Google's Local Business Dashboard - Don't Do Local Search Without It!

Today, we'd like to show you how to take advantage of Google Local Business listings. The Google Maps team has just launched a new dashboard in its free Local Business Center that will provide you with information on how users interact with your local listing on Google Maps and Google Search.

This is very important as local listings has become an increasingly important part of the Google algorithm. Because the information is verified using humans or via phone book listing, Google gives strong weight to those who are listed. This will result in your listing being shown in more search results.

As you can see below, the dashboard will show you stats such as how many times your business comes up as a search result, how often people click through, which queries led customers to the business listing, as well as which zip codes customers are coming from when they request directions to your location. All you have to do is claim your listing in the Local Business Center and go through a quick verification process to get access to this information.

For the local business who relies on Google in helping customers find the business, you can now measure the impact of search, especially the top search queries that result in your business showing up in the listings. Once you see these search queries, you’ll want to have your listing show up more often in searches. This will lead you into assessing whether you should move forward and buy the keywords in the Google AdWords campaign. You’ll also want to think about optimizing your website to get more inbound traffic from natural search results who are LOOKING for your product or service.

If you are interested in knowing more, go to the Office Google Blog to learn more details about Google's new Local Business Center Dashboard.

Labels: google local business center, search engine marketing

posted by Fred @ 10:11 PM

                         

Google Local Business Listings

If you're like most SMB's, you probably do a substantial amount of your business locally. Traditionally, people used local phone books or yellow pages to find services like yours. However, people are now turning to Google to find local service providers, and therefore you're at risk of losing to your competitors if your business is not listed in the Google Local Business Listings.

Google Local Business Listings typically show up when the user types a service oriented business followed by the city for their search. A Google Map appears alongside with up to ten URLs including phone numbers for each business. Google’s Local Business Listings are becoming even more important since they are being displayed more often in search before organic listings even start. As a result, they often get most of the clicks from users.

Google uses Yellow Pages and other business directory information from third party providers to generate the basic local search results. If your business is already in Yellow Pages, it'd likely be listed in Google local business listings. However, the information is often limited and usually does not take advantage of the new features that are available on Google.

Go to Google Local Business Center to create your free listing or claim ownership of an existing listing and update your business information. Remember to review your local listings from time to time. Google continues to add new features to the local listing, like the ability to integrate YouTube videos. Using Google Local Business Listings and its features will keep your listing exciting and attract more visitors to your website.

Labels: b2b search engine marketing, web marketing, yellow pages

posted by Ray Yip @ 9:47 AM

                         

Online Press Releases - SEO Food

One of the best and easiest ways to get PR is to issue online press releases. There are a number of outlets such as PRweb or PRLeap. In addition to getting the word out to thousands of news and blog outlets quickly and at low cost, SEO'ed press releases have the additional value of getting indexed almost immediately. They also enjoy the benefit of being fresh and new, and can get high rankings for the keywords it is using.

A search engine optimized press release can reach thousands of people if handled correctly. Google and Yahoo search engines and news is how today's journalists and reporters get their sources and facts. Here are some stats from PRWeb's website that press (pun intended) home this point:

• 98% of journalists go online daily
• 92% for article research
• 81% to do searching
• 76% to find new sources, experts
• 73% to find press releases

On an average day, 68 million American adults go online

• 30% use a search engine to find information
• 27% get news.

As you can see, the Internet is or is fast becoming the source for news and a properly SEO optimized press release can get you noticed far eaiser than traditonal press release outlets. This is because your release will be keyworded, so that can be much more easily found by journalists who are LOOKING for your content and news!

Online news outlets that are hungry for new content, along with bloggers who are looking for news, will quickly publish your release in the hopes of attracting visitors.

There's a modest cost for this, and in addition to get your 'news' out there, it will give your website some Google 'juice' if the content is properly linked back to your website. This will increase your website's visibility temporarily. All this will result in more traffic to your website, which usually isn't a bad thing.

Be sure to also put the press release on your website to get even more bang for your buck. More info on online press releases can be found here.

