First off, in my line of work I’m fortunate in that I get to talk with and learn from a lot of various entrepreneurs, affiliates, internet marketers and business owners from around the world. What struck me is that most of our discussions are so focused on Local SEO, Social Media and other Internet Marketing Strategies that we tend to neglect the examination of our processes and systems that scale a business to it’s maximum potential. Now I’m not saying that we never talk about how to scale a business, semi-automation or that we don’t have systems in place, of course we do. It’s more about understanding that in order to have a happier life, more free time and build a multi-million dollar business (or whatever your goal is) you need to analyze how effective these systems are, which ones are flawed and which ones you are missing.

“Why We Should Look At Process Mapping”? Here’s a list from a presentation slide.

1. Processes are how the work gets done in an organization.
2. It is nearly impossible to achieve optimum performance with flawed processes.
3. We often blame workers for process issues that they have no control over.
4. Focusing on processes provides a focus for production and quality improvement
5. Increase cost-savings
6. Because there is simply no way you can design the optimal way of doing things unless you’ve written it down and mapped it out.

Rich Schefren on how to scale a business.

Business Process Mapping: I’m still working 80+ hour work weeks to this day and haven’t taken a “real” vacation in years and it’s all because I’m not building enough of my systems correctly so that my business is highly scalable and I happen to be a control freak.  Sure, sales for 2010 were at an all time high and we now have 1 full-time and 3 part-time employees but my daily involvement in the company does not have an end in site and I want to change that.

“The goal of every entrepreneur, affiliate or business owner should be to create systems that will run and grow the business with or without you being there” – K

I hope Rich’s presentation on how to scale a business resonated with you as well. If you’re looking for some more information on how to scale a business check out these articles from Six Sigma’s website.

Here are just a few of the processes you should be mapping out.

1. Choosing Outsourcers
2. Recruiting Joint Venture Partners
3. Recruiting Affiliates
4. List Building Activities
5. Product Rollouts
6. Website Design Setups and Maintenance
7. Testing Protocols
8. How Metrics are Collected and Tabulated
9. Continual Improvement Mechanism
10. PPC Rollout and Management
11. Google Adwords Setup
12. Continual Education
13. Link Building
14. Reducing Refunds
15. Domain Acquisitions
16. Email Marketing
17. Content Generation
18. Automating or Semi-Automating Tasks
19. Customer Service
20. Training

If you’re looking for some business advice, consulting or workshops in Chicago check out SCORE

Since the announcement of Google Instant back on September 8, the re-brand of its Local Business Center to Google Places and the roll out of the new Local Search algorithms in October there’s been a lot of talk online hinting that this is the “Death of SEO” or “SEO is now irrelevant” and I couldn’t disagree more.

Sure it’s been difficult this past month to keep up with all the developments in our industry, even for Local SEO experts. But I believe these changes are a step forward in search and will increase the value of SEO after the dust settles.

Google Local SEO Advice:

At Pubcon, Matt Cutts had some tips for SEOs and suggested that they “do not chase the algorithms but instead chase the users”.

Well, what the hell does that mean? you say.

It means that look at where Google is going towards the future as a business model. Google understands what users want from a search engine and also understand the great value, community and “advertising revenue” that social media provides. They are simply “listening” to more of what is happening on the web which is a good thing for Local Search Rankings and SEO.

Matt had some interesting suggestions for SEO’s about these latest changes in search and how Google is heading in new directions at his address at Pubcon, here’s a very rough low-fi clip.

Some of the key information I found interesting and useful to SEOs and local business owners:

• Google reduced the number of hacked sites showing up in Google’s search results by 90%

• Matt said that users are more likely to click on the first link in an article as opposed to a link at the bottom of an article. He advised put your most important links at the top of the article

• Google will be looking at why exact domain matches rank so well (which they kind of do, but I’ve seen the contrary. I believe it depends on the quality of your SEO efforts such as quality content, images, video and social media interaction)

• Google is reportedly building a paid link algorithm or tool that blocks the link value from paid links on a page and lets the other not paid links pass link juice.

• Caffeine Update: Is basically a continuous update of everyones index. Google will crawl a page from your website and instantly index it (lately within 7-8 hours).

