Vertical Measures » Local Search

How to Get More Customers with Local Search Marketing: 10 Optimization Tips

Sarah Schager — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 11:30:43 +0000

Local search marketing online has become the standard for driving new customers to a local business. Below, I will discuss ten solid tips to ensure any local business has the opportunity to outrank their competitors.

Investigate Local Directories

Local search optimization, like any solid search engine optimization strategy plan, requires a bit of research. Perform a search query for your Business. You absolutely want to do this first, so you can find out which directories your business is listed on. When searching, don’t limit your queries to just your business name though; plug in different variations of your address and phone number as well. As you uncover each listing, record the link and any details about the listing in a spreadsheet.

Keep it Consistent

Consistency is key – This is where the spreadsheet comes in handy. Consistency is important so the search engines can recognize your business accurately. Do you want to help the search engines, or confuse them? Obviously you want to help them, so you will want to review your spreadsheet and make sure every single detail, in every single listing, is the exact same. A minor detail such as Suite 100 vs. Ste 100 can make a huge difference. Google can, and many times will, recognize this as a different address. Think of it as the same as having misspellings in your anchor text when you are link building.

Start Submitting

Submit your information to any directories you aren’t currently on, except Google places (for now). This can be extremely time consuming, so resources like Universal Business Listing or the up and coming Knowem local service can help speed this up by automating some of the process. Knowem Local platform “allows profile creation on all local listing sites, GPS systems, and business directories, while incorporating Knowem’s current social media reach”. Besides the listings being valuable in an SEO sense, it also makes sure you establish a wide presences across the web so that you’re potential customers can find you.

Google Places

Create your Google Places listing. Wait at least a week after your listings have been fully completed, and then submit to Google Places. The reason for this is so Google has time to scrape all of the other listings, thus giving it more authority right off the bat.

Build those Links

Include link building in your local search marketing optimization strategy. Use geo-specific keywords for the anchor text. It is best to acquire these links from other local businesses in the area, websites optimized with the same geo-specific location, or niche directories. Guest blog posting, creating social links, and placing content on article sites are useful tactics as well.

Optimize your Site

Optimize your site with geo-specific keywords. It is important to do this at the same time you begin your link building campaign. Be sure to have your address listed on every page, with a local phone number included.

Create Geo-specific Pages

Create location pages on site for multiple locations. If you have multiple locations, consider creating individual optimized pages on your website for each location. Not only does it help your customers find out information on the location closest to them, but it also clearly indicates to the search engines that you have multiple locations. Please note that you will want to create separate directory listings for each location as well.

Get Blogging

Use geo-specific keywords in your blog posts. If you’re not blogging yet, you should be. Blog posts containing your geo-specific anchor texts, or about your different locations in general can help boosts your rankings. Consider linking to your Google places listing as well. Be sure not to overdo this though, and only include it when it seems natural.

Be Social

Create a local business page on Facebook for each of your locations. But don’t just set it up and expect it to grow. Start by adding the Facebook button to your site and in your email signature to drive your website visitors to it. Ask your family, friends, and colleagues to like your page to give it that initial boost. If you have the budget, consider adding local fans utilizing Facebook’s advertising pay per click or pay per impression options. There are endless ways to promote your local business, but we’ll save that for another blog post.

Encourage Feedback

Last but not least, customer reviews are a very important part of your strategy. Ever notice how your biggest competitors who are ranking well in Google Places have tons of reviews from customers? Reviews play a huge role in impacting search engine rankings, so you should encourage feedback from anyone you’ve felt has had a good experience. If by chance your business gets a negative review, be sure to address it professionally and in a way that’s going to convince that customer want to come back and give you a second try.

Let’s keep the list going. What suggestions do you have to increase the online visibility of a local business?

