Archive for google local search
Google Screwed Up Big Time With Buzz “Disengage” Button
Posted by: | CommentsGoogle is not really clear about social media and building community as they move forward with Buzz. First they exposed users’ contacts and had a PR mess on their hands resulting in a quick repair job both on your Google profile and to their Gmail pages. Now they have a bigger one on their hands as users try to self-select out of Buzz…
- You can mute it
- You can turn it off (but don’t do it yet! Explanation to follow)
Buzz is in its infancy and will change as it goes through the typical growing pains of a new social tool. However, this does not explain why they have decided to take punitive measures against users who wish to disengage from Buzz. If you are currently using Buzz and want to ‘turn it off’ you go to the bottom of your Gmail page:
Then you are re-directed to your Gmail settings. This is where things get tricky. Notice that if you turn off Buzz completely you also get your Google profile removed. Yikes!
Turn off Buzz and Google deletes your Google Profile
What are they thinking? So this appears to be a punitive response for leaving their social network. Hmmm…how anti-social! If you lose your Google profile you lose some SEO but if you have left any reviews on businesses do those disappear too? And what about the book reviews a user might have posted or what if they have a local business listing attached to that Gmail account and that profile…does it impact that as well? It is not clear what is lost other than your Buzz account and your profile. So will they next require any business listed in Google Local Listings to join Buzz? This is all supposition and a bit Orwellian; however, it does make a new user pause and think twice about signing up for Gmail and Buzz.
Punishing users for leaving a social network is never a good thing. It will certainly make new adopters angry if they sign up and this rule is not clearly spelled out in the terms and conditions. What is most interesting about this little glitch in their process is that there has been little to no outcry either on Buzz or any other social network about this removal of Google Profiles for disengaging Buzz. Perhaps what is worse is that while I posed this question twice on Twitter no one from Google must be monitoring their brand name as not one response has come back to me.
Hey Google! Are you out there? Hope you are listening!
Geo-targeted Location Listings – More than Just Getting Listed on Mobile Apps
Posted by: | CommentsA terrific recent post on Mashables addresses the rapid expansion and explosion of location based mobile apps and the importance of businesses taking advantage of getting listed on them. While that is a critical element in any business’ online presence the article omitted two pieces that are just as important and relevant to mobile and hyper-local marketing: Local Search Listings and Listing Optimization.
Huh? Seems like mobile local app listings and local search are one and the same?! Yes and no. Twitter, Brightkite, FourSquare, and others all have a geographic location tagging ability but they don’t get you correctly listed in Google Maps or Bing Local or Yahoo or any of the other city search tools necessarily. For a brick and mortar business, exact location on local search listings is really important! Getting listed on the first page of local search listing is even more important! If your customers can’t find you, you won’t be in business long.
So how do you land on that first page of local search? Google is the first place to start creating a local business presence on line. It’s free, easy create, and is posted immediately upon phone verification (some instances it requires a pin code sent via the US Mail). What’s not to love? Your business does not even have to have a website to be included, only a telephone number and a physical street address. Optimization for first page results requires a bit of effort in some service industries but for the most part this is an untapped arena for competition. There are many free local search listings (some with an up-sell version) so there is no need to pay to be included when the Big Boys (Google, Bing, Yahoo, City Search, Info USA, etc) all have free local listing centers. It only costs your time. Get Found Now – Local Search Secrets Exposed is a useful prescriptive book for walking you through the process of creating a highly optimized listing on each of these sites and more.
Another interesting piece of the Google local search puzzle is the new unique bar code sticker business’ can now apply for and get with a Google Local Business listing to display in their store front (whatever it might be).
To take advantage of this program customers with a camera with the ability to scan a bar code are are taken to the business’ Google Places listing to view coupons or other offers the business may make available currently.
There are additional elements to consider when creating a plan for local listing inclusions. One that is often overlooked by businesses is getting placed accurately as a ‘point of interest’ (POI) on GPS listings. Most businesses are not aware of this simple but growing element of search. With more and more GPS based apps appearing, now more than ever this is growing market share to dominate easily. NAVTEQ and TeleAtlas are free GPS mobile locator services. Mobile search capabilities are only going to get more powerful so businesses should have an optimized local search profile and maintain it fairly regularly.
