Local Biz Bits
Local Search Marketing Information for Small Business

I have always been a big supporter/advocate for adding some general, related content on the small business web site. Why?…To provide keyword rich content, create another avenue into the web site and finally, to simply provide a resource to the visitor.  I definitely will work with someone who seems to want to help me and provide some information, without necessarily trying to sell me something.

With the advent of local search, adding locally related material to ones web site is a smart move. There are a number of ways for the small business web site to do this.

1. Add your own local search engine-  Build Your Own Local Search Engine check out this article by Chris “Silver” Smith at Natural Search Blog
2. Create a directory on your site - Turn Your Small Biz Website Into An Online Yellow Pages & Get Qualified Traffic  check out this article by Andrew Shotland at Local SEO Guide
3. Create a local blog - Local blogging? check out this article by Kirby Winfield at Local Point
4. Use Zvents to promote local activities
5. Add local rss news feeds to your web site

Do not try to cover everything. Cannot tell you how much would be too much…but I would not do everything I have listed, unless you are a local directory web site. The goal here is to provide some local, relevent information for your customers to give them a reason to return to the web site.

Finally, in an article by Stoney DeGeyter Content is Dead. Community is King Now he concludes by saying:

“I might suggest that the best ecommerce websites are not those that build content around their products but build a community around the product interest. By creating a place where shoppers can come and gain information, learn more about the products and discuss or share information with others and then make purchases as well, will do more for sales than simply creating a shopping website.

By building a community you not only sell more products but you build brand recognition and customer loyalty. And both of those are worth far more than a single one-off sell. So while content may not be dead (not by a long shot, really), there is a new king in the online marketing industry. Long live community. Long live the (new) king.”

Though he is not specifically speaking about local content, his point about creating a web site that will engage the shopper/visitor is what you are after.

I often hear local advertisers talk about what advertising worked and what didn’t… they almost always consider the medium and rarely the message. Then I wonder… “So… 100 people typed in the category of your business, your town,and visited your site… then decided */not/* to do business with you… why do you think that is? Hmmmm…

A recent survey conducted by Nielsen/Netratings  for WebVisible showed just how important website design really is. Peter Krasilovsky  has a nice write up on the survey at the The Local Onliner . What really struck me is:

“Eighty-five percent of respondents agreed that the quality of a business owner’s website is an important factor in earning the consumer’s trust. Over 75 percent of respondents said they were more likely to make a purchase from “an unfamiliar business with a quality website,” than “a poor website from a known business.”

Eight-five percent!!! In Yellow Pages, we used to call this ‘completing the ad cycle’. Somebody would get recommended to your business or see your advertising and they would come to the Yellow Pages to get the numberor learn more …and if you’re not there or if you’re not well-represented… you’re going to lose that customer.

Well, what’s old is new again, right? Check out how many referrals were potentially lost in one month alone by glancing at the analytics of this local search campaign  good place to start a web marketing campaign is at the beginning… with a good design. Paying for a good esign up front will save you thousands in marketing costs down the line.

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Today’s post is from our anonymous Internet insider, Mr. X.

Do a local search on Google… how about ‘house painter Augusta Ga’, now, notice how none of the results are actually House Painters in Augusta Ga. (except for the Google Local results).  Ever wonder why that happens?  Does Google have something against house painters or small businesses… not at all.

A big cause for this is actually conventional web design and the ubiquitous use of  the ‘Services’ page. There are 2 big reasons for you to eliminate this page from your website: search engine visibility and conversions. Let’s take at these one at a time.

For starters, I feel quite certain that many web conventions were established before the proliferation of search engines and that sometimes we are slow to question an established way of doing things. The ’services page’ must be questioned when it comes to your site ranking in search results and here is the reason why.  We didn’t type services, Augusta, Ga when we were searching for a house painter in Augusta, did we? Of course not and no one else would either because that phrase tells us nothing about which service we’re actually looking for and we would get lousy results.

But this is exactly the information you are giving to the search engine when you use a services page. So when it is given a query for a house painter it looks at these sites and “sees” a page about services” instead of house painting…. hmmmm.  No wonder there are no house painters in those results.

The second drawback to using a services page is that it gives your users less information about what they need to make a purchase decision and so will hurt your site’s ability to convert.  When someone goes through the extra trouble to type in a geographic qualifier into a search engine they are probably very near the end of the buying cycle and are looking for something they are about to purchase. So you want to provide them with the *benefits *of choosing you for this service.  Not just a laundry list of everything that you do.

So how do we get along without our services page? Simple. Give each separate product or service that you sell it’s own page.  On it list the features and benefits of doing business with you for that particular service.  And then use descriptive anchor text  to help your visitors get to the page they need quickly.  This will also help the search engines identify what your site is truly about and return your page in the search results.

For example, if I were laying out a site for a house painter in August Ga, I would create different pages for interior painting, exterior painting and maybe power washing.  This will allow someone  searching for an interior painter to get the information they need without having to read about power washing, which at this point they care little about.  The other benefit here is that Google may return this page one someone does a search for interior painting August Ga, which is a search term that is deliciously close to the end of the buying cycle.

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Today’s post is from an Internet insider, who would like to remain anonymous at this time. After speaking with him, I must say he has an unique vantage point and can should provide LocalBizBits readers with some timely insights. He has agreed to be a frequent contributor to this blog. 
Thanks Mr. X. -Larry

Chris Linnett has a nice post at Search Engine Land, The Future Of Rich Media On Local Sites. In this article, he goes over the pros/cons of adding various types of media on local busines sites.