Sarah Schager

Sarah Schager is an internet marketing strategist at Vertical Measures who specializes in organic search engine optimization. Some of her specialties include social media strategy, link acquisition, local search and content development management.
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The Door-to-Door Salesman’s Guide to Local Online Marketing

Kristi Hines — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 11:30:04 +0000

If you work in a small office, one thing you will see from time to time (depending on the size of your office complex) is the friendly door-to-door salesman. They offer everything from paper to salon services. But the question is, are they making the best use of their time?

The next time he or she comes walking through your front office door, maybe you should give them a few alternative online marketing strategies they could be pursuing instead of the straight cold-call but in person tactics they are doing now. Some great local online marketing ideas include the following – since several of our latest solicitors were for printer ink, I will target the examples to them.

Optimize Your Website for Local Search

First of all, if your business doesn’t have a website, it should. It doesn’t matter who you are or what your business does, you should have an online presence beyond just your social media accounts. Development doesn’t have to be a crazy expense either – just get a hosting package, domain, install WordPress, then find a nice corporate theme to pop your information into. It’s really about that simple.

Once you have your website, take a morning off of your door-to-door activities to optimize it for local search. This includes:

Adding a local indicator to your site’s title such as “Phoenix Ink Cartridges – Your Source for Discount Printer Ink.”
Extend your title into your site’s meta description to include local indicators such as “Get discount ink cartridges for Brother, Canon, HP, and other printers from your Phoenix ink cartridge dealer!”
Add your local phone number and street address to every page of your site (easy if you have a site with a header / footer template to modify.
Add a specific contact us page that has your local phone number, address, and a Google Map to your location to make it easier for visitors and search engines to see where you are in one place.

There’s lots of additional things you can do, but these are the bare minimum basics!

Setup Local Directory Profiles

Next are local directory profiles. Take your next morning off of visiting local businesses to claim or create your profile on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Fill it out as much as possible, including photos and videos as these make your profile more robust and more likely to rank better in local search.

If you have more time on your hands, check out additional local directories like Yelp and Merchant Circle and add your business profile on those.

Find Local Clients on Social Media

This (personally) is my favorite part of local online marketing. You know all of those potential customers you visit? Why not visit them on social media instead, in the comfort of your office (or home office), and visit twice as many at a time.

First of all, if you haven’t already, you’ll want to setup a Twitter, Facebook fan page, and LinkedIn profile. This might take you an extra few hours to create if you don’t have them yet.

Also you will want to make sure each profile is customized for your business, including a succinct description of your business including the local and primary keywords you used (think your meta description) and a link to your website. Once you have your profiles set, you’re ready to find local customers on social media.

Twitter

I generally start with Twitter. It’s a great platform in the fact that you can start replying to locals on Twitter without them having to follow you!

You can use Advanced Twitter Search and simply look up keywords that your customer would be tweeting about and narrow the results down to a particular location with the “Near this place” box.
You can use FollowerWonk and its extra search options to find particular keywords in bios and limit them down to a particular location.
You can use Twitter Grader’s Top Cities list to find the top Twitter users in your region.

Facebook

Next is Facebook. Your strategy here is to find fan pages of other businesses where you might find customers, like those pages while using Facebook as your page, and start interacting on their wall. If you provide valuable interaction, you’ll get noticed by your target audience and start getting new fans and leads from Facebook.

LinkedIn

This one is a bit tricky as people are more inclined to be picky about who they add as connections. You’ll want to use the people search and find profiles with particular keywords, then narrow it down by location using the filters on the left side of search results.

The best way to connect with someone you don’t personally know is through groups. You can set your filter to show you people you are connected with through groups and add them to your network using that affiliation.

You can also visit the profiles of 2nd connections (meaning you both have a connection in common) and see what the groups they are in (or choose to share publicly). Simply join that group and then connect with them. Be sure to include a personalized message saying that you are connecting with them since you have a common interest in [insert group topic here].

Maintaining Online Relationships

Once you have built your following, fan base, and connections on each of these networks, your on-going duty (for an hour or two a day, more if you can) will be to continue engagement with these people. The more you engage with them, the more likely they are to become leads.

