It’s been just about a year since I started my very first niche site: TopRatedCoffeeMakers.com. I didn’t document the process because I wasn’t really sure how it would go, but its definitely become a success. I now consider my site to be an authority site for coffee maker reviews, and it has been generating over $150 a month.

Round 2 will be documented

With a year under my belt of building a niche site and getting it to #3 on Google, I want to document a new site I will be building to help others achieve similar results with their own sites, as well as account for my own actions and what is working or not working.

I also want to use this case study as a way to account for spending and revenue, because I really didn’t do a good job of this for the first site.

Finally, because Spencer Haws at nichepursuits.com just finished his own documentation of a niche site he got to rank in less than 70 days at the #1 spot on Google, as well as Pat Flynn’s (smartpassiveincome.com) recent announcement of a second niche site duel, I felt inspired to start my own case study/challenge.

The niche

I chose a keyword in the coffee niche because my first site was already in this niche, so I felt it would be easy enough to carry over a lot of what I did on the first site to the new site. I won’t reveal the exact keyword just yet, but I will tell you what I used to find the keyword, as well as the criteria I was looking for when choosing the keyword.

The keyword research tools I used

For this niche site, I’ve decided to use Long Tail Pro in conjunction with Market Samurai. For TopRatedCoffeeMakers.com, I initially started using Market Samurai but eventually burned out because it was taking me too long to find a good keyword. So I eventually went to Odesk.com and hired a great keyword researcher who found me a bunch of potential niche keywords I could use. This is where I ultimately chose the keyword top rated coffee makers.

Anyways, back to the current project. I typed in the seed keyword coffee into long tail pro and chose the following settings (click to enlarge):

A pretty unrefined search…but basically what I was looking for was a keyword with at least 3 words and at least 2000 local exact searches a month. These were actually some of the main criteria Spencer discussed in his recent interview on The Smart Passive Income podcast with Pay Flynn.

Criteria for the winning keyword

When I went through the results page I didn’t expect to find a niche keyword right off the bat…and who knows, maybe I made a poor choice? But the KW I chose had the following qualities that I found desirable:

• CPC over $2
• At least 2,000 local exact searches
• A .org exact match domain available (keep in mind: this isn’t as important as it used to be in the world of SEO)
• Top 10 results didn’t have too many “Juice Page Links” (as reported by Long Tail Pro…more on this later)
• Market Samurai reported not too much competition in top 10 results

Juice Page Links

To be completely honest, I don’t really know how this differs from the other types of links out there, so I will probably need to check in on this. But in the podcast episode with Spencer and Pat, Spencer mentioned that he looks for the top 10 results to have under 20 juice page links in the majority of cases. So say that 6 out of the 10 first-page results have 10 juice page links…chances are good that it will be easier to rank for than a first page that showed 8 of the top 10 results with more than 20 juice page links each.

Market Samurai competitor analysis

I realize I was pretty vague about Market Samurai’s lack of competition, so let me break down some of the metrics I was looking at.

To me, the BLP (back linking pages), Title, Desc, URL, and Head are the most important metrics to look at. If they are mostly red or yellow for the top 10 results, it’s best to steer clear of the keyword you thought was a good one. I’ve been told that these metrics are some of the main indicators for heavy competition. Sure, the other stuff isn’t trivial, but you should definitely be focused on the most valuable ranking criteria when choosing your keyword.

Available domain

As soon as I saw the .org EMD available, I decided I should go for the keyword. At the very least, I’d lose $9 if I go to my KW research guy (which I think I’m gonna do) and he tells me the KW I chose is no good.

I bought the domain through my hosting service Bluehost.com. Next step will be setting up WordPress and installing the Thesis theme.

Stay tuned!

In the early days of mobile web design, companies and website owners were building entirely new sites specifically designed for mobile devices and tablets. Looking back at this, it sounds incredibly ludicrous given the incredible amount of money, time, and development this required.

Enter: responsive web design.

It’s trending right now, and for very good reason. So what is it?

What is responsive web design?

Well, if you take a look at this site on a desktop or laptop computer, you may notice that it looks different from how it looks on your mobile phone. Go ahead…give it a try.

Responsive web design allows your site’s design and layout to change (optimally) for the screen size the site is being viewed on.

