If you’re a local business owner and don’t have time to finish this article at least CLAIM YOU LOCAL BUSINESS LISTINGS NOW. It’s FREE and will get you listed (if you’re not already) in GOOGLE, Yahoo!, Bing, Yelp, and other search engines regardless if you have a website or not. Just visit GetListed.org and enter your business name and zip code. GetListed will let you know if your listing has been claimed already and if not, will direct you to each search engines local business center where you can claim your listing.

Now for those of you who can stick around, lets me explain the what, where, why, and how of Local Search.

What is Local Search

Simply put, it’s a type of search performed by a search engine when the search query is deemed to have “local intent”. In other words, your search includes not only “what” you’re searching for but signals the intent by including “where” (street, city, zip code, region, etc.) your searching for it. However, sometimes search engines decide that a query has local intent even if location isn’t explicitly signaled in the search query.

For example, a search on the word “pizza” returns search results for pizza shops nearby or when the word “shoes” is searched from a location aware device (cell phone, GPS, etc.) search results are returned for nearby shoe stores.

The ranking algorithm for local search is different than the ranking algorithm for traditional search. Traditional search is focused on ranking the pages of a website while local search is focused on ranking the business listing pages. Accordingly, the ranking factors for each are different.

Where are Local Business Search Results Displayed

Local Business Search Results for "pizza"

In 2008, Google and other major search engines began to incorporate local business search results (which formerly appeared only as part of Google Maps) into its “traditional” search engine results page when people submitted queries that had local intent. Local business search results only appear on page one in a very obvious business listing adjacent to a map that displays the locations of the businesses, known as “The Local 7-Pack (Google) or Local 5-Pack (Bing & Yahoo!)”. The 5/7-Pack is usually tucked beneath the sponsored ads at the top of the page but above the organic results. Other search engines show similar results for their local listings.

What’s important to realize is that it may be possible to achieve something that you may not be able to achieve even if you have a website, the coveted “top position on page one”! That’s because the Local 5/7-Pack essentially pushes organic search results into the 8th spot on the results pages. And what’s more astonishing is that this can be done without having a website. That’s one reason why it’s so important to claim your local business listing (see how below). Oh, and by the way, did I mention it’s FREE to claim your local business listing?

Why is Local Search Important for Small Businesses

Google reports that 20% of searches on Google are related to location. Using this combined with ComScore’s report that 10.7 Billion searches were conducted in the U.S. during the month of Aug 2010 you realize that Google searches with local intent exceeded 2 Billion for the month. Assuming the same % of local searches for the other search engines (Yahoo!, Bing, Ask, AOL) and the total searches with local intent conducted in the U.S. in the month of Aug. 2010 is over 3 Billion.

Why Businesses Should Claim Their Local Business Listings

Besides being able to achieve top position on page one of search results, there are other good reasons to claim you local business listing.

Correct Incorrect Information
Whether you have a website or not your business may already be listed in local search results. But that doesn’t mean the information is accurate. Search engines not only maintain their own database of local businesses but also look to trusted sources like infoUSA, Acxiom, and Localeze to gather local business information. If your business information is incorrect at any of these major data providers it may outweigh the information that search engines have about your business. One way that may correct this is to claim your business listing directly with the search engines. Once you claim your listing and complete the verification process search engines have more trust that your information is accurate.

Prevent Your Listing From Being Hijacked
Not only does claiming your business listing give you some control over how search engines index you, but it prevents someone else from hijacking your listing. It doesn’t happen often, but if it does it’s another problem you have to deal with in correcting your local business information.

Don’t Have a Website Yet? Let Your Local Business Listing Page Fill the Gap
If you’re a new business owner that hasn’t had the time or money to have a website designed for your business, then your local business page is a great alternative. You can add all sorts of information about your business including a description, products and services, coupons, business hours, business logo, photos, video clips, and more.

Low Competition + High Demand = Local Search Visibility
According to Google it’s local search index includes more than 50 Million Place Pages worldwide, yet only 4 million have been claimed! Compare this to the level of competition for keywords and phrases in traditional search and you can see that achieving high ranking in local search is going to be much easier. Compound this with the fact that 20% of all Google searches have local intent and you have a good reason to want to claim your local business listing.

