics that are near and dear to my geeky, internet marketing loving heart. In the next three weeks, leading up to our upcoming webinar entitled ”Go Local or Go Home” which will be given on July 15th by our very own Sarah Moraes and Jason Hendricks. I will be speaking to experts of the Local Search realm. As always, I plan to kick it off with a bang.

Therefore, this week I spoke to Mat Siltala the owner of the well known SEO firm Dream Systems Media. He is  also an avid SEO blogger and has been heavily involved in the Internet marketing world for several years. He has consulted with thousands of companies around the world. It’s easy to see that Matt simply loves what he does for a living, which makes us kindred spirits.

Elise Redlin-Cook: There are many local search sites out there. Do you see the market continuing to grow, or narrowing down to a few key players?

Mat Siltala: As more people switch to “app phones” I think we are going to only see more and more of “geo specific” type apps/websites/business emerge.  However; that does not mean all of them are going to survive.  Right now the obvious front runner in local is Yelp (and that is because of their app), and with them adding badges, regular programs and additional features to compete with location based gaming sites such as Foursquare they will just continue to gain in popularity.  There is a growing group of people out there that hate Yelp, so there will always be room for others, but I don’t see them being over taken anytime soon.

Other major players would include sites like City Search, Foursquare, Groupon, GoWalla.  Watch for coupon based sites like Groupon to get bigger and stronger too in the future.  I would also suggest keeping an eye out for companies that are creating services that compliment these sites I mention above – an example would be Snacksquare that goes hand in hand with what Foursquare is doing with their advertising program.   As everyone in this industry knows, things change rapidly – I bet MySpace would not have thought in a few short years they would be the laughing stock of social media.  With that said, my guess is Yelp, Foursquare & Groupon will be the big winners for the next couple of years.

Elise: That’s an interesting prediction. So, in your opinion, what currently are the best free local search sites today?

Mat: Google Places, Yahoo & Bing Local, Yelp, CitySearch, Groupon & Foursquare

Elise: Great, and how about the paid local search sites – which do you prefer?

Mat: If you are going to pay for any local service, I would pay into a site like GetListed.org that makes sure you are on the top ones.  Yelp is free, but they do have an advertising option that has brought many results to my clients too, and well worth looking into.  Angies list is growing some awesome momentum too – I kind of feel like they are the paid version of what most people who love Yelp wish it were.

Elise: What about businesses with multiple locations?

Mat: Most all of these services allow you to do batch uploads that make it easy.

Elise: I know that Merchant Circle allows you to add coupons, reviews, blog posts, etc. Will the other local search sites continue to adopt this trend of allowing more user generated content?

Mat: The dominate player in this group is Groupon, but with the things that Yelp is doing lately (as well as places like Foursquare) I see most location based services to be adding these kind of features and the main part of their programs in the future.  This is going to end up being big in the future of local.

Elise: Is it more important to be listed on niche sites that are specific to your industry, or the big sites with lots of traffic?

Mat: I think both – especially if you live in a bigger city where some of the more niche sites exist.  I am an SEO by nature and only look at is as more citations, more links, more traffic etc.  So I am going to suggest getting everywhere you can!

Elise: What local search sites MUST a business be listed with today?

If you are not listed with Google you are dead in the water (according to Google) If you do not have an app you are dead in the water (according to Steve Jobs)  SO it depends on who you ask, but I would do everything to get my site listed in normal search sites as well as those sites who have apps.

Elise: Do you see value in the paid listings versus the free listings?

Mat: If you are good with ad copy and conversions then YES, there is always value in paid listings, but to just chose one or the other I think is a mistake.  You have to evaluate the bottom line and what it means for your business.

Elise: There are mass distribution sites that blast your listing out to various search sites. Are there any that you’d recommend or that you’d recommend staying away from?

Mat: None that I would recommend here

Elise: That’s probably a good answer.  Well then, Lets get a little personal. Do you have any exciting projects that your involved in right now?

Mat: About the only thing I have time for right now is growing my companies and doing everything I can to get our name “out” there in the real world!  I guess its not completely honest to say we don’t have any “big” things going on, but nothing we can really talk about right now (how is that for a teaser?)

