No Surprise Here

I don’t think this comes as a surprise to anyone, but what is surprising is that so few business owners are taking advantage of this information.

Prospects who read customer reviews that answer their concerns are much more likely to initiate contact with a company than if they read reviews that address how likeable and attentive the employees are. Likeability and attention are critical, and the lack of likeability and attention are the biggest reason people complain. But they’re not the reason people buy.

Good To Great Reviews

As a business owner you want to do everything in your power to encourage your happy customers to write reviews that address reliability and other customer concerns. Here’s how the Five Star Review System handles this issue, and you can do the same.

When a customer is asked to write a review using the Five Star Review System, they’re taken to a page that subtly coaches them on how to write a meaningful review. The reason for this is two fold.

1. First, if left to their own devices, they will write a review about how wonderful you are … thinking that is the kind of review you want.
2. Second, when you provide simple and subtle guidance, they will write a much more meaningful review and appreciate the help.

When customers get to the page on the Five Star Review System where they’re asked to write their review, they will see two pieces of information in the right hand column.

The first thing they see is text that reads.

Did You Know?

Did you know that the three biggest concerns homeowners have when hiring a painter include:

• Reliability
• Neatness and cleanup
  
• Value

By offering this information to soon-to-be reviewers to read, it gives them guidance as to what to write about. Business owners who use the system can add any three concerns they choose … and it’s different for every industry.

The second thing they see are examples of three very well written reviews that address one or more of these concerns and the reviews are only 2-4 sentences long. By providing this information, reviewers can quickly see what you’re expecting of them and they appreciate the help.

Let me encourage you to create a page on your website or add this information to the email you send when asking customers to write a review for your business and notice how much better and more persuasive your reviews become.

If you want more information on the Five Star Review System and to see if your company qualifies to use the system, please visit BestLocalReviews.com

Does your local business have a mobile web presence? It should. Check out this wonderful Mobile Website Template that allows you to easily create and direct people to your mobile website rather than your primary website when they search for you using a mobile device.

Did You Know?

Did you know that on Valentine’s Day, 2012, 62% of all US based national chain restaurant queries on Google were made from a mobile device? Here’s what that tells me.

If you have a local business, you must have the ability for your customers to easily find your business on their mobile device and provide them with a Click To Call button. We include a mobile website with a click to call button on every website we build, and you should too. This trend is only going up. What are you doing about it?

If you want to read more about mobile searches, check out this article from Google.

Video 1: Reviews and Feedback
Video 2: Rewards and Referrals
Video 3: Reputation and SEO
Video 4: Roadblocks and Ramifications
Video 5: Reports and Statistics

The Five Star Review System was created for local businesses who want to attract new customers by dominate the Internet with genuine five star customer reviews. Here is a quick recap of what they system will do for your business.

1. Get feedback from all of your customers
2. Have good reviews show up on the search engines
3. Have good reviews show up on the social networking sites
4. Keep bad reviews from showing up on the Internet
5. Have up-to-date customer testimonials on your website
6. Have a customers photo with their testimonial on your site
7. Have a webpage on the Internet with your 5 star reviews
8. Have a digital coupon for your customers to use and share
9. Generating referrals from your happy customers
10. Provide customers a compelling reason to buy again
11. Track customer service by employee
12. Track customer referred sales
13. Track sales by employee
14. Generate referrals for specific salespeople
15. Track where your new business is coming from
16. Understand how search engines rank your business listing

Click here if you want to sign up for a notice when the system is fully operable.  It will be available to the first 100 customers for $169.00/month Starting in late May, 2012.

Where Does Google Get Your Business Information?

Many business owners, maybe even you, are not aware of how Google gathers the information they show on your Place Page. As they mention in their email, they use many sources to determine the accuracy of your listing. This is why optimizing and publishing your business listing on sites like Universal Business Listing is so important. The more sources Google finds with accurate information about your business, the better they feel about promoting your business listing to the front page of results.

If Google finds discrepancies with your business listing (business name, business address, business phone number) on multiple sites, they will be reluctant to show you in their results. You can do a quick search to see what Google and the other search engines see by doing a search for:

• Just your business name
• Just your business address
• Just your telephone number

You may be surprised to see what comes up. If you do see a discrepancy, fix it quickly.

