Category : local search marketing

Don’t waste money on advertising – Good Local Marketing Advice

Posted by Jan at 3:54 pm

Invest in marketing

As you develop your 2010 budgets, what are your plans regarding your
marketing and advertising…and why?

So often we talk with business owners who have spent thousands of
dollars on yellow pages, banner ads, radio, newspapers and other
forms of advertising. In most cases, they bought the ad because the
sales person was very convincing and it sounded like a good idea at
the time. However, they often feel like they never saw a return on their
investment and are then hesitant to try other methods of advertising.
Which is good!

What?

Yes, it’s true. For most small and medium sized businesses, advertising
is not very effective.  Of course, there are exceptions, but in most cases,
developing smart marketing campaigns is the way to go for smaller
companies.  Large companies can advertise because they have the budgets
to buy the frequency and combinations to reach huge audiences. For example,
Coca-Cola advertises on billboards, radio, tv, in magazines & newspapers, etc.
Obviously, advertising works for them: they are the most recognized brand in
the world.

With advertising, it is very difficult to calculate specifically what is generating
new revenues for you. However, with marketing you can easily see what’s
working, what isn’t and quickly make changes to be more effective.

Marketing includes your email campaigns, direct mail (postcards and letters),
coupons, and even your SEO and social media campaigns.  Marketing allows
you to segment your audience so that different types of prospects receive
messages that will be informative, interesting, and relevant to them. You can
also include a ‘call to action’ which will help you to see how effective a particular
campaign is.  If you’re getting ho-hum results, it’s not very difficult or expensive
to change the message or the call to action.

So as you put your budgets together for next year, ask yourself if you will be
spending your money on advertising or investing it in marketing?

*****

Please keep The Surfside Group (TSG) in mind whenever you or your Clients
want to GROW a business!

TSG has been in the business of growing Client’s companies since 1997. The
focus of our practice is to identify, recommend and implement the proven,
“best practices” strategies, systems and solutions, that meet each Client’s
unique needs.

Our model also allows Clients to access the experience and expertise of our
business partners, put it to work for their venture, and get it right the first
time. This approach accelerates growth, avoids costly mistakes, lessens risk
for investors and increases the overall likelihood of your success!

Call us today and arrange an initial conversation as to how The Surfside Group
can help your organization to sell more, market better and GROW!

Here’s to your success!

Suzanne Foley

you can visit them at www.SurfsideGroup.com

Local Internet Marketing Research – Insider Google data released

Posted by Jan at 11:56 pm

Did you think your websites rank determined your local listing status?

Think again!

Tom Critchlow has done a great job of researching and distilling information about what makes local businesses rank with in the coveted Google 7 pack. Even if you aren’t an SEO junkie it is important information to know because it shows just how critical citations, reviews and proximity can be.

Getting the top spot in Google is always changing and shifting as they change and tweek thier algorithms. So research like this is invaluable in helping local search marketers understand the changes and hopefully – what is coming down the pike for Atlanta local SEO. The information shows that it isn’t just one thing like citations, review or tags, it seems tobe a combination of factors making each aspect  important. It might seem boring to the average business person but it gets alot more interesting when you reaslize that the difference means more calls, clients and sales to your local business!

Here is part of the article: to read the entire thing – click on his name below.

Google Local Research Data Released For Free

By: Tom Critchlow

Being a good SEO involves research. You need to be constantly pushing the envelope on the data that you gather, the insights that you gain and what recommendations you provide in terms of what works and what doesn’t.

What’s In The Data?

The link to the Google Docs file is here in case that’s easier for people.

It’s always nice to try and quantify exactly how important different factors are and do some analysis on which hypothesis are actually correct and which are just learned from the crowd and generally accepted as true.

I’ve got no ground-breaking insights in this post, but by analysing this data and other data I have come to the following conclusions:

1) – The raw number of reviews is not the only ranking factor.

We can see this by comparing for example the Renaissance Seattle Hotel and the Hilton Seattle Hotel – the Renaissance has WAY more reviews but still doesn’t rank.

2) – The raw number of citations is not the only ranking factor.

We can see this because the Grand Hyatt Seattle Hotel has an obscene number of citations compared to any other hotel in Seattle.

3) – The combined number of citations and reviews is not the only ranking factor

Although we’re getting warmer here (the sum column, E) this isn’t the whole story. If we look at the average sum of the top 7 ranking hotels we see that there are 3 hotels that don’t rank which have a higher sum than average – Renaissance, Grand Hyatt and the Crowne Plaza.