How to Claim Your FREE Local Business Listing

A great place to start building your local business presence is by claiming you local business listings. Fortunately GetListed.org makes it easy for you by providing a one-stop business listing dashboard where you can enter your business name and zip code and GetListed.org will check your business listing status on five leading search engines (Google, Yelp, Bing, Yahoo!, Best of the Web, and Hot Frog).

If your business listing has not been claimed, GetListed.org directs you to the local business center of each search engine where you can establish a local business account (for FREE). After adding all your business details (check out David Mihm’s Local Search Ranking Factors for guidance) and submitting your listing to each search engine you can visit GetListed.org again to check you listing status. Once you have completed all the submission requirements you’ll have all green check marks and be one step closer to dominating your local market.

Resources

Google Places
Yahoo! Local
Bing Local Listing Center
Local Search Marketing Guide
Local SEO Guide
David Mihm’s Local Search Ranking Factors
SEOmoz
Search Engine Guide
Search Engine Land
Local Search News

Why Local Businesses Need Local Search and How to Claim Your FREE Business Listing is a post from: Willamette Web Design

Social Media Revolution [Video] is a post from: Willamette Web Design

There’s an overwhelming number of ways a business can participate in communities on the social web these days (Facebook Fan Page, LinkedIn Groups, Twitter Communities). One often overlooked method is creating your own online social network for your brands community.

Having your own online social community is like chatting at a cocktail party compared to yelling during a stadium concert as with other large social networking sites. It’s a place where like minded guests can have an honest discussion without all the background noise. With your own social networking site you can make your brand social, amplify a cause you’re passionate about, or simply forge strong relationships with like-minded people.

4 Benefits of your own community network

There are many benefits for you or your  business having a social networking site. It’s a great ways to add value and connect with potential customers. More specifically, it will help you:

1. Build Brand Loyalty – Having a place for your customers to go and engage with you can further your brand loyalty. How? By developing trust and customer satisfaction through community engagement, leading to repeated buying behavior even when your products or services are more expensive.
2. Grow Evangelism -Customers who really like your products or services will want to talk about them with other passionate enthusiasts. Creating your own social network will make them feel they have an exclusive connection to you brand that most consumers don’t have, and giving them continuous opportunities to discuss the brand and keep it top of mind. Having your own social networking site provides customers with the motivation, tools, and means to evangelize your products to friends and family.
3. Garner Customer Feedback – Creating a custom social network provides a common place where your customers can voice their opinions and provide feedback on your product and services. It also allows your most loyal users to suggest new product features and and gives them a place to report bugs, all of which helps build trust and transparency.
4. Promote Discussion – It’s important to open up the dialog, not just between you and your customers, but between your customers themselves. Connecting your community members to each other has the benefit of building trust and relationships leading to a stronger and more loyal community. It also allows you to listen in to concerns and opinions that may not be shared directly with you.

Create a Social Network to Grow Your Brand, Amplify a Cause, Engage Customers is a post from: Willamette Web Design

Not so long ago social media seemed so new and different that it was considered an experimental part of the marketing plan. Not so today. In fact, if social media isn’t part of your strategic marketing plan you’re likely missing a huge opportunity. When done properly, a SMM (social media marketing) campaign can create many more access points to potential customers and clients. These points can then be leveraged to create content, context, connection, and community. Doing that well can also add to lead generation, nurturing, and conversion. And there you have it, that’s how social media can help your business.

But social media isn’t used in my industry…

Many small business owners still think that because they don’t have a hi-tech product or service they can disregard the power of online social media tools. In fact, using social media in industries that are slow to adopt it can give you the edge over your competition. Social media is useful for almost every type of business. Even professional services can build their online reputation and increase trust. By taking advantage of social media, businesses can make themselves more accessible, more personable, and maintain long term connections. For a small business looking to increase referrals, social media can be a powerful tool.

Don’t think your customers and clients are users of social media? Just take a look at the most recent social media statistics:

Facebook

• More than 400 million active users
• 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
• Average user has 130 friends
• People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook
• There are over 160 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups and events)
• Average user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events
• Average user creates 70 pieces of content each month
• More than 25 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month.

