This is a guest post by Emily Thompson, Online Marketing Coordinator for Kutenda.

Local search has quickly become one of the most cost-effective opportunities for businesses to connect with local prospects. Not only are you getting found by locals searching for YOUR products or services, but statistics show nearly 82 percent of local searches online result in further action: a phone call, site view, in store visit or immediate purchase.* (Source: TMP/comScore, October 2008)

Wondering how to tackle Local Search for your business?

There are several factors involved including optimizing your webpage content with geographically targeted keywords, and other on-page factors such as updating your title tags and meta data with geographic modifiers. When it comes to the off-page factors, the key element is your local business listing. You’re probably familiar with Google’s local results (deemed the “7-pack”) that often appear at the top of the search engine results page. Those listings are given prime real estate. Simply claiming or creating your business’ listing can bring a plethora of visitors to your website. The real goal, though, is to reach that “7-pack”.

Here’s five important tips you need to reach Google’s “7-pack:”

1. Choose the correct categories for your business. Google allows you to choose categories that apply to your company and these tend to be important factors within Google’s ranking process. Targeting these categories as closely as possible to your products and services can provide better results.
2. Attempt to get your listing 100% complete. A complete listing tells Google that you are adding more value for the user and Google is all about user experience! Add pictures, video, coupons, etc. to ensure all areas are filled in.
3. Keep your data up to date. Making updates to your listing helps Google ascertain that your business is relevant and valuable. It can be as simple as adding a new coupon or changing an image.
4. Use your local targeted term (city, metro area, etc.) within your description. This gives users and search engines the most content about you, so use it to your advantage. As with on-page content, make it natural and informative.
5. Encourage reviews on your listing. In certain industries, the number of reviews can mean the difference in getting to the top. Reviews provide credibility to the search engines, and the user, so gaining reviews for your listing can greatly benefit you. Try reaching out to happy customers and asking them to review your company today!

There you have it – 5 simple tips to help you achieve success with your business’ local listing. Have any tips from your experience with local listings? We’d love to hear them!

Emily Thompson is the Online Marketing Coordinator for Kutenda Internet Marketing Software. Kutenda offers an all-in-one online marketing toolset for small businesses.

Titles need to catchy and descriptive, obviously, but in today’s 140 character world, they also need to be shareable.  I run into titles all the time that I have to edit in order to share on Twitter – usually because they’re too long, but sometimes because they have too much extra “stuff”.  Here’s some tips for making your titles more shareable…

1. Descriptive – Many people share & see content on Twitter or Facebook and make snap decision whether it’s interesting based only on your title.  A good title accurately describes what the content is about.
2. Concise – A long title may be cute or funny, but you need to catch people’s attention in the first few words.
3. Less Than 100 Characters – I run into it all the time – titles that are longer than 140 characters, which means I have to do some editing.  Extra effort means people make just not bother.  Keep your titles under 100 characters to allow room for shortened URLs & retweets.
4. No Extra “Stuff” – Having the name of the site at the end of the title is understandable.  Adding a bunch of extra stuff (for keywords, etc.) is just annoying.
5. Same Title as Content – I see this occasionally, where the title of the page isn’t the same as the title of the content on the page – usually for SEO reasons.  Very annoying to people who want to share and to people who follow a link and find a different title.
6. A Couple Relevant Keywords – Including descriptive keywords is good (especially for people using searches), just make sure they’re concise and relevant (and not overdone).
7. Tips or How To – People like information they can quickly digest.  Titles with “tips”, Top # or “How to” grab attention (Thanks to Nikki Stephan for pointing this out)

What other tips do you have for making more shareable titles?

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Technorati tags: internet strategy marketing, social media, strategy, marketing, business strategy, business

This is a guest post by Michelle Strassburg, head of Sales and Marketing at Wood and Beyond.

The most important online marketing goal for any small business is to build its channel of organic web traffic. Organic web traffic relates to users finding your business when searching online through the natural search results. So why is it so important you ask? There are many reasons why higher search engine ranking matters, none more important than the fact that it’s free web traffic and users who found your site through the natural search results are more likely to buy a product or order a service. Before we dig deeper into the specifics of how to improve your organic ranking, know this: Unfortunately there are no shortcuts and the process of optimizing your site is a long process which along the way will work at times and won’t at other times.

