So I am playing around and see there is a new app from Bing.  I like Bing maps on the PC but was curious that a Microsoft service would be on Android (Google) phone. LOL  I noticed Greg Sterling briefly commented on the app at Search Engine Land, Bing Mobile App Comes To Verizon Android Handsets. Right now I am holding off on it, but we will see. 

As I am looking over the app(s), I got an email from my good friend Stacy Williams over at Prominent Placement.  The article,  written by Star Bradshaw, was entitled The Yahoo-Bing Search Alliance Will Affect Your Business. Thought it was interesting that as I was looking at the Bing app, I get an article about Bing. “Got to write about this one” I thought.

Overall I thought it was a great article. Star says, “This impending alliance shouldn’t be ignored – it will produce a significant change in the search landscape. Though Google’s dominance is undisputed, with more than 65% of the market, Microsoft’s Bing and Yahoo combined hold a 30% share, which represents a viable alternative to the search behemoth.”

Star comments on how to deal with or protect your organic listing(s) and your PPC visibility with the coming change.  She provides a nice set of links to Bing resources as well as Yahoo and Microsoft transition centers sites.

So if you are actively marketing and listed in Bing and Yahoo, you need to spend the time and see what is in store for you (and us). Thanks for the article Star and Stacy!

Q. What is guiaslocal.com?

A.  GuiasLocal.com is a new, non-yellow page, bilingual start-up that connects consumers to major U.S. cities and millions of businesses.  Guias Local translated in English means “Local Guides” (a logical name for Hispanics and search algorithm when searching locally).  The primary language of GuiasLocal.com is Spanish with a secondary language in English.  Currently GuiasLocal.com, is the largest bilingual, non-yellow page in the United States.

Q. What is its mission?

A. Our mission is to change Local search and offer Hispanics a new way to search.  With so many English language local search companies in the mix, we feel we can add value to an emerging market.

Q. You have just gotten beta in El Paso, what is the timeline for other cities?

A.  On Monday, December 7th, we will be launching our second version of Beta for El Paso, based on feedback from consumers and businesses.  This version offers more in regards to search and features.
Our full launch of our 200 major U.S. cities is scheduled for early 2010.  This version will include additional enhancements to GuiasLocal.com including white labels, private labels, and mobile versions.  We will be adding additional cities growing quickly.

Q. Are you looking at producing any iPhone or Blackberry mobile apps or site for the directory?

A. Mobile versions of GuiasLocal.com are currently in development.  As more Hispanics adapt to mobile applications faster than non-Hispanics, mobile apps are a top priority for GuiasLocal.com.  Our mobile versions will offer easy navigation and a fast search.

Q. Are there any other bilingual local search directories out there?

A.  There are no other bilingual, non yellow page, nationwide, local searches in the U.S.  There is a yellow page company named Seccion Amarilla Usa, a Telmex company, which offers results in two languages.  Yellow page companies tend to focus on print and not on the Internet or mobile applications.  Our enhanced version of GuiasLocal.com will offer our consumers an easy to use local search in two languages as well, GuiasLocal.com offers businesses the opportunity to reach consumers with various levels of advertising available at a significantly reduced rate as compared to yellow page companies.

Q. Why should small business be concerned with bilingual listings?

A. Hispanics are the largest growing minority in the United States.  As well, given  that  almost  half  of Hispanics  speak  only Spanish  at  home,  products  that  offer easy  directions  and  a  bilingual  user  interface will  gain  faster  adoption.   What’s more, one-third  of  Hispanics  feel  that  Spanish-language  Web  sites  enhance  their  user experience — a clear message for online retailers and marketers.  Why not offer the consumer the opportunity to search in both languages?  GuiasLocal.com offers Hispanics a choice, their choice of which language to search in.

Q. How can a business get listed in your directory?

A. Businesses can either contact GuiasLocal.com directly to place their business in our search.  Upon launch, we will offer a business submission where the business can add all of their information via GuiasLocal.com as well as manage their listing.  This will be available in early 2010 with our full launch.

Q. Where do you see local search marketing going in the next year or so?

A.  Local search marketing is growing at a rate of 17 percent according to Forrester Research.  GuiasLocal.com knows the true value is in becoming a brand and an information provider not just a local search.  We are currently working on this with: Private label (powered by GuiasLocal.com), Apps, API’s, licensing, desktop, mobile, and business packages.

