Some interesting points:

A. Economic and Business Outlook:

47.3 percent of merchants disagree or strongly disagree with the statement “The worst effects of the recession are behind us.” 23.2 percent of merchants believe that the worst of the recession’s effects are behind us and 29.6 percent neither agree nor disagree.

B. Holiday Outlook

68.3 percent of respondents expect holiday sales to decline or remain relatively the same in 2009 versus 2008

C. Marketing:

47.7 percent of merchants expect their marketing expenditures to remain stable over the next three months, while 26.6 percent expect to increase marketing spend and 25.7 percent expect to cut marketing expenditures

D. Current U.S. Administration:

When asked if the current U.S. Administration is doing enough to help small businesses, nearly three quarters of merchants responded negatively. Only 10.1 percent think the current administration is doing enough.

Below is one graph Kevin provided that I thought was very telling.

From personal experience, I definitely can agree with the results here. Small business have been effected by recent economic activity but this should be a time to act not react. Online marketing represents an affordable and effective means to get your message out there. Remember you are looking long term- build your presence, work on it, and be consistent. Also think outside the box.  Good luck and keep your chin up!

Dominating Local Searches on Google

First you need to do basic search engine optimization on every page of your website.  Next build optimized pages for your major local keywords and include semantically related phrases on those pages.  Talk to Larry about getting this done for your site.

Next, set up a Google Local Business listing so your business can show up in the Google Maps local results box.  Fill it out completely.  Add the videos, pictures and get reviews from your customers.  You should be putting almost as much effort into this one tool as you do for initially optimizing your website–it’s that important.

Your goal is to get your main website (your money site) into the top 3 organic search results before you start on the next steps.  Doing everything at once will dilute your efforts.  I’ll say it again.  Make sure you are ranking in the top 3 of your ten most important keywords before proceeding.

The next step is to get as many double listings as possible.  To get a double listing, optimize two or more pages on your site for the same keyword.  With a double listing for a geo-targeted keyword, Google frequently returns 8 organic search results instead of the normal 10.  That means you need to work to own at least the remaining 7 results.

You’re going to build a content network using Squidoo, Hubpages, Youtube, Wordpress, Blogger, Tumblr and Posterous.  There are more, but you’ll start here.  You or your SEO will have used some or all of these sites to create some links to your main website to get it to rank.

Now, we want the sites in our content network to start ranking for our major keywords so we have to do all the same steps we take to rank our main site to get each of these pages to rank.  See the diagram for a simplified outline of what your content network will look like.

In the Content Network Snowflake you’ll see your main website in the middle surrounded by support sites that in turn are supported by auxiliary sites. Each of these sites are content sites that reinforce the relevancy and authority of each other. What you don’t see in this diagram are the inbound links that support each of these sites.  This is nothing new in SEO, but it is new for the purpose of ranking multiple content sites for the same keyword to prevent competitors from ranking.

The reason we are doing all this is to take up as many available organic search results as possible.  Don’t allow weak competitors to show up next to you in the search engines.  This is the only place I know of where some good ol’ fashioned elbow grease will keep your competitor’s ads (search listing) away from your ads.

In all of your content on your content network, you need to have conversion tools in place.  This will include links to free reports, email opt-in boxes where possible, phone numbers, contact forms, your business location and any other way you can think up to get people to leave your content network and connect with your business.

Being better and smarter will pay off in you dominating page one of Google.  Once you have control, visitors will have no choice, but to choose you.

I know this was a lot to throw at you and I left out a lot of details on how to do local search engine optimization, but please feel free to ask questions in the comments and Larry and I would be happy to answer them.

About the author:  Tim Conley is a local marketing blogger in Phoenix, AZ and has consulted with over 200 companies from solopreneurs to software companies with 250+ employees.  Go to Tim’s blog to get more local online marketing insights at LocalMarketingMastery.com.

What if there was a way for you to get more than the average 50+% of visitors from a number one Google ranking?

I don’t know about you, but I really dislike paying a lot of money to advertise my business (or that of my clients) only to have my direct competitor’s ad show up right next to mine. Every directory that you’re business is listed in also has your direct competitors, too. In most advertising venues that get a lot of “eye balls”, you’re going to pay to show up next to your competitor’s ad. This, frankly, stinks.

But there is a new way to market your company that keeps your competitors at bay. But first let me give you some background knowledge first.

