As far as Google Places go, there are a few new features that you might be interested in, in addition to the original features offered by Google Local Business Center. And as always, if you have any questions, please feel free to comment here or ask your account manager.

Service Area

So one of the new features is the service area feature. This feature is more for local businesses that travel to their customers (rather than customers traveling to the business). With service areas, you can now show a particular region your business currently covers. There are a number of different ways we can determine your service area, but the most basic requirement is city or zip code(s).

For home based businesses, Google now provides the option to make your address private. This means you can still have your Google Places page available in Google Places, but you can keep your physical location private if your business relies mostly on online transactions via your website or phone calls.

Enhanced Paid Advertising

For $25 per month, you can add a yellow marker next to your listing on Google Maps, which you can use for special promotions, coupons, or highlighting a specialty your business provides.

Google does explicitly state that this won’t affect the rank of your site in search results, however, in my personal opinion, it could potentially make your listing stand out among the others (well, at least until everyone in Google Places starts paying for this new enhancement). With the rise in popularity of couponing, customers are searching for the best deals and tagging is a great way to promote your specials.

Business Photo Shoots

Ok so this is probably the most surprising (but not so surprising) new feature in Google Places: business photo shoots. And if your perplexed about what that exactly is (and by the way, let me also emphasize that this is also a FREE service that Google is offering), it’s exactly like it sounds. Google is offering to send a professional photographer out to your business to take pictures of your store and staff for free.

They did state in their FAQ that this feature is initially geared mostly toward local businesses that could benefit from great photos (such as specialty stores, restaurants, and local services). In addition, they’re also offering this service in select cities throughout the U.S., Japan, and Australia and it’s by application only. They did say, however, that demand will determine what cities they offer this in so perhaps the more people in your area request this service, the more likely they’ll open this service to your city.

One more thing to note: Google will decide what photos to upload to your Google Places page. However, you’ll still be able to upload your own photos in addition to the ones that Google chose for you from your photo shoot.

Customized QR Codes and Favorite Places

If you’re not familiar with QR codes, you’re in for a treat. QR in QR codes stand for “quick response.” You can display them for smart phones, which, with the right phone application, can quickly decode them and take an action whether it be to visit a web page or to save contact information for a business or an individual.

With the implementation of QR codes in Google Places, a user can quickly add your contact information to their mobile phone by opening an app, snapping a photo of your QR code which would prompt them to save your info and–zip!–out the door they go.

Real Time Business Updates

In Google Places, they’re now allowing businesses to offer real-time updates–kinda similar to the well-known Facebook status update. Real-time updates can be great for announcing breaking news, limited-time offers, or special promotions.

An update in May has been causing a bit of a stir among internet marketing experts. The change is small, but may be significant for some websites that rely on long-tail keywords as an internet marketing strategy. Long tail keywords are essentially keywords that are more than three words long, detailed, and use obscure terms. They are often used despite their low traffic because long tail keywords were easy to rank on page one of Google, and they also tend to drive far more targeted traffic.

Officially Google states that this change:

• Took place around April 28th – May 3rd.
• Is purely algorithmic tweak and doesn’t involve any human factors.
• The update is permanent.
• Mayday mostly affects long-tail keywords, its impact is most vivid on search terms made up of 3 and more words.
• Affects the way Google ranks sites and has nothing to do with indexing.
• It’s not related to Caffeine in any way.

Now, this change may not have significant impact on your rankings. The drops in traffic from long tail keywords are noticeable, but not dramatic for high quality sites that have very relevant content connected to long tail keywords. Organizations that focus on smart “white hat” SEO tactics should not see a significant difference in rankings or search engine traffic. White hat SEO tactics include, but are not limited to:

• Building good relevant backlinks through online PR, Social Media, and great content.
• Developing strong organic results for short tail phrases and long tail phrases.
• Focus on optimizing all media types (web pages, video, social media, etc.)

However, organizations who use content from other sites via RSS or other tactics, have lots of content on their site with the sole purpose of ranking well for long tail phrases, might see some of those deeper pages loose ranking. Some companies are reporting significant traffic drops of 50-90%. The companies especially affected are e-commerce and directory sites, where long tail keywords are located on pages without a wealth of links leading in, and are several clicks deep from the home page.

Remember, don’t panic. To analyze the impact of this update, first check your rankings and organic search engine traffic. If you haven’t seen a drop in these areas by now your site is fine. You might see some strange anomalies like a change in back links or page rank too. However, if your traffic hasn’t changed then keep doing what you are doing.

