I’m not exactly sure of the timing, but it seems not to long ago that Google started placing more emphasis on its map listings when you type in local searches. If you are a SEO company, you probably know what I am talking about because it was as if Google was putting more emphasis on local vs. their pay-per-click advertising. Not to mention, it didn’t take to long for local vendors to take notice and were asking “How do I get higher in the listings?”  Just check out this search below for “garage door repair minneapolis.”

If you are like myself, local search is no easy egg to crack and is not as straightforward as regular search engine optimization (SEO) is. In the sea of duplicate listings, salted reviews, and nasty competition lies a wealth of ROI to be had. But the question that keeps popping up is how do you climb to the top?

Well, one thing that most local businesses don’t know is that one major factor in how you rank is the sheer number of listings you have among all the local channels. But it doesn’t stop there, your listings need to be accurate and consistent. This among other factors, tells Google Maps that you have been around for a while and in their eyes is more trustworthy. But with so many local search sites, which ones are the most important and how do you get in as many places as you would like?

A good starting in my opinion is getlisted.org. Right from the homepage you can enter your business name and zip code to see how many of the top local engines you are found in. (BTW- this list has been growing) So as you can see from my personal entry, I scored a whopping 62% and am in all the channels except two.   Now I could just as easily just go to those two and manually submit, but there are drawbacks. First, it takes a lot of time. Second, waiting for verification can be a pain. Lastly, just because you are in these channels doesn’t mean that they all have the same data not to mention there are literally hundreds more. That’s where Yext comes in.

For a monthly or annual fee, you can grab a PowerListing which gets you into over 30 search destination sites. By creating one listing, Yext aggregates it to all the major local search destinations including your photos, products, and specials. In addition, these changes take effect much quicker than the manual method not to mention the time it would take you to do so. Yext also gives you the ability to track your performance with a dashboard filled with statistics. So to recap, you get better rankings, get into more places, and save a hell of a lot of time. Does it work? Yep, just one day after summiting a new listing, here is a screenshot of a status update on the dashboard:

Search engine marketing agencies will be glad to hear that they have a solid reseller program. However, I would jump on the bandwagon early because I think their entry prices will likely skyrocket as more people take advantage of their offer. Search engine marketing agencies and alike can sign up through their PowerListing Reseller Program.  Below is a screen shot I took of the easy to use Reseller Interface:

Again, the price for agencies is very attractive right now.  If you are not an agency, feel free to contact us at www.tmaemarketing.com or www.delmonteagency.com for immediate support. Happy local searching!

Your Small Business’s Blog and You

So, you’ve set up a blog for your small biz. Maybe you’ve had one set up for a while but haven’t really used it, or haven’t really seen a return on your investment in it. Hopefully, you realize that a blog’s overall purpose in the grand scheme of Internet marketing is to serve as a social tool, not necessarily a sales tool. You can use that blog to sell your goods and services, sure, but using it as a way of engaging your client or potential customer, and as a way for interacting with them is a much better use of your blog, and your time. Small business bloggers often get lost in all the confusion that is online marketing. And that’s where we’re here to help. With these tips for small business bloggers, let’s see if we can’t clear up some of that confusion, shall we?

First of all, your blog should be part of an overall Internet marketing strategy. It shouldn’t be your only Internet marketing effort, but it shouldn’t take a back seat to Facebook or YouTube or other “sexier” forms of marketing available today. In fact, it is quite possible that if you are just starting out in the online marketplace, your small business’s blog might just be the most important piece of your Internet marketing puzzle. It’s where loyal customers and potential new ones can find out about you, your firm, and your products. You can engage in conversations, answer questions and dispel doubts or myths all while dispensing information vital to your clients’ needs and buying decisions.

Secondly, your blog isn’t there to sell. Sure, that’s a major function of all marketing efforts, but it isn’t the only thing your blog should be doing. Today’s customers want to be informed, both before and after making a purchase. They also want to know that there’s a real live person behind the monitor. They want to know who you are – what you care about, what makes you tick – just as much as they want to know about your products and services. It’s called relationship marketing, and what it all boils down to is that you and I are more likely to establish a customer/merchant relationship with someone we can trust, someone we can like, and someone we can get to know. Your blog is the ideal channel to do just that.