4) – Distance to centre (of Seattle) seems to play some part in the rankings

Looking at the data we see that the Edgewater Hotel has the highest combined total with many many reviews and a large number of citations but doesn’t rank number 1. Perhaps this is something to do with the fact that it’s a lot further out from the centre of Seattle than the other hotels – 1.3 miles to be precise, almost double the next furthest out ranking hotel at 0.7 miles (the Best Western).

5) Star ratings could well play a part in the rankings

Typically people have assumed that the raw number of reviews is more important than the sentiment of those reviews. However, this may not be true. Take a look at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel, a very low combined reviews and citations score but 4.5/5 stars in total of the reviews.

6) Quality of citation almost certainly plays a part

Firstly, assuming it didn’t – citation spam would be big business! But digging into the data I see that the best western has a very low combined score but has citations from sites such as the New York Times. Same again with the Hilton, which has some very strong citations from authority sites. This suggests to me that quality of citation is important, or perhaps the number of citation root domains? (like with links, perhaps multiple citations from one domain don’t count so much…)

Note 1

There is still speculation that the ‘regular’ SEO factors come into play such as pagerank or strength of domain. I’m not convinced this is a factor. After all, Google Local Listings are attached to an business name (and address/phone number), not a URL. Sometimes there isn’t even a URL for Google to attach to the listing. This makes me think that regular on-page SEO factors don’t carry that much weight. I’d like to hear other’s thoughts on this though?

Note 2

It’s worth noting that in the data you might like to exclude the Crowne Plaza Hotel from your data analysis – when gathering the data I see that it’s missing an image which may imply a wider issue about data perhaps? Not sure what a missing image means but I doubt it’s good news for the Crowne Plaza. This is backed up by the fact that it by rights (i.e. combined citations and reviews score) it should rank, but it doesn’t

Contained in the full spreadsheet is Google Local data for a particular search phrase “Hotels in Seattle”. The link to the Google Docs file is here in case that’s easier for people.

• Summary – The summary information which contains the hotels which rank for the phrase. The top 7 are the ones that I see in the Google Local one-box. The remaining 13 are the ones which rank once you click on the map to explore Google Local rankings. The data contained includes the number of reviews, the number of citations and the distance to the centre of Seattle for each hotel.
• Sheet 1-20 – These sheets list the complete individual citation list for the relevant hotel. So for the edgewater hotel which ranks 4th we click on sheet 4 and see the full list of citations for that hotel.

Note 3

In a usual analysis I would have looked at the category of the listings, I don’t think this is a factor in this case since it’s a competitive SERP and all the listings are likely tagged with the Hotel category.

To Conclude…

What can you do to get better rankings? Get more citations and reviews! The combined number of these seems reasonably well correlated with rankings once you factor in distance from centre etc. Especially if you can get positive reviews and citations from strong websites.

But also, to conclude, we see that the algorithms are somewhat complicated. I’ve still not completely figured out why some sites rank and why some don’t but I’m getting close. I’d love to hear analysis from other Google Local SEOs who’ve been digging around in data. I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours

Note: Thanks Tom! this was a very generous offer to share your reserach so freely, go to his blog here and join the conversation!

Atlanta Chiropractors – How many local customers are looking for you?

Posted by Jan at 10:22 pm

Back pain is a popular search: Atlanta Chiropractors need to know

I did some research today on chiropractors and noticed that when I just use “chiropractor” the 7 pack was 3 spots down and the rest of the page was directories. Yet when I added the modifier chiropractor “chiropractor Atlanta” the 7 pack was top and the rest of the page was organic websites. Another caveat is that the people int he 7 pack were different.

What this means for local Atlanta marketing is that the highest volume search term is already being returned with local results, and that even with a qualifier like “Atlanta” getting into the 7 pack will become essential for local Atlanta chiropractors.

Here are some search numbers for chiropractors in atlanta:

“chiropractors Atlanta” 1600 per month – costs $3.80 for PPC

“chiropractor atlanta”  1600 per month – costs $4.74 for PPC

“atlanta chiropractors” 720 per month – costs $4.74 for PPC

“chiropractors in atlanta ” 260 per month – costs $4.19 for PPC

these 4 terms = 4180 searches per month

“chiropractors” 450,000 per month

“chiropractor” 1,220,000 per month

“chiropracter” 27,000 per month

How much is a new client worth to Atlanta Chiropractors?

Lets say your average office visit is $50 and each clients normally comes 12x a year this means that a new client is worth aprox – $600 a year or more!

How cost effective is search engine optimization for local businesses like a chiropractor?

