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 $99.97/month Starting on January 3, 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.

If you want to see a watch a local search marketing project unfold before your eyes, this is a great example to watch.

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 his local search project post-haste. Here’s what we did.

June 1, 2011

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 on 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.

October 8, 2011

Now it was my turn. I took the information Tom acquired and build a fully optimized website for his local business. I also optimized and claimed his business listing 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’ll have to wait to verify Ft. Myers Motorcycle Rental through the mail.

My next step is to place his business listing on UBL and Localeze in order to promote his business on the net and acquire tons of citations, which I will do over the next few days. Then I’ll do a little link building to his new website via article marketing to give it some recognition on the Internet.

Then I’m going to run off a list of the most powerful citation sites for motorcycle rental companies in Southwest Florida using a very, very cool tool from Whitespark. I’m going to share this list with Tom for he and his staff to use to gather even more citations over the course of the next few months.

As of today, 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 we will be generating a 5-star review from virtually every happy customer.

• Cost of Project: About $2,500.
• Return on Investment: My guess is that once Tom Opens his doors, he will recoup his investment in less than 60 days … 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. Super Sweet!

Now his quest is to continue to gather business citations at the rate of one or two a day from the list provided by Whitespark.ca and generate 5-star customer reviews using the 5-Star Review, Reward and Referral System … which will come as soon as he is ready to start renting his 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 as follows. “Rent Harley-Davidson Motorcycles from Ft. Myers Motorcycle Rental in Ft. Myers, Florida.”

After talking to the owner, one of his biggest selling points is the cost of renting from him over renting from the Harely-Davidson dealer in Ft. Myers. Therefore …

I’ve 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.

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.

Now imagine that your potential customers can access your ad from their computer, their smart phone and from the GPS device in their car.

Here’s the Good News

If you work out of your home or have a brink and mortar business that caters to local customers, you CAN advertise your business on all of these sites and many others for FREE!

There is an entire segment of Internet Marketing known as “Local Search Marketing” that allows you to do just that. Odds are pretty good that you’ve already used it to find a product or service you were looking for, but just didn’t know what you were looking at at the time.

Free Online Advertising

Go to any of the sites I listed above and do a search for the products and service you offer. As soon as you do, you will notice that all of these sites show businesses that provide these services. Some of the businesses paid handsomely to advertise on those sites while others paid nothing. Sounds too good to be true doesn’t it?

All you have to do is go to each of these websites, look for text that reads “Add Business,” and provide your business information in the space provided. They will all try to sell you their paid service, but I strongly discourage you from investing in something you can get for free.

But Why?

If you’re like me you’re probably wondering, “Why would any of these sites, much less all of them, give me an opportunity to advertise for free?” Good question, and here’s the answer. “Relevance.”

You see, all of these websites including Google and the Yellow Pages are fighting to be the most relevant website on the Internet. They know that if they provide the best and most comprehensive information available, you will be more likely to use their service in the future. And one of the ways they become the most relevant website is to provide you with the most choices. Let me explain.

I’m Looking For A Barber

Let’s assume that you’re looking for a new barber. Let’s also assume that Google shows you all 50 barbers within a 10 mile radius of your home while the Yellow Pages only shows you the 7 barbers in the same 10 mile radius who paid to be listed on their website.

Which directory or website are you most likely to use in the future? Which website are you most likely to tell your friends about?

That is why everyone of the websites I mentioned above is clamoring to list your business, even if you don’t pay to advertise with them. They don’t want you to know that you can advertise for free of course. They want you to believe that you must pay to be listed.

Don’t Be Fooled

If you know what to look for and what to avoid, you can get free advertising on the most highly searched sites on the Internet. Better yet, you can expect to generate tons of new business from your effort.

Go to our Free Online Advertising page and get backdoor access to over 40 of the most highly searched websites on the Internet.

To start, there are dozens of ways you as a local business owner can market your products and services over the Internet. And when I use the term “market” I’m writing about free ways to promote your products and services, not paid advertising.

Along those same lines, I want to address the question more specifically. “What are the biggest mistakes business owners make when marketing their business on-line via Local Search Marketing … i.e. Google Maps.”

To start, if you call on local customers and you’re not implementing Local Search Marketing techniques including Google Maps, Bing Local and Yahoo Local you’re missing out on the most effective form of Internet Marketing available to your business. In my humble opinion, there are very few local businesses, if any, who will find a better return on their investment, especially since this form of Internet Marketing is free and it generates a ton of new customers. That being said, let me get back to answering the question.

Mistake #1

Not Searching For Your Business Like Your Customers Do

Unless you have fantastic brand recognition, customers will not search for your business using your business name. They will search for the products and services you offer and they will do it on their computers, on their smart phones and on their GPS devices in their cars and trucks.

So, if a searcher or potential buyer is looking for someone to replace the brakes on their car, they’re going to search using terms like, Auto Mechanic, Brake Repair, Brake Service or Car Repair.

Take a moment right now and do a search for the products and services you offer. Better yet, do that search on your computer using Google, Yahoo, Bing and Yellowpages.com (keeping in mind that these are only a handful of all of the potential places where your customers are looking for the products and services you offer.)

Then do the same search from your iPhone, iPod, iPad and any other mobile device you can get your hands on, and then do the same search from the GPS device in your car or truck.

