Small Business Online Marketing at Kutenda » local search

How to Take Control of Your Google Identity

Emily — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 13:01:54 +0000

When you create a new listing in Google’s Local Business Center (LBC), you may be prompted if there are existing listings for your business. For those unfamiliar with the LBC, it’s where you create a business profile that shows up in Google Maps, as well as the natural search listings. Here’s an example:

Why would there already be a listing for your business? Because Google sometimes creates listings for businesses that have not yet created their own, and it does this by pulling information from sources across the web, including human-powered directories. It’s common that these Google-gathered listings have errors—for example, you may have changed your phone number or relocated since Google gathered its information.

There is often much confusion on what the proper steps are when you discover more than one existing local listing for your business in the search engines. The thing to do is claim and edit the existing listing.

It’s important to remember: For each physical location of your business, you should have only one listing. Having more than one can negatively impact the position of all of your listings, decreasing your visibility among local prospects (bad).

What if there are multiple listings? Google has recommended some steps to take to properly handle multiple listings for their Local Business Center:

Choose the listing that you’d prefer to keep in your account. Make sure that you have all your enhanced content (photos, business hours, description) attached to this listing and this listing only.

For duplicates of this listing in your account (the ones you want to remove), remove all enhanced information. Keep only required information, like the business title, address, and one phone number.

Submit these changes and verify as necessary.

Now, sit tight for a couple of weeks – just for good measure.

Delete the duplicates from your account, choosing Remove this listing from my Local Business Center account.

The key point to remember is that it’s crucial to have one optimized listing for your business. This entry should have all of the additional information and be as close to 100 percent complete as possible. Local search has a ton of potential for small business and creating this optimized listing can dramatically increase your visibility among your target market and create a steady stream of free inbound leads.

Geographic SEO: Using Geographic Keywords for Local Search Engine Optimization

James — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:00:53 +0000

In my last two posts, we learned how to select the right core keywords and how to add the right geographic modifiers to take advantage of local online marketing. In this post, we’ll walk through the various elements of search engine optimization (SEO) and how to use the right local keywords to optimize web pages for a local business web site.

The five primary areas where you use local SEO keywords are:

1. Title tag
2. Meta description tag
3. Meta keywords tag
4. Page content and H1 tags
5. Internal and external links

Let’s go through each of these and learn what they are, where they can be seen, and the guidelines for using keywords in each.

TITLE TAG
What it is
The title tag is one of the most important elements of a web page for search engine optimization. It serves as a key indicator for what your web page content is about and it is visible in the search results.

Where you can see it
In the browser: This is visible at the top of your browser window
In the web page code: Located in the section of the page code, the title tag can be found between the </span> and <span style="font-family: andale mono,times; color: #0c343d;"> tags.
In the search results: The title tag is seen as the blue and clickable part of the search results in a Google search

Guidelines for Writing Title Tags
- Use your primary keyword once
- Use one secondary keyword once
- Title tag length should be about 65 characters
- Include your company name at the end
- Make it attractive to a searcher so they are more likely to click

META DESCRIPTION TAG
What it is
The meta description tag is a short description of what the web page is about. It is an SEO factor, but more importantly, it often shows up in the search results as a web page’s description.

Where you can see it
In the browser: The meta description tag is not visible in a web browser when viewing the page
In the web page code: Located in the section of the page code, the title tag can be found after the tag
In the search results: The meta description tag is often visible in the search results as the description for a web page located under the blue and clickable text.

Guidelines for Writing Meta Description Tags
- Use your primary keyword once
- Use two secondary keywords once each
- The length of your description should be about 150 characters (including spaces)
- Include a call to action or include special promotions, offers, etc.
- Include your company name

META KEYWORDS TAG
What it is
The meta keywords tag is really just a list of keywords that you think match the content of your web page. While Google no longer uses this tag as a ranking factor in their search results, it still can help with optimization in Yahoo! and Bing, and can help a web site’s internal search engine find the right results.