So basically you will see something different (and hopefully user-friendly) on every device you view a website on.

Responsive web design is awesome…but not for Adsense publishers

I was stoked when I first turned my website(s) into responsive ones. That is, until I found out that my Adsense ads did not play nicely with the design on mobile devices because of their fixed widths. ARGH!

I was faced with a decision…either:

a) Get rid of the ads on my websites and go with another monetization strategy or

b) Keep the ads and sacrifice the user’s experience somewhat drastically with a sub-optimal layout and design for mobile devices

Unfortunately, I chose option b, but I worked very hard to find a solution…because I wanted to have my cake and have my readers eat it too.

Solution found…but it was kind of sloppy

Eventually I found a solution by scouring the internet, but it was pretty code heavy and not perfect. My ads were getting cut-off slightly…so even though I had a nice responsive site, my Adsense ads didn’t look the way they were supposed to.

As of May 1st, 2013, I have finally found a solution that works perfectly for me

It took awhile, but more and more people started to acknowledge the issue of Adsense ads being unresponsive, and some developers over at Mocha Themes went out to create a great plugin that allows Adsense publishers to serve different ads depending on the user’s screen size.

I’m going to walk you through exactly what I used and did to achieve both a responsive website, and responsive Adsense ads. Please note that I’ve included a few affiliate links in this post. Thanks in advance if you choose to buy through one of the links…if not, no problem!

Step 1: Grab a domain, hosting, and WordPress

I realize most people reading this post already have a domain, hosting, and probably an existing website…but I’m just trying to be thorough here.

I use Bluehost for my domain and hosting needs. They also offer 1-click WordPress installation, which is 100% free.

Step 2: Install a responsive WordPress theme

You will need a WordPress theme that is responsive. All of my sites (including this one) are pretty much built on the same theme and skin combo: Thesis 1.8.5 with Kolakube’s Marketers Delight 2.

If you want, you can also go with Thesis 2 and Marketers Delight 3, but I have little experience with either and can’t speak to whether it will function the exact same way.

Step 3: Install MochaTheme’s Easy Responsive Adsense plugin

This is the plugin I use for responsive Adsense ads: Easy Responsive Adsense. Make sure that you don’t forget to activate the plugin after installation!

Step 4: Create 3-5 ads with varying sizes in Adsense

On one of my sites: TopRatedCoffeeMakers.com, you can see how my ads respond on different devices. I use the following 3 sizes on the TopRatedCoffeeMakers.com homepage:

1. 728×90 leaderboard
2. 250×250 box (as backup to the leaderboard)
3. 200×90 (as backup to box)

If you look at the homepage on a laptop/desktop computer you will see 2 leaderboards like this:

But if you look at the homepage on a mobile device like an iPhone, you will see the 250×250 box ad instead:

Oh, and just for the sake of being thorough, here’s what the homepage would look like if I didn’t use this plugin:

Yikes!

Step 5: Insert your ads using the Easy Responsive Adsense plugin

OK, so you need to use a shortcode to put the Adsense ads into your content. Here’s the exact code I used:

[easy_responsive_adsense publisher_id=pub-xxxxxxxxxxxx ad1=123456:728x90 ad2=78910:250x250 ad3=11121314:200x90 wrapper_id=responsive_ad_div]

Important: everything in bold must be replaced with your own information. 

Every ad has its own ID, and every Adsense publisher has his/her own publisher ID. So put the right info in the code above, and make sure your ad ID’s have the size settings that are shown to the right of the colons.

Step 6: Add this custom CSS to your CSS file

So looking at the code below once again, you will notice a “wrapper_id” segment highlighted in bold:

[easy_responsive_adsense publisher_id=pub-xxxxxxxxxxxx ad1=123456:728x90 ad2=78910:250x250 ad3=11121314:200x90 wrapper_id=responsive_ad_div]

This tags the shortcode with a CSS ID tag that I’ve called responsive_ad_div. Add this code to your CSS file:

#responsive_ad_div {
width:105%;
}

For whatever reason, this was the only way I could get the plugin to recognize the container’s size (read: get things to work properly). Now, this may not be a necessary step if you get through the first 5 steps and everything is working correctly…but in case you are having issues after the first 5 steps, give this code a try.

Thoughts? Questions? Leave it below!