Lastly, your small business’s blog should be treated as not so much a marketing tool, but as an extension of you and your small business. After all, it may be the first, and sometimes only, contact a client has with you. You don’t want it looking like something your kid threw together for a class project (unless your kid is a web design student, and maybe not even then.) Nor do you want it to give a stuffy, standoffish appearance. You want your blog to represent your small business in the best possible light. Keep it friendly. Keep it topical and relevant to your small business’s products or services. And by all means keep it updated regularly. New, fresh content is key to all your blogging efforts. Even if that means hiring a professional blogger to do it for you.

Your small business’s blog can do great things for you. You just have to know how to use. And how to use it right.

Making Your Small Business Stand Out

A recent (12/10/11) report from lead generating firm MerchantCircle/Reply.com states that in a survey of 2,500 US small business owners, SEO is the way they would go. The way they would go, that is, If they only  had one choice on which to focus their marketing.

The survey asked, “If you had to put all your marketing time and budget into only one channel, what would it be?” The participants were then given 6 choices of marketing channels: SEO, paid search, traditional media, social media, mobile marketing, or none of the above. Nearly 33% of the respondents chose SEO as their marketing channel of choice, if that’s all they had available. The closest second was traditional media, garnering 19% of the responses. Traditional media was defined for the purposes of the survey as radio/television, newspaper ads, Yellow pages listings, and direct mail. Newspaper advertising space and direct mail were the two traditional marketing channels identified in the survey as the most used by the small businesses participating.

Another surprising result of the survey was to see that Facebook, not Facebook ads, was the number one choice for social media marketing. It beat out Google by 15%, LinkedIn by 18%, Twitter by 38% and YouTube by a whopping 50%. (There were a host of other media sites to choose from, including Bing, Yelp, and Foursquare.)

So what does all this mean for you? Well, if you are a small business (just under 80% of the survey’s participants had 4 or fewer employees, so we’re talking small business here) and you’re not using SEO strategies in your marketing campaign, you may want to rethink that for the coming year. It would appear that your competition has already figured out that SEO marketing is the way to go for their small businesses across the country. You may want to consider adding a bit of social media marketing next year, as well. You don’t want to be the only shop on Main Street without a Facebook business page, do you?

I think this survey also shows that SEO marketing and social media marketing aren’t just for the big firms anymore, and need to be taken seriously by the small business owner. Granted, the ROI in both SEO marketing and SM marketing can’t always immediately be registered. Nor can you typically find good SEO marketing and SM marketing providers right around the corner like you can your local newspaper or print shop. It takes some time to find a SEO marketing firm that you’re comfortable working with. It takes some research and effort to find a good SEO marketing firm you can afford and see the results from their efforts. It also takes a real investment of money – you can’t get something for nothing, not even on the Internet. By looking at the results of this survey from November, it would appear that the savvy, strategic small business owner can’t afford to NOT invest some time, money and energy into SEO marketing and a social media presence. His competition already has.

How to Optimize Your Blog Using SEO

It seems like everybody and their cat has a blog these days. (Don’t believe me about the cat? Google “Mr. Puddy.”) How in the world do you make your blog stand out? How do you get it high enough in the rankings so as to be found by clients, customers or fans? The same way you let them find your site – by using good sound SEO strategies.

1.)    Good content – every web writer knows that content is king. And well-written optimized content is the High king. Don’t let your SEO work stop with the site, though, and treat your blog as a throw-away. Keep the content high quality. Keep it rich, keep it fresh and keep it optimized. Use keywords shared by your site. Use your business name as a keyword. Use all your best SEO tactics and strategies to keep your blog content ranking high in the search engines. And keep that content coming. Blogs have to be updated frequently, or at least with a standard regularity, or the search engines get bored and look elsewhere.

2.)    Use descriptive titles – We all know that keywords belong in the title of SEO pieces, but your blog may required some extra effort. Some blogging software actually makes your blog titles repetitious by insisting on inserting the blog name into the title – typically preceding the title. This constant repeating of “Joe’s Tangential Rantings and Ravings” before every new blog post’s title can send the search engines down the road, as they think it’s the same-old-same-old from you.

