Back to School – Local Search Style!
Going to School for Local Search- GetlistedU
How does anyone learn things, these days-school of course. In continuing my topic of local search DIY (do it yourself), I interviewd my good friend David Mihm about his GetListedUniversity. This appears to be an excellent opportunity for small business owners to get some hands on training in local search. Getlisted, just recently expanded to include a UK branch. If you are interested in see if a class is coming near you, David has provided his contact info below.
Q. What is Getlisted University?
A. Local University is essentially a four-hour crash course for business owners in local search engine marketing. We bring in Google Places and Bing Local reps for the day, along with some top-notch experts in Local SEO, and try to get business owners up to speed, as best we can, for how to get found online.
Q. Why did you start it?
A. Mike Blumenthal, Mary Bowling, and I started tossing around the idea of a Local roadshow at SMX East last fall–an idea that Pat Sexton and I had discussed internally since before we even started what became GetListed.org. All of us were committed to getting beyond the search marketing community, right to business owners, to cut through the snake oil and bogus internet marketing sales pitches they receive every day.
Q. Who should attend?
A. Our seminars are definitely geared towards business owners themselves, but we’ve had considerable interest from chambers of commerce, offline media, and online marketing agencies who have sent their clients or member business owners–and in some cases junior employees or account managers.
Q. What should one realistically expect to get out of the course/seminar?
A. We hope that attendees leave with an overall idea of how the search engines work–especially for local keywords–and a few tactics they can implement immediately to get their business to rank better.
Q. Is it just another sales pitch?
A. We’re 100% sales-pitch-free. Every tool, product, and service we talk about in our presentations is a legitimate recommendation, and none of the speakers are shilling for more clients. In fact, our goal is to partner with local marketers and agencies so that business owners have someone to talk to in their own area after we leave town. I think we all have a pretty good reputation in the search community, but outside of our little world, we’re not exactly known entities 
. So we’re really proud of the number attendees who have remarked to us “You guys really knew your stuff–it was great that it wasn’t a sales pitch” or something along those lines.
Q. Where will you be having your next seminar(s)?
A. We’re geared towards less traditional (and more affordable) venues than those of the typical SEO conference circuit. So next up are Cleveland/Northeast Ohio (June 30), Denver and New Orleans in the fall, and Phoenix in the winter. We’d love to do events in towns even smaller than that, but it seems like we need a critical mass of business owners
in order to break even on our travel expenses. We’re still trying to find out what that critical mass is, though & are open to entertaining ideas from any area.
Q. If folks want more info, where should they go?
A. We put up a landing page a couple months ago http://getlisted.org/university which has some high-level bullet points, but people can feel free to email me at david@getlisted.org if they’d prefer, too.
Q. In your opinion, how realistic is it for SMBs to DIY local search?
A. I think it’s very realistic for the ones who are motivated. A lot of SMB’s do need their hands held by a trusted (and trustworthy) advisor but there are an incredible number of low- or no-cost positive steps that they can take to get themselves started. As the online space becomes more competitive, or more sophisticated, they may need more help, but one of the things that I love most about the local search world is that there ARE so many non-technical things business owners can do to improve their visibility, without even touching their websites. They just need a push in the right direction–which we hope to give them with Local U!
Thanks David for your time and hope to see GetlistedU in my neck of the woods soon.
DIY (Do It Yourself) Local Search
DIY (do it yourself) local search is a topic that has been covered before by many different sites and authors. It is one that I get asked a lot from small business owners. Everyone wants to try to do things themselves to save a buck. That is fine; I am definitely into saving a buck or two, but one question I have is, “Is it worth your time and effort to do online marketing yourself?”
I have decided to put together a number of posts on this subject, as it has been on my mind for a while. Online DIY can be a great thing – you learn a lot of stuff, save money, and have an increased sense of ownership of in your website and marketing plan. The negatives about online DIY are the time and energy spent simply learning the material, (the learning curve), having todo the updates yourself, and not having anyone to help you out along the way.
In addition to the question above, I have another one: “Is DIY local search or Internet marketing realistic for the small business owner?”
What do you think about these questions? What is my two cents? I say that “yes“ to both, but….I think small business owners can learn and do SOME local search marketing themselves but I do not think it is realistic that EVERYONE can do it alone.
I know a number of small business owners that have taken charge of their online marketing and are doing well. It has not been easy for them and has taken years to get where they are today.