Q. Anything else you would like to add?

A. We recently added dotcom veteran, Tom Herman, to our board who has been guiding GuiasLocal.com strategically in our money raising efforts. You may remember Tom from the movie, Startup.com. The film followed e-commerce website govWorks.com and its founders, Tom and Kaleil Isaza Tuzman, from 1999-2000 as the Internet bubble was bursting. Under their leadership, govWorks raised $60 million in venture financing from firms such as the Mayfield Fund, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company, the New York City Investment Fund, Hearst Corporation, Sapient Corporation and Vignette Corporation.  Tom brings over 15 years of start-up experience leading technical strategy, software architecture, fund raising and mergers and acquisitions of technical assets.

Twitter: We are the most followed Hispanic brand on Twitter World Wide.

–Thanks for that info George on Guiaslocal.com.  Look forward to seeing how your site grows and develops.

Dominating Local Searches on Google

First you need to do basic search engine optimization on every page of your website.  Next build optimized pages for your major local keywords and include semantically related phrases on those pages.  Talk to Larry about getting this done for your site.

Next, set up a Google Local Business listing so your business can show up in the Google Maps local results box.  Fill it out completely.  Add the videos, pictures and get reviews from your customers.  You should be putting almost as much effort into this one tool as you do for initially optimizing your website–it’s that important.

Your goal is to get your main website (your money site) into the top 3 organic search results before you start on the next steps.  Doing everything at once will dilute your efforts.  I’ll say it again.  Make sure you are ranking in the top 3 of your ten most important keywords before proceeding.

The next step is to get as many double listings as possible.  To get a double listing, optimize two or more pages on your site for the same keyword.  With a double listing for a geo-targeted keyword, Google frequently returns 8 organic search results instead of the normal 10.  That means you need to work to own at least the remaining 7 results.

You’re going to build a content network using Squidoo, Hubpages, Youtube, Wordpress, Blogger, Tumblr and Posterous.  There are more, but you’ll start here.  You or your SEO will have used some or all of these sites to create some links to your main website to get it to rank.

Now, we want the sites in our content network to start ranking for our major keywords so we have to do all the same steps we take to rank our main site to get each of these pages to rank.  See the diagram for a simplified outline of what your content network will look like.

In the Content Network Snowflake you’ll see your main website in the middle surrounded by support sites that in turn are supported by auxiliary sites. Each of these sites are content sites that reinforce the relevancy and authority of each other. What you don’t see in this diagram are the inbound links that support each of these sites.  This is nothing new in SEO, but it is new for the purpose of ranking multiple content sites for the same keyword to prevent competitors from ranking.

The reason we are doing all this is to take up as many available organic search results as possible.  Don’t allow weak competitors to show up next to you in the search engines.  This is the only place I know of where some good ol’ fashioned elbow grease will keep your competitor’s ads (search listing) away from your ads.

In all of your content on your content network, you need to have conversion tools in place.  This will include links to free reports, email opt-in boxes where possible, phone numbers, contact forms, your business location and any other way you can think up to get people to leave your content network and connect with your business.

Being better and smarter will pay off in you dominating page one of Google.  Once you have control, visitors will have no choice, but to choose you.

I know this was a lot to throw at you and I left out a lot of details on how to do local search engine optimization, but please feel free to ask questions in the comments and Larry and I would be happy to answer them.

About the author:  Tim Conley is a local marketing blogger in Phoenix, AZ and has consulted with over 200 companies from solopreneurs to software companies with 250+ employees.  Go to Tim’s blog to get more local online marketing insights at LocalMarketingMastery.com.

What if there was a way for you to get more than the average 50+% of visitors from a number one Google ranking?

I don’t know about you, but I really dislike paying a lot of money to advertise my business (or that of my clients) only to have my direct competitor’s ad show up right next to mine. Every directory that you’re business is listed in also has your direct competitors, too. In most advertising venues that get a lot of “eye balls”, you’re going to pay to show up next to your competitor’s ad. This, frankly, stinks.

But there is a new way to market your company that keeps your competitors at bay. But first let me give you some background knowledge first.

Local Search Engine Optimization

Google and other search engines want to offer searchers relevant results so that the searcher keeps coming back to their search engine. Since you are reading this article on Local Biz Bits, you have probably heard about search engine optimization a time or two. SEO is the process of manipulating content on a website and on other websites to get top search results. I’m not going to go into the mechanics of SEO or I would be cranking out a book and Larry is probably thinking this article is a bit too long already.