What Google Really Wants From You However Is …

What Google is really hoping however is that while you’re making the changes to your listing or checking for its accuracy, they will be able to redirect your attention to their Google Adwords Express service. This is great for Google, but not so great for you.

There is no doubt that the Google Adwords Express service will generate new business for you, but getting your business listing to the front page of results and making it the most compelling listing on the page and generating all of your new leads for free is much better.

Before you invest a dime, (or a couple hundred dollars a month) in Google Adwords Express, do everything in your power to optimize and publicize your business listing. This site is filled with tips and ideas as to how you can do just that. Just keep in mind that the three most important factors necessary to get front page placement include:

• Distance
• Promenance
• Relevance

You can learn a lot more about all three components by reading my article entitled: Local Search Ranking by Google Maps

Kick It Up A Notch

If you really want to kick it up a notch, invest in our DIY Local Search Marketing System. The System will provide you with the step-by-step process necessary to take full advantage of Local Search on Google, Yahoo, Bing and dozens of other highly search sites.

If you don’t want to pay a local search marketing expert hundreds of dollars an hour to optimize, publicize and trouble shoot your local search marketing program, then this system is exactly what you’re looking for. It is comprised of a Fill-In-The-Form PDF Manual and our Local Search Marketing Training Website that will walk you through the entire process.

If you’re not afraid to do a little work on your own marketing, you can look forward to seeing some wonderful results, and by results I mean free leads from the Internet.

Chronicle Of A Local Search Marketing Project

Would you like to see how a local search marketing campaign works from start to finish? Join me as I chronicle my step by step experience creating a campaign for a brand new business in Southwest Florida.

The business is Ft. Myers Motorcycle Rental in Ft. Myers Florida. The business owner, Tom Kindelan, knows the value of local search first hand (read his testimonial) so he asked me to get started on a local search project for a  new business he wanted to start. Here’s what we did.

June 1, 2011 – Tom Had An Idea For A New Business

Tom decided he wanted to start a motorcycle rental business and open it before the snowbirds came to visit Southwest Florida in the fall. He called me and asked what he needed to do over the summer to prepare for the work we would do in early fall when we started his local search marketing project in earnest. This was my advice.

• You must have a website. It does not need to be fancy or expensive, but it must be fully optimized for the search engines. Get a domain name that describes exactly what you do and include your location. Try to get something like FtMyersMotorcycleRental.com
• Get a local telephone number exclusively for your business. You won’t need it until about 60 days before you open, but Google suggests/demands/requires that you have a unique telephone number for each business.  239-257-8085.
• Research your competitors on Google and determine your niche. What will make Ft. Myers Motorcycle Rental different, better? Rent a pre-owned, professionally maintained Harley-Davidson motorcycles for a fraction of the cost you would pay to rent a new Harley.
• Purchase motorcycles to rent before you start getting calls.

October 8, 2011 – The Work Begins

Now it’s my turn. I took the information Tom had researched and built a fully optimized website for his local business http://www.ftmyersmotorcyclerental.com. (Optimizing a website for local search marketing is very different from standard website optimization.) I also optimized and claimed his business listings on Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Unfortunately, because Tom owns another business at the same location, neither Google nor Bing allowed me to claim his business via the telephone. We had to wait to verify Ft. Myers Motorcycle Rental through the mail. No big deal!

My next step was to place his business listing on UBL and Localeze in order to promote his business on the Internet and acquire tons of citations, which I did over the next few days.

Then I ran off a list of the most powerful citation websites for motorcycle rental companies in Southwest Florida using a very, very cool tool from Whitespark. I gave this list with Tom to share with his staff so they could gather even more citations over the course of the next few months. This is something he and his staff did without my assistance. It’s easy to do when you know how to do it.

As of October 8, Ft. Myers Motorcycle Rental is not showing up on any of the search engines for Tom’s primary keywords which are “Ft. Myers Motorcycle Rental” and Ft. Myers Harley Rental.” He won’t be renting motorcycles until mid-November, so we will not be able to acquire reviews until that time, but rest assured, he will be generating 5-star review from his happy customer. Tom is very good getting reviews.

• One time cost of Local Search project including new websites: ~ $2,500
• Return on Investment: My guess is that once Tom opens for business, he will recoup his investment in less than 60 day … and that’s without any ongoing monthly fees. Sweet!