Where you can see it
In the browser: The meta keywords tag is not visible in a web browser when viewing the page
In the web page code: Located in the section of the page code, the title tag can be found after the tag
In the search results: The meta keywords tag is not visible in the search results

Guidelines for Writing Meta Keywords Tags
- Use the primary keyword along with variations
- Use your two secondary keywords along with variations
- Use other secondary location keywords
- Maximum length should be no more than 20 keywords
- The keyword (or keyword phrase) should be separated by commas

PAGE CONTENT AND H1 TAGS
What it is
The page content is the text you see on your web site (not including the text in the images on the web page).

or heading tags are a page style that makes text more prominent on the page.

Where you can see it
In the browser: The content on a web page is what is primarily seen in a browser window. H1 tags often appear as larger headline text on a web page.
In the web page code Usually the content between
tags. H1 tags are seen as the text between opening and closing

tags.
In the search results: The page content is usually not visible in the search results.

Guidelines for Writing H1 and Page Content
- For heading tags, use you primary keyword once
- Make sure your heading makes a visitor want to read more of your content
- Make your heading brief
- In your page text, use a minimum of 300 keywords per web page
- Repeat your primary keywords about 6 times on the page
- Repeat two secondary keywords about two times each
- Spread the keywords naturally throughout the content
- Make the content readable (write your content for readers first, search engines second)
- Make sure your text drives your visitors to convert into leads, sales, registrations, etc.

LINKING TEXT (INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL LINKS)
What it is
Linking text, or anchor text, is the text that is clickable to take you from one web page to another. This text can take you from one page on a web site to another page on the same site (internal linking) or from one web site to another (external linking)

Where you can see it
In the browser: Any text that is clickable (traditionally it is blue and underlined text)
In the web page code: Can be seen in the code like this Anchor Text
In the search results: Anchor text is not shown on the search results page, but is a factor in how a web page ranks.

Guidelines for Anchor Text
- Use your primary and secondary linking text for different links to your web pages
- Vary your anchor text using variations of your primary and secondary keywords
- If it is an image that is linking to you, put your keywords in the alt image tag

Kutenda’s Lead Generation Tool Can Help
If you are looking to optimize your web site for localized business terms, Kutenda’s lead generation software can help. Our built-in optimization tools can help you research and implement local search keywords that can help you rank for the right keywords. Make sure to check out our product demo to learn more.

Using Geo-Modifiers for Local Search Marketing and Lead Generation Success

James — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:33:34 +0000

As discussed in my last post, finding the right keywords for your search marketing campaigns is essential for getting the right traffic to your web site at the right price. But many small and midsized businesses should also consider adding geographic keyword modifiers to their search campaigns to really target their search marketing campaigns. In this post, we’ll define geographic modifiers and discuss why they are important to localized search marketers.

What is a geographic modifier?
A geographic keyword modifier is the use of a geographic term in the beginning, end, or in the middle of a keyword term. For example, if my core keyword was “health insurance,” you could geographically modify the keyword by adding the term “Denver” to it, making it “Denver health insurance” or “health insurance Denver.” Pretty straight forward, eh?

Why would I use a geographic modifier?
Even if a business wants to appeal to searchers on a national basis, it’s not a bad idea to start out by targeting a local market, because they will be able to see better results more quickly. Why? Because competition can be fierce on the national level, and the timeline for success can be considerably longer.

An unscientific way to assess the competitive landscape is by Googling your keyword and viewing the total number of results. While this number does not express the amount of search marketing competition per se, it does give a good indication of how many web pages have been found on the Internet that could fulfill a search for your search term.

For example, the total number of documents (web pages, PDFs, etc) in the Google index for a term like “health insurance” is 105,000,000. That’s a lot. Even though a majority of those pages are not well optimized for that term, the web pages are still competing for a space in those search results.