Here are 5 search engine optimization tips For small businesses I’d recommend to start with:

1. Getting Your Pages Indexed – Before you have the opportunity to increase your ranking, you’ll need to get your pages indexed. This means getting your pages to appear in the search engine indexed and for the moment their ranking isn’t that important. To achieve this, consider creating an HTML site map which includes all your pages and updates each time you add or remove a page. Another useful type of site map to consider as an XML site map which the search engine look out for and again it should update each time a page is added or removed. If you don’t have means to create either, make sure you link internally between related pages so if the search engine found one page it is likely to therefore find the link to page. To check how many of your site pages are indexed on Google (for example), search for [site:your-site-name.com] and look at the number on the right.
2. Finding The Right Keywords – To help the engines understand what’s your business is all about, you’ll need to find and use certain keywords in certain areas of your site. Most likely in product and service descriptions. To find which keywords you’ll need to display on the site, I’d recommend using Google’s Keyword tool. Once you’ve narrowed down which keywords best describe your business you should also look at the number of estimated searches those words have each month and the number of other sites already ranking for that keyword. For example, you might find that it will be easier to rank higher for certain keyword which has less searches, but also fewer sites ranking for it.
3. Optimizing On-Site Metadata – Each page on your site should have unique page title and page description which best describes the content on the page. These are the two blocks of lines you see when searching online. Now that you have the keywords which you’d like to rank for, optimize each of your pages around one key term by placing it once in the metadata page title and in the page description. Don’t stuff those fields with many keywords as it won’t be effective and will look very spammy. To optimize the page title for Google, limited the page title to 70 characters and the page description to 140 characters.
4. Create Great Content – The search engines place huge weight on the level, freshness and quality of your on-site content when determining the overall ranking matrix. While on the surface it seems that bloggers or businesses offering services might find it easier to generate quality content, e-commerce sites can do the same in the shape of allowing product reviews, offering how-to guides or even sharing their knowledge on other sites. If you are unsure what to write about or what web users are likely to search for, consider using the the free Google trends tool for valuable insights.
5. Building Links – The number and quality of links pointing to your site is an important ranking factor. From the search engines point of view you can understand why. If you are offering quality services, great content and attractive price other sites will link to yours thereby indicating to the search engines that your website is worthy. To increase the number of links pointing to your site, consider writing articles, submitting your site to quality niche directories, asking your suppliers or even your family members for a link. While some services offer other less ethical means to increase the number of links, my suggestion is to build your links naturally so to avoid disappointment down the way.

I hope my optimization tips will point you in the right direction.

Michelle Strassburg is Head of Sales and Marketing at online wooden worktops vendor Wood and Beyond. Michelle has over 10 years experience managing online marketing.

(photo by LiveFromAmsterdam @ Flickr CC)

Technorati tags: pay-per-click advertising, internet advertising, internet marketing, search engine marketing, business, SEM, SEO, PPC, marketing

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WordStream offers a paid keyword and seo tool, which they’ve recently updated with some new features (integration with Google Analytics and their free keyword tool, analysis based on different traffic sources).  I’m taking a look at the paid keyword tool for a separate review (and to see if we want to use it), but WordStream also released a free keyword tool back in September that I thought I would take a look at.  I mostly use Google AdWord’s tools currently.

WordStream advertises their free keyword tool as fast – and it is that – pretty blazing fast, actually.  Which is nice.  You can get access to a full list of keywords much faster than Google’s keyword tool.  And WordStream will email you the full list – although the value of that goes down quite a bit when you’re talking about large numbers of keywords – who wants to sift through a list of 1,108 keywords?

I’m not so sure I agree with the quality of keywords, however.  For example, I did a search for “internet strategy” and the search returned keywords like “zara internet strategy”, “xenocide 3001 internet strategy game”, “what is home depots internet strategy”, “walmart internet strategy”, “ups and internet strategy”, “tigerdirect newegg internet strategy”, “tigerdirect internet strategy 2007″ (among others).  These were all in the top 15 results, rated based on relative volume.  It’s important to realize how much search volume a particular keyword (or phrase) has, but in order to be efficient and cost-effective, you’re usually looking for good keywords that have relatively few advertiser competition – which is information that Google’s keyword tool provides (along with last month’s local search volume and global search volume).

WordStream’s keyword tool did suggest a list of related keywords, which was nice (Google will also do this), so I tried a search that included the keywords: internet strategy, internet, marketing, advertising, consulting, strategy, trends, strategies, strategic, consultant.  This search came up with some interesting keywords, such as “newbies marketing guide” and “automated advertising services” that I did not see in the Google results.  But, again there were pretty useless keywords in the mix, like “internet explorer”, “football ats trends” in the top 10 results (and the results from 8 to 20 were all about sports trends).  The same search on Google provided more relevant results, but the keywords were mostly all very broad, with lots of competition, so not necessarily very useful either (you can narrow Google’s search or look for negative keywords).

