Archive for the ‘Local SEO’ Category

Five Web Marketing Trends for 2011

Thursday, January 6th, 2011

Now that we’re at the beginning of 2011, you might be looking to update your web marketing to make your organization more viable online in the coming year. From social media to local SEO, here are the hottest trends in the Internet marketing forecast for 2011:

Local SEO

For any business that depends mostly on a local customer base, local SEO has always been important. But, with Google’s major rehaul of its local search program in 2010, local SEO is more of the essence than ever. Google Place listings, city/county pages, and locally geared social media campaigns are just a few ways to attract more local customers.

Social Media

Being on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media isn’t just something that “couldn’t hurt”; having a presence on social media is becoming vital to staying competitive. According to studies, most online users are also social media users. Moreover, the typical social media user spends several hours of their time every month on social media. So why not tap into this worthwhile, growing market?

Mobile Search

As an increasing number of people are browsing the web through their mobile devices, being optimized for mobile search is becoming more and more essential. Do you have a mobile-friendly website? Can customers accessing your website from a mobile device clearly see your call-to-action? If the answer to either of these questions is no, you need to strongly consider making your website to the growing wave of mobile users.

Video Marketing

From commercials to how-to videos, adding video to your web marketing is a great way to connect with customers and increase conversions. In the U.S., online users watch more videos online than they conduct searches. To boot, videos are wonderful for SEO as they are 50 times more likely to get you on the first page of Google than text pages.

Online Deals

In 2010, we saw the rise of online coupon with deal-of-the-day websites like Groupon and LivingSocial spreading like wildfire. And now with Facebook Deals and Yelp Deals, online deals are becoming a more feasible option for all sorts of organizations. Offering online deals are a terrific way for businesses to inform and, better yet, entice potential clientele. After all, who couldn’t use a coupon?

CyberMark can help you add these trends in your Internet marketing. Whether you want to make your website more mobile-friendly, reach more local customers online  or start a social media campaign, contact us today.

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Posted in Groupon, Local SEO, Mobile marketing, Social Media, Video Marketing | No Comments »

Google Reveals New Place Search

Friday, November 5th, 2010

Last month, Google announced Place Search, a new way of displaying search results for local businesses. Place Search makes Place Pages, local business profiles with basic information such as address, telephone number and official website as well as both Google and third-party reviews, figure more prominently in Google search results. A dramatic change, Place Search is likely to have a considerable impact on local search engine optimization.

Before Place Search, when users googled a place, relevant local search results were presented in a “7-pack,” or seven basic listings for area businesses that most closely matched the search Accompanying the 7-Pack was a Google Map that showed the locations of these listings, which displayed at the top of search results. Here’s an example of what the 7-pack looked like using the search term “personal injury lawyer San Diego, CA”:

google 7-pack local search image

Now that Place Search is in effect, when users search for a keyword that Google’s algorithm detects as a regional keyword, Google automatically switches to Places search. In Places search, Google shows only local results, which are tagged with a red push pin. Each local search result shows the location’s basic identifying information, including street address, phone number and official website, with related results from third-party websites clustered beneath. For instance, here’s what pops up when you search for “personal injury lawyer san diego ca” today:

google place search image

Here’s a closer look at a single Place search result. Notice that this listing presents much more information than the bare-bones 7-pack listings.

Google Place Page Search Result

If it’s not apparent whether or not the user is searching for a place, Google will display a combination of local and regular web results. For example, a search for the ambiguous term “desert” from a computer with a Phoenix IP address turns up this screen:

Google local and web results screenshot

These search results are a mix of Place pages indicated with a red pushpin and regular web results such as the desert Wikipedia entry and a web page about desert biodomes.

Google’s new way of displaying local SERPs is likely to lead to a major change in local online marketing for regional businesses. Before the advent of Place Search, the goal was to land in the 7-Pack. Now, the focus will probably shift to making sure Place Pages are informative and fully fleshed out as well as getting links from third-party websites that will appear in the clustered results, such as Yelp, Citysearch, Insiderpages, Urbanspoon, TripAdvisor, Yahoo Local and Judysbook.

Place Search isn’t available in mobile search yet, but will be available soon.