Now, let’s add some geographic modifiers for a state, city and neighborhood and see how that number of indexed pages change:

- Colorado health insurance (state modifier) – 24,300,000 documents
- Denver health insurance (city modifier) – 16,100,000 documents
- Denver Highlands health insurance (neighborhood modifier) – 149,000 documents

As you can see, as the geographic area gets smaller, the number of web pages and other documents goes down as well. This shows the big advantage of geo-modifiers: a reduction in keyword competition.

Geo-modifiers give you the ability to target a specific local or regional market, and this means you can get results more quickly and get a faster ROI on your search marketing efforts. It also means you can focus on the areas that are most profitable for your business.

Starting local can get you from start-up to success quickly. And if you want to go national right away, go for it, but consider doing it in a two-pronged approach where you target your local market with one campaign (including a local website) and another where you go for the whole nation. That way you’ll be able to profit in the short term while waiting for long-term national success to kick in.

How do I choose the right geographic keywords?

So now that you have an idea of why you would want to use a geographic modifier, you might be wondering how to pick the right modifier for your business.

Sometimes it’s obvious. There are many businesses that are geographic dependent, such as sales people with a specific territory or a brick-and-mortar store that has limited regional draw. But other times it’s not so obvious.

Some companies that are able to operate in many locations struggle to define the geographic area that they will market to. This can be tricky, but one good way to make this decision is to ask the following question:

What is the smallest definable geographic area that I get or want to get 80 percent or more of my business from?

Is it your city? Your state? Your neighborhood? Think of the answer to this and write down 3–5 potential geographic areas that would fit this definition.

Once you have done this it’s time for you to check and make sure there is search volume in your area for these search terms. Go to the Kutenda tool or another keyword tool, and plug in your keyword along with each geographic modifier (e.g., “Denver health insurance” or “Colorado health insurance”). Check the monthly search volume on these geo-modified keywords and pick the one with the most volume. This should be your primary geographic modifier.

Now that you’ve got your primary geographic modifier, it’s time to make a list of secondary modifiers. Secondary modifiers can come from a number of different sources based off of your primary keyword:

1.    Other nearby major cities
2.    Cities/towns within your primary modifier (if it’s a metropolitan area, etc)
3.    Adjacent states, counties, metro areas
4.    Neighborhoods within your primary geographic area

As you did with the primary modifiers, write down as many of the secondary geo areas you can think of and plug them into the Kutenda keyword tool along with the primary keyword you are using. Check the search volumes for the words and then make a list of the highest volume locations you want to market to. It’s good to have 10– 5 of these, if not more.

When you’re done, you’ll have a list of your geographic modifiers—congrats! But what do you do with them? In the next post, we’ll discuss how to use these modifiers for search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising and local search engine optimization. And no, the use is not the same for all three.

If you have any questions about this post, feel free to leave a comment below. Thanks for reading and please remember to take action and succeed online with Kutenda!

Local Search: Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough

Ginevra — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 12:59:20 +0000

: Image via CrunchBase

To small businesses, the benefit of dabbling in local search is clear: Get found by a geographically relevant group of customers who are in search of the product and/or service you offer. What a concept—real-time interaction and a high conversion rate to boot!

However, the process by which you properly establish your small business in the local search world can be confusing to some, downright maddening to others. Take Angelo’s mom for instance. If you can ignore the talk of the devil and the image of her spitting down her own shirt, you might be able to relate to the frustrations here. Like a desktop PC for technologically hesitant parents over 55, online marketing is a mysterious world that few small businesses have mastered on their own. So before getting stubborn and rejecting the process, read on for some simple insights into getting your business successfully integrated into local search …

Maybe you’ve got a web site and managed to get it listed on Internet yellow page sites. While you’re a step ahead of many, you can’t stop there. People search for products and services in plethora of ways online and the value of receiving incoming leads from multiple sites far outweighs the effort it takes to get listed. TMP Direction Marketing states that 62 percent of consumers will use either a search engine or a local search site to find a local business. Yellow page sites are used 19 percent of them time.

Additionally, chances are your competitors are listed on local search sites so what’s to stop a customer from purchasing from them if your information isn’t even available for viewing? Strategizing your listings according to your competition’s ad placements and local search listings can be vital to your success online.