This is how I got a responsive website with responsive Adsense ads. I hope it helps you achieve the same.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them in the comments section below.

Update: Well, typically, the day after I posted my review TweetAdder got updated to a new version that no longer supports some of the features I’ve outlined below. It really sucks, but it appears they were running into legal issues with Twitter. Here is an outline of some of the major changes:

• No more automatic unfollows
• No more “to follow” list or automaticity there
• Monthly pricing model…no more flat rate

The software is still useful, but not nearly as hands-off as it used to be…

Oh, Twitter. I never stop hearing about you and still can’t quite seem to understand you. Granted, I’m starting to get it, but it has been a slow struggle to say the least. And frankly, I don’t quite enjoy it as much as I think I could.

I don’t think I’m the only one who feels this way either. But even if you disagree with me, I’ve got a tool that I’ve been using that I think can help anybody get more out of Twitter.

I first learned about this tool through an email that Eric Gati from my4hrworkweek.com. I eventually got around to buying it because I figured I needed to hop on the Twitter bandwagon. So without blabbering too much, here is my full review as well as how to use this great Twitter tool known as TweetAdder (affiliate link).

What Is TweetAdder?

TweetAdder is software used for automating routine Twitter activities like posting tweets, following users, sending direct messages, and much more. It is available for both PC and Mac.

Who Is It For?

Anybody who is looking to get more out of Twitter with much less effort can greatly benefit from TweetAdder. For me, it is ideal because it’s like having a small social media marketing department without the extra overhead and management.

What Can You Do With It?

With TweetAdder, you can do all of the following:

• Automatically follow users at any selected interval
• Automatically unfollow users at any selected interval
• Automatically tweet a list of tweets
• Spin existing tweets with the built-in spinner
• Automatically send direct messages and re-tweets
• Automatically follow-back
• Automatically tweet new posts in any RSS feed
• And so much more…

Some of My Results

For one of my sites: TopRatedCoffeeMakers.com, I had about 10 followers before purchasing TweetAdder on January 8th, 2013. Today is April 26th, 2013, and I now have 1,398 followers.

For SearchAndPerch, I had a pretty low number of followers on March 27th, 2013. In fact, I had only 80:

Just about 1 month later, I now have 295 followers…and I’ve hardly done anything but set a few basic settings:

“Big whoop, you are following more people than are following you”

Hey, it’s a great point…in fact, these numbers don’t look nearly as good when your ratio of Following to Followers is greater than 1:1. The good news is that you have control of this ratio. The reason I haven’t done so yet is because I’m looking to grow my followers first, and then control the ratio later.

So here’s how you control this:

See that little checkbox? Tick it and enter the ratio you want to stop sending follows at, and you can make sure you don’t follow more users than those who are following you. If I set this to .8 to 1 for example, my Twitter account would no longer be going out and following people until my ratio of following to followers fell back down to that level.

You can control your ratio with unfollows too:

And follow-backs:

Oh, and say that there are some users that you absolutely mustn’t unfollow. These could be leaders in your industry that are always pumping out great stuff on Twitter, or maybe just some of your biggest fans.

Welp, there’s a setting for this. You can blacklist or whitelist users to follow/unfollow. If a user is on your whitelist, they will never been unfollowed, and if a user is on your blacklist, they will never be followed.

Definitely a cool feature, especially because some of the biggest people in my industry don’t follow back.

Pros and Cons

What do I like and dislike about TweetAdder?

Pros

• Relatively low, one-time cost
• Extremely automated and hands-off
• Lots of smart settings that other Twitter software doesn’t offer
• Can run multiple accounts at once (up to 100)

Cons 

• Old-school interface has a somewhat steep learning curve
• Only runs automatically when your computer is on and connected to internet (unless using a VPS)
• “Tweet Search” option can be pretty slow
• Cannot filter out Retweets that contain @mentions

The Exact Settings I Use

In the two videos below I give you an overview of TweetAdder, as well as the exact strategy I’ve used to grow my follower list. Let me know your thoughts.

In Conclusion

I’m loving this software so far, especially because it has allowed me to re-establish my faith in Twitter. I simply have not been able to find the time for Twitter at this point, and TweetAdder has given me the freedom to keep it this way, all while keeping a strong presence on Twitter. As I continue to work with the software I will provide updates on how it has been working out for me, as well as tips on how you can get more out of it if you decide to give it a try.

