Automatic SEO with Wordtracker Strategizer
Early in my 10-year career as a professional SEO I realized that most writing and training about keyword research and SEO was not based on the real world I was working in.
For example, mainstream keyword research all seemed to miss the most simple of SEO techniques which is to build on your site’s successes …
So if your site is successful for the single (or exact) keyword pizza delivery then it can easily be successful for thousands of other keywords containing pizza delivery including pizza delivery boston and pizza delivery chicago.
These keywords are part of the pizza delivery keyword niche – all keywords containing pizza delivery.
There was another problem with targeting single keywords. The keywords most sites might target could often bring no more than a handful of sales at best. Worse, some keywords on their own will bring your site very few visits. Or just one visit!
In fact, it is normal for 80% of the keywords that bring traffic to your site to bring just one visit each. This might be tens or even hundreds of thousands of keywords. And no person or company can separately work on so many keywords.
So I quickly learned to find a site’s most successful keywords and then target those keywords’ niches.
Do this and you soon discover there is an almost unlimited number of different keywords in any keyword niche …
… you’ll have discovered the long tail of search marketing.
Success with one problem
Over the years I developed an SEO process to find and target keyword niches and then exploit the long tail. It has been incredibly successful, but the research required for each site took a long time and it had to keep being repeated. I needed a tool to help me …
… I dreamed of a keyword research tool that would do the job quickly.
Wordtracker Strategizer is the solution
I’ve worked with Wordtracker to build that tool. You can start using it today.
The new tool is called Wordtracker Strategizer. The ‘Strat’ automates the successful process for search engine optimization (SEO) I’ve developed and refined over the last 10 years.
You can read more about Wordtracker Strategizer and try it for a month for just one dollar at: http://strategizer.wordtracker.com/introduction.
See you at the top.
Mark Nunney
Wordtracker Strategizer Team
Sign up now! http://strategizer.wordtracker.com/introduction
Schmap – Intersection of Local – Social (Part 2)
Today I finish my interview with Paul Hallett, CEO of Schmap.com Hopefully this interview will give you a little insight of what is happening on mobile-social-local front. Twitter is just one of the many areas online where small business can interact and reach out to potential new clients.
Q. What is schmap.me?
A. Schmap.me is a simple way to share map links using a meaningful, memorable, custom url. For locations that you share frequently this can be a much more effective way of communicating location than sending a cumbersome google map link. For example, you can see the schmap.me url for Donald McMillian, VP of marketing. It includes additional information related to the location, such as phone numbers, directions, and photos – schmap.me/donald.mcmillan
Coincidentally, venture capitalist Fred Wilson recently commented on exactly this issue on his blog – http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/06/linking-to-google-maps.html (we’ll have to get him a schmap for Union Square Ventures)
Q. I see you have a limited number of preloaded cities on your publish or widget programs. Will those cities listed be expanded at any time? What if someone like myself wants to publish or schmap about something not in one of those cities?
A. We do plan to expand those cities for which we offer browse-able guides, but do not have a release schedule at this time. However, our services, including schmap.it, schmap.me & geotweeter, are designed for the sharing of information from any location. And in fact we have seen schmaps created for places in all corners of the world, in cities as wide ranging as Singapore, Moscow, New York, Reykjavik, and many many more.
Q. So how can a small business benefit from using schmaps?
A. Many small businesses are already using Twitter for local marketing: bars tweeting happy hours, stores with discount sales, restaurants promoting lunch specials, realtors marketing property – these are examples of local businesses trying to drive foot traffic from Twitter for commercial gain. Schmaps give these same local businesses a much better way to do this – extending a 140 character tweet into a rich local marketing resource.
Q. Are they any costs involved in using your site/services?
A. The basic service is free, with an optional $9.95 /month PRO account for power users. The PRO account has some nice additional marketing resources, including tweet scheduling, direct message and @message marketing campaigns, and the ability to track campaign metrics. We’re currently offering a limited number of free PRO accounts – details at www.schmap.it/PRO-account-for-FREE – if any of your readers would like to take advantage.