Worried about brand building and personal interaction? Have no fear. Local search allows your business to get found by people expecting geographically relevant results. Like the yellow pages, consumers are often looking for a business’ physical location. TMP Direction Marketing’s recent local search usage study reported that 71 percent of consumers follow up online local searches with an in-store visit or phone call.

Don’t forget to establish your local search cred. With all the businesses out there looking to get found, Google and other sites have to take action in order to weed out the bad and provide valuable results to their users (i.e., your potential customers). However, you have the power to help take the guesswork out for your site and increase the level at which Google trusts your listing. The following steps will help your listing gain credibility and raise your chances of being found:

Provide concise / relevant business descriptions and keywords so its clear what your business offers and how it should be categorized.
Increase brand credibility by listing your business on consumer review sites such as CitySearch, Yelp.com, YellowPages.com and InsiderPages.com, and encourage satisfied customers to post reviews.
Acquire citations. In the world of local search, citations are mentions of your business’ name that exist near a listing of your address and/or phone number. Citations give Google et al. the confidence to trust your listing and give you a better chance of being displayed as a result. Search engines will look for your citations across the entire web so make sure to be accurately listed in as many locations as possible including your web site, business listings, industry blogs, etc.

Local search is extremely fragmented. While there are a few key players, it’s a different game than traditional organic search. Pay attention to vertical local search and get your business listed on web sites that segment search according to industry. This, however, means more than getting listed. Vertical local search sites require you to be part of the conversation. Pay attention to how people rate your listings and respond to their feedback. It’s a much more personal setting than traditional search – consumers communicate with each other and a vote of confidence from one customer to another certainly can’t hurt! Plus, all those new listings you’ll create double as awesome citations. So go on—Take action and succeed online!

Escape from Phone Book Island in 3 Easy Steps

admin — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:29:46 +0000

http://www.flickr.com/photos/singlefin/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

About a month ago, my wife and I welcomed our fourth child into the world and the team at Kutenda presented us with a gift certificate to a restaurant near my house. Needless to say, our hands were full, so ordering in seemed like the perfect option.

It was a surprise to me when I did a Google search and couldn’t find a web site for the place. This was a bit frustrating, as it’s tough to order for delivery when you don’t know what is on the menu. Fortunately, the place was only a 6-minute drive, so I went there to find out.

I entered the restaurant and asked for a takeout menu. The hostess said their takeout menus were located in the Yellow Pages. Wow.

Since it was a small business, I asked if the owner was around and she introduced me. We had a nice chat about her place and then I asked why she didn’t have a web site. She told me that she didn’t need one because everyone already knows about their small business or could find them in the Yellow Pages. I told her that I don’t keep a phone book because it takes up too much space and showed her how I could find it all on my iPhone. Again, she said that people just call and place an order. Confused, I said, “but I don’t know what’s on your menu.” We ended the conversation back at the Yellow Pages.

It was clear she was marooned on Phone Book Island. (Well, it was more of a self-imposed exile.)

This experience showed me how vital it is that small local businesses understand changes in consumer behavior and the importance of having a web presence. To cling to the phone book is to isolate your business on an island with a rapidly declining population. The phone book now trails the Internet as the most popular source for local business information, and the proliferation of smart phones will add to the web’s lead.

Just creating a profile on Google Local Search would dramatically improve this restaurant’s chances of being found. The amount of revenue being lost by this small-business owner could be substantial.

As with many small proprietors, she probably does not know where to start with online marketing. According to a 2009 Opus/AllBusiness.com survey, a plurality of small businesses, 25 percent, chose “confusion” as the reason they do not market themselves online. “Lack of budget” was close behind at 24 percent.

Though web marketing may seem daunting and expensive, there are three easy and affordable steps businesses can take to get started:

Create a web site

Submit to Google Local Search

Build an email list

Just starting with these three steps—none of which is harder than setting up a free email account—would allow a small business to be found online. If this restaurant had a web site with a menu, more people would be able to order for delivery and decide if it’s a place they want to go to eat.