Although there is a lot of contradicting information out there, you can track some monetary return on investment when it comes to social media using Google Analytics 5. So don’t worry – you’ll be able to see some results!

Create Content to Build Mailing List

Last, but not least, you will want to create some great content on your site that will get you leads to your mailing list. For this, you’ll want to think about what your target audience would be most interested in.

People who buy printer ink, for example, will probably be in the market for a new printer every year or two when their printers crash or go out of warranty. So a regularly updated guide to a comparison of the top printers of the year would make a great downloadable eBook / report in exchange for an email address.

You can also lead more people to your site by creating videos like how to change the printer cartridge in a specific model printer and put the video on a blog post and YouTube, linking back to your main site. Simply creating free content can drive traffic to your site, and that traffic may signup for your mailing list to keep up with your great content!

What Results Should You See?

Once you’ve performed these tasks, what results should you see? Instead of only getting leads when you’re out hustling from one office to the next, you should start seeing leads trickle in 24 / 7 through your website. Imagine – you could get leads in your sleep, or while you’re sitting inside your air conditioned office instead of

What is the estimated time to complete these tasks? Four mornings of door-to-door sales (or maybe a few extra if you didn’t already have a website and social profiles). I think it would be well worth it! So the next time you see a door-to-door salesperson, get their card and email them this article. They’ll thank you for it!

Kristi Hines

Kristi Hines is a Web Strategist and author of the Vertical Measure’s Guide Blogging for Business.

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How Will Google+ Affect Local or Has It Already?

Sarah Moraes — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 11:30:09 +0000

20 million Google+ users may exist by the weekend, according to an article published this last Tuesday by PCWorld.

Google+ is definitely taking off, but will it ever be as successful as Facebook, which reports over 750 million users? Or, will it lose steam and eventually die off? Should local businesses add this to local search marketing efforts?

In a recent post by Mike Blumenthal, which he wrote with a spotty Internet connection while on vacation but simply wanted to get the news out, he stated:

Taking the time to network via Social Media often results in quality links, mentions and citations to your business that all support rankings.

Jeff Huber, Google VP of Local and Commerce, has indicated that Google+, at some point in the near future will include the option for business profile page. Here is his comment:

“And pre-emptively answering a question — yes, we will have (smb) business profile pages on Google+. I can’t announce a launch date yet, but we want to make them *great*, and we’re coding as fast as we can.”

Yet another profile for a small business to maintain, in addition to the already existing Google Places page. Hmm.

Until now, Google Places has not had any interactive elements to it other than the ability of users to leave reviews. People cannot check into Google Places. Perhaps this will be an element of Google+ business profiles. But, I would sure hope that these two things are seamlessly integrated. Chances of that happening? We shall see.

Google rolled out their new look across all of their applications. You can see it here with the local SERPS. Personally, I like it. And, if you hadn’t noticed before, Google AdWords is now integrated with the local SERPS, announced in a post back in February. The paid listings show up with a blue pin, versus a red pin for the organic results.

In addition, Google recently updated their mobile interface within Safari, which is much easier to use and much more attractive.

With Google Offers, this new mobile interface, are we just months away from the ability to check-in? Google really seems to be increasing their socialization factor. But, is social media indeed a factor for local search rankings? For the past four years, David Mihm of GetListed.org conducts a Local Search Ranking Factors Survey of leading industry experts. He asks them to rate the importance of 79 factors. Social didn’t make the top ten factors this year, but it still more important than it was last year. Social media interactions can generate citations and links for a small business. Google+ is another opportunity for a business to engage with potential and current customers.

A few quotes from Mihm’s survey:

According to Lisa Ko lb “Taking the time to network via Social Media often results in quality links, mentions and citations to your business that all support rankings.”

And from Ian Lurie, “Links are as important here as they are for standard organic rankings. But social media is a far bigger factor than last year. Encourage customers to Tweet/Fb when they’re in your establishment.”

The survey was published on June 3, 2011, so I am sure if Google+ had rolled out beforehand, there would be mention of the social product.