So over 8000 people a month are searching for chiropractor/s atlanta

The top 3 spots get 85% of all clicks on the page

The first listing gets 2/3 of those clicks

Just the numbers mam

Meaning the top 3 local listings can expect to get the lions share of traffic – clicks ( aprox – 4100)

The first listing will most likely get 2/3 of those ( aprox -  2600)

If only 10% of those people follow thru with an appointment that lucky Atlanta chiropractor could conceivably get over 260 new clients !

and if you remember that each client is worth a yearly $600 then that could be over $153,000 on new client business a year!. Now imagine getting over 200 new clients each month – could your chiropractic business even handle that?

and someone is already paying an average of $4 for PPC for those terms meaning getting organic results is equal to scarfing up over $16,000 in FREE traffic.

Heck even getting only 1% could mean 26 new clients in one month generating an added revenue of over $15,000.

Right now many local Atlanta businesses are struggling to get new clients, but the search numbers show that people are still out there shopping, even if more carefully. If you are willing to invest in your future – local search marketing could be the marketing solution for you.

Local SEO to do list:

I will be putting out a video soon that shows this research process and some other important things to consider for local businesses. If nothing else, go Google a term you think people are using to find your business ( NOT your company name) -See who comes up and where you stand. If the map comes up with names, click on the top two and see who is getting the lions share of traffic. THESE are your real competitors.

4 ways to boost Local Search results

Posted by Jan at 6:45 am

The Four Corners Of Local Search

I believe that these 4 topics clearly outline the critical areas of focus for local businesses needing local business marketing. Atlanta has  thousands of local businesses who need to get in front of local customers. What I believe is so important is cor Local Businesses to understand the correlation between the 4 areas and their core strengths as local merchants.

SEO – Site optimization
yes kind of dry and does not seem applicable to a local business person, but if your website is optimized for your products, services, brands, and specialties then yes – it si like having a very clear elevator speech, everybody ( including the SERPS) will know exactly what you do.

Citations:

This is sort of like getting a word of mouth mention. In your local community you know there are many ways to get people talking about your busienss ( in a positive way) Local citations are an online version of this.

Local Links
Getting local links is another way of showing you are involved in your community. The search engines like to see you hand out in local online neighborhoods and are well liked.

Reviews:

Whether you know it or not, the SERPs are serving up customer reviews of your business all over the place. If you don’t have any – its time to get some. Imagine coming to a page that has 6 listings 4 have reviews and 1 has 35 great reviews, who would you click on? Nuf said.

The original article appeared in Small Business trends Here is the full article

By Lisa Barone

One of the speakers, William Leake, identified four important areas for local search that I thought may be worth sharing.

On-Page Optimization

Just because you’re trying to rank locally, doesn’t make the SEO basics any less important. If you want to be seen as relevant and authoritative in your area, you still have to go through the steps to tell Google who you are and what your site is about.  That means using your City and State in your Title tag. It means using your physical address on page to help localize content. It means using tools like WordTracker and Google’s Keyword research tool to find out which terms searchers are using to find sites like yours, and then using them on page, in your internal linking structure, in headings, in Titles, in your alt text, etc.

A lot of this sounds like common sense, but too often we forget.

During the panel, fellow speaker Michael Dorausch joked about someone who once wanted to rank for [san diego chiropractor] but who NEVER included the phrase anywhere on his site. The mystery person ended up being David Klein – another one of the speakers on the panel. [He now ranks first for the query.]

Citations

Citations have become increasingly important over the past 6-8 months. So much so that you can’t even talk about local search without giving them proper credit. Citations are any mention of your business name and address on a Web page, regardless if a link is present. It’s generally thought that, with all things being equal, a site with more Web citations will rank higher than a site with fewer citations. The search engines use them to validate information that they may have about a business.

You want to look to get local citations from local directories, your local chamber of commerce, other Web sites in your city, local organizations, the Better Business Bureau, etc. An easy way to find directories focused on your area is to do a search for [your city + directory]. These kinds of citations will go a long way to help the search engines understand where your business is located.

Link Building

Links are obviously an important part to ranking, whether you’re trying to do it locally or on a national level. Longtime SEO veteran Bruce Clay spoke about local SEO myths during a video interview with WebProNews and talked about the importance of getting localized links – that is, links from people in your area. It’s just another way to show the search engines that you are an expert in your little corner of the world and that they should rank you for localized queries.

That may mean getting a link from your Chamber of Commerce, links from other businesses in the area, from local organizations, schools, etc. Speaker Darrin Clement really underscored the importance of creating your “neighborhood” whether that’s ID’d by radius, postal zip codes, points of interest or even socially based.

Reviews

Reviews are another area that’s really growing in importance – not just for SEO, but for every local business. As of right now, it doesn’t seem to matter whether all your reviews are positive and glowing or if you have some negatives ones in there (for ranking, anyway. For branding, get on those!).

You just have to have them – lots of them.