Having a Web presence that you can control to some extent is becoming a larger part of business success. Getting found is the first part of search but then keeping the conversation going is about you and your products and services is just as critical now, more than ever. Create the local presence then continue feeding and nurturing a Web presence with Twitter, Four Square, et al.
Differentiation is what makes it easy to like you and want to do business with you…but first they have to find you! Create a local presence and watch your business grow.
Flowtown – Where Social Meets Email Marketing
Posted by: | Comments
I recently co-authored a book on Local Search called Get Found Now Local Search Secrets Exposed and became fascinated with how local search was adding social elements. With the advent of user reviews directly on the local search site as well as aggregating reviews from other sites like Yelp and Judy’s book. Social has now become a critical element of optimizing your business for Local SEO. Suffice it to say I am looking at all things related to Geo-data as they relate to local search optimization.
Recently I discovered a really interesting tool from Flowtown that examines business communication channels with their consumer audience and then translates that information to identify not on their email address but their name, age group, gender, occupation, location, influence, and every social network they belong to (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN, Amazon, Flickr, Stumbleupon, and Myspace) and participate in personally or professionally. Essentially, they have harnessed social networking and turned it into social email. The endless possibilities of social media marketing make it possible for a business to make just about anything happen on line when it comes to identifying consumers and their personal preferences in the market place converting them into social marketing dollars.
Flowtown is an incredibly innovative tool that allows B2B’s and B2C’s to target email campaigns via Mail Chimp to clients with the firm knowledge of their social behaviors and influences as well as their IP address (which reveals their current geolocation). This knowledge gives a business a ton of specific information for crafting a more targeted highly focused campaign based on demographic and social information of users that provide enhanced social email marketing.
With Flowtown’s use of Klout’s influence calculator, a user will know exactly who you as a business need to reach out and touch to get noticed and get people talking about your brand and your products/services. You can target particular customers by geographics, by which social networking site they hang out on, and by the level of influence they have on others where ever it is they hang out.
To test Flowtown the first 50 or so imports cost nothing as do the first 250 emails per month. To maximize your contacts is quite reasonable ($14.99 for unlimited contacts and up to 10,000 emails/month). With a minimal investment now you have not only a useful email marketing channel but an influence tracking device for everyone in your network. You can analyze their social profile, find out who chats with whom where as well as their other favorite social network channels. Real customer intelligence is now at your fingertips for a song!
Buzz Goes Mobile
Posted by: | CommentsGoogle has integrated Buzz onto its mobile home page in the top right corner of the display. Download the mobile Buzz webapp at buzz.google.com. To post just click on the Buzz icon and magically it not only lets you post it can not only tell physically where you are but also identify if you are at work, home, a café, etc. Wow…Orwellian! That has some implications and brings up some real safety concerns for some and a ‘cool’ for others. One young Buzz user quipped, “What if I am on the john at home, will it know that?” Well….not yet! But give it time…but what the heck are you doing using your droid on the toilet anyway? In a way this scares me.
The thing that most users seem to totally miss the boat in their assessment of Buzz is Google’s integration between local search, real time, and their mobile device. On the Droid, according to Joe Hafner of Ocho Consulting, “Buzz is drastically ahead of its competitors on this one integration making it a trend to watch in 2010-2011.”
An interesting real life search scenario happened to me today as I was perusing my Google Alerts from my Gmail account. I set up a Google alert for Cheddr Media so I can watch their growth and lead up to launch of their new product 20 Decibels a Twitter campaign management and analytics tool http://www.20dbs.com/…so imagine my surprise when I clicked on one of the alert items and it was a Buzz stream between two people I don’t know and have never emailed! Now take that one step further…it is searchable? Indexable? You can have a public Buzz string using keywords to drive traffic and more SEO possibilities!
Leo Chen – Google Profile
Leo Chen – Cheddr Media, Inc. – About me: Co-founder & COO of Cheddr Media,
Inc. – Companies I’ve worked for: Lake Partners Strategy Consultants.
<http://www.google.com/profiles/leo.hj.chen>
From his profile I went straight to his public Buzz stream…Cool…but also makes it obvious how we need to make sure we don’t have public record chats accidentally on Buzz! So I eavesdropped on his Buzz and now find him to be another cool Cheddr guy. Wonder if he minded?