Small businesses should pay attention to this and once Google+ business profiles are rolled out they should indeed set one up. Speculators are already questioning why Google would make it more difficult for small businesses with two separate profiles. Jeff Huber seems to be listening and I think he’ll consider this and Google Places and + will somehow be integrated.

Sarah Moraes

Sarah Moraes, Marketing Manager, heads the tactical planning and implementation of cross-platform marketing activities for Vertical Measures including; blogging, social media marketing, webinars, content marketing, email marketing and promotions. In addition, she published the Local Search Marketing for Business How-To-Guide, a part of the Vertical Measures How-To-Guide Series.

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Increase Your Prominence, Increase Your Local Search Rankings?

Sarah Moraes — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 12:00:08 +0000

One of the key factors to consider when developing a local search marketing campaign is prominence. In a post on LatLong back in December, Brianna Brekke, Senior Strategist for Google Places confirmed, “There are a variety of factors we take into account to provide you with results that match your local search, and three of the primary signals are relevance, prominence and distance.”

Let’s brush up on the terms here. Prominence in the context of local search refers to a business’ popularity on the web in the form of citations, reviews and others discussing the business in comparison to other similar businesses. Citations are to local search as links are to organic search. A citation is when a web page mentions a company name, address and phone number and it doesn’t need a link in order to count to Google.

Bekke goes on to say, “Hotpot – our new local recommendation engine based on ratings from you and your friends – can definitely affect the ranking of the local businesses you see in your organic search results. If you’re signed in to your Google account and have enabled Hotpot, you’ll get personalized recommendations based on the ratings you and your friends provided – making it easier for you to discover new places you’ll enjoy.”

Let’s skim through some of the major players and talk about what’s going on in the space lately.

Google HotPot: Google created its own review site, Hotpot. At first, this was separate from Google Places, which was strange. No other local review sites had their review platform and listing platform separate. But, it was a signal that Google cares a lot about reviews and unlike some of Google’s other products, HotPot has seen a lot of success with more than 13 million total reviews in just one year. In comparison, Yelp currently has over 16 million reviews and growing. HotPot has officially been rolled into places. A user can create a profile and rate and review businesses and services. HotPot users build up their friends list, usually selected from your Gmail friend list. The idea here is that your Hotpot friend recommendations will show up in related Google search results as well as in the local organic blended results and branded searches, creating a much more personal user experience.

In addition, users are now seeing the ability to check-in with Google Places mobile and business owners are able to set up check-in offers through their Google Places account.

Google has had some issues lately with their branding, re-branding, rolling things out and then shutting them down, e.g. Google Wave. But, it appears Google HotPot/Places is here to stay. As a business owner, it’s crucial to have a Google Places listing to rank in the local SERPs and of course, pay attention to Google’s own review products and functions. Users are engaging there, so you should be too.

Yelp: It’s apparent that Yelp and Google don’t get along. But friend or foe, Yelp is a major player. Google often displays reviews from Yelp and other review sites on Google Places listings. One of my favorite restaurants in the Bay Area is the Stinking Rose (if you’re a vampire, stay far, far away from this place.)

As you can see, there are more than 1,200 reviews of this place on Yelp, being displayed here on the Google Places listing. There are only 417 reviews from Google users, which are not even displayed above the fold. If I were Yelp, I wouldn’t be so upset about this, but I don’t own a company valued somewhere around $600-700 million.

Foursquare:With 300,000 businesses currently using the dashboard to create check-in specials and more than 10 million users, the check-in site still needs something more to continue to grow. With this mobile site, a user can check-in to a business and if that business does not exist on Foursquare, the user can set up the business. The user is rewarded for checking in to different types of businesses and a certain number of times with badges.

So whether or not a business is actively engaging with this user, this user is engaging with the business. Setting up a Foursquare listing is pretty simple and creating a deal once a week or twice a month, whichever works for you, is a great way to excite customers and drive traffic to your business.