Labels: online press releases, prleap, prweb, seo-pr

posted by Fred @ 10:46 PM

                         

Free SEO Tools at FoundPages

With SEO and SEM becoming more common and understood, there appears to be an upsurge in interest in tools for improving Google PageRank and traffic. For most websites, most visitors come via search engines (even if they know your name) than any other way. Something we don't promote but you should use are the free SEO tools available on this website.

Use it freely, as there is no cost, but keep in mind that they are tools. Tools that can help you analyze and measure your current situation, but they don't improve your website - only you can do that! There are many other resources on this website to help you with doing that.

One of the easiest things, is to update your website regularly. Updating content and adding more pages will get your website noticed by search engine crawlers, and new pages will add to the number of pages you will get indexed by the search engines. You don't need specialists to do this, and no one knows your business better than you do.

The pages don't have to be about your product or service. For example, if you sell cargo nets (like one of our customers), it can be about the legislation and laws surrounding the requirements. Or a page on how to install it properly on a truck. All this can get indexed, and help you with the 'long tail' in search. Just remember to add unique tags to them, and to add the page to the sitemap.

The long tail refers the keywords that are not searched a lot, but the many searches for various unique phrases that are very detailed and relevant for a searcher. For example, 'cargo net law' is a long tail search, that would bring visitors interested in cargo nets regulations, that then might interested in purchasing a cargo net that complies.

I'll have more on the SEO tools in the next few blogs, on what the benchmarks mean and how to improve them. These tools should be part of every online marketer's toolkit today. If you are a small to medium size business (SMB), you ignore search engine marketing metrics at your own peril.

Labels: FoundPages, free seo tools, Google rankings, online marketing, SMB

posted by Fred @ 3:14 PM

                         

Lower Bounce Rates Mean More Leads

Among web analytic statistics, the bounce rate is one of the metrics often overlooked by many marketers. A bounce rate is the percentage of single page visitors to your website that left your website quickly after arriving. Some advanced systems also use visit duration to calculate bounce rate which treat visitors as bounces if they stay on the site for less than 5 seconds.

Bounce rate can also be defined as negative statistic. It measures how engaging your website is to your visitors and how it relates to the intention of them. It also measures how effective and 'sticky' your landing page is when it's used with a campaign. Lack of relevancy is a major cause of bounces, and solving this will increase lead generation by an order of magnitude sometimes.

A high bounce rate usually indicates something wrong with your website's landing pages. However, the problem can also be caused by where you acquire your traffic. Let's look at a few things you can do to reduce bounce rates (lower is better).

Analyze the bounce rate for your traffic sources
Many inbound marketers use social media as part of their marketing campaigns. However, many of these referrers are low-value. These visitors aren't "looking" when they arrive at your website so they tend to leave immediately. You don't have to worry too much about bounce rates from these traffic sources but you should know which referrers contribute to the high bounce rates. If you are using social media advertising like Facebook ads, you should have a specific landing pages to create demand and guide your visitors to whatever you're advertising.

Not giving the banana to the monkey
This is a classic conversion problem. When people arrive at your website and can't find what they want, they would leave right away and go to your competitors websites instead. You only have a few seconds to let the visitors know that they are at the right place so "give the banana to the monkey." Make sure you have clear and obvious conversion points for your visitors. These conversion points should also tailor to the different interests of the visitors such as home buyers vs home sellers at a realtors website. While home buyers want to see what listings are available, the home sellers want to know why they should use the provided services to advertise their homes.

Match interests to the sales cycle
This is mainly related to organic search engine traffic. A website might rank highly on certain keywords but these keywords are often irrelevant. Similar to the previous point, when people don't find what they are looking for, they leave. Many 'content' websites with high search visibility often receives high traffic for irrelevant search terms. You should understand the Search Buying Cycle and adjust your content to use keywords according to different phases of the buying cycle. Also avoid having too much unrelated content, like too much profile information on every client.

Improve landing pages
Pay-Per-Click campaigns often have high bounce rates. Simple landing pages with only one call to action are often the issue. Email marketing campaign can possibly cause high bounce rate too if the subject line is misleading or the links take recipients to an unrelated page. It might also be the offer that's too aggressive (eg buy now) on the landing page. Consider having micro-conversions on the landing pages. A micro-conversion doesn't turn the visits into sales but it turns visitors into leads so that you can nurture them into sales. This is particularly effective for B2B.