Local Search Engine Optimization

Google and other search engines want to offer searchers relevant results so that the searcher keeps coming back to their search engine. Since you are reading this article on Local Biz Bits, you have probably heard about search engine optimization a time or two. SEO is the process of manipulating content on a website and on other websites to get top search results. I’m not going to go into the mechanics of SEO or I would be cranking out a book and Larry is probably thinking this article is a bit too long already.

As local business owners, we have a window of opportunity in the search engine game. The reason I say we have just a window is that large national companies are just now waking up to the power of local search and only about 50% of small businesses have websites. Of the small businesses who have websites, most have nothing more than an electronic business card that is lost in the wilderness called the Internet.

Right now you can use search engine optimization to out compete big corporations and your local competition on all your local keyword search phrases and your brand phrases. But here is what is so amazing…you can dominate those local phrases to the point where your competition won’t show up on the first page of the search results—you can own the top ten.

There are two exceptions to you owning all of page one of Google and those are Google’s Lucky 10 (or soon to be 7 in all markets) Local Results box at the top of searches that have geographic modifiers and in the sponsored ads at the top and right. To dominate these you have to do some black hat techniques and I don’t recommend you try them because getting delisted by Google won’t help your business any.

At the time this screenshot was taken, this fitness trainer owned the entire page for his city. The only place he didn’t have a listing was in the right hand sponsored links. You can see he even got two double listings.

(part 2 tomorrow)…

Thanks

Well if you remember, I set up a fantasy baseball league earlier in the year. Thankfully that league and the main baseball season is over. It was a terrible year for my NY Mets and my fantasy team I am now looking forward to the NY Giants and the NY Knicks seasons. My last team the Florida State Seminoles….well it appears their season is pretty much over at 2-4. There is always beer. LOL

Well here are the results to the SEM09 season:

1. Dial9 4LongDistance -Steve Meyer
2. Canseco’s Link Juice -Gib Olander
3. SEO’Brien- Paul O’Brien
4. New England Pilgrims- Tim Dineen
5. Moustache Rides – Bob Leland
6. Boston Hard Heads – Ben Saren
7. Baron’s Bombers – Michael LeBarron
8. Hounds- Tim Coleman
9. The Metros – yours truly
10. Disastros – Mike Belasco

Congrats to Steve and Gib you did pretty good for the 2nd year in a row!

1. MerchantCircle launches:

Neighbors “Neighbors enables consumers to “follow” local businesses for the latest promotions, coupons and announcements.  Business owners can use the Neighbors “feed” as an easy way to communicate directly with their customer base and share information on new products, events or anything of importance to their customers. Want to receive alerts for deals on things like shoe repair services, landscaping, tax preparation or virtually any service in any industry? MerchantCircle connects you to the deals you are interested in, in your local area.”

and

Answers “Answers gives consumers the opportunity to tap into MerchantCircle’s 910,000 local businesses for expert advice on virtually any topic, all for free. Real business owner experts are glad to give consumers free advice on important questions in order to win their business. MerchantCircle doesn’t moderate the conversation; it just connects consumers to real experts who have the answers. Need to know what kind of oil to put in your truck or how to keep a dog from escaping the backyard?  Car mechanics, veterinarians and professionals in every industry will quickly respond, saving you time and often money.”

Read the full release here

2.  StudioNow Launches Video Asset Management & Syndication Platform (AMS), Delivering End-to-End Video Creation-to-Distribution Service

“providing businesses with rapidly escalating video workflow requirements an efficient, affordable and highly scalable solution for the management and distribution of high-quality video assets to multiple video channels across the Internet.”

There’s a local business case study with Citysearch online at their new site at: http://www.studionow.com/create.

Read the full release here

Here are the links to those posts. Thanks Mike!

Google Analytics For Local Search Part 1 of 7: Tracking Traffic From The 10 Pack

Google Analytics For Local Search Part 2 of 7: Tracking ‘local’ Local Traffic

Google Analytics For Local Search Part 3 of 7: A Filter For Local

Google Analytics For Local Search Part 4 of 7: Tracking Outbound Links

Google Analytics For Local Search Part 5 of 7: Conversions By Location

Google Analytics For Local Search Part 6 of 7: Explore Your Geo-modified Keywords

Google Analytics For Local Search Part 7 of 7: Pimp Your Dashboard