Stay tuned and let’s see how well this local search marketing project works for Tom, both in search engine placement on the Internet and more importantly, in real dollars for a start-up business.

Update November 1, 2011

Just received a call from Tom, the owner of Ft. Myers Motorcycle Rental. His business listing is now in the second spot for the term Fort Myers Motorcycle Rental and he’s in the third spot for Fort Myers Harley Rental on Google.

Now his quest is to continue gathering business citations from the list provided by Whitespark and generate 5-star customer reviews using the 5-Star Review System … which he will do as soon as he starts renting bikes.

I also made a change to the description text on the Fort Myers Motorcycle Rental website. Currently the text under the search results reads, “Rent Harley-Davidson Motorcycles from Ft. Myers Motorcycle Rental in Ft. Myers, Florida.”

I change the description text to now read, “Save 30 percent by renting your Harley-Davidson Motorcycles from Ft. Myers Motorcycle Rental in Ft. Myers, Florida.” The goal is to attract Harley renters who want to save money on their rental.  I’ll be keeping an eye on this to see how quickly Google picks it up and if it makes a difference in the number of rentals.

Update February 25, 2012

Google

Pictures speak louder than words. Take a look at the graphic below and see how Fort Myers Motorcycle Rental is doing the the major search engines.

Google Listing

As of a few weeks ago, Fort Myers Motorcycle Rental took the first place spot in Google. Tom’s business listing is just ahead of the Harley listing with eight reviews and a 5 -STAR rating while the Harley Dealership has nine reviews with a 4-STAR average rating.

Just a few months ago, this business did not exist. Today, Google is presenting Ft. Myers Motorcycle Rental as the best, most trusted Motorcycle Rental company in Ft. Myers Florida … even more trusted than the Harley-Davidson Dealership that has been in business in Ft. Myers for years.

Google Maps Listing

Fort Myers Motorcycle Rental is listed in the first spot on Google Maps too, ahead of the Harley Dealership. It also has a higher customer rating with a more compelling photo and a better review for someone interested in renting a motorcycle. Studies show that 20% of people doing local search use Google Maps rather than Google. That is why it’s so important to be listed high in the search results here too.

Yahoo Listing

Fort Myers Motorcycle Rental is listed in the second spot on Yahoo, which a lot of business owners tend to discredit. On average, Yahoo generates about 1/4 the number of calls you can expect from Google, depending on the industry you serve. It’s important to be listed high on Yahoo! too. It only takes one customer review for the stars to show up on yahoo! It takes 5 reviews before stars show up on Google. Focus on getting at  least one 5-star review on Yahoo!

Bing Listing

Ft. Myers Motorcycle Rental is in the #1 spot on Bing … ahead of the Harley Dealership. Bing also represents about 1/4 the traffic of Google, and Bing is growing in importance every day.

Internet Yellow Pages

Oh, and Ft. Myers Motorcycle Rental is in the second spot for Motorcycle Rental Fort Myers on YellowPages.com with a 5-STAR average rating there too … and Tom’s not paying a dime to advertise there either. Sweet!

Conclusion

As you may know from reading my other articles, first page placement on Google, Yahoo! and Bing means nothing if your business listing is not generating new business. According to Tom, he went from zero calls a day before we started his local search marketing campaign to an average of 1 call a day (7 calls a week, 30 calls a month or 365 calls a year) just a few month after we started.

That may not sound like a lot, but in the motorcycle rental business it’s the difference between owning a profitable business and going out of business.

Return on Investment

Initially, I thought it was going to take Tom about 60 days to earn his investment back from the work I did for him on his local search marketing project. As it turned out, it only took 30 days.  And, here’s the best part, Tom will see a return on his investment every 30 days without having to pay a dime in advertising … ever.

From a local search marketing perspective, things could not have gone better. As Tom and his staff accumulate more and more 5-star reviews and a list of happy customers, he will see a never ending flow of new customers.

The success of Ft. Myers Motorcycle Rental is based on four things.

1. An optimized business listing.
2. A publicized business listing.
3. A website optimized for local search.
4. Ability to generate 5-star reviews on multiple review websites.

Now It’s Your Turn

Would you like to do the same for your business? You can. Here’s what you need to do.