As Google just launched Place Search, there are likely to be more changes in recent months. CyberMark will research these changes and their effects to help you adjust your local SEO campaign for the best results. To discuss how we can optimize your business online for Place Search, please contact us today.

Posted in Google, Google Places, Local SEO | No Comments »

Groupon Launching Do-it-Yourself Deal Platform

Monday, October 25th, 2010

Groupon, the burgeoning deal-of-the-day website, is preparing to test out Groupon Stores, a new self-service platform for businesses looking to promote specials. The new feature will also include elements of social media. Customers will be able to follow businesses to find out about specials.

Groupon has this to say about its newest platform:

“Groupon Stores is a place where your favorite, local businesses can sign up, create a store page, and post deals at anytime for you to see. Welcome to the future of Groupon.”

Here’s an example of a Groupon Stores page:

Groupon Stores image

Groupon Stores does offer businesses, especially smaller, local businesses, an opportunity to take advantage of Groupon’s popularity without having to wait for months. Also, as Groupon only chooses one out of every eight businesses for deals, Groupon Stores is a way for all businesses to share deals as they become available with customers.

Presently, only a few select merchants are testing out Groupon Stores. Stay tuned for more information on signing up for this new platform.

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Posted in Groupon, Local SEO, Social Media | No Comments »

New Google Places Redesign Features Separated Reviews

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

Last week, Google Places unveiled redesigned Place Pages, which are local search profiles linked to Google Maps. These newly designed Place Pages display Google user reviews and reviews from third-party websites such as TripAdvisor and UrbanSpoon separately. Indicated with a favicon, reviews from third-party websites are featured in a section titled “Reviews from around the web” along with charts that present the gist of the reviews. As an example, here’s the Place Page for Green Restaurant in Scottsdale, AZ:

Google Place Pages Reviews image

As Google said about the new “Reviews from around the web” section on its LatLong blog, “This section highlights reviews from a variety of sources, and helps you identify the sites that have high-quality, relevant information about a particular place. In many cases, this newly formatted section also provides a quick summary of what you can expect to see, including the number of reviews from each source and the average star rating that reviewers on that site gave a place.”

Google continued with, “We hope these changes to the way reviews are organized help you discover the most useful information about the places you care about from a diverse set of sources and voices.

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Posted in Google, Google Places, Local SEO, Search Engines | No Comments »

Local Lure: Social Media Marketing for Local Businesses

Thursday, October 14th, 2010

online social media imageDoes your organization depend on local customers? If so, attracting area customers is crucial to the continuing success of your organization. With Internet marketing, you have many opportunities to raise awareness of your business among customers in the markets you most want to target. In Local Lure, our new blog series about local SEO, we talk about the ways you can gear your marketing to bring in more locals.

Social media marketing offers a terrific opportunity for local businesses to connect with local customers. According to a recent Nielsen study, the typical Internet user spends an average of about 25 percent of their time online using social networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook. In addition to making your business more visible to area customers, social media marketing can make it easier to keep customers up-to-date on the latest company news and even help improve your SEO. We recommend the following social media sites for building a local following:

Facebook

The most visited website on the Internet, people of all ages, races, ethnicities and income levels use Facebook to connect with others. Given its popularity, more and more businesses are finding that having a Facebook page is not only a good idea but a necessity. Offering a large toolbox of applications and features, it’s easy to create a customized Facebook page for your business to reach out to more locals.

Twitter

Much like Facebook, Twitter is on the rise with people of all walks of life. With a Twitter page, you can send out short updates to current and prospective customers in your area.

Yelp

Yelp, a user review and local search site, is popular with influential consumers, especially in major markets. Each month, more than 30 million users go to Yelp to find businesses in their area – from restaurants and shops to plumbers and lawyers. If your business is already listed on Yelp, go ahead and claim your listing to respond to customer reviews both publicly and privately, add bios and about us statements, photos and other informative content.

MerchantCircle

MerchantCircle is a social network for businesses. Through MerchantCircle, businesses can connect to area customers as well as other businesses. By claiming your MerchantCircle listing, businesses can customize their listing layout, add links to their website, blog and other social media sites and post pictures.

Groupon

Groupon features one-day-only specials (i.e. $50 for $100 worth of clothing) in each major market. In order to take advantage of that coupon, customers must purchase that coupon for its face value in advance. In addition to receiving money from promotions upfront, being featured on Groupon helps businesses of all sizes inform local customers about their business.