Elise: I know what you mean. If only there was more time in the day! So, are you driven by any great passions outside of the business arena?

Mat: I love the NFL, Apple & gadgets, but my first passion is my family and spending time with them.  I love the opportunity this industry gives me to be able to spend as much time as possible with them and for that, I am very grateful!

I think I’d second just about everything that Mat had to say here. How about you?

Elise Redlin-Cook

Elise is the Content & Marketing Manager at Vertical Measures, an internet marketing company in sunny Arizona providing services ranging from content marketing, to social media marketing, link building, and advanced SEO. She’s fully immersed herself into the world of content marketing and content strategy and is the managing editor of this blog.

Website – Twitter – More Posts

Whether you’ve been working on your website marketing for years, or just starting to take it seriously for your business, there are few more powerful tools than Google Analytics (or another analytics software program such as Omniture or WebTrends). Last month we held an introductory webinar on the subject, which you can watch again, but with any tool this powerful its full potential cannot be covered in just one hour.

Analytics software is focused on telling you what visitors did on your site, and the clues that this information can provide ranges anywhere from pages that are underperforming, to ideas for new keywords to target. However, to get the most out of the information, you have to spend some time setting it up beyond simple installation. One of these areas that provide great insight is ‘Site Search’.

Site search is turned off by default because not every website has a search function, and those that do all work a little differently. If your website is currently lacking a search feature, we highly recommend adding one for reasons that will hopefully become obvious as we dissect the information that becomes available. When many of our clients first come to us they haven’t enabled this feature, but turning it on and configuring it is a couple of simple steps;

1. Go to Website Profile Settings – Currently set to ‘Don’t Track Site Search’ and ‘Edit’

2. In the new page click the radio button ‘Do track Site Search

3. Perform a search on your website and take a look at the URL to find your query parameter. It’ll be the url between the ‘?’ and ‘=’, probably a ‘s’, ‘q’, ‘search’ or ‘query’. Search for something unusual, not your company name or ‘search’. I searched my own name, and in the URL you can clearly and you see our website uses ‘s’.

4. If you also have categories, such as ‘Books’, “DVDs’ “clothes’ etc that people can search within, then set up the categories section in a similar fashion. Otherwise Save Changes and you’re done!

Once you have this set up a whole new realm of information becomes open to you with 6 new reports to analyze, pick apart and otherwise dissect and digest. Some highlights of these reports, and clues you can gain from them are as follows;

Overview

The overview is just a dashboard for your site search, so while useful, lets dig a little deeper!

Usage

Usage is again a little self evident in that this report tells you how often the search function on your website is being used, and it does this by way of a pie chart and graph over time. The actual figures involved in this report will depend on the industry you’re in, and the type of website that you are running, but anything over 20% would make me worry for most websites and make me ask such questions as;

• Why is the search volume so high?
• Has it changed over time or always been high?
• Are people having a problem with your sites navigation?
• Are your landing pages accurate for keywords, or do people need to search for what they want?

…and so on. Really try to see your website as someone visiting for the first time and without the ‘Curse of Knowledge’ in that you know where everything on your website is.

With this and any other report don’t forget to check out those tabs at the top for ‘Goals’ and ‘Ecommerce’ if you have these set up. This can tell you if those who use your search are more or less likely to convert into sales – maybe too many people are leaving your site because they can’t find what they want to buy, and are unwilling to use the search bar.

Search Terms

Search terms is how Google Analytics separates search queries on your website, and search queries that bring traffic to your site, which are classified as ‘Keywords’ in the Traffic Sources reports. In terms of SEO, this information may be the most important as it can tell you directly what your customers are looking for and if they were satisfied with what they found – look at exits %’s and time after search. This can give you inspiration for new keywords to target, new content to create, or new products to stock to keep your visitors happy!