Twitter

• Twitter gets more than 300,000 new users every day
• There are currently 110 million users of Twitter’s services
• Twitter receives 180 million unique visits each month
• There are more than 600 million searches on Twitter every day
• Over 60% of Twitter use is outside the U.S.
• More than a third of users access Twitter via their mobile phone

Blogging

• 77% of Internet users read blogs
• There are currently 133 million blogs listed on leading blog directory Technorati
• 60% of bloggers are between the ages 18-44
• One in five bloggers update their blogs daily
• Two thirds of bloggers are male
• Corporate blogging accounts for 14% of blogs
• 15% of bloggers spend 10 hours a week blogging
• More than half of all bloggers are married and/or parents
• More than 50% of bloggers have more than one blog
• Bloggers use an average of five different social sites to drive traffic to their blog

Social Media? Who Cares What I Ate for Breakfast? is a post from: Willamette Web Design

Your website is an extension of your brand and is the online face of your company. Sure, it has to look aesthetically pleasing with coordinated colors, branding, organized well for easy navigation, and follow usability guidelines. But equally as important is insuring that it’s achieving your business goals. Whether your call to action is lead generation, online sales, further your brand, or newsletter sign-ups, your website mission is to attract visitors, convert them into customers, and customers into evangelists.

As part of your company’s marketing strategy your website is the hub for all things digital. Here are some important steps to follow in creating a website that performs:

1. Identify your business goals – This might include simple brand recognition, lead generation, online sales, or newsletter sign ups. Whatever it is will influence the style of the website and marketing strategy. And most importantly, determine how you will measure your success against your goals. No sense in setting goals if you don’t know how to determine if they’re achieved or not.
2. Competitive research – Review other websites in your industry. Why reinvent the wheel. Look for any techniques that can be adapted and ways to differentiate your products or services. Are there any special techniques like social media elements (share, Facebook Like and retweet) being used? Pay careful attention to keywords that are being used in page titles, page descriptions and page headings.
3. Create a solid site architecture – One of the most important things a small business can do is logically organize their website for easy navigation. Visitors should easily be able to find the information for which they came looking, especially if it leads to a conversion.  In addition to being easily read by humans, websites need to be traverse-able by search engine spiders. Serving up an XML site map will give specific navigation instructions to all your website pages.
4. Write keyword rich content – Write page copy with keyword rich content that’s meant to be read by humans. Use targeted keywords and phrases as close to the top of the page as possible. This will help search engines index your page in search results for keywords that are important to you.
5. Call to action – Include your compelling call to action statements to entice visitors to take the next step with your product or service. This hook will convert your visitor to a customer and hopefully into a raging evangelist.
6. Employ on-page SEO techniques – Use on-page SEO (search engine optimization) techniques to enhance your search visibility.
7. Employ on-page SMO - Use on-page SMO (social media optimization) techniques such as follow me, share, retweet, RSS, email, and Facebook Like buttons. This will help you to drive traffic from sources other than search engines, though improved search ranking is also a benefit of successful SMO.
8. Include a Blog – Including a blog section to your website will establish authority and accessibility which allows you to gain an insight into your customers and help establish and build relationships. It’s a good way to build brand awareness as well.
9. Search/local search submission – Once your site is finished, tested, and launched, it’s time to let search engine know. Establish webmaster accounts at Google Webmaster Central, Bing Webmaster Tools, and Yahoo! Site Explorer. Each of these search engines provides tools for website submission and verifies that your site is being crawled successfully. Also, visit GetListed.org to claim your local online search listing, a separate step from submitting you website using the webmaster tools. It’s free and one of the best ways for local business to show up on the map, literally.
10. Link building – Often forgotten, link building is one of the most important steps to increasing your rankings in search results. Taking the time to establish high quality links to your website will be a key to your success.

10 Steps to Make Your Website More Effective is a post from: Willamette Web Design

No matter how beautiful your website or easy it is to navigate, if it’s not found by those searching for your products or services it’s of no use.  Google alone receives several hundred million searches queries each day through its various services and it’s highly likely some of those are directed at the products or services you offer. Are they being found.. or are your competitors? If you want traffic, highly targeted, highly interested  traffic, you need to have search engine visibility. Ranking high in search results for keywords and phrases that are important to your business doesn’t happen by accident. It happens as a result of SEO.

What is SEO?

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of increasing visibility in the natural or organic section of search engine results (non-paid area). In general, the higher and more often a website appears in the search engine results page (SERPs) the more traffic it will receive from the search engine. SEO takes into account the algorithms search engines use  and applies techniques to HTML code and content to increase relevancy for keywords and phrases. In addition, removing any barriers that may prevent a website from properly being indexed are eliminated. Finally, off-site promotion of the website to increase the links back to the site (backlinks or inbound links) is a tactic that is used.