As I stated above there are a number of things small business owners can do to help out their cause online but with the search engines constantly changing and updating themselves even those involved with search marketing can have a hard time keeping up.
Ok, so you want to try your hand at doing some online local search marketing? Where do you begin? What is important in local search? If you have the time, head over to David Mihm’s world famous Local Search Ranking Factors posting on his site. The 2010 version, has just come out. For the last few years, he has asked a number of search marketers their thoughts and experiences in the local online market and has summarized the results. It is a very well done and through review, so see what the experts (and yours truly LOL) think is important in local search rankings.
Once you have read that, then I will have some more goodies for you.
More Local Search Presentations
In addition to Mike, Martijn Beijk also presented at SMX London. Below is his presentation.
I contacted Martijn about his presentation and asked him what was the key point(s) that he would share. His reply, “Most important thing is that you need to track as much as possible. For all else, you will have to use an attribution model that fits your business.”
Martijn also was featured in a podcast over at Webmasterradio, Using Local Search back on May 4th. Yesterday, May 25th, they had a podcast reviewing SMX London. So if you have a few minutes check them out.
Analytics for Local Search
My good buddy, Mike Belasco, founder and director of search marketing of seOverflow, recently gave a presentation at SMX Advanced London 2010 on analytics and local search.
Mike has been in the local search arena for some time, so when he talks, people should listen. LOL I found his presentation well done and should be easy to follow. If you have read Mike previous articles online, some of this info should be familiar. Enjoy
Just when I thought it was safe…
Yes I am still alive. Yes I have not been very active here. Yes I am a loser!
What is going on? In general the economy. The economy is hitting different sectors, locations, etc differently. From what I have seen, here in Augusta GA, a small market, businesses are not very proactive when it comes to Internet Marketing. Despite my best efforts, folks are still very hesitant to venture online and if they were online, they are backing off. I have lost a good number of clients simply because they are folding up their online efforts since they are not seeing results. Now am I doing a bad job. No (imho). LOL
Seriously when money gets tight, the natural instinct is to pull things in closer. Also in a smaller marketing, local search has not reached its potential nor does it seem to have the same impact it does in the larger city. This does not mean it is a waste of resources; online marketing does involve some financial commitment.
So what have I been doing? Working other jobs. I have a ton of material to talk about here and review but there are only so many hours in the day and one has to sleep. Well tonight I was going to getting moving on it. So I decided to update Wordpress but something went wrong and killed the site. I was able to restore the theme, posts, etc, but all my widgets were killed, as was my blogroll. I just spent the last 2 hours trying to fix it all back up. If you see any links missing, that I should have, let me know.
Just when I thought it was safe to blog again…looks like most everything is back the way it was or at least close. LOL I will be back.. thanks for your patience
Local Search Interviews
Hope everyone is having a great weekend. Sorry for the lack of posting-simply not enough time in the day. Despite my lack of writing, local search is moving forward at full speed. Today, I wanted to direct your attention to a new blog that I found: Niftymarketing.com Mike Ramsey has some good info over there. He recently did 4 interviews with some big names in local search. If you have a few minutes, head over and see what is being said.
Local Search Talk Series Part 1: Miriam Ellis Interview
Local Search Talk Series Part 2: Dev Basu Interview
Local Search Talk Series Part 3: Matt McGee Interview
Local Search Talk Series Part 4: Chris Silver Smith Interview
Local Search Talk Series Part 5: Ed Reese Interview
I enjoy always spending some time hearing what others are saying.
Play Ball
Well tomorrow, baseball season begins. I am a lifelong baseball fan. I have been amazed how I can remember team lineups, batting averages, etc from years gone by but I can’t remember what we had for dinner yesterday. LOL
For the past 3 seasons, I have run a fantasy baseball league for fellow web marketers. It has been a lot of fun and a neat way to follow our national past time. Since we are starting tomorrow, I wanted to introduce this years managers:
Team Name, Manager, Twitter Name
Boston Hard Heads, Ben Saren, @bsaren
Canseco Link Juice, Gib Olander, @golander59
Dial9 4LongDistance, Steven Meyers, @steviemeyers
Metropolitans, Larry Sullivan, @l_sullivan
Moustache Rides, Bobby Leland, @bleland
Pilgrims, Tim Dineen, @TimDineen
Rankers, Matt Crouch, @theMattCrouch
The Ripper’s, Todd Salerno, @tsalerno28079
Thanks guys and good luck!