3.)    Be careful with anchor text – We all love to link from our blog posts – to others’ blogs, to interesting articles and news stories, to our own site even – and that’s a good thing to do from an SEO standpoint. What we need to be careful with is the linking text. If we simply put “here” or “there” the backlink will not be as strong as if we use a unique anchor text related to the post at hand. So instead of simply linking “here” we’ve linked from “Joe’s Latest Ranting That’s Not Quite a Raving.”

4.)    Categories – The categories in which you place your blog posts can act as extra keywords, especially if you use category names unique to your blog or keyword set. These repeated terms associated with your blog will help the bots find it again and again, ranking it higher for those category terms.

5.)    Write with the reader in mind – Most readers seem to prefer blog posts about the same length as a typical SEO marketing article – 400 – 500 words. They aren’t going to wade through 1500 word essays when there are other blogs out there to read. If you have something to say that’s longer than that, they’ll want you to write a follow-up post, or turn it into a series of posts. On the other hand, if you know your readers prefer to sink their teeth into your long-lasting juicy entries, go for it. Just keep the SEO writing going, whatever the length. If you’re not sure, try varying the length of your posts and then track to see which are the best read.

Optimizing your blog isn’t difficult, and doing so can make all the difference in the blogosphere between a once-read and a royal win.

SEO Trends for 2012

With Google changing its algorithm somewhere between 350 and 500 times in 2011 (that’s more than once a day!) it’s sometimes difficult to know what to stick with and what to toss out when it comes to your SEO content. What’s relevant today may not even score with the bots tomorrow. In SEO’s ever changing landscape, the best SEO provider needs to stay on top of what’s working now, to ensure that they can switch strategies in midstream if need be to continue flying high in the rankings. With that in mind, let’s look at a few of the SEO trends working really well right now.

1.)    Social Media – How many Tweets, or Facebook shares or mentions, or the number of Plus Ones from Google Plus you receive can have an effect on your SEO. Setting up a profile on Twitter, Facebook or Google Plus is a hot SEO trend right now. By keeping the content relevant and consistent, you can greatly improve your reputation with the search engines and in doing so, dramatically improve your rankings.

2.)    Linking Frequency – Watch out how many backlinks you create in any one day. More than five and many of the bots see it as a manual manipulation in an attempt to improve your standings. Likewise the same number of links built every day. Vary the number, the type and the time of day you create your backlinks. This lets the search engines see you as more legitimate and organic.

3.)    Backlinks – Long a mainstay of SEO strategies, so how can they be a new SEO trend, right? Well, it’s all in how you use them nowadays. You have to remember to vary the sources of your backlinks. You can’t just rely on article directories or social media alone. The search engines like to see a wide variety of sources – blogs, articles, social media, and your fans/followers/commenters sites, too.

4.)    Outbound links – We all know that backlinks – inbound links – are worth their weight in gold as far as search engines are concnerned. A commonly overlooked but highly effective SEO strategy that’s turning into a hot SEO trend is outbound linking. By linking to high-ranking, high quality, well thought of sites, you add authority and reputation to your content. Make sure the links are to sites relevant in your niche or to the topic of the blog post for maximum effect.

5.)    Content – Content is still king, and I’m sure if it can accurately be described as an SEO “trend” or not. Without regularly updated, high quality, high interest content though, you might as well not even bother with other SEO strategies. Without good offerings of interest to them, your readers, followers and fans won’t bother either. And without them, what’s the point? Besides, the bots still love finding fresh new goodies on your site. Keep writing and updating. It still matters.

Whether you are just starting out with SEO or have been at it a long time, it never hurts (and usually helps to keep the trends in sight. Knowing what’s hot and what’s not can make all the difference in the world!

Using SEO in Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

Social media marketing is everywhere, and if you listen to the “experts” it’s the new face of the marketing world. What then, is an SEO marketer to do? The simple answer is to combine the two. SEO and social media marketing are really just two powerful weapons in the marketer’s arsenal, after all.

SEO and social media marketing are two forms of so-called “inbound” marketing. For those readers who aren’t familiar with all the technical terms of the marketing world, inbound marketing is anything that the customer goes to, as opposed to outbound marketing that goes out to the customer. So, SEO articles and other optimized content such as web pages are part of the inbound marketing crowd. Social media marketing also runs with that crowd, as customers find blogs, Facebook and Twitter accounts, YouTube videos and all the other boys in the band that is social media marketing.