Now if you are a real technophobe and want to turn off Google Buzz simply go to the footer of your Gmail page. There you’ll see an option that says, “Turn off buzz.”
Introduction to Local Search Engine Listings
Posted by: | CommentsRanking well within the search engines can mean the difference of having a extremely fast growing business and one that is struggling to stay a float. Just look at this following chart that I found on SEOSearcher.com.
If the first two links of the page get about 70% of the clicks what would having a first page listing at the top of page for your main GEO targeted keyword phrases mean to your business?
How to get to Page 1 Fast!
One of the fastest ways to get to Page 1 at the top of the page in the major search engines is by taking advantage of Local Search Listings. The search engines offer free local listings to any small business (regardless of whether you have a website or not). With very little SEO efforts your business can quickly rank for your major GEO keyword phrase on the 1st Page of the major search engines.
Now with blended search or sometimes referred to as ‘universal search’, where the local listings are appearing on the first search engine results page (SERP) for even broad term keywords this has become a standard SEO strategy.
However, do not be fooled by some companies who want to charge you a monthly on-gong fee to submit you to these FREE local listings. It’s totally not necessary to pay that kind of dough for that service when you can do it yourself in about 10 minutes.
Below are a series of videos that will teach you everything you need to know about submitting to these local directories.
Google Local Business Center
Be sure to check to see if your business is already listed with Google Local Business Center before registering a new one. This will prevent you from having a double listing. Now a ton of business’s will discover that there is a listing in Google’s LBC for them already (due to the fact that Google does pull data from some of the phone companies).
It is very important that you claim your listing because if you don’t it says “is this you..? claim your listing” and when it says that, it promotes an element of miss-trust. Once you claim your listing that goes away. Another reason to claim your listing is then you have control over the information being displayed which can be very powerful in gaining better rankings and instrumental in turning internet surfers into offline buyers.
8 Additional Google Local Listing Tips:
- Address: Make sure your address listed is closest to the core of the city you want your listing to show. If you are a contractor or work out of your home and your home address is not in that city then you may want to get a P.O. Box that has address and ZIP/Postal Code that correlates to the city core, otherwise you may find your listing not ranking as well as you’d like. NOTE: Make sure your contact address is consistent across all the web. Don’t have different sources showing different address for your business.
- Category: Make sure you choose the most relevant category for you business in the ‘choose category’ section. Getting this wrong can cause your local listing not show for the GEO keyword terms you would like.
- Title/Business Name: Make sure your major keyword product/service is in the title (which is the business name section) however, I heed a WARNING: Do Not go too far with this because you don’t want to look like a spammer. Make it look nature and make it make sense for humans who are ultimately your true audience.
- Business Description: Make sure you have your product and/or service keywords listed in your business description. Now this is not as important as the Title, but it too is important. It is the equivalent of a website’s “meta description”.
- Reviews: Get reviews! Right now it doesn’t seem to matter whether the reviews are positive or negative, just having more reviews can get your local listings to rank better. Encourage your clients/customers to writer reviews. Offer something in return for reviews.
- Content/Media: Add rich media to your local listings. Add photos & video, etc. I not sure if it improves rankings in the local listings, but it can only help turn online browsers to offline buyers.
- Coupons: Use them. This can be what differentiates your business from other competition found in the local listings. Not offering a Google coupon is risking losing business to those businesses that are. It also gives you a great way to track your sales generated from your local listing on Google. NOTE: If you have coupons listed on other local listings make sure you make them different so you can track properly.
- Double Listings: Don’t do it and make sure you only have one. Currently spammers have not be banned from this, but it will hopefully happen one day soon and when it does you don’t want to lose your listing over something so ridiculous.
Yahoo Local Listings
MSN Local Listing
SEO & Additional Local Listing Tips
Did You Enjoy This Free Local Search Course?
If you enjoyed with this course we provided be sure to do us the favor of sharing it with all your friends. All your favorite social sites are listed below. Just click on the icon that represents your preferred social and let your friends know about this course.
http://www.smallbusinessonlinecoach.com/locallistings/