Q. Where do you see local mobile marketing going in the near future.
A. Right now, we’re seeing an epic commercial migration taking place at the intersection of ‘local’ and ’social’. The same local restaurants, bars, shops etc. that took ten years to discover the Internet are now adapting to Twitter and Facebook with much greater speed, finding some great opportunities to engage local consumers with a blurred mix of content, service and local marketing. Local consumers are increasingly accessing social networks and local content from mobile devices: we see the future of local mobile marketing being driven by these two trends – local businesses going ’social’ and local consumers going mobile.
Again, I want to thank Paul for his time and insights.
Schmap – Intersection of Local – Social
Twitter is becoming a very powerful tool for individuals and small business. Recently I have found myself spending more time on Twitter, trying to keep up with the new trends and ideas on local search marketing, as well as sports scores, trades, rumors, the latest Android phones and more etc.
Mobile-local and social-local are growing areas small business needs to understand and areas where they can reach more potential clients. Schmaps is one of those companies doing some interesting and cool stuff online in the mobile-social-local market. I wanted to learn more, so I reached out and was able to interview CEO, Paul Hallett of Schmap. Below is part 1 of that interview. (The more I investigated their site and business, the more questions I have. I hope I covered everything you might have a question one.)
Q. Good day Paul, can you tell us a little about your company?
A. We started out in 2004 – at that time, there were just three of us, developing a platform to combine maps with local content (reviews and photos) in a compelling and dynamic way. This platform became the foundation for our popular Schmap guides – www.schmap.com – a series of desktop and mobile local guides for 200 worldwide cities.
Q. What is schmap currently doing?
A. Our current focus is at the intersection of local and social, making it easier for local businesses to reach local consumers, and help these same consumers discover vibrant, real-time local content. One aspect of our rollout here is the geoparsing of content shared on social networks. Taking Twitter for example, at any point in time, there’s a wealth of vibrant local information being shared in tweets: people tweeting about great restaurant experiences, bands tweeting about gigs, bars tweeting about happy hours and so on.
The challenge is filtering and deciphering: if someone tweets ” Cool bash tonight at Joe’s”, has that person just returned from a private party at a friend’s house, or is there some kind of event coming up at Joe’s Bar? What is the event, where is Joe’s Bar, and who might this information be relevant to? The second aspect of our local/social rollout is http://schmap.it – a Twitter app for event marketing and local promotion.
Q. I recently signed up for that app, can you tell us what this new tweeter app does?
A. Our schmap.it Twitter app basically allows the user to add rich local content to a tweet, in the form of a schmap – a map with text, photos, hash tags, and functionality that allows the recipient to retweet, add comments and RSVP to local events. The app is designed for commercial users – event promoters, marketing professionals and local businesses trying to drive folk from Twitter to real world locations: we saw a gap for this type of service left by the likes of Foursquare and Gowalla (services that focus on individuals sharing their current location).
Q. After looking at your website, can you tell us a bit about your mobile apps….Schmap GeoTweeter? Any Android or Blackberry versions coming out?
A. Geotweeter is an app that allows users to share their location via twitter as a customized map that can include photos, notes and custom icons. It was among the first iPhone apps to combine GPS coordinates with Twitter’s service. We are currently developing a new iPhone app that uses many of the concepts from Geotweeter, but will integrate with our offering of real time local information. We are considering Android and Blackberry platforms for development following the release of the iPhone app, but have no firm plans at this time.
I will end Part 1 here. Tomorrow I will finish up the interview but if you are interested, you can sign up for a Free PRO account at http://www.schmap.it/PRO-account-for-FREE.