1. Read everything you can about Local Search Marketing on VisOnTheNet

2. If you want to do Local Search Marketing yourself, invest in the DIY Local Search Marketing System. You can learn more about it here.

3. Start generating 5-star customer reviews right now. If you want to supercharge your ability to generate 5 star reviews and acquire referrals from your happy customers, check out The Five Star Review System at BestLocalReviews.com

4. Don’t have the time or inclination to do it yourself? Give us a call at 808-891-0449 and talk to us about your project. We can get you moving in the right direction.

A whole new wave of bad karma is blanketing the Local Search Marketing world with people informing Google that “This place is permanently closed,” when in fact, it is not.

The New York Times published an article in their September 5, 2011 issue entitled:  “Closed, Says Google, But Shop’s Signs Say Open” The article was about two business which Google showed as permanently closed, when they were actually alive and thriving, that was until something bad happened. And that something bad had to do with competitors or dissatisfied customers or dissatisfied employees informing Google that each business had been permanently closed. Like I said, Bad Karma.

How did this happen and what can you do about it if it happens to you?

Before you read another word, please go to your business place page on Google and see if your business has been permanently closed. If it has, I’m going to show you what to do to get it back on line. If your business is still open, I’m going to show you how to insure that it stays open.

Back To The NYT Article

The instant I read the NYT article, I contacted Charlene Cowan, the owner of the Macadamia Meadows Farm, a bed-and-breakfast in Naalehu, Hawaii, which had been tagged as “permanently closed.” I wanted to find out from her first hand what happened and what, if anything, she had done to get her business back on line with Google.

According to Charlene, her bookings for the month of September plummeted and she couldn’t figure out why, that was until she discovered that her business was permanently closed on Google. She tried to contact Google on multiple occasions for a resolution, which did not come. Fortunately for her, a NYT writer discovered her request on the Google Place Page help forum and wrote an article that was seen by millions of readers and the people in charge of Google Maps in Mountain View, California. At that point Charlene told me that Google jumped on her issue and she was back on line in short order.

I know what you’re thinking. Good for Charlene, but I doubt if the NYT is going to write an article about my business being permanently closed on Google, and you would be right. So, here’s what you can to do.

Solution

Google seems to be much more attentive to this issue after the NTY article exposed this kink in their Local Search armor. Last week I received a call Anne Oishi, the owner of Island Honda here on Maui. She told me that her business had been tagged as permanently closed by Google and asked me what to do. Here’s the good news. We were able to get her business back on line in less that 24 hours. And here’s more good news. It was not that hard to do.

If your business listing is off line, you will see one of two things when you go to your Google Place page.

• “Reported to be closed. Not true?”
• “This place is permanently closed. Not true?”

In both cases you have an opportunity to click on the “Not true?” link and tell Google that your business is still open. In the event of Island Honda, I asked the owner to ask her friends to click on this link and indicate to Google that there was an error. In less than 24 hours, Island Honda was back on-line (and showing up very high in the search results for all of their primary keywords). It’s really that easy.

And, If Your Business Is OK?

Please, do not be apathetic about visiting your Google Place page. In the case of Island Honda, they caught the error early. If you don’t check your place page frequently, you will not know that there’s a problem until your business declines.

Bob Sommers
VisOnTheNet.com

For more information about getting your business listed high on Google Maps and generating tons of 5 star reviews, go to VisOnTheNet.com

The day was bound to come. Google is no longer offering their $25/month tag service. So, what’s a business owner to do to stand out from the crowd? This video will show you 7 things you can do today to attract the attention of your customers on Google without having to invest in “Boost” their paid advertising service.

Distance / Relevance / Prominence

How To Get 5 Star Reviews

How to Geo-Tag Photos

One of the primary factors Google looks at with respect to ranking your business listing on the map section of their results page is continuity and signal strength. If your business is sending a strong and consistent signal across the web, your listing on Google will be rewarded with higher placement.

Signal Strength

There are many factors that determine signal strength including your ability to generate multiple citations from both local and vertical (industry specific) websites. Other factors include well thought-out keyword rich anchor text links leading back to your website from local and industry specific sites, but this is an advanced topic for a future article.