SEO is used in conjunction with social media marketing then to pack a double power punch. Not optimizing social media content is like loading the gun with rubber bullets. If a customer or potential client can’t find your great social media content via search engines, what good is it? If a customer or potential client doesn’t realize that the great social media content they are reading or watching or following is your brand, what’s the point? Using SEO tactics along with your creative and awe-inspiring social media content is putting the hollow-point, full metal jacketed shells in the gun. It says you mean business and you intend to blow your competition away!

Using SEO with blog post content is relatively easy. You simply use all your best SEO strategies when writing the post – keywords, density, themed SEO content, backlinks, etc. Optimizing other social media content may take a bit more work and creativity. Strategically building a social web presence that promotes sharing of content and audience participation isn’t an overnight operation. You have to begin by knowing your client base and what types of social content they prefer using. Once you get your customers playing along, joining in and generating some buzz, your battle is half over, as the search engines will pick up on all that chatter and name dropping. Then, your rankings will start to climb.

Using SEO strategies without some sort of social web presence isn’t too smart in today’s marketing world, either. Your wonderfully optimized content isn’t much of a tour de force without the power of social media behind it anymore. The inbound links from all that sharing, voting and commenting literally can’t be bought! Your devoted fans generate more and more fans as they unknowingly target other members of your audience just like themselves. The exposure and traffic they can provide is invaluable to your marketing efforts – it’s word of mouth marketing at its finest.

SEO and social media marketing shouldn’t and really can’t, be seen as separate entities. One without the other is leaving half your troops in reserve. Combining the two makes the best sense in today’s tough marketplace minefield.

Business Blogs and Social Media Should Work Together

Before Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and the hundreds of other social networking sites existed, individuals and businesses used blogs as a way to share and express their thoughts. In fact, blogs can be thought of as the original social media. The whole point of blogging was to get others to read the content, comment on it, and start a conversation. Sound familiar? In recent years blogging has lost some momentum as people spend more time using “sexier” social media platforms. Businesses are being told that they need to be active on social networks in order to succeed and in an effort to catch up and make the medium work for them, have left their blogs dormant for months at a time. This is a huge mistake since social media should not replace blogging. While social media and blogging may serve similar purposes, they aren’t the same. Both are necessary parts of an integrated online marketing campaign and operating a business blog can give your social media efforts a boost and vice versa.

Social media is important for many reasons. First, it’s where the people are. Millions of people sign in to social media accounts every day to connect, share, and find information. It’s Marketing 101 that you want to be where your target audience is. An active business social media account page helps build a brand and establish loyalty and trust over time. It allows a place for businesses of all sizes to engage in a dialogue with current and potential clients or customers. Social media is a focus group and customer service outlet all in one. In addition, social media data now has search engine ranking implications. The search engines take note of social signals such as Likes, Comments, Shares, Re-Tweets, +1’s, etc. Trust plays a large role in search engine ranking and the search engines use these social signals as indicators of that trust. The thought is that a link that gets passed around in social media must be valuable, which is one reason why it’s so important to share quality content with your social followers. Where does this content come from? You guessed it. It comes from your blog.

Social media is great for having conversations and sharing content, but in order to really take advantage of it you need to be sharing your own content! This can include everything from press releases, articles, whitepapers, infograhics, e-books, and guides but as long as you are actively contributing posts to your blog on a regular basis you will continually have fuel for your social media strategy. Consumers very rarely make a purchase or decide to do business with a company before conducting some research. It’s the content that you create that provides them with the answers that they need. Depending on the industry, the sales cycle can be extremely long. Writing blog posts to share with social media followers can establish trust over time.

Ditching a business blog to concentrate on social media is a mistake. Sure, you can share content in social media but you are at the mercy of the social network. That content isn’t owned by you and there are certain limitations. Do you think that 140 characters is enough space to explain your position on a given topic or outline your business strategies to potential clients? A business blog is your property. You can do whatever you’d like with it.