What did we think of the food? It was excellent. I would send you a link, but you’ll have to paddle out to Phone Book Island to have a look at the menu …

Tracking Google Local Business Marketing Results

James — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 08:17:40 +0000

As mentioned here last week, marketing a small or medium sized business through the local search results is an effective and smart way to generate new leads and sales to your business. As a local business owner getting your web site into the local business results on Google, also know as the 10-pack, can bring substantial new business for no direct cost.

In the past, once you had set up your local search listing on Google there was not a whole lot of visibility into how exactly those local search listings were benefiting you, other than corollary data in Google Analytics and the perceived increase in web based inquiries coming via phone calls, emails, or inquiry for submissions.

About two months ago, Google opened up Local Business Center reports, which give local business owners a detailed look into what is going on with their local search listings. These listings not only show small businesses marketers what they have done well, but also can show areas for improvement in their local business listing.

Let’s take a look at what’s included in the Google Local Business Center reports.
Activity Report

Google Local Business Activity Report

In the Activity Report we can see a number of important data points:

Impressions and Actions Graph – these graphs provide a good visual representation of the impressions and activity driven by your local business listing on Google. This can serve as a good place to spot trends in your listing’s activity and look for areas to improve.
Impressions – this shows the number of times people saw your listing as a part of the local business results. Every impression really represents and opportunity for you to get a customer to click on your local listing.
Actions – this section of the report shows you how many of your potential customer impressions turned into an action for you. The report shows clicks for more information, which means they look at your full business listing. The next number shows the number of people who clicked for driving directions, a good sign that you may get a walk in customer from your local business listing. Finally you can see the number of people who clicked on your web site, showing that the visitor is looking for more information.

Top Search Queries Report

Google Local Business Top Search Queries Report

The top search queries report is a great way to see what keywords are triggering your listing in the Google local results. This is extremely helpful as it will help you see if your local business listing is optimized for the right keywords. If you see that you are showing up for terms that are not a good match for your business, or you are not showing up for big terms that you think you should, you might want to go back and change up the keywords in you business listing.

Driving Directions Report

Google Local Business Driving Directions Report

For small, medium and large local businesses that rely on walk-in business, the driving directions report gives you an idea of where people are located when they are looking for directions to your business. Aside from being a neat way of finding out where your customers are coming from, this also give you an idea of which geographic regions are seeing your listings.

Based off of the data in the image above, you can see that the primary cities where this listing is being displayed are Denver, Englewood and Aurora, Colorado. If this business wanted to get traffic from another location, such as Boulder, it might be a good idea to add the city name Boulder to the business’s listing.

Conclusion

Regularly looking at your Google local business statistics is a smart way to get detailed information on how much and what type of business you are getting from your local listing. Scanning the reports can show you your successes and also point out areas for improvement in your local search marketing efforts. If you haven’t done it already, place a reminder on your calendar to review your local business listings statistics at least once a month – doing so could help you boost your leads, prospects and sales without any direct marketing cost.

When Search Marketing Fails SMBs

Jeb — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:45:26 +0000

Recommended reading: Greg Sterling provides an excellent overview of the “local search ecosystem” and how it has failed small businesses.

Writing for Local Search News, Sterling describes this ecosystem as “an awkward set of alliances between traditional (mostly yellow pages) publishers, local search marketing (SEM) vendors and search engines, among a few others.”

This unholy alliance appears to be breaking down, and its demise may be a good thing for small and mid-sized businesses.

The current model, Sterling explains, was developed to reduce complexity and make SEM easier to sell to small businesses.

But here’s the rub: simplifying SEM often makes it less effective – leading to bad experiences and a high degree of “churn” in the market, with SMBs bailing after dismal results. Sterling reports that local SEM churn rates are between 50% and 100% each year.

NOTE TO READERS: While we strive to keep this blog free of gratuitous company promotion, I can’t resist plugging Kutenda’s search marketing tools, which make SEM easier for small businesses without sacrificing effectiveness.