Sports Minute From LocalBizBits
Well just a quick sports update. It is the half way point in the SEM2010 fantasy baseball season. It has been very fun and a close race so far. Here is where we stand:
1. Canseco Link Juice (Gib Olander)
2. Pilgrims (Tim Dineen)
3. Dial9 4LongDistance (Steven Meyers)
4. Metropolitans (Larry Sullivan)
5. The Ripper’s (Todd Salerno)
6. Boston Hard Heads (Ben Saren)
7. Rankers (Matt Crouch)
8. Moustache Rides (Bobby Leland)
Good luck guys! How do you it every year Gib?
Local Search for Dummies
Over the last few weeks I have been reading, Local Online Advertising for Dummies by Court Cunningham and Stephanie Brown. (Thanks to Yodle for providing a copy.) Overall I like the book. I think it does a nice job on providing information on the basics of local search and is written in a way most folks can understand. (Isn’t that what all “dummy” books are supposed to be? LOL)
After I reviewed the book, I contacted Yodle to get a few questions answered. Below are my comments, thoughts, and answers (in italics) to questions I had.
Before I get into the book, thought it was important to know who Yodle is.
“Yodle is a leader in local online advertising and named fastest growing local online advertising company by industry analyst Borrell Associates. Yodle connects thousands of local businesses with consumers in a process so simple and cost-effective that business owners can’t imagine any other way to advertise. Yodle has developed an integrated approach to signing up and serving local businesses that are transitioning their marketing budgets online. Yodle is headquartered in New York, NY with a presence in 25 major cities across the United States.”
On to the book. ..
This book came out a few months ago and is one of the newest addition in the “for dummies series”. The book does a good job providing definitions to many terms we in the search market know and use all the time. Thus it definitely will help small business owners understand what we, local search marketers are saying. 
The book is broken down into 20 chapters and many, many sub sections within each chapter. For a list of the chapters and purchasing info, you can head over the official dummies site. This is also where you can purchase a copy if you wish.
I liked how the book is organized and does a very good job breaking stuff down into bitsize pieces. It is very “readable”, not too boring and dry. The material is presented in way (or order) that if one follows it, they would have a “reasonable” and “obtainable” marketing strategy. What I am saying is that the books gives good basics on the main and proven marketing techniques, no “do this and you will be #1 overnight” material.
As I was reading though, my first question was, “why a book? wouldn’t it get outdated soon?” A lot of this information is online. So I asked them.
“While there is definitely a lot of information available online that may be very “up to date,” no one has ever vetted all the information that local business owners need to know about online advertising and put it one place. A book seemed like a good vehicle through which to “bundle” all this information and make it available to the average local business owner – who themselves may not be all online savvy such that they would otherwise be able to find this information.
Additionally the opportunity to create this book in conjunction with a brand so universally recognized as the “For Dummies” imprint, was an opportunity we just couldn’t pass up.
The last thing I’ll say about the book becoming “outdated” is that we really tried to write the book in a way that empowered local business owners to think about local online advertising broadly as opposed to just making it a laundry list of tools and resources.”
I also asked if any updates were in the works. “If we sell enough copies. Did we mention that the book is available on Amazon?”
The majority of the book is about local search, but it covers other areas like email, analytics, paid search, banner ads, budgeting, web design, hosting. It does not go into huge details on all of these areas, but gives a nice intro to each. All are areas small business owners need to know about.
Throughout the book, there are many references to websites and companies, that they recommend. Now being “nosy” I asked if these references asked to be put in the book or were paid. You might think it a silly question but I wanted to know.
“We absolutely did not receive compensation from any companies other than Wiley (the publisher) who paid us to write the book. Any time we may have listed specific companies, it was a product of us asking ourselves the question: if we were acting as a business consultant for a small business owner who was a friend or relative of ours, which resources or companies would we tell them to check out?
Also, it’s worth mentioning that Wiley was very stringent about being as “non-biased” as possible. I put that in quotes only because we have a natural bias which is that we believe in online advertising for local businesses – however, I think there are quite a few stats that would back up that bias as well. In fact, more along the lines of being non-biased, if you look through the actual text of the book (outside of dedications and the like), the word “yodle” only comes up perhaps two or three times.”