WordStream’s information about the free keyword tool compares it to WordTracker and Keyword Discovery, which it may very well compete against (I’ve used both but it’s been awhile).

Conclusion: I’d suggest using WordStream’s keyword tool for keyword discovery purposes – when you’re looking for keywords you hadn’t already considered.  Then, take those keywords and refine your list using Google’s keyword tool.  Tthe WordStream paid tool may be better than Google’s tools, but I’m still playing with it.  In terms of free tools, you’re going to get more information and higher quality keywords from Google’s keyword tool.

Have you used WordStream’s free keyword tool?  What do you think?

Related posts:

• Interview with WordStream founder, Larry Kim
• WordStream Adds Free Keyword Grouper & Keyword Niche Finder to SEO PPC Tools

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Technorati tags: keyword tool, seo, marketing, ppc advertising, business

Recently there was a call for the government to regulate Google in terms of how the search engine displays results.  The anonymous author of the post called for transparency in terms of how Google’s algorithm works. Reading the post, I became convinced that the author’s company had recently had some type of run-in with Google – which probably means they did something that was against Google’s TOS.  Just like any 5-year old that gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar, our anonymous author has started to throw a temper tantrum and scream “It’s not fair!”

In my years of experience with Google and SEO, if you follow generally good SEO practices and focus on the content of your site and how well it works for your visitors, you’ll have success.  Yes, many people find you via a search engine, but in these days of social media, people are just as likely to find you elsewhere or be recommended by a friend (which is way more valuable than a search engine listing).  But, having good content and creating a good website takes time and patience.  Creating a place where people want to visit isn’t an overnight task.

I also think that Google is genuinely interested in creating results that match what people are looking for.  They are constantly tweaking their algorithm to provide the best results for people.  And they have to – if they don’t provide good results, people will just start using something else. By gaming the system, companies are trying to circumvent the rules that everyone else is playing with – and that just doesn’t sit well with me.  Maybe it’s these violators and hack-SEO firms that need regulating…. (although I think Google regulates them by changing their algorithms so that the hacks no longer work)

If you can’t get a good position in the organic search results, you have the opportunity to purchase an ad.  As the author stated, unlike a normal auction, the highest bid doesn’t necessarily win – you also have to be relevant to the keywords in question.  This allows a level playing field where big companies can’t just buy their way into owning the entire Internet.  Instead, small companies, which are providing more relevant content for the keywords in question, have a chance at reaching the same eyeballs as the big guys.  This provides the best results for people who are using the search engine.  Yes, this is in Google’s best interest because people will go somewhere else if the results are poor, but it’s also in all of our best interest.

In these days of economic crisis where the banking and real estate industries have failed us, when healthcare is a mess,  when big companies seem to have the upper hand (as long as you’re not an auto company), when the environment is in danger, I think the government has much larger problems to deal with than trying to regulate a company that’s providing consumers with good products.  Econsultancy Blog had a similar reaction, if you’d like some further reading.

What do you think?

(photo by i eated a cookie @ FlickrCC)

Technorati tags: SEO, marketing, google, internet marketing, business

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We’re an Internet company, so we’re on the nets pretty much all the time.  Many of the tools we use every day and couldn’t work without are web-based.  We thought we’d share them and find out what you use and like.

Analytics, Statistics & SEO (oh my!)

• HitTail
• Google Analytics
• Google WebMaster Tools
• FeedBurner
• Website Grader
• Twitter Grader
• WHOIS
• SEOQuake

Firefox plugins/clients

• SEOQuake
• Firebug
• Web Developer
• FireFTP
• Delicious

Productivity

• Gmail
• Google Docs
• Google Calendar
• Remember the Milk
• BaseCamp

Images & Design

• Flickr Creative Commons
• iStockphoto

News

• Google Reader

Social Media

• Flickr
• Twitterfeed.com
• Ping.fm
• Delicious
• Social Networking Finder

What are your favorite tools?

(photo by batega @ Flickr CC)

Technorati tags: analytics, web tools, productivity, social media, business, SEO, marketing

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There is a term we used to throw around the publishing desks back in the day.  If we had a new branded product or publication we wanted to create, the first  bullet point on the ToDo list was to find out if the name it was ‘Google Safe’.     For us, ‘Google Safe’ meant the term or name or phrase or tagline was light on targeted search results in Google and was available for someone to make their own.  I use the quotes there because, unaware at the time, Google was branding its own line of services and calling them Google Safe Browsing (who knew).  The term stuck in my head since and I’m not sure what the the kids are calling it today but at least the concept is alive and well.  The CEO of a web startup that will intentionally mispell an english word as their brand to find a niche in a crowded search market, that’s a woman who enjoys the path less chosen.