One more thing: if you found this review useful and think you’d like to give TweetAdder a try for yourself, I’d really appreciate if you went through one of the links to TweetAdder in this post. I will get a small commission at no extra cost to you, and would greatly appreciate it. If you aren’t interested in TweetAdder, thanks so much for reading my review anyways.

Questions? Comments?

Please ask me any questions that you may have about the software in the comments section below. I will answer as soon as possible.

Have experience with TweetAdder? Please share in the comments!

Everybody who has dabbled in PPC for awhile knows about the 3 main keyword match types: Broad, Phrase, and Exact. But what many people don’t know is that there is actually a fourth match type, and frankly, it’s my favorite of them all.

It’s called the Broad Match Modifier, and it looks a little bit like this:

+frozen +cheese +pizza

See those plus signs? Sticking one of these in front of a word in your broad keyword string is what makes the keyword broad match modified.

So what does that mean? Well, any word that has a + in front of it has to be in the search query the user types, and it can’t be any variations.

In the example above, here are some of the search queries that would trigger an ad for the keyword:

frozen cheese pizza

cheese pizza that is frozen

frozen cheese on pizza

Similarly, the following search queries would not trigger ads for the above keyword:

frozen pizza

frozen pepperoni pizza

cheese pizza

You see, the 3 words with + in the front must be part of the search query exactly as they are displayed, but in any order.

Giving Google’s ridiculous search queries the finger

Broad match keywords are often criticized because of their unpredictability as far as the search queries that will trigger them goes. A Keyword like snowboarding lessons in its broad match format could trigger something as far off as where to buy a snowboard. I’ve seen some pretty horrendous search queries come about from broad match keywords.

With broad match modified keywords, however, you are safely assuring that the words you want appear in all search queries. If you only want to target users who are looking for snowboard lessons, adding a keyword like +snowboard +lessons is far less dangerous than snowboard lessons, because you know that both of those words (not their variants), have to be in the user’s search query.

Maybe you aren’t giving Google the finger, but it definitely gives you more control over where your PPC money is going…something that makes everyone happy.

What are your thoughts on the broad match modifier?

Do you have any experience with broad match modifiers? Been meaning to give it a try? Please share your thoughts and questions in the comments section below!

If you’re looking to build an email list through your website, applaud yourself. Having a list of email subscribers is one of the most valuable ways to stay in touch with your customers and prospective customers. Building a list of email subscribers however, is no easy task. People really value their personal email address, and giving it away is a risky endeavor considering all the email spam that’s out there today.

So how do you make this difficult task a lot easier?

Develop a lead magnet!

What is a lead magnet?

A lead magnet is usually a product or document that you give away in exchange for an email address. The most common lead magnet is an eBook, although I’ve also seen “white papers”, software, videos, and email newsletter series/courses offered as lead magnets. But really, you could give anything away, as long as the offer is enticing enough to get people to subscribe to your email list.

What do you need to get started?

You really only need two things to create a lead magnet:

1. An email marketing service
2. The actual magnet (eBook, software, video, etc.)

Email marketing service

Try AWeber’s Email Marketing Tool Risk-Free

While it may seem feasible to simply put a contact form on your site and collect leads that way, there are several problems with this thinking. First, you would have to manually add your subscribers to a spreadsheet and then copy and paste them into any message you plan to send. You would also have to BCC all of them to avoid issues with your email host. Finally, emailing a bunch of people simultaneously without an email marketing service will likely result in your email account becoming suspended.

So what email marketing service should you use?

That’s really up to you. I generally recommend MailChimp for newbies because you get your first 500 subscribers for free. But Aweber is what I use, because it is the most powerful email marketing service out there in my opinion. Not only is their customer service great, but they offer the most features. This is also what all of the biggest names in internet marketing use.

To signup with MailChimp, click here.

To signup with Aweber, click here (affiliate link).

Planning your magnet’s development

Before you start creating your magnet, ask yourself a couple of questions:

1. What is the most popular content on my site? (specific posts, tools, videos, etc.)
   • Tip: use Google Analytics to see what pages/posts have the longest avg. visit duration and/or lowest bounce rate
2. Through what platform is your site’s current content most-delivered?
3. What are the most frequent questions your customers ask or are looking to have answered?