B2B websites typically have average bounce rate of 10-30%. If your bounce rate is higher than that, you should flag it and find out why. Having high bounce rates doesn't mean the end of the world if you understand what's causing it and take actions to improve it. It might take a few round of tests to nail it down but the effort you put in will turn you website into one that's relevant for your visitors. They will engage if it fits their needs.

Labels: b2b search engine marketing, online marketing

posted by Ray Yip @ 5:22 PM

                         

The Sky is Not Falling on Online Advertising

During economic slowdowns, business spend more carefully, yet need to increase revenue to offset a loss of business from it's existing customer base. So it's always a contradiction to see companies cut back on marketing, when they likely need it the most.

No so for online advertising according to the Rubicon Project. They indicate that more global advertising dollars will actually increase the online advertising market, helping to increase the total amount spent online.

According to their report, millions of dollars are being taken from traditional mediums such as newspapers and television. Why? It's not the usual easier to track and ROI arguement. It's because their researchers have found that online advertising has better reach globally than TV or newspapers.

Their researchers have found that out-of-country visitors make up about 40% of traffic to U.S. based websites, and more than 50% of traffic to international websites come from the U.S. So much for thinking that the traditonal broadcast mediums have more reach.

So with online advertising being lower cost, more effective, easier to buy, and now with better reach, it's easy to see how online advertising will continue to grow, even in the slower growth economy. And guess what? Afterwards, the advertisers will stick with it having tried it.

In other developements, comScore reports that there has been large jumps in traffic to financial websites, due in part to the financial markets. Put that together with what I mentioned above and you know one of the best places to advertise right now during tougher times is online, and on financial websites.

The sky is definitely not falling on online advertising.

Labels: advertising growth, online advertising, Rubicon project

posted by Fred @ 3:50 PM

                         

Need A Little Chrome on Your Browser?

Google is a little like most politicians. They keep denying this and that, when it's obvious that they are going to something. In this case, it was create their own browser. Called Chrome, they had to finally let the cat out of the bag, when this clever comic book was discovered by the public before they were ready.

Although there are a lot of reviews and explanations for Chrome out there already, I'm gonna give my simple-minded spin. The comic explains the reasons, but it's somewhat technical, and definitely biased.

Chrome is Google's ultimate weapon. They know if you control the browser, you get to direct user behavior. Sure, the reasons are better speed, easier to run web apps, security, less crashing etc, but the REAL reason in my opinion was ensure they had a platform that they could control to make all the things they want work - work. And to ensure that Microsoft didn't stop them by not allowing it, or SLOWLY cooperating.

Firefox is already open source and does most of the things that Google needs. But they don't control Firefox, and besides Firefox is only about 18-20% of the market. And because Firefox can't be bought because of their company structure, Google put their tremendous resources to work and built their own.

So what that mean to you dear reader? You will have another choice to make. With all the free applications and tools from Google, you can be sure they will run better in Chrome. On the other hand, some things, especially Microsoft products (both paid and free) will likely not be as compatible. Think of it as what a browser was supposed to do, but without the wrinkles that Microsoft plugged in to make their browsers 'better'.

What I'm going to do is keep using Firefox, until I see a clear need to switch to Chrome. I might have Chrome on my desktop, in case something I'm using really needs to run in Chrome (just like I have IE on my desktop for IE 'enhanced' web pages), but otherwise, the last thing I need is another browser.

Where it does make sense is when they make Chrome usable on a PC without an operating system. Which is what I think is the ultimate goal. No Windows, just boot up your Netbook and use your browser for everything. Then your phone is next with Google's Android project. No wonder Microsoft doesn't like Google.

BTW, the comic book a lot better in my opinion than the Seinfeld/Microsoft commercials, because frankly most people don't get the commercial...the commercial has a pile of inside jokes while at least with the comic, you can ask somebody what all the geek means.

Labels: Android, Chrome, comic book, Google, Microsoft

posted by Fred @ 4:41 PM