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

                         

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

                         

Interview by Brian Carter

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Brian Carter of Fuel Interactive, for the upcoming SEM Canada conference. I haven't had a chance to listen to it much, but it's a great way to cover alot of ground in SEM and online marketing.

Brian is the Director of Search Marketing for Fuel, based in South Carolina. Brian is an SEOmoz Pro Member and Google AdWords Qualified search marketing trainer, consultant, and speaker. Brian has more than eight years experience in the internet industry and is well known in the search engine marketing industry.

Being that one of our specialties in B2B and using SEO/SEM with longer sales cycles, we decided to cover those topics in detail. Brian was gracious to also ask me about www.ActiveConversion.com, which helps companies capitalize on search and online marketing.

The MP3 is around 45 minutes long, and I think you may find it interesting.

The interview is in his blog article which is here: http://adwordsconsultant.blogspot.com/2008/07/interview-mp3-with-fred-yee-of.html

Here is a condensed list of things we cover:

• Search marketing in the B2B space
• 2.5m businesses that could benefit from SEM
  
• Advantages of online marketing over offline marketing
• Why Microsoft would spend so much to buy Yahoo
• Branding vs. Niche direct marketing
• Case study: Evans Console who sells $250k consoles to NASA and FedEx
• Effect of interactive marketing on Yellow Pages
• The Calgary business scene, and search marketing scene
• Shifting from the part-time in-house to search marketing agency experts
• Conversion tracking for lead generation campaigns
• A more sophisticated way to track and stay in touch with long buying cycle sales prospects

Lightning round topics! Fred's quick opinions on...

• Twitter
• Yellow pages
• LinkedIn
• Local search
• Canadians
• Americans
• Calgary

Labels: activeconversion, b2b search engine marketing, Calgary SEM, fred yee interview, SEM Canada

posted by Fred @ 5:46 PM