With the answers to these questions, you can get invaluable information for what your magnet’s content will consist of.

Don’t make the same mistake I did

I foolishly wrote an eBook for one of my niche sites on a topic nobody cared about. I thought people would care about it, but I was wrong. The topic was uninteresting, and the offer, simply not good enough for someone to give their name and emails out. Make sure your magnet actually provides incredible value. A little bit of market research should set you in the right direction.

Also, don’t forget the value of a great book title (if you create an eBook)!

Delivering your lead magnet

If you want to give your lead magnet full exposure on your site, you will need web forms. These can be created easily with Awber and MailChimp. However, you can get fancier here if you use WordPress. I am currently in love with a premium plugin for creating compelling web forms. It’s called OptIn Skin and I highly recommend you check it out.

Here is the link if you’re curious (affiliate link). Note: this is only for WordPress users.

Have experience with lead magnets?

Have you ever used a lead magnet? What current strategies are you using to grow your email subscriber lists? Please share in the comments below!

Note: frustratingly, Soliloquy has problems with my site. It works on and off (I believe I have a corrupt WordPress installation). If you want to check out an example, you can visit my coffee site at www.topratedcoffeemakers.com!

Ever wonder how to get one of those cool image sliders that you see around the web on your own site? You know…the ones that look like this:

http://www.searchandperch.com/soliloquy-wordpress-slider-review/

The good news is that you can do so quite easily (assuming you’re already using WordPress). There are a ton of slider plugins available to WordPress users, many of which are free.

The slider above however, is designed with a premium WordPress slider plugin called Soliloquy. The plugin enables you to create an unlimited number of sliders to put anywhere on your website.

Here are some of the things that make this slider plugin stand out from the rest:

• It’s responsive to all devices (computers, phones, and tablets)
• It loads very quickly due to cleaner code
• It’s SEO friendly, allowing you to add titles and alt tags to your images
• You can have an unlimited number of sliders (of different sizes too!) on one page

Responsive Slider

Responsive web design is hot right now. More and more people are browsing the web on their mobile devices and tablets and as a result, web sites are becoming “responsive” to these varying screen sizes. You can already see that searchandperch.com responds to different screen sizes…this is a great example of a responsive site if I do say so myself.

For the Soliloquy slider, you will see the same responsiveness. Here’s a sample of the slider in action on a computer screen:

Now, here’s a screenshot of what the same slider looks like on an iPhone screen:

You can check it out for yourself at www.topratedcoffeemakers.com. Try it on different screen sizes to see the responsiveness in action.

At the time of writing, Soliloquy is one of the only (if not the only) responsive slider plugin on the market. If this is an important feature to you, this plugin is a very good option.

Clean Code = FAST and Secure

Sure, I could tell you how fast this plugin is, but I think it might be more useful for me to show you.

The plugin is also very secure and has been audited by Mark Jaquith (lead WordPress developer), so you can feel confident that your data is safe and secure.

Multiple Sliders, Different Sizes

Here’s a 600 x 300 px slider:

Here’s a 400 x 200 px slider:

DIY Themes, creators of the most premium of premium WordPress themes, Thesis, have finally released Thesis 2. This update is perhaps the most anticipated (I’m talking 2-3 years) that I’ve witnessed for any piece of software I’ve ever used. It is definitely a relief that the wait is over, and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for the weeks and months to come as all of the quirks get sorted out.

First Impressions

Thesis 2.0 is beautiful as far as user interface is concerned. When you first activate the theme, you see something along these lines:

 I gotta say, although the “click to get started” button probably can’t be more salient than it already is, the first thing I was inclined to do was “check out (my) site now.” I was met with a blank site upon clicking this. So then I tried clicking “click to get started” and voila! Some scripts ran, and the theme was activated.

A slight bug, but crisis averted.

Templates and Template Editors

The new Template Editor is probably what I’m most excited about with Thesis 2.0. While in previous versions of Thesis and current versions of other themes allow(ed) you to create custom templates for pages with lots of ugly code (this is the current way to do it), Thesis 2 allows you to create templates with drag and drop (read: visually) for pages, posts, and categories with virtually ZERO code. This is HUGE. Not even WordPress alone allows you to do this in a remotely easy way, and Thesis 2 allows you to do all of this.