• Google Instant: Google is now trying to suggest answers that you might want.  If you type in “s” you’re most likely searching for “southwest airlines” so Google will show that to you. Power users hate it because they know exactly what they’re searching for and it becomes a pain in the arse. (Local SEO Tip: If you haven’t already, you need to start looking at Google’s auto suggest and Instant search results and start building pages optimized for those suggestions).

• Google Instant Preview: This basically lets you see a preview of a page so you can decide which result to click on. You click on the magnify glass and it will show you a visual snippet of the webpage and it highlights specific snippets of text within that page that Google determines relevant for that keyword. (I’m still trying to figure out snippets, leave a comment if you have any insight?)

• Geo-Targeted Search Options:  The “Change Location” feature is an interesting addition for Local SEO’s. You can do queries as if you were in Seattle when you’re really in Chicago but does not affect local search results when you use a Geo-specific keyword in your search query like “Chicago”.

Here’s my Top 10 Google Local SEO Tips:

1. Local Phone Number In Places Page (non-800)
2. Quantity of Inbound Links
3. Positive Reviews (with keywords in review title and body)
4. Selecting Related Categories in Places Page
5. Local Address On Every Page of Your Site
6. Embedding a Google Map on your Contact Us Page
7. Include Coupons in Places and Update Regularly
8. Geo-Tagged Videos and Photos in Places
9. Location and Product/Service Keywords in Title, Description, Category in Places
10. Local Phone Number On Every Page Of Website

If you have other ranking factors, SEO tips or insights leave a comment, we’d love to hear from you!

Avinash Kaushik Video Interview at SES Chicago 2010 on using tag clouds to help visualize thousands of keywords, the overemphasis on the head of search rather than the tail and how companies need to move past the traditional model of revenue and conversion rates when quantifying the value of SEO.

The big takeaway for me as an SEO consultant in Chicago as it should be for any SEO is the emphasis Avinash conveys to the value of the long-tail. It’s true each longtail brings in much less traffic than your head terms but this traffic is highly targeted and converts very well and that’s the whole point of SEO isn’t it?

If you’re looking for more coverage of SES Chicago 2010 check out Seoroundtable’s live blog recap.

What Love is talking about isn’t rocket science though and the longer I’ve been in the internet marketing and lead generation business, especially this last year, I’m really starting to get it. As you should already know, consumer behavior has changed dramatically in the last decade as 70%+ of consumers have migrated to a multi-channel world for discovery, research and the purchase of products and services. It’s very apparent after watching Mr. Goel’s keynote that there is a lack of critical skill re-balancing for c-level leaders and boards of directors in the corporate world.

What c-level leaders are (amazingly) failing to realize is that television and radio are now directly competing with the huge surge in user generated content found on Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and countless other digital media platforms. And with search engines like Google who have changed the content distribution flux from outbound to inbound there are tons of opportunities for small start-ups to compete and transform their company into the next global brand leaving traditional marketers and legacy brands/sytems in the dust. There are countless c-level executives that just don’t get this and really need to make a paradigm shift quickly or they will soon become obsolete.

ERA D2C Keynote Address – Love Goel

With so many channels competing for the customer’s attention how is it that companies invest so little into search engine optimization, content creation, PPC advertising, affiliate marketing and interactive digital media technologies??? They pay internet marketers the least amount of money while throwing away billions on traditional marketing that they can’t even measure? Wow.

Marketing is more than just advertising, one-way interruption and agencies winning awards. It’s about thought leadership, innovation, synergy, data and an investment strategy based on winning in the marketplace. Consumers are multi-channel. Whether researching that big screen tv purchase or looking for that last minute gift for a friend. Consumers consult everything. They buy because of customer reviews on Yelp or Amazon, or interactive mobile apps like Shopkick, or email blasts from Groupon. Customers want a choice in how they receive their information, take advantage of it.

So to answer the question “what is social media” I’ve been directing people to the “Social Media Revolution” video on Youtube that explains social media in a few short minutes. Recently, they’ve updated that video to reflect the rapid changes that are taking place in social media so I wanted to post that here for all to enjoy.

SEO Training: Embed Youtube videos on your website instead of linking. This increases the time spent on your site, improves the user experience/engagement and most importantly, you’re not sending traffic away from your site over to Youtube (they have enough traffic already).

Here is a great follow up to the above video.

Is Social Media just a bunch of hype? Leave a comment and let us know what you think.