As local business owners, we have a window of opportunity in the search engine game. The reason I say we have just a window is that large national companies are just now waking up to the power of local search and only about 50% of small businesses have websites. Of the small businesses who have websites, most have nothing more than an electronic business card that is lost in the wilderness called the Internet.

Right now you can use search engine optimization to out compete big corporations and your local competition on all your local keyword search phrases and your brand phrases. But here is what is so amazing…you can dominate those local phrases to the point where your competition won’t show up on the first page of the search results—you can own the top ten.

There are two exceptions to you owning all of page one of Google and those are Google’s Lucky 10 (or soon to be 7 in all markets) Local Results box at the top of searches that have geographic modifiers and in the sponsored ads at the top and right. To dominate these you have to do some black hat techniques and I don’t recommend you try them because getting delisted by Google won’t help your business any.

At the time this screenshot was taken, this fitness trainer owned the entire page for his city. The only place he didn’t have a listing was in the right hand sponsored links. You can see he even got two double listings.

(part 2 tomorrow)…

1. MerchantCircle launches:

Neighbors “Neighbors enables consumers to “follow” local businesses for the latest promotions, coupons and announcements.  Business owners can use the Neighbors “feed” as an easy way to communicate directly with their customer base and share information on new products, events or anything of importance to their customers. Want to receive alerts for deals on things like shoe repair services, landscaping, tax preparation or virtually any service in any industry? MerchantCircle connects you to the deals you are interested in, in your local area.”

and

Answers “Answers gives consumers the opportunity to tap into MerchantCircle’s 910,000 local businesses for expert advice on virtually any topic, all for free. Real business owner experts are glad to give consumers free advice on important questions in order to win their business. MerchantCircle doesn’t moderate the conversation; it just connects consumers to real experts who have the answers. Need to know what kind of oil to put in your truck or how to keep a dog from escaping the backyard?  Car mechanics, veterinarians and professionals in every industry will quickly respond, saving you time and often money.”

Read the full release here

2.  StudioNow Launches Video Asset Management & Syndication Platform (AMS), Delivering End-to-End Video Creation-to-Distribution Service

“providing businesses with rapidly escalating video workflow requirements an efficient, affordable and highly scalable solution for the management and distribution of high-quality video assets to multiple video channels across the Internet.”

There’s a local business case study with Citysearch online at their new site at: http://www.studionow.com/create.

Read the full release here

Here are the links to those posts. Thanks Mike!

Google Analytics For Local Search Part 1 of 7: Tracking Traffic From The 10 Pack

Google Analytics For Local Search Part 2 of 7: Tracking ‘local’ Local Traffic

Google Analytics For Local Search Part 3 of 7: A Filter For Local

Google Analytics For Local Search Part 4 of 7: Tracking Outbound Links

Google Analytics For Local Search Part 5 of 7: Conversions By Location

Google Analytics For Local Search Part 6 of 7: Explore Your Geo-modified Keywords

Google Analytics For Local Search Part 7 of 7: Pimp Your Dashboard

In addition to MerchantCircle’s suite of easy-to-use online publishing services, MerchantCircle’s local business members will have access to Web.com-powered marketing products and services designed to help them successfully market their businesses online. Participating merchants will gain the following benefits:

• A professionally built or redesigned website with enhanced Web design and marketing features on a unique domain address
• Inclusion on top-tier search engines
• An Internet Scorecard that tracks website performance in real-time
• Secure and cost-efficient eCommerce options that will allow merchants to safely transact with their customers

You can read the whole press release here.

From the press release/blog:

To further increase local business exposure online, MerchantCircle also announces the first-ever local city coupon Twitter feed. Merchant-built coupons are now automatically fed to city-specific Twitter feeds, so that local consumers can find local coupons and events in real-time. MerchantCircle local business owners create more than 50,000 online coupons and events every month.  Merchant-created deals and events are automatically posted to the new Twitter feeds to expose local merchants to even more potential customers.

“I’m thrilled MerchantCircle is always coming up with ways that make it easier for customers to find us,” says Ken Mapel, owner of The Glass Guy in St. Paul, MN. “I can create coupons for free on MerchantCircle and they distribute them across the web. And now with the direct Twitter feed, they’re making it even easier to find more local customers. I currently receive around 80 calls per month from consumers who have found me on MerchantCircle; ™ looking forward to this bringing in even more.”

Are you on Merchant Circle, if you let me know how it is working for you.