Whichever sites you decide are best for your business and are worth your time and money, having specific goals for all of these sites is crucial to monitoring your success. Just throwing a deal out there and having a busy day following the announcement of the deal, doesn’t mean it was successful. The local search space is still evolving. Google continues to add new features to Places and continues to confirm that prominence is a key ranking factor.

To generate a lot of citations, check out Universal Business Listing. It’s a syndication site, listing a business with major data channels. It isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it service, though.

This of course all ties into social sentiment influencing rankings. Do negative or positive reviews influence rankings? Or is it just quantity? Well according to the US patent which reads:

[0047] When the document falls within the broad area (block 460–YES), then a location prominence score associated with the document may be determined (block 470). The location prominence score may be based on a set of factors that are unrelated to the geographical area over which the user is searching. In one implementation, the set of factors may include one or more of the following factors: (1) a score associated with an authoritative document; (2) the total number of documents referring to a business associated with the document; (3) the highest score of documents referring to the business; (4) the number of documents with reviews of the business; and (5) the number of information documents that mention the business. In other implementations, the set of factors may include additional or different factors.” all of the above matters.

Even if prominence did decrease in importance with regards to rankings, the entire marketing industry is moving towards a more customer-centric model. Our potential and existing customers are beginning to expect personalized information and speedy responses. It sounds like a lot to handle as there are so many social sites and check-in sites out there, which ones should you focus on for your business? Of course, there is no definitive answer. It depends on your audience and how they like to interact with your business. If there’s anything you’re going to remember from this post, it’s know your audience!

To learn more about review sites and creating a holistic local search marketing campaign, check out my Local Search Marketing How-To Guide. Also available on the Kindle!

Sarah Moraes

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Creating Local Onsite Content Never More Important

Sarah Moraes — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 12:00:22 +0000

With the recent Google Panda Update, creating quality onsite content has become essential. So, how does this apply to local search marketing? It does in a very big way!

Geospecific onsite content has always been highlighted as a key factor for ranking in the local search results. Wrapping your head around all of the factors that can influence your local rankings can be difficult. Recently, Mike Blumenthal released a handy Web Equity: Owning Your Local Presence infographic that highlights all of the factors quite nicely!

If a business has various locations, it is ideal to have a separate area on the company website with information pertaining to that location. The key information is the address and phone number but it shouldn’t stop there. Just as you provide information about your products and services, provide information about your location and the community. This offers a platform to engage customers that are close by and most likely to come to your business.

It also provides a likely opportunity for links, depending on the type of business. For a restaurant, for example, specials, happy hour information, optimized images and videos of recent events are all great examples of rich, valuable content that not only provides a better experience for your customers but the search engines will eat it up.

Additionally, here are more examples of the types of pages that can help the search engines as well as your visitors understand your business location:

Directions: Ideal for almost any business, providing directions to your location from various nearby cities is a great way to generate some optimized content and customers will surely appreciate it!
Community Info: Providing information about the surrounding community is a great way to show that you’re involved in the community and care about your neighbors.
Tourist Attractions: Especially for hotels, listing some nearby attractions, restaurants and things to do in the area can be a deciding factor for a visitor deciding where to stay.
Resources for Homebuyers: Some of the key things a prospective homebuyer is looking for are nearby facilities and resources such as schools, grocery stores, and banks. Housing developers should definitely provide all of this information on the site to make it easy for a prospect to decide if it”s the right neighborhood for them.

Another key factor to ranking in Google Places is reviews. Featuring customer reviews and testimonials on your site provides valuable content to your visitors. You might also link to your local listings sites like Yelp to encourage your customers to visit those sites and leave a review. And, whether good or bad, be sure to respond to these reviews. Show your customers you’re listening!

For more information about localized content and local search marketing, check out my new book, Local Search Marketing for Business: A How-To-Guide. In this eBook, I share my experiences and showcase recommendations for local search marketing and optimization. This book serves as a jumping off point, a systematic plan to get started, covering the latest and greatest tools and sites for total local coverage!

Sarah Moraes

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