If you’d like to know more about how social media marketing can have a positive effect on your local business, contact us at CyberMark. We can create a custom social media strategy for your business that will help you reach more customers in your area – and beyond.

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Posted in Facebook, Groupon, Local Lure, Local SEO, MerchantCircle, Social Media, Twitter, Yelp | No Comments »

Search Round-Up: September 24, 2010

Friday, September 24th, 2010

Search engine news imageEvery week, our search news round-up brings you the latest web marketing developments in everything from search engine optimization to pay-per-click advertising. Here are the biggest stories this week:

Wikipedia Introduces Article Assessment Feature

Online collective encyclopedia Wikipedia is testing an article assessment tool as part of its Public Policy Initiative to ensure higher quality site content. With the new feature, readers can rate articles on several criteria, including sourcing, completeness, neutrality and readability. (Read More)

Google Places/Maps Allows Rich Snippets

The Google LatLong Blog and Google Webmaster Center announced yesterday that Google Maps/Places can now support rich snippets of data, including reviews, people and events, to make local search results more contextual. (Read More)

Google Handing out Mobile Devices to U.S. Businesses to Encourage Check-ins, Reviews

Google is reportedly distributing 8 million custom mobile devices to U.S. small businesses. These devices, which can be used by customers to check in to, rate and write reviews of businesses, are designed to contend with popular check-in services on Foursquare, Yelp and Facebook. (Read More)

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Posted in Google, Google Places, Local SEO, Search Round-Up, Social Media, Wikipedia | No Comments »

Google Places/Maps Allows Rich Snippets

Thursday, September 23rd, 2010

The Google LatLong Blog and Google Webmaster Center announced yesterday that Google Maps/Places can now support rich snippets of data, including reviews, people and events, to make local search results more contextual.

Google Maps rich snippets image

The rating and price range in the above image are examples of rich snippets, which are labeled using structured HTML.

Google said the “use of Rich Snippets can help people find the web pages you’ve created that may reference a specific place or location.” Created using structured HTML, Google added that rich snippets will help “properly classify your site, recognize and understand that its content is about a particular place, and make it discoverable to users on Place pages.”

Although people can easily distinguish between different types of content, computers cannot differentiate without some kind of context in the mark-up. Essentially, structured mark-up labels website data to provide more precise meaning for search engines. Using structured mark-up helps resolve what search engines might see as imbiguities.

To optimize content for a richer local search, organizations must:

For more information about rich snippets and local search, visit http://maps.google.com/help/maps/richsnippetslocal/.

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Posted in Google, Google Places, Local SEO | No Comments »

Local Lure: PPC Campaigns

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010

local PPC imageDoes your organization depend on local customers? If so, attracting area customers is crucial to the continuing success of your organization. With Internet marketing, you have many opportunities to raise awareness of your business among customers in the markets you most want to target. In Local Lure, our new blog series about local SEO, we talk about the ways you can gear your marketing to bring in more locals.

For local businesses looking for a quick and effective way to attract area customers, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising offers a terrific solution, particularly when coupled with organic SEO tactics. PPC ads list almost immediately, drawing in potential customers while waiting for the effects of organic SEO to take hold. Also, the success (or lack thereof) of PPC ads can help you better determine which keywords are the most successful at pulling in customers.

To develop a successful PPC ad, you must use keyword phrases that are popular enough with searchers but specific enough to bring in targeted leads. Including regions you want to reach with your PPC ad helps strengthen your efforts to inform potential area customers about your organization. For example, say you operate a Greek restaurant in Phoenix. By using the keyword phrase “Phoenix Greek restaurant,” your ad will appear next to search results when people in the Phoenix area search for nearby Greek restaurants. If you decided to leave out the city name and just go with the phrase “Greek restaurant,” your ad will appear in search results all over the nation. However, with a phrase as general as Greek restaurant, your ad will be subject to considerably more competition and, therefore, likely to get pushed to the wayside.