Thesis 2.0 Template Editor

Working with a canvas

The new canvas in Thesis 2 is awesome. It allows you to make changes to your templates on the backend and instantly seeing the results in another window, without having to hit refresh and/or clear your browser cache. Take a look at the canvas in action in the video below:

Let’s get responsive

If you’ve ever checked out searchandperch.com on a mobile device, or a tablet, you may have noticed that it adjusts to a more user-friendly version. Give it a try. Searchandperch.com is a responsive website, which is all thanks to Alex Mangini over at Kolakube.com. He is the head designer for DIY Themes (the creators of Thesis), and continues to pump out awesome skins time and again.

While he has yet to release any skins for Thesis 2, they are imminent. Not only will Alex’s skins be responsive, but so will the majority of those that are being developed for Thesis 2. If you have been meaning to get at least a mobile version of your site together, now is certainly the time to do so, as web browsing will continue to grow on both phones and tablets at a rapid rate. Having a responsive site is perhaps the best way to solve this problem, and Thesis 2 will have you covered.

More to come…

In the very near future I will share my walk through of building a website with Thesis 2. The post(s) will outline all of the new features (as well as old) to show you how Thesis 2 can help you build great websites easily!

Already use Thesis or Thesis 2? Please share your thoughts, comments, impressions, and/or questions in the comments below!

Bing Ads? Yep. Microsoft adCenter is no longer the name of the second/third biggest search engine’s ad platform. I have a feeling though that it will take awhile for PPC pros to start referring to it as Bing Ads. In any case, I’m digging the new changes that were unleashed this week, particularly the Google Adwords campaign importing feature.

Say goodbye to the headache of syncing Adwords with adCenter…er, Bing Ads!

I just finished the task of importing about 10 campaigns from a client’s AdWords account to Bing Ads. Normally, this process would have taken me hours. Being a Mac user, I still don’t have the option of using Bing’s desktop tool, which really would expedite the import/export process. Fortunately, with the new Import From Google Adwords tool in Bing Ads, I didn’t need to rely on the desktop tool I can’t use.

Importing those 10 campaigns took me literally 3 minutes.

Step 1: Navigate to the Import from Google Adwords Tool

Aside from the smoother interface (at least on Chrome), you won’t notice much of an aesthetic or UI change in Bing Ads. The one thing that sticks out the most is Bing Ads’ newest tool, sitting right in the navigation menu.

If you have some campaigns to import, go ahead and click the link in the navigation menu.

Step 2: Enter your Google sign in info

A straightforward step. If you have an MCC account, you will have the option of selecting the account you would like to import from.

Step 3: Select the campaigns you want to import

Another straightforward step. Don’t you love it? I can see why Microsoft is rebranding themselves here…adCenter had a really bad rep, especially when it came to usability. This is a great step in the right direction. Go ahead and select the campaigns you would like to import into Bing Ads.

Step 4: Choose what to import

With the Import from Google Adwords tool you have the option of updating current campaigns already within Bing, or simply adding a new campaign. This is great news when it comes to keeping your account changes synced across ad platforms. Having said that, there are two things I wish this tool had that it currently seems to be missing. Applying changes to device targeting and keyword statuses (active or paused) would be nice. Having to manually go through every keyword that has been paused via automated rules in Adwords is quite tedious.

Step 5: Review uploaded campaigns

Once you click the “View Imported Campaigns” button you will be able to go through and check to make sure everything transferred over correctly. Pay special attention to max CPC bids and campaign targeting settings. As I mentioned before, the tool doesn’t import device targeting settings, so if you imported a campaign that is only meant to target Computers, make sure you change your device targeting settings to reflect that.

Beta = not perfect

At the time of this writing the tool is still in beta, which means it is not going to be perfect. I’ve already had issues importing a managed placements display campaign, so this may take some extra work in the display network department. If you double and triple check everything that you import you should be ok. Just keep in mind that this tool isn’t quite there yet with everything. Still, it’s a huge improvement over the old school importing tool they offered. Jeez. Spreadsheets and everything…what a nightmare that was. I won’t miss it.

Thoughts on Bing Ads?