The tools were conceived by our in-house SEM brain trust, aka James and Michael, who have freakish knowledge of search marketing and a knack for making money hand-over-fist with it. That knowledge is built into the tools. To use them is to be coached by James and Michael.

But the SEM services that Sterling describes, which are typically purchased through a middleman publisher (we won’t name names), are essentially watered-down versions of the real thing. Sterling:

Rather than explaining keywords and bidding strategies, the sale to the SMB was simplified by offering “guaranteed clicks” for a fixed price. That original model has evolved in most cases. But what it permitted was an easy “close” by the sales rep. The complexity of search marketing — setting up and managing a paid-search campaign – was totally outsourced and hidden from the local business.

Not so with Kutenda’s search marketing tools. They simply enable the average business to engage in bona fide SEM, in all of its dynamism and intricacy, but in an interface that guides the business through the best practices in campaign setup, execution and management.

Here ends the sponsored message. Now is the time to click over to Sterling’s article on Local Search News.

What Every Business Should Know about Local Search

Jeb — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:06:44 +0000

: Image by niallkennedy via Flickr

Here’s why small businesses care about local search:

Because it’s is a way for them to cheaply connect with the best kind of prospects: the kind already looking for their products or services.

These prospects aren’t passive tire-kickers. According to a 2008 study by comScore, 82 percent of local internet searches result in some kind of action—whether it’s a click, call, in-store visit or actual purchase.

What’s defines a ‘local search’?
Scenario one: A consumer adds a geographic modifier to their search engine query (e.g., Denver pet stores). Local pet stores are displayed prominently.

Scenario two: The search engine notices the consumer’s IP address and displays local results, geographic modifier or not. For example, when I Google ‘pet stores’ or ‘Denver pet stores,’ I get similar results.

Google killed the phonebook star
Google, Yahoo, MSN (now Bing) and a handful of smaller search engines have gradually turned the phone book, once a valuable place to find information, into a glorified door jam.

The phone book isn’t dead yet. But web-enabled smart phones will probably steal the last bit of oxygen available.

Consumers now turn to search engines to find information about local businesses—their products and services, contact information, store hours, location, driving directions, deals, and price listings. [Here’s a detailed breakdown from comScore.]

What local search means for SMBs
As search engines have improved at determining the physical location of their users, the little guy now has a chance to:

Do an end-run around the Yellow Pages

Compete with larger companies

Generate leads cheaply

Note: This doesn’t happen automatically. Depending on the particular industry, small businesses may find it difficult to break into the top of the search listings. That said, it’s entirely worth the effort. (If it’s a smart effort.)

There are three ways to get your business into the local search listings, moving from easy to difficult:

submit to local business directories (Google Maps, Yahoo Local, etc.)

pay for placement (commonly known as pay-per-click advertising)

build a site that people and search engines will love

The best approach? Use all three methods.

This month we’ll be exploring local search in greater detail, so be sure to stop by each Tuesday for the latest installment.

In the meantime, check out the archives for more information on how local search can help small businesses connect with active prospects.

Great Example of the Power of Google Local

Robin Seidner — Fri, 29 May 2009 11:07:13 +0000

Yesterday I was showing a copywriter friend about Google Local so she could write about it for us here at Kutenda (Did you know that our Online Marketing Suite will be a big help for companies marketing locally? Yup). I did a typical search that an average consumer might do. I searched for “pizza” here in Broomfield, Colorado, where our offices are.

Here’s what came up in the map results:

#1 result in Google Local - a local pizza joint

Look, the top result is a single-shop, local owned pizza place (they really do have good pizza, too). In the local results, its beating out Dominos, Papa Johns and BlackJack and other big wig pizza-pumping machines.

Local search continues to grow in importance, which just means to you – local or regional business owner – that you have better ways to harness your Internet marketing efforts more effectively. That you do have the opportunity to beat out that 900-lb gorilla in your business area, if you have the right tools to make it happen.