Local Biz Bits
Local Search Marketing Information for Small Business

The other day I was speaking with a client (I helped her finish a web site). She wanted to do some SEO for her new business web site. She knew she needed to market on-line and that the search engines were important. [Hooray!]

Her question to me was “who to use?”  She had spoken to a number of SEO companies and got a variety of ideas/services/prices and was not sure which to use.  (I could have said me, but I was not going there.)  I told her that there is no “industry standard” for SEO and that you are going to get a variety of answers.  I warned her against anyone who guarantees results overnight.

Finding someone to do SEO can be hard to do. If you can’t find someone you know and trust to recommend someone then you need to do some research.

[Check out a post over at Paul Jahn's LocalMN Blog: Search Engine Marketing Firm Gets $100,000 Fine - What to Look for in a Search Marketer.]

For those who would like to learn more about on-line marketing, I recommend you read, Converstaion Marketing, Common Sense Internet Strategies by Ian Lurie.  Ian does a nice job providing down to earth info and comments regarding on-line marketing strategies.

Ian has also written an excellent book, Converstaion Marketing, An Internet Marketing Strategy That Works.

The article I wanted to draw your attention to is The Internet Marketing List: 59 Things You Should Be Doing But Probably Aren’t

This is a great list of things to check over yourself or things to ask your web designer or SEO person. If they know anything, they should be able to answer and explain to you anything on this list.

As I have always said, knowledge is power. Educate yourself as best you can; that will be your best bet when trying to evaluate someone to help you.

Got an email a while back from a new website/local search, ParkingHunter.com. The purpose of the website is to help folks find places to park their cars.  From their press release:

ParkingHunter.com has created a marketplace for monthly parking spaces and currently has 2500+ parking spots available. The goal is to connect car-less home owners that have empty driveways, with motorists who want affordable parking. The service is at no cost for users to advertise their parking spots. In addition to renting, users can also buy and sell parking real-estate.”

I zipped over to the web site and this is not a bad idea. The site is in beta but I like what they are trying to do.  I recently went to Atlanta and was looking on Mapquest for parking lots in the city. So if you are curious, pop over to the site and take it for a spin.  Future plans, they say,  are being developed to allow for hourly parking and mobile reservations.

note: I did contact them for more information but they did not return my email.

At the end of any year, it is a natural thing to take a step back and review what has been done and see what is coming up. Every small business needs to do this; I definitely am working on my plan for 2008 based on 2007.   I wanted to pull together some of the more interesting posts reviewing local search in 2007 and those looking to 2008.  Happy reading!

Local Search in 2007
Google Maps: year in review for its posts and product launches

Happy Holidays from the LocalPoint Team

Praized Blog: A Look Back at 2007

Kevin Newcomb at Search Engine Watch:  2007: The Year that Search Grew Up

A couple of notable items:

BackFence, Judy’s Book, Edgeio shut down
A lot of new sites such as Greyboxx, Yellowbot
Many new local search blogs, such as LocalBizBits were established (had to throw that in )
Lots of great conferences such as SMX Local, ILM

Local Search in 2008

Praized Blog: Local & Social Media Predictions for 2008

Fred Aun at ClickZ: 2008 Outlook: No Sign of a Cooldown in Local Online Ads

Greg Sterling at Search Engine Land: Local Online Ads Will Reach $12.6 Billion In 2008, Local Search Will Bring In $5 Billion Of That Total

Mike Boland at Search Engine Watch: 8 White-Hot Trends Lift Local Search in ‘08

2008 looks like it will be a big year - will be exciting to see how it all pans out.  See you next year!

Update: Make sure you see Matt McGee’s post, Big List of 2008 Prediction & Resolution Posts over on his blog!

ShowMeLocal.com Interview (continued)

Q. Tell me about your Facebook and your other applications.
A. This week we have released the Business Space  application that allows business owners to integrate their blogs, coupons, specials and job posts with local Facebook Pages. Business owners will be able to control what type of information to put on the page and have an ability to post either from ShowMeLocal or from Facebook directly. For those businesses who don’t have an account with us,  we offer a simple integration tool to import their information directly to us.

In addition we have built a Facebook application to enable facebookers to search through the available businesses, coupons, deals and jobs. It gives not only more visibility for businesses but also an opportunity for us to spread a word about our services. We already see some number of referrals (small businesses) that came through Facebook application.

Q. What costs are involved?
A.  We have invested into creating a comprehensive software product, which I can proudly say working very smooth and stable. 

Q. Do you provide any other services to local businesses? 
A.  Not really

Q. Why should a small business use your services?
A. SML is  a simpler and easier way to establish a strong online presence, get new customers, and stay in touch with your community.  ShowMeLcoal.com is built around Social Network ideology with all desired attributes: ratings, reviews, photos, videos, maps, comments, tell a friends feature, social bookmaking, feed subscriptions and networking with local businesses.

In addition our distribution platform promotes business content to the variety of local oriented sites relieving business owners from the task of spending enormous amount of time and effort to do it themselves. Small business  can get a premium product for free!