In addition, your localized PPC ad will reach more local searchers regardless of whether or not they include specific geographic information in their search queries. In order to produce more relevant search results for users, Google gleams users’ location through their IP addresses to present searchers with local ads related to their searches. For example, if someone in Phoenix searches for “Greek restaurant,” your “Phoenix Greek restaurant” ad would show up in search results.

CyberMark can help you create and execute winning PPC ads for major search engines on local as well as national levels. We can recommend keyword phrases to use to bring in the most targeted leads to your organization. We’ll also monitor and analyze the effectiveness of your campaigns and make the necessary adjustments.

Contact Lisa DeVoe, our CPC manager, to discuss in detail how a local PPC campaign can positively impact your business.

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Posted in Local Lure, Local SEO, PPC | No Comments »

Local Lure: Google Places

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010

Does your organization depend on local customers? If so, attracting area customers is crucial to the continuing success of your organization. With Internet marketing, you have many opportunities to raise awareness of your business among customers in the markets you most want to target. In Local Lure, our new blog series about local SEO, we talk about the ways you can gear your marketing to bring in more locals.

One of our first recommendations to local businesses looking to gain the attention of area customers is to add or claim their business’ Google Places listing. Previously known as Google Local, Google Places displays local business search results in Google Maps, representing each business with a red icon. By clicking on an icon, users can view more information about a business, from street addresses and phone numbers to customer reviews and coupons, on their Google Places listing. Google Places listings provide a valuable opportunity for local businesses to let prospective customers know about their business.

Google Places listing

CyberMark International's Google Place listing

Once you have added or claimed your Google Places listing by going through a short verification process, be sure to fill out your listing with as much information as possible. The more information you provide in your Google Places listing, the simpler you make it for potentially interested customers to find out about your business. You can add the following information to your Google Places listing:

  • Company name
  • Address (your business’ physical address or service area)
  • Phone number
  • Website
  • Up to 5 categories that describe your business
  • Hours of operation
  • Payment options
  • Up to 10 photos or images that depict your business
  • Up to 5 of your company’s YouTube videos
  • Coupons for your business
  • Custom fields such as “Cuisine” or “Nearby Attractions”

As with Google.com search, Google Maps ranks Google Places listings by using an algorithm. This algorithm considers many factors, including how many reviews a business has received. Although Google Places displays reviews from third-party websites such as Insider Pages, UrbanSpoon and Zagat, you can help your Google Place listing rank higher by encouraging your customers to post a review of your business in Google Maps. You can do this by including a link to your Place listing on your website or your e-mail newsletter and simply asking customers to describe their experience with your business.

At CyberMark, we would be happy to help you add or claim your Google Places listing(s). As Google Places experts, we can help you avoid penalties setting up your Google Places profile improperly. Just contact us, and we’ll help you build a Google Places listing that will get you noticed among area customers.

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Posted in Google, Local Lure, Local SEO | No Comments »

Local Lure: Regional Pages and Websites

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

Regional pages and websites imageDoes your organization depend on local customers? If so, attracting area customers is crucial to the continuing success of your organization. With Internet marketing, you have many opportunities to raise awareness of your business among customers in the markets you most want to target. In Local Lure, our new blog series about local SEO, we talk about the ways you can gear your marketing to bring in more locals.

Regional pages, web pages geared toward certain cities, neighborhoods or other significant areas to your organization, are a great way to gain the attention of more locals searching for products and services related to what your business offers. A regional page includes region-specific text to increase the odds of your website appearing in localized search results. For example, if you owned a dry-cleaning business in Los Angeles, you would want a Los Angeles web page with phrases such as “Los Angeles dry cleaning services” or “L.A. dry cleaner.”

We recommend adding regional pages for each area you want to target. In this example, we would also recommend adding regional pages for major cities close to Los Angeles, including West Hollywood, Glendale, Burbank, Culver City and Santa Monica in efforts to attract the attention of potential dry cleaning customers there as well.

If you’re looking for an aggressive way to market to a particular area, you could even add a regional website, an entire website geared toward a certain city, neighborhood, state or region.

At CyberMark, we can advise you on adding regional pages and websites, as well as other ways to boost your local SEO. Our staff will work with you to determine which markets you most want to target, and our text writers can develop compelling and informative region-specific text. To find out more about how regional pages and websites can positively affect your business, contact us.

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Posted in Local Lure, Local SEO | No Comments »