Well, Constantin S. Manta, the man behind this site,  was gracious to give me some time for this interview so you and I could learn more about this new search engine. Today I have two posts regarding YellowSpaces. This one will cover YellowSpaces in general and the second post will cover their new iPhone app which launches today.

Q. Thanks again Constantin for the time, can you tell us a little about you and your company.
A. I’m the founder and principal of YellowSpaces.  For the past 20 years I have worked with Internet advertising agencies and financial services companies primarily offering them financial services. I noticed a growing frustration with my clients when they tried to find reliable on- and offline advertising resources, including print yellow pages and local search engines.

Inspired by this frustration, I saw a need for more reliability and so YellowSpaces was born to create a unique and relevant search engine to appeal to smaller businesses across the U.S. As well, we think that consumers are looking for the most accurate business information, too.

Q. What is YellowSpaces and what makes it unique?
A. YellowSpaces is a new local search engine that focuses on finding businesses, products, or services anywhere throughout the United States.’  What makes it unique is that it offers more information to users more accurately and reliably than any other search engine. It’s also easier to use than the Internet or Apple’s iPhone.

Q. How can a small business get listed in YellowSpaces?
A. On our search results page we have a link for business owners to list their companies.

Q. Is Localeze the only source for business data for YellowSpaces?
A. Yes. We researched the field thoroughly and determined that Localeze offers the most current and dependable local search information.  What helps make Localeze a real benefit to our users is their rating system they call it a Confidence Score.

The confidence score is a grade,  an evaluation of the validity of the information about the local business. The higher the score, in the range from 0-100, the more accurate and dependable are the search results. When we do a search, we show the confidence score of that business right on the screen for the user to see.

Q. Do you have business reviews on the side?
A. Not at the moment. We might offer them in the future as a recommendation shown with a simplified graphic (e.g., thumbs up, thumbs down). We can probably define and make these recommendations from a consensus of opinion from other Internet Yellow Pages ( IYPs) rather than producing a long narrative presentation of our own.

Q. Did you launch nationally or are you doing it in increments?
A. Our original plan was to launch in the New York tri-state market, however, the introduction of the iPhone application into our overall strategy made it clear that we needed to launch nationally.

Q. You and I have initially connected on Twitter and I see you are using that quite a bit.  Why do you use Twitter? Where to you see Twitter going in the near future?
A. For one thing, @yellowspaces gathers and reports news within the local search and IYP space. You see, Twitter is one of the most effective business tools on the market. It’s a wonderful marketing tool.

For example, we did a fun and keyword strategic 10-day countdown before launching our website. We used specific keywords in our tweets to attract the media.  Although I have around 200 follows, and that isn’t a very large audience, Twitter is not about followers. It’s about timely knowledge. And timely knowledge is important.  Twitter search and other tools give everyone access to your tweets.

For example, if you are a blogger who writes about start-ups, I can go into Twitter and search for the term start-up and pull companies that may be launching now. I believe Twitter will become another business customer service channel to the consumer.

Q. Where do you see local search going in the next few years?
A. Even with all the interest in local search, we really are still at the dawn of this application.  As international business becomes more interdependent, there is a growing need for international local search. In a few years, we will want to be able to search locally anywhere in the world.

YellowSpaces is able to duplicate our technology internationally right now, and expand quickly into any country. We had the foresight to purchase and secure most of the domain names in the top 25 international by population and/or gross domestic product.  We have trademarked YellowSpaces internationally, too. Our goal is to become the globally-branded local search destination.

TwitterHawk “TwitterHawk is a real time targeted marketing engine that will find people talking on twitter now by your chosen topic and location, allowing you to really hit your target mid conversation with ease.

Twellow “The Twitter Yellow Pages”

TwitterLocal “AIR Client allows you to watch as many location-based Twitter feeds as you want”

LocalTweeps “By mapping twitter profiles and content to geography, Localtweeps encourages local connections and local information sharing. We’ll help you find local tweeps, get found locally and share geographic trends on Twitter.”

NearbyTweets “a geography centric social tool for networking and a business tool for building customer relationships and monitoring realtime buzz. With Nearby Tweets sophisticated geographic layer on top of Twitter people and businesses will find Twitter more relevant, manageable, and fun!”

WeFollow “User Powered Twitter Directory”

ChirpCity “latest tweets in your city and top user list”

CityTweets “twits new, near you!”

LoadedWeb” We focus on geo-centric directories: blogs, businesses, and Twitter.

Tweepz “Tweepz is a search engine which helps you find and discover interesting people on twitter”

Are there any that I missed that you use? Let me know.