“Yet despite the popularity of rich media elsewhere on the Internet, the use of photos and videos on local sites is in its infancy….But as a group, local sites have not yet harnessed media to full effect, making it a fascinating category in which to be engaged, and one with many opportunities”

Chris is definitely correct about sites “not the harnessing media on local sites”.  One of the things I do, is help design web sites for local businesses. I continually remind folks that in addition to having a search engine friendly, easy to navigate, quality content web site, they need to engage their visitors with some form of media.

Chris goes over 3 types: video, audio, photos.  I will let you read his pro/cons. Here is my take on each of these 3 media types.

Videos: I think these add a nice touch to any website. They don’t have to be huge, but not many sites have videos so you definitely will catch their attention. Also I think the video should be hosted on the web site itself vs being at YouTube.

Audio: I have not used audio much. I have been playing around with the idea of podcasts etc. but I don’t hink audio has the same effect as that of pictures. Most time, I turn off the sound on my speakers when I surf. 

Photos: I consider photos a MUST HAVE. People want to see what you look like, what your storefront looks like., what you are selling.  Recently I found out that one of my local business clients was getting more traffic from folks searching Google images than from the normal web search. Hey, however they get to the web site, is fine by me, as long as they get there.

So if you have not already, look to see where you can add video or more photos to your web site. If done properly, they can help engage your audience; make them stay on the web site, show them who you are, and what you do. 

When you have a website, you want to build and optimize it to rank as well as it can in the major search engines. Everyone wants to be on the first page. Whether is it global or local search, there are many techniques a webmaster can employee to accomplish this.

Small business owners, please be aware that most web designers are not search engine experts or marketers. Your website might look great to you but how does it look to the search engines? That is the key to good site optimization.

I bring this topic up, because Chris Smith wrote an excellent article, Using Images For Local SEO  at Search Engine Land the other day. I learned quite a bit from some of the neat ideas Chris provided. There are too many to list here but I recommend you check them out.  Chris said:

“A lot of small business websites I see out in the wild are pretty thin on content.”

“Though, if they were more detailed in many ways, I wouldn’t have to call them, nine times out of ten… a picture is worth a thousand words, so I see both SEO value and benefit to user-experience in beefing up local biz sites’ image usage.”

Everyone has images on their website-if you can help show off who you are and increase your search visiblity, well then I say that is a win-win.  I never really thought about the images and the role they can play. Chris definitely gives you more options to “get the most out” of what you have in your website.

Yesterday I spoke about your website and used Stoney’s ebook as a resource you can pick up to get all the specifics.  To summarize though-your website needs to be built to succeed. You need to plan or deal with such things as:

• domain name
• content
• types of pages to have (about us, faq, etc)
• site navigation
• keyword selection
• and more….

Once the site is properly built then you need to promote it. Now I am not going to into great detail here because this whole blog is about promotion.  Hopefully though, you can see that there are many different ways of promoting your website. Also too I hope it is becoming clear that you will need to employ numerous marketing tactics to increase your online visibility.  The promotions you choose to use should be use to fulfill your online goals.

Some promotions techniques are:

• pay per click
• pay per call
• local search
• social media-blogging, reviews
• mobile search
• link building
• article writing
• banner ads
• online videos
• search engine and directory submissions

On Friday, I am going to wrap up this group of articles and focus on link building.

A lot has changed in online marketing since I put together my first website, back in the mid 1990s. The days of simply putting up a webpage(s) online, getting some links, and submitting it to the search engines are long gone. It takes alot more for a website to be successful online these days. (I started this article a while back, but never finished it. I have a couple things on my desk that tie in nicely with the article, so now is the time…)

One of my kids favorite movies is about a bunch of ants that are being bullied by a small band of grasshoppers. Once the ants realized there was power in numbers that took care of the bullies. Small business traditionaly have been the ants, “bullied” and told they are “small”, “insignificant” but statistics show small businesses really are the ones that run the economy and have power; they just need to realize it. For small business, the Internet represents a great way to “flex” their power. But to flex their muscles properly, they need have an appropriate online presence. I am speaking of a properly built website.

Stoney G deGeyter of Pole Position Marketing ,   E-Marketing Performance and frequent writer at Search Engine Guide, has an ebook that I want to recommend to those do-it-yourselfers, E-Marketing Performance - Effective Strategies for Building, Optimizing and Marketing your Website Online.

Stoney provided me with a copy to review and I must say it is a well written, easy to follow ebook with top notch information in it. (No this is not a paid review or advertisment! When I find something of value, I let people know about it).

Stoney has done a great job explaining what is needed to have a website that is going to last online. The book is 97 pack pages of stuff that a website owner needs to consider when building an online presence.  What he has written down, is basically what I have been telling (or trying to)  my clients for years.

One of the things I really like about the book is the research exercises at end of different sections in the book. These exercises help put things into perspective.

(The book is in pdf format and the table of contents is linked to the pages in the book, making it easy to navigate. I know that took some time to put together but thanks Stoney!)

At only $39,  it is very affordable guide to having a successful website. For more details and to get a copy, head over to Pole Position Marketing today.

Stay tuned for part 2…