Good online branding is getting difficult.  It has to be memorable, short, representative if possible, and it has to be somewhat available on Google.  I was sitting down just today thinking of a good product name when I came up with some guidelines that at least helped.

• Pick one word that speaks to your product, lets say Community, and another word that neither adds nor distracts from the first word.  CommunityOne, CommunityPrime, CommunityNow
• Prefix words like colors are easy to remember and can give your name a little separation from the pack.   Sure you could call your wireless mini networking technology ‘tooth’ but ‘Bluetooth’ is so much cooler and more unique.
• Locations make good Google Safe additions to names.   Your town, your county, your street, your state can all help you find a unique name for your business that is easy to remember and representative as well
• Numbers are popular with the online community.  37siganls, 43folders, 30helens.
• So are strange animal combinations.  RazorFrog, GlassFish, FireFox.  Entire product releases for Ubuntu are renamed with an allerating combination of Adjective and Animal name: Gutsy Gibbon, Intrepid Ibex, Hardy Heron.
• Of course, would be remise if I didn’t mention the trend Apple foisted upon us.  Take a word, slap on a lower case letter in front, surround with rounded corners.  iPod, iTouch, iMac, iGotNothing

I’m sure you can come up with better suggestions of how to pick the next great name.

Photo attributed to audreyjm529

Technorati tags: strategy, marketing, google, google safe, search engine optimization, seo, search engine marketing, sem

Google has announced that it will now begin including scanned documents in its search results – a feat that requires an immense amount of processing power and advanced image recognition technology. Unlike standard text documents, scanned files don’t contain any text data that Google’s spiders can index. Instead, Google has employed Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, converting photos of words into digital text files. – TechCrunch – Google Now Indexes Scanned Documents

The implications of this on search engine optimization (SEO) are fairly huge.  In order for PDFs to be indexed by google, they had to be saved in text format (instead of image format), which counted out millions of older documents and documents from sources not aware of this caveat.  There is a wealth of information online in the form of scientific papers and technical documents that could not previously be included in search results.

For business owners, stop worrying about whether documents on your website will be included in search results.  Instead, shift your concerns to more important issues such as content, usability and increasing sales.

As we’ve been discussing, sometimes businesses get caught up in the need to increase traffic to their website.  This “traffic” often equates to the number of visitors to a website or the number of total pageviews.  But, as Traffikd discusses, there often is an opportunity to increase the time on the site and the number of pageviews per visitor.  This obviously will increase the number of total pageviews, but it also means that visitors are spending more time on your site – which gives you more time to sell to them.

For bloggers and social media marketers, the desire to increase numbers of unique visitors to a site often overshadows an effort to increase the average number of pageviews per visitor… In reality, the blogger and the designer do have some influence on visitors in terms of encouraging extended visits, and even a small increase in average pageviews per visitor can result in significant gains in overall pageviews. – Traffikd – Increasing Pageviews Per Visitor

Many business owners get caught up with the need to increase traffic to their business website in order to increase sales and/or revenue.  Increasing traffic to your website may or may not help increase sales depending on who the traffic is (whether they are potential customers).

Sales from a website are based on the number of potential customers who come to the website (a lead) and the percentage that actually purchase something (a conversion). To increase sales from a website, there are three options:

1. increase the number of potential customers coming to the site (leads)
2. increase the number of actual sales on the website (conversions)
3. both #1 and #2.

While increasing traffic can help, it will only help if the traffic includes more potential customers (leads).  Just increasing traffic, if none of the people are interested in making a purchase, does nothing to help sales.  So it is very important to increase the number of potential customers (leads), which is sometimes called qualified traffic.

Sometimes sales are not happening because information on your website is not clear or potential customers are not sure how to make a purchase. Increasing the number of potential customers who actually make a purchase (conversions) is another way to increase sales from your website. Taking a look at where people may be leaving the site, as well as whether marketing information entices a purchase can help increase conversions.  Advertising should take potential customers right to an “action” page where they have all the information they need and can make a purchase.

Just increasing traffic to a website without increasing the number of potential customers and/or conversions will probably not increase your sales, leaving you wondering why your efforts are not working.

(photo by Burning Image @ Flickr CC)

Technorati Tags: seo, search engine optimization, internet strategy, internet marketing, internet consulting