Q.  Tell me about your business network feature.
A. The business network is a great way to reach an extended customer network.  In other words it is a cross promotional feature. If on Facebook or MySpace friends can connect their profiles together, the same feature is available for the small business on SML. By doing this information flows from one business profile to another, attracting customers that came to one of the businesses pages. It makes sense to organize local business networks.  An example of “local” oriented business networks can be found here: http://www.showmelocal.com/kings2. In addition business owners can communicate with the other network members in the profile administration.

Q. In conclusion, where do you see local search going in future?
A. Considering that internet is becoming social and the customers are ready (the business owners are not),  I think it will take some time to get those local businesses online. When the critical mass is achieved, then local search will become really exciting, because it will produce meaningful results. Also I think that the future lies in the community oriented websites and there is where the local business wants to be exposed.  This is why we are developing Facebook applications and scheduled to release the Open Social application to promote our clients to the other social networks.

Thanks for your time Eugene and look forward to see SML grow!

ShowMeLocal.com is one of the better websites/directories where local business can create an online profile and promote themselves.  I came across the site when I did my post of local search in Facebook. They had a local search application, so I clicked over their website, did some review, and then contacted them about doing this interview.

ShowMeLocal has a lot of unique and neat promotion ideas for their local business profiles and in general is pretty easy to use. I created a profile for me, which you can review.  After speaking with the founder Eugene Belenky during the course of this interview, I  have decided to contribute to their blog on a weekly basis. The ShowMeLocal blog will cover updates to the ShowMeLocal directory/web site  but also cover general web site marketing topics.  But without further ado, the interview with Eugene Belenky at ShowMeLocal.com

Q. What is ShowMeLocal?
A. ShowMeLocal.com is the website that gives local business owners the tools to promote and distribute their business content online and where local consumers go to learn about businesses in their area while finding great deals.

Q. How long have you been around?
A. We have been around 10 month.

Q. Do you automatically fill in your database? 
A. No. Our database is 100% user (smb) generated which guarantees that behind every local business there are real people with real businesses.

Q. You are located in New York City, but do you serve all 50 US states?
A. Yes, we do service all 50 states.

Q. Tell us about your distribution system. 
A. ShowMeLocal.com is not a directory, classifieds or search engine placement service but rather a backbone for small business owners, giving them not only a well designed and feature rich profiles but also a promotional-distributional platform to distribute their content on the sites where tens of thousand customers are looking for the local information/deals in their neighborhoods. 

All business profiles are search engine optimized and provide top placement on the major search engines. Beside this standard feature we supply content (business listings, reviews, coupons, specials and job postings) to the classified aggregators such as Oodle, Vast, Google Base, Edgeio. Further, syndicated content is promoted to their affiliates. In addition we supply coupons for the Google Maps. We also work with other services to syndicate content on behalf of our clients. All businesses have RSS feeds available for subscription. In addition we are giving widgets, buttons and professionally design ads for businesses to insert to the sites of their choice such as CraigsList, Ebay, MySpace, etc.

Q. Can you guarantee a business their listing will be seen?
A. Well, we work really hard to help smbs to get their word out online. We have built an extensive collection of online tools that give almost limitless options to promote a business online. Depending on the level of participation – online exposure is varying, ranging from search engines to classifieds and local sites. What I am trying to say that more business owner put information on their sites, more visible business becomes bringing more customers to the virtual and live storefront.

Until next time….

Here are some great followup articles to various topics I have discussed here:

1. Mobile Search Marketing: The Pros And Cons Of Mobile Marketing by Paul J. Bruemmer. A nice summary of the current state of mobile search.

2. Link Building: Link Building for Local Search by Justilien Gaspard over at Search Engine Watch. I thought this went nicely to the articles I wrote.

3.  Social Media: Everything You Need to Know About FRO (Fake Review Optimization) by Andy Hagans. I thought this was great article.  “So, local business owners, if you’re going to do fake reviews (and, let’s be honest, if you own a local business, you probably will), please keep the following tips in mind..”  Thanks Andy for the advice

Think Local, Act Social by Michael Boland.  “There’s clear demand from searchers who increasingly expect user reviews as part of their local search experience.”4. Local Search: Local Search Is About Products Too, Not Just Restaurants And Plumbers by Greg Sterling.  “Often when people discuss local search they’re referring to finding restaurants or plumbers. But the concept of “local search” should include goods and product purchases as well.”  “To look out into the future a couple of years, the three most interesting trends in ‘online shopping’  are local, social and mobile.”

Happy reading!

The other day, I wrote about local directories here in Augusta, Ga  and in general on -line. One particular directory I mentioned was AugustaBiz. This is a local directory, created by local company that really knows what it is doing (design-wise, content-wise, marketing-wise, etc.)

Well I am happy to announce, that starting Monday, I will be in charge of the managing, creating, and promoting of the local business profile section of AugustaBiz.com.  I am very excited about this new venture and honored that AugustaBiz chose me.

“We have worked with Larry in the past and know what he can do. With his knowledge and experience in local search marketing, web design, and ability to work with small businesses he was a perfect fit.” -Terence Daniels, Owner of AugustaBiz.com

So if anyone needs their business profile made…