So what else can I say? I could go on for a long time commenting on each chapter or section. What I will do is open up the floor to you — send me any questions you might have about the book and I will do my best to answer them.
In conclusion, should a small business owner buy this book? If he wants to understand local online marketing better, I would have to say yes! The material in the book is current, accurate (best that I can tell ), nicely organized and easy to understand. It provides good solid advise and resources. Could a small business owner do all the work themselves? LOL (see my previous posts on that one)
Thanks Yodle for a good local search marketing resource.
Is Local SEO Easy?
This seems to be the $64000 question these days. Also depending on who you talk to, you can get a variety of answers. Today I wanted to bring to your attention a number of articles that have written recently that are all interconnected. They are listed in the order you should read them. I found all three articles and the comments associated with them interesting and should help give you an idea on why local SEO is not just adding meta tags or getting listed in Google Places.
Why Local SEO is Harder Than SEOs Think by Matt McGee. Matt does a nice job going through a local listing and trying to figure out why one listing is not listed higher than another on Google maps.
Local SEO Citations: Response to SBSM by David Pavlicko, sort of takes off where Matt left off and comments on citations in local SEO.
Finally, there is Local Ranking Factors and Core Data Confusion by Mike Belasco, Mike says “Despite all of your other optimization efforts and all of the other ranking factors that we may consider, core data confusion can hurt your ability to rank in Places. I took this theory and applied it to the listings that Matt McGee recently researched [see above article], using a few simple procedures”
Don’t Waste Time in Haste-Social Media Tips & Tricks
Today we have a guest post from Ben Johnson of Logoinn. They provide custom logo design services and are based in the UK. As a side note, if anyone else is interested in being a guest blogger here at LocalBizBits, just let me know. Thanks for the article Ben.
=========
Can you really make a lot of money in a very short period of time? Well, may be, if you are really lucky. However, realistically speaking, you can’t get rich overnight. Success comes after you put in efforts.
See, I am saying this because there is a common notion that social media is a new way of making a lot of money online. There is no doubt that it is a powerful medium for marketers, but you can’t grow your small business and make hundreds of thousands of dollars in a matter of days only. You will have to remain consistent and keep evaluating and improving your performance and results.
If you rush, you will waste time. When you rush, you make mistakes. Sometimes, in marketing, we make big mistakes and we can’t undo them. It happens mainly when we rush without a proper plan. If you continue to make progress at a consistent pace, you will achieve the desired results soon. Of course, it won’t happen overnight, but you will eventually create your success story like others.
Make Up Your Mind First:
When you are ready to promote your business on social media, you need to make up your mind that you won’t become a millionaire in a week. It will take time. This way you will work with dedication and remain persistent. If you start marketing with a short term plan that you will achieve the desired results in a month, then you will end up wasting your efforts.
Stay Away from Spamming:
A lot of people have this misconception that simply sending promotional message will help them socialize with their network. Wrong! This is spamming, not networking. You need to communicate with your network just as you communicate with your friends. If you spam, you will lose your credibility and get labeled as spammer.
Get to Know Your Network Personally:
If you begin to know your network personally, then they will begin to recognize you as well. It can happen if you communicate with them regularly. When they post something, don’t forget to provide them with your feedback. Also, share articles and videos that your network will like and ask them to leave their comments.
Help People in Your Network:
This is a great way of connecting with people in your network and get closer to them. If they ask a question, try to help them out with a good answer. Don’t hesitate to offer any advice that you think will be helpful. This will help you build trust and become credible.
Now, You May Ask: Why Get Closer to Your Network?
The reason is that once they get to know you, they will take your offers seriously. See, if you just add friends and start posting links to your products, then you will soon become notorious. However, once you establish a connection with your network, then whatever you say will hold weight and your voice will actually be heard.
So, don’t rush and don’t waste your time. Walk towards success with a plan!