Start Pages

The start pages report tells you the most common pages where visitors on your website enter a search query. You may wish to compare this information with that in your top content report to see which pages have disproportionally high number of searches, and then ask yourself;

• Does the page have difficult navigation? Why can’t visitors find what they want?
• What content are visitors expecting on certain pages?
• Are my landing pages not correctly aligned with their targeted keywords?

Drill down to each page to see the search terms used, as well as looking at the % of search exits, time after search etc, to see the value of each search term to your sites goals.

Destination Pages

The destination pages report tells you those pages which were most commonly found via a search term. This again can give you clues into some of the following questions;

• Which pages are your website visitors looking for but struggling to find?
• Why can’t your visitors find the pages they want? Are there navigation issues, or are you categorizing pages in subsections your visitors don’t think to check?
• Which pages do people want, and can you create more of them?

Catagories

If your website has different categories that can be searched in, and if set up correctly, this report can show those categories with the highest percentages of search queries. The information you can gather will again vary wildly, but you might want to ask yourself the following

• Why are some categories searched more than others?
• Is it in proportion to the volume of visitors in those categories?
• How can I alter the navigation of each category to reduce user search?

Trending

Like any Google Analytics report, the best information can be gathered by comparing how information changes over time, and the trends that take place. The trending report is therefore crucial in measuring the effect of changes that you make in response to any or all of the above questions. For example…

• Have the changes you made increased or decreased search volume?
• Are your visitors able to find what they want with just one search?
• Are visitors staying on your site longer after searching?

Once again this post can only barely scratch the surface of what all of this information can tell you about your website and its visitors. The better you can understand the two of them, and how they interact, the more successful your online business will be. Whether you have Site Search set up, or you follow these instructions to get started, let us know in the comment section below of any additional tips you pick up from the reports. Alternatively, if you would like to have us take a look, and see what we advise to get the most from your visitors, contact us and we’d love to help you succeed!

James Constable

James is a Campaign Manager at Vertical Measures, looking at client’s Internet Marketing from a strategic viewpoint to get them the best possible results for their business needs and budget. His blog posts revolve around strategy, analytics and keyword selection.

In the latest edition of our VM interview series, we talk to Vertical Measures Director of Sales and Marketing Patty Adams. Patty, VM’s resident Parrothead, shares a little about her previous jobs, her love of dogs and how quickly she can finish a Taco Bell burrito.

Michael Schwartz: There’s only one way I could start this thing. Arnie and Andi were out of town, and you were in charge last week. What kind of special privileges do you get when you’re sitting in the big boss’ chair?

Patty Adams: I am humbled at the opportunity to fill the shoes of two great people (please make sure Arnie and Andi get a copy of this interview). Other than that, no special privileges….just the privilege of being here. I still had to sit in my own chair at my own desk.

Michael: Now before we get into the hard-hitting questions, it would be remiss of me not to ask about your May Employee of the Month honors here at Vertical Measures. How does this award rank among your career honors?

Patty: Among the highest of course! And this is the only award I’ve ever won that came with a metal bulldog trophy that proclaims, “Top Dawg.” No words can describe that feeling. Not sure where the little sombrero came from that sits on the dog’s head, but really, who can ask for more than that? I’m truly honored.

Michael: In the earlier parts of your career, you’ve worked as the marketing director for a culinary school and a golf college. How did those positions prepare you for the Internet marketing world?

Patty: It helps me understand what the person on the other end of the phone is thinking when I’m trying to explain to them how Vertical Measures can help with their overall internet marketing efforts. No one wants to hear how great Vertical Measures is; what they want to hear is how we’re going to help them with the problems they face with their online marketing efforts. Having been in those marketing positions in the past, I understand they want results, and they want to know that before I propose a solution I’m going to understand their company and their challenges and what their pain points are, and how we can help. I’ve also seen how effective internet marketing is when compared to other more traditional marketing methods, especially when I look at things like cost per lead or cost per acquisition. I can talk to potential clients about how our services can fit into an overall, comprehensive marketing strategy.

Michael: Before coming to Vertical Measures, you were actually a VM client. How did that transition ensue going from client to employee?