There is a place for both social media and blogging within an online marketing campaign. A good strategy will integrate the two in order to achieve more links, improve SEO, and gain more visibility over time.

About the Author:

Nick Stamoulis is the President and Founder of Brick Marketing, a Boston SEO agency. For more information please call 781-999-1222 or visit http://www.brickmarketing.com.

Blogging is no easy task. Once you set up a blog, you need to keep it active and engaging. This means that you need to decide on a topic, write a post, edit the post, schedule the post, promote the post, and monitor comments on the post on a regular basis. The first step to becoming a successful blogger, whether for business or otherwise, is to set up a blogging schedule and then stick to it. For some, this is difficult to do. The blog posts go from a few a week, to one a week, to one a month, to one a quarter. Before they know it, the blog is completely inactive. For others, they go into blogging full force and master the art of successful blogging. They can see the positive results, like increased traffic and leads, that comes from blogging and it gives them momentum to keep moving forward. So what’s the next step after proving that you can operate a successful blog? Start blogging for others! Here are 4 reasons to submit guest blog posts:

Forms Relationships
Before there was Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn, individuals and businesses took to their blogs to share their thoughts with others. Blogs are, in a way, the original social media outlets. In order to become a true part of the blogging world, you need to be accepted by established members. This can be done by leaving thoughtful comments on their blogs and responding to comments that they make on yours. This may eventually lead to guest posting opportunities. Don’t submit one post and then disappear, maintain that relationship and loyalty over time and continue to guest post regularly.

Builds Brand
Blogging to your established audience is important, but it’s also important to establish new audience members and visitors to your site. Guest blogging on relevant blogs provides an opportunity to get in front of new people that may be interested in the products or services that you provide.

Traffic Generation
If readers like what they see in your guest post, chances are pretty good that they will click over to your blog and/or website to learn more. Always include links to your own content in the “Author Bio” section of a guest post. Make it easy for someone to find further information.

Link Building
To make things perfectly clear, guest blog posting should never be done just to get a link. However, it is a side benefit to guest blogging. For SEO purposes, link building is important because the search engines favor sites that are trusted. The number of relevant inbound links pointing to a site is a way for the search engines to determine whether you have that trust or not. A link from a respected industry blog can help boost that trust factor.

About the Author:

Nick Stamoulis is the President and Founder of Brick Marketing, an SEO services company. For more information please call 781-999-1222 or visit http://www.brickmarketing.com.

For some, retargeting is a great strategy. It’s a way to get your company and brand back in front of the eyes of a website user that was, at one time, interested in the products or services that you have to offer. It serves as a quick little reminder and says, “Hey, remember me?” People browsing the web can have short attention spans. Just because they left your website once without converting, doesn’t necessarily mean that they hated your website or thought that your products were useless. It’s entirely possible that they thought of something else that they had to do and figured that they would just return later. Giving them a little nudge in the right direction by displaying a banner ad where they are guaranteed to see it can result in getting that visitor back to your site which will hopefully result in a conversion that didn’t happen the first time around.

For others, retargeting isn’t such a seamless strategy. Some website visitors may find this little reminder to be annoying, and maybe even creepy. Essentially, displaying banner ads on multiple sites that potential prospects visit is a little bit like stalking them and can be considered an invasion of privacy. Retargeting is similar to cold calling and other forms of “interruption marketing”. The advertiser has little to no control over the sites that the banner ads show up on and a potential prospect may not appreciate seeing your ad while they are attending to personal business online.

So, should you do it? A big determining factor is who your target audience and demographic is. If you are targeting a mass consumer audience or operate an e-commerce site, it makes sense. Retargeting is a quick way to get a visitor back that may have initially abandoned their shopping cart for a variety of reasons. On the other hand, retargeting might not be the best approach if you are a B2B service provider that is targeting business and marketing people. Think about the target audience. They know what you’re up to and don’t want to see you everywhere they go. In B2B, the sales cycle is often much longer and there is a lot more taken into account than whether or not today is the right day to buy that pair of shoes. If you are a serious contender for their business, they’ll remember you.

About the Author:

Nick Stamoulis is the President and Founder of Brick Marketing, a Boston SEO company. For more information please call 781-999-1222 or visit http://www.brickmarketing.com.