OK. Now you have an idea of what your customers are seeing … and just as importantly, what they’re not seeing.

Mistake #2

Not Claiming Your Google Place Page

Current estimates show that 12% of Local Business owners have claimed their business listing on Google. It’s the first, and one of the most important steps to “World Domination” or at least market domination in your community. You can find and claim your business by going to Google.com/local, searching for your business name and address, clicking on the “more info” next to your business name, seeing if your business has been claimed yet and then setting up a Google Account and claiming your business.

When you go to your Place Page, you will see one of two pieces of text on the top right hand side of your place page. It will either read …

Indicating that the business has not been claimed by the business owner or someone working on behalf of the business owner.

Indicating that the business has been claimed by the business owner.

You can quickly eliminate the second biggest mistake by finding and claiming your business on Google.

Mistake #3

Not Fully Optimizing Your Google Place Page

Claiming your business is one thing, (and it’s a very important thing to do) but optimizing your business listing will bring your business to an entirely different level of success. When we offered this service we changed $1,000 to optimize a Google Business listing and it was worth every penny.

Most business owners never take a second look at the information they provide in their place page. And, because of that, there is a very good chance they will be either removed from the map section completely (because they unknowingly broke one of Google’s rules) or they will now show up in the map where potential customers are looking (because they have not done their local keyword research.) Let me give you a few examples of where things can go wrong if you don’t pay attention.

Business Name
If you don’t provide your legal business name exactly as it appears in the outside world, Google can and will remove your listing from their maps section. I’ve seen this happen multiple times and it’s very difficult to back on the map once you’re business is removed.

Business Address
We never, and I mean never provide an address without checking with the USPS first. Get this wrong … even slightly wrong and your listing will not show up in the right location. I can not tell you how many times business owners provide the wrong (non-USPS approved) address in their business listing because they’ve never checked with the USPS. It’s shocking.

Telephone Number
This alone will keep you from showing up in the map results if you don’t have the “right” telephone number. Follow the rules and make absolutely sure that you’re providing a Google authorized telephone number.

Website Address
This is way to comprehensive to cover in this article. But in short, if your website is not localized, you’re screwed. Google is now paying very close attention to your website. Among other things, they are looking to see if your site has …

• Your business name, address and telephone number on every page.
• A map with written directions to your business on your site.
• A geo meta tag in your HTML header.
• Optimized, geo-tagged, photos on your site.
• A quick loading home page.
• A domain name owned by the business and not the business owner
• Your website hosted on a server in your country.
• A site that is optimized for mobile devices.
• Dozen other critical components that I don’t have time to cover in this article.

Problem is, most business owners just type in their web address (without the http://) and without giving any thought to localizing their website.

Categories

This is the primary way Google knows what your business is about. Again, most business owners either select one “Google suggested” category or they choose the maximum of five “Google suggested” categories. This is a huge mistake. We spend more time on this one aspect of optimizing a local business listing than we do anything else, and we rarely select more than one “Google suggested” category, and you shouldn’t either. You can learn more about selecting the best categories for your business listing here.

Photos / Videos / Description Text / Additional Details

• Did you geo tag your photos?
• Did you optimize your photos by adding a caption, renaming it with your keywords and adding a full citation in the description before linking it to Google?
• Did you re-size your primary photo to the proper dimension and link to it from a static server?

I could ask you similar questions concerning your video, description text, hours of operation and additional details. As you can see, there is much more to filling out your Google Place page than meets the eye.

So, in order to avoid the third biggest mistake, take the time to fully optimize your Google Place Page listing and fill it out completely.

Mistake #4

Assuming That Once You Fully Optimized Your Google Place Page And Your Business Listing Shows Up On Page One Of Google Maps … Your Done.

If you’ve fully optimized your Google Place page listing following the guidelines I provided above, and your business listing is showing up on page one of Google Maps for your primary local keywords, you’ve completed about 7% of the work necessary to dominate your local market. It won’t be long before your competitors figure out how valuable this space is and start to do the same thing. If you want to use your business listing to generate new customers, you must be willing to take the time to do your listing right and promote it all over the Internet … not just on Google.

There are hundreds of websites and Internet services where your customers look for your business. Your listing needs to be prominent and have a stellar reputation on every one of those site. Google is just your starting point.

Now that you’ve done the initial work, get to work on the remaining 93% that still needs to be done.

• Generate additional business citations.
• Clean up your inaccurate citations.
• Find the most valuable citation sites for your business in your community.
• Claim your business on multiple sites.
• Make sure the Yellow Pages isn’t hindering your efforts.
• Generate positive reviews.
• Get bad reviews removed.
• Claim and optimize your business listing on every site where your customers are looking for you and reviewing your service.
• Insure that your business website is fully optimized for local search.
• Build the value of your business website by creating valuable link bait.
• Monitor your results and continue to build your reputation.

Local search is free and it’s the most powerful form of Internet marketing for the vast majority of local businesses, but it takes effort. Do it right and you will be rewarded with new customers for a long time to come.

Local Search Marketing Boot Camp – April 9 On Maui

If you’re really interested in dominating your local market for the products and service you offer, consider joining us for an all day Local Search Marketing Boot Camp. It’s a lot of work and it’s a very long day, but you’ll be amazed at what you accomplish (with your business listing) after just one day.