Have you tried out Bing Ads yet? How about the new Import from Google Adwords tool? What are your thoughts? Please share in the comments section below!

Hello loyal readers!

Just wanted to drop a quick post to let you know that you have not been forgotten. I’m currently working on a new project that I thought I’d share with ya’ll, as I think its relevant to this whole internet marketing thing.

Building a Niche Site

Something I have wanted to do for awhile after being inspired by Pat Flynn’s extremely helpful posts on the subject is to create a niche site.

This is completely new to me and I’ve had a blast so far. In fact, my plan is to not only make this first site a niche site, but an authority site. I won’t go into too many details right now, but the niche I chose is related to coffee, something that I am not only passionate but also that has a ton of market value.

Why am I doing this?

Aside from the obvious reason of making some passive income, there are other reasons that this project is really important to me. Coming from a PPC background, I really want to learn more about SEO and discover what is working and what isn’t working. Niche sites are all about ranking organically (SEO), and I think the lessons I will come away with will be invaluable.

I also plan on sharing all of these lessons with you as I move along, so please stay tuned!

Of course I will also have plenty of posts on other internet marketing topics coming up shortly, so please be patient! Also, if you haven’t subscribed to the blog via RSS, I encourage you to do so so you don’t miss out on any of the great (hopefully) information I’ll be sharing.

Thanks; hope you’re having a lovely Summer (assuming you are above the equator)!

Benji – Owner, Search and Perch

If you’ve been keeping up with Google’s latest changes in the search world, you may have heard some news about the significant changes that will be taking place with their local search platform. What was formerly know as Google Places is now being labeled as Google+ Local, and I think you can infer what the centerpiece of this update will be.

Yep, Google Plus.

If you are a small business, you better get on Google+

I’m not making any threats here, but Google may be. Granted, your old Google Places page will automatically be converted to a Google+ Local page, however, Google has already hinted that Google+ Business pages will have a role in the future of Google+ Local:

We know many of you have already created a Google+ Page for your business, and have been hosting hangouts and sharing photos, videos and posts. We’re excited that we’ll soon extend these social experiences to more Google+ Local pages in the weeks and months ahead.

What do I mean by “role?” Well, if you don’t have a Google+ Business page, or you aren’t active on Google+, your visibility in search is likely going to be compromised.

So how can you prepare for Google’s changes in local search?

Easy: Get active on Google+. Create a Google Plus Business Page. Add your influencer’s and customer’s to your circles. Post interesting and valuable information.

Really, there is nothing new here. Whatever you do on Facebook and Twitter can translate over to Google Plus, just make sure  you are sharing unique content across social media platforms from time to time.

What’s new with Google+ Local?

There are a bunch of new features that have been added to the artist formerly known as Google Places. Frankly, I don’t think many of these new features will apply to every business. In fact, it seems that this is more of Google’s war declaration on Yelp. You will see what I mean…

Zagat reviews

Yep, Google bought Zagat awhile ago. I missed this news, but I guess this is the moment Google is putting that investment to use. Here are some of the features that will be integrated into Google+ local:

• Scores for different aspects of a business
• See what others say on a 0-3 score
• Zagat summaries of user reviews

Explore Neighborhoods

This new feature gives you personal recommendations based on top reviewers, reviews you’ve written, and reviews written by people in your circles.

This is basically Google’s way of helping you find what you’re looking for in a particular neighborhood. I could see this feature having potential if and when people become more active on Google+, but for now, I think Yelp and Foursquare have Google beat in this domain.

OpenTable integration

With OpenTable integrated into the Google Plus Local pages, user will have the ability to make reservations at the business (restaurant) in question. Personally, I can’t help but feel that all of the new features in Google Plus Local are geared towards restaurants…but my ranting would be for another post.

Making the actual transition

Good news is that you don’t actually have to do anything if you already had a Google Places page. Google will take care of transferring things over. However, you should get started with Google+ before doing anything else.

I also hope that you now have some sort of idea of what to expect in the coming months so you can prepare for it. Google Places listings have seen tremendous growth in SERP real estate in the past few years, so this is definitely something you want to educate yourself if you plan to make an impact in local search.

What are your thoughts on the changes?

Have any opinions on Google+ local or just Google+ in general? Please leave a comment or question below!