The search engines want to see lots of reviews from lots of difference sources as a way to legitimize your business. That means you should be actively soliciting reviews from happy customers. William suggested giving push cards to customers are they’re leaving in order to ask for a Yelp review, cherry picking positive customer reviews and managing the customer reviews that you do get. This is one area that you don’t want to leave to chance. You don’t just have to get reviews from customers, either. Consider asking partners and vendors to leave reviews about your business, as well. Anyone who has worked with your business.

Note: Thanks Lisa!

As you can see this is an awesome article that spells out the 4 areas of importance for local search engine optimization and how any local business can get more traction with thier local search marketing budget.

Local Search Success: Do not copy your compeditors online

Posted by Jan at 6:20 am

Note:  This is a really powerful article that spells it out for local businesses.

Be visible online or invisible Offline.

I believe that it is especially relevant to local Atlanta Businesses wanting to build their market visibility, a clear point here is to understand that more and more of your local customers are searching online and will do business with the online presence they feel most comfortable with. Does your local business have a web presence  and SEO strategy that connects with local customers?.

Here is the article:

A survey earlier this year showed what we have already seen and what we were suspecting: Finding Local Businesses through the Internet is increasing AND Local Businesses aren’t doing a lot to capture those searchers.

Local advertising has usually been the realm of newspapers, yellowpages and the vehicle the owner or service person drives.  Unless there’s a budget for it, radio and TV advertising are usually too expensive.

99% of business owners have a hand in their own marketing, but the frustration of what to do and when and where usually results in doing the easy things that take less time – such as saying “yes” to the yellow pages sales rep to run the same ad year after year.

51% believe their website is only fair in gaining new customers, yet only 9% of them are satisfied with their online marketing efforts. That means that 91% of your local search competitors aren’t doing everything they can to find customers online!

Let me throw this out: If more and more people are turning to researching your company online, they must NOT be going somewhere else.

I stated before that the yellow pages have their place, but a website becomes a salesperson that will work for you 24/7 – all you have to do is start making your site Search Engine Friendly.

there are now customers out there who will NOT do business with you if they can’t find you online

I’ll leave you with four thoughts on local SEO:

1. You Don’t Need a Slick Website

It’s true.  When people think about redesigning websites, they fear they have to outperform every other site, be slick, be innovative and be top notch.  Nope.  Though my web designer friends would kill me, you can still create a relatively simple site that will bring customers to you as long as it functional, answers what people are looking for, and is clear on who you are and how to contact you further.

2. Don’t Neglect Your Online-Researching Customers

It’s time to realize that there are now customers out there who will NOT do business with you if they can’t find you online.  People will judge your services and your credibility by what you say and don’t say on your site.

3. Don’t Advertise Through 3rd Party Online Ad Listings

If you do want to advertise online start here and educate yourself on the next steps to taking charge of your online marketing.  Too many “reps” are out there just to take subscription dollars without really educating you on what you are doing and what you can expect.

4. Define What Sets You Apart From Your Competition

If you want to stand out, you need to brand yourself with qualities that will shame your competition.  The right keywords and phrases built into your website will make a world of difference where your competition won’t do anything.

Your goal is to be where your competition isn’t.  You’ll notice that you are starting to upset the waters when they start mimicking you.  It may seem like they’re going to try to kick you in the butt, but as an elderly local businessman put it “the only way they can kick you in the butt is from behind.”

Note:

I especially agree with Eric on the aspect that local businesses biggest advantage lies in being where your cusotmers are and repsonding to their changing needs. I see more opportnities for business growth for business with Atlanta Search optimization with a local focus.

Local Search means Targeted Marketing for you

Posted by Jan at 11:46 pm

Local Search = Targeted Geography, Customers & Behavior

Do you want your business to rank well in Google, Yahoo and Bing with a quality local business listing? Local Search marking, Geo Mapping and targeted customer profiles can put your Atlanta business in front of throngs of  local customers who are online and searching for your wares right now.  We know local search, so you run the day to day operations while we bring you more local customers - it’s that simple.

Did you know… that over 2 billion local online searches are performed each month? 60% of searchers online looking for local businesses think that the top results are most relevant. 25% don’t want to have to scroll down. 90% of searches  are for keywords NOT related to your business name. 54% of internet users have thrown away the phone book.

Online IS where your customers are:

And you want to be!  In order to be successful with local search your business information should show up in multiple online venues – from Google to Kudzu. Local Customers expect you to be there and information to be correct, relevant and updated. (even if they already know you exist) With local search engine marketing you can target specific geographic areas, cities, neighborhoods, social groups or specific buying habits. We make sure your customers are continually directed towards your business information no matter where they look.