A trillion reasons why your website needs SEO

A brand’s position on search engine results pages (SERPs) is critical to driving traffic to the site. In a recent study from iCrossing is was found that more than 95 percent of all site traffic for organic, non-branded queries, on Google, Yahoo!, and Bing comes from page-one results.

Source: iCrossing - "The importance of Page One Visibility", Feb. 2010

When done properly SEO is one of the most cost effective ways to drive “targeted” traffic to to a website. After all, it’s the keyword or phrase the visitor searched  that caused them to arrive at the website. With well over a trillion pages on the internet, arriving on the first page of a search result doesn’t happen by accident.

What does a search engine do?

To better understand whats involved in a typical SEO campaign it’s best to understand how a search engine works. In their simplest terms, there are only three key processes:

• Crawling: Web bots move from page link to page link collecting new and updated pages to be added to the index.
• Indexing: Web bots process each of the pages it crawls in order to compile a massive index of all the words it sees and their location on each page. In addition, it process information included in key HTML tags and attributes.
• Serving Results: This is the SERP’s that is created by searching the index for matching pages and returning the results that are the most relevant to the user. Relevancy is determined by many factors in a highly guarded algorithm.

Do It Yourself SEO steps

Professional SEO’s have a lot of insight into the optimization process. Search algorithms change all the time effecting ranking positions and ultimately traffic patterns at your website. However, if you have the inclination to SEO your own website there are some things you can do on your own. Here’s some steps:

1. Familiarize yourself with SEO: There’s a lot of information online about what’s involved in the SEO process. You don’t have to become an expert but like anything, you get out of it what you put into it. SEOmoz has a very good Beginners Guide to SEO that’s free and will get you started down the right road. Also, I recommend Google’s SEO Starter Guide that does a good job outlining best practices that you should follow. Make sure you checkout the end of this document that outlines tools and resources that will help you along the way.
2. Evaluate your SEO readiness: Use an automated tool to evaluate your websites SEO readiness. My favorite is Instant SEO Review at SEO Automatic. This service is free to any business owner managing their own internet marketing program. All you need to do is sign-up for a free account and you can run a full website report once a month. The review tool will report over 20 on-page search ranking factors, grading each with a “Notable Issue”, “Worth Reviewing”, or “Correct” score. Useful information is given about the issue and in some instances how to fix the problem.
3. Make the quick fix’s: Many of the search ranking factors with problems can be fixed on your own, especially if you’re website is built using a CMS (Content Management System) like WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal. These platforms typically include provisions for defining many of the HTML tags and attributes.
4. Create your website using a CMS with optimized SEO plug-in: If your just starting your website or planning for a redesign, consider a CMS that has an SEO plug-in available. These plug-ins can take care of many of the on-page technical factors of the optimization process. These add-on’s are not a substitute for an SEO strategy, but rather a structured facility for managing your SEO strategy. My favorite WordPress SEO plug-in is the All-In-One SEO Pack.
5. Write good effective SEO copy – SEO copywriting is the art of writing copy for humans that is appealing but ranks high in search results for keywords and phrases important to your business. Much has been written about how to go about this and I recommend the CopyBlogger article “Copywriting 101: An Introduction to Effective Copy” which includes a 10 step tutorial about how to write effective SEO copy.
6. Establish webmaster accounts: Each of the 3 big search engines (Google Webmaster Central, Bing Webmaster Center, and Yahoo! Site Explorer ) have their own webmaster accounts available and provide tools to submit your website for indexing and will verify that your website is being crawled by web bots properly. They also provide other information that can help you debug issues that may be prevent your site from being indexed.
7. Claim your Local Search listing: Local Search is an important topic these days because 40% of all queries have local intent (5% use the city and/or state name, 2% use informal terms, like neighborhoods, and 0.5% use zip codes). The 3 big search engines have a their own local search capabilities with a listing claim process (it free) that should be completed. The best way to claim your listings is to visit GetListed.org where they will guide you through the process for each search engine.
8. Create your own backlink campaign – Backlinks are incoming or inbound links to your website or web page from another webpage. Search engines use a number of factors to gauge the value of backlinks and can ultimately influence your search rankings. Much has been written about how to build and execute an effective link strategy but one of my favorite’s is Link Building Fundamentals by Adam Audette.

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8 Steps to Improve Your Rankings in Search Results is a post from: Willamette Web Design