Patty: When I worked for the golf academy, Vertical Measures was brought in by the new president to handle our internet marketing and link building needs. They did such a great job that when I left there to go work at the culinary school, I recommended that they consider Vertical Measures as their internet marketing vendor, and they ended up bringing them onboard. After leaving SCI, one thing led to another and here I am today!

Michael: What do you think is the toughest part of your job today?

Patty: The toughest part of the job is that the industry changes all the time, so our services have to continually change and adapt to keep up and be effective, and I have to understand all those service changes to put together a great link building and content marketing plan for our clients. The only way that I can successfully provide our potential clients with the best service solution possible is to understand these changes and stay well-versed myself, not only on how our services are changing but the industry as a whole. A lot of what I learned about link building even six months ago is outdated now.

Michael: In your Facebook info box it says that you are “sometimes” darn funny. Can you tell us a joke so the people can decide for themselves?

Patty: Not one that can be printed here, no.

Michael: How long have you been a Parrothead and where does your Jimmy Buffett love stem from?

Patty: I’ve been a Parrothead ever since seeing him in concert about 15 years ago. Like I tell people, it’s not about the music; it’s about a way of life. I someday inspire to live the life he sings about in his songs.

Michael: Let’s say you’re stranded on a desert island and can only bring one Buffett song with you to listen to on an endless loop on your iPod, which one would it be?

Patty: I’d have to say “Changes in Latitude” though every time I go to Mexico the song “First Look” pops into my head. “A Pirate Looks at 40” is also a good one, but I’ll stick with “Changes in Latitude” if I could only pick one.

Michael: Vertical Measures is a real dog-loving community, but nobody has as many big dogs as you. How many canines does it take to protect you and your dwelling?

Patty: I have four dogs. Two of the dogs are brothers: yellow labs; they’re about 110 lbs each. My other two dogs are rescue dogs: an Australian Shepherd mix (70 lbs) and a Lab/Chow mix (75 lbs).  Together they work as a pack and wreck havoc on my home; no pillow is safe, but I love them …. and no longer buy pillows.
Michael: I understand you hold the VM record for fastest lunch time ever, scarfing down some Taco Bell (which is right next to VM) in your car before even getting back to the office. What’s your fastest official time for a lunch?

Patty: If the good people at Taco Bell are on their toes, I can be mowing my way through the last bites of a Grilled Chicken Burrito and be back in my office chair in six minutes. I try to wear dark clothes on those days so no one sees the taco sauce I inevitably drip on myself during the feeding frenzy.

Michael: And finally, you’ve been at VM longer than anyone not named Andi or Arnie. What’s your favorite part about working at Vertical Measures?

Patty: Bagel day whenever it’s somebody’s birthday. I love eating.

Michael Schwartz

Michael Schwartz is an Internet marketing strategist at Vertical Measures as well as an accomplished reporter, blogger and editor. He covers the link building beat.

+Michael Schwartz

Twitter – Facebook – More Posts

After two weeks of travelling from Phoenix to Seattle, where I presented at SMX Advanced, to Alaska, where I took a lovely cruise with my wife Andi and had little to no access to Internet, and then down to LA, where I presented at OMS, now I am back in Phoenix in the Vertical Measures office and excited to share my experiences. My amazing staff held down the fort and was kind enough to create a mural for me of what they imagined my trip was like.

So now it’s back to business as I recap my day at OMS in Los Angeles. For this occasion, I presented Social Media for SEO and Link Building. In this presentation, I emphasized the importance of optimizing your social media profiles for search, the fact that real-time search includes social media results and also touched on which industry specific sites might be best utilized as a part of your social media campaign and how to leverage these sites for link building. But, probably my most important point is that if you own a website you must understand that you are now a publisher and you must focus on publishing content that informs or entertains your website visitors. If you do, the links and search rankings will come.

Arnie Kuenn

Arnie Kuenn is the president of Vertical Measures and author of Accelerate! Content Development & Marketing to Grow Your Business Online. Vertical Measures provides search, social and content marketing services, designed to help businesses improve their online presence and obtain more traffic and conversions.
+Arnie Kuenn

Website – Twitter – Facebook – More Posts