Some citations (signals) are much more valuable (stronger) than others. For example, if you own a mini-storage facility and you have a citation from your local Chamber of Commerce, that is a powerful citation, or indication of trust. The same is true if you have a citation from your mini-storage association.

Citation: A citation is a mention of any combination of your business name, business address and business telephone number on another website. The site does not have to link back to your website to be considered a citation.

On the other hand, if you have a citation from an unrelated website in a community hundreds of miles away, it’s still considered a citation, but the signal strength or trust level is weaker. It’s not as valuable as a local citation or a citation from an industry website, but it’s still counted positively.

Signal Consistency

Consistency is another factor that determines your signal strength, and this is where the Yellow Pages can potentially create a hiccup in your signal. Google looks for a business name, business address and a business telephone number on all the sites where your business is listed. If Google sees the same information across multiple websites, it’s a sign of trust. If Google sees a different telephone number associated with your business name, it creates a feeling of mistrust. (Interesting use of the word “feeling” when talking about a search engine, but that’s exactly what happens.

Here’s the problem.

There are tens of thousand of local business owners who have been persuaded by the Yellow Pages to use a tracking number with their Yellow Page ad. Having a (telephone) tracking number in print is not the problem. The problem arises when the Yellow Pages shares your business information … along with your tracking number … with hundreds of citation sites including sites they directly control like Yellowpages.com, Superpages.com, Yellowbook.com etc.

When these sites pick up your business name and address with a tracking number, it creates a distorted signal. This in turn can cause Google to lose trust and lower your business listing ranking in their map section. Lack of consistency is considered a negative ranking factor.

So, What’s A Business Owner To Do?

There are many ways to increase your signal consistency, and they all include dropping your tracking number.

Let’s start with an example. If you do a search for Coker Septic Inc in Miami, Fl on Yellowpages.com, you will find the following information for their business listing.

Coker Septic Inc.
6022 SW 35th St
Miami, FL 33155
(786) 245-6732

If you go to their website cokerplumbing.com you will see this information about their business.

Coker Septic Inc.
6022 SW 35th St
Miami, FL 33155
(305) 667-7579

Notice how everything is identical except for the telephone number. This causes a trust problem with Google.

(Good News) Since I wrote this article, Coker Septic, Inc. has fixed the problem with their listing in the Yellow Pages. Now their telephone numbers match and the number they choose was their local Miami number.)

The Fix

1. If you have a tracking number with the Yellow Pages, get rid of it. Encourage the people who answer the telephone for you to get in the habit of asking every customer how they found you. Don’t be afraid to be specific. If they found you on Yellowpages.com, ask them. If they found you on Google, ask them.

A very busy heating and air conditioning company in St. Louis makes sure that everyone who answers the telephone has immediate access to a note pad listing all the potential ways their customers can contact them. Then they quickly check-off the answer and keep track of the data. Your people can to the same thing.

2. Then, go on the Internet and do a search for the tracking number associated with your business. Go to Yahoo.com and type the telephone number into the search bar. Here are the results for the tracking number for Coker Septic Inc.

(786) 245-6732

3. Finally, you will need to do one of two things. You can either visit each and every website with the tracking number and request that they change your telephone number to your correct local number, or (if you continue to advertise with the Yellow Pages) you can request that they change and promote your actual business number. Once they do that it will take a few months before most of the bad numbers are corrected.

Not Just About The Yellow Pages

You should do this exercise even if you’ve never had an ad with the Yellow Pages. You could be surprised at where and how often your telephone number shows up on the Internet. It could be a telephone number was was incorrectly published by someone else or an old telephone number used by another business before the telephone company reassigned the number to you.

Conclusion

One of the primary keys to moving your business listing up in the search results is signal strength, and you can improve your signal strength significantly by making sure that your business name, address and telephone number are exactly the same on every website.

Once you get your citations (telephone numbers) cleaned up, you will begin see your business listing start to rise on Google Maps. You will also see the same thing start to happen on Yahoo! and Bing.

If You Want More

VizOnTheNet now offers one-on-one Local Search Marketing Consulting for business owners who don’t have the time to attend our Boot Camp. The fee is $995 and it includes two half-day sessions. This is a great alternative for business owners who want our complete attention working with them on their Local Search Marketing Campaign.

If you’re interested, please contact us here in Hawaii at 808-891-0449.