In practical terms, this update will mean that you need to work to improve the relevancy of long tail keywords on pages that are no longer ranking. One of the best things you can do is make sure there are internal and external links pointing to pages with the proper key phrases in the anchor text. Improving the content on these pages can help your site become an ‘authority’ so that it truly is the best result for long tail keyword searches.

So why did Google make the changes? Well, there has been a lot of patent activity going on in regard to Google Caffeine. Were the changes made because Google is actually getting better at indexing longer phrases? Before, Google’s ability to index a phrase of 4 or five words was very limited, but with new and better algorithms, they may be able to do that more easily. That means that Google is now much more accurate at finding the best results for long tail keywords.

If there are significant drops in traffic due to this update, Webdex Media Group can examine the keywords that the site no longer ranking for, and check out what is currently showing up in Google instead. We will look at those sites to determine what qualities they have that are helping them rank higher, and adjust your pages accordingly.

What exactly turns a lead into a sale? Well, that’s a difficult question, because there are a great many variables to consider. Only a skilled internet marketing company will have experience necessary to get the right data and extrapolate the right information from it. Here are some of the many different aspect that will help determine the conversion rate:

• Site design and usability
• The persuasiveness of a site’s content
• The sales team of the company in both email and telephone sales
• Follow-up communication
• How targeted the audience is

A good internet marketing company will be able to find which of these factors affect conversion, and to what extent. Data alone won’t tell them, and luck certainly will not give them answers. The only way to know which aspects are pushing the customer from lead into sale is to check each variable one by one against controls, and test for effectiveness.

Even once the aspects that work best are known, the work is far from over. From there, it’s important to improve on the weak aspects, which will require the same battery of tests. Even the most effective sales tools are not finished. It’s possible to infinitely refine the very best parts of your campaign, making them even stronger.

There are some benchmarks of data that internet marketers can use to tell them where the strong and weak points are in any campaign. For example, a high bounce rate may mean that the site’s layout is not compelling. A short time on site may indicate that there is not enough content to keep visitors interested. Visitors who leave the site without converting may indicate a weak call to action.

Whatever the strengths and weaknesses of a site, there is no secret to converting leads to sales. It’s never all about content, or about site design, or even about the products and services for sale. For this reason, it’s important that you always work with an internet marketing that understands how all the pieces fit together, and how to constantly manage both the good and bad aspects.

Because an SEO or SEM campaign is built on a foundation of keywords, it’s especially important that B2B companies do extensive keyword analysis from the very beginning. A great way to start this process is by checking out competitors. Look that what they’re doing right, and more importantly, what they’re doing wrong.

There are other tools that internet marketing companies use to find the best B2B keywords. Often, SEO companies have some insights into the world of B2B marketing that may not be readily known to more traditional marketers. For instance:

Search counts are one indicator of a keyword’s usefulness, but not the only one. it’s also important to look at the relevancy of the keyword in question. A highly relevant keyword will direct very targeted traffic to a site. Research of B2B keywords tends to show that long-tail key phrases of 4 or more words convert the best.

There are two kinds of buyers for B2B businesses. There are the buyers who know what they want, and are actively looking for it – let’s call them the ‘Now Buyers.’ There are also buyers who may know what they need, but aren’t familiar with the exact product or service that fits that need. These are the ‘Future Buyers’. It’s possible to snag the Now Buyers with phrases like “CRM Software Provider” and the Future Buyers with phrases like “How to improve customer retention.” By paying attention to both sorts of clients, businesses can market effectively to each.

Keywords can become more relevant and unique by pairing them up with common search terms. For instance, an internet marketing group might want to consider keywords like Internet Marketing Company (or companies), Internet Marketing Firm, or Internet Marketing Services. Words like product(s), providers(s), and vendor(s) are also great keyword additions.

Another often overlooked technique is to use the specific information of products you represent as keywords. If you represent Cisco, for example, use phrases like “cisco callmanager v3.0,” “Cisco SPA942-4 IP Phone,” or “Cisco IOS Netflo.”

If you want to do some preliminary B2B keyword analysis yourself, take advantage of some of the free tools available online. For instance, Google’s keyword tool is very powerful. for ideas you may not have thought of before, try Google’s Wonder Wheel. The Google AdWords keyword tool can also be very useful.

Out of necessity, the SEO industry has expanded to include professionals from many different aspects of web design and marketing. What could be done in the year 2000 by one person with some knowledge of code now requires a highly organized team of copywriters, market analysts, web designers, and clerical assistants.

What’s changed? Why has SEO gone from a handful of skilled web designers to a fully fledged marketing industry?

The short answer is competition. As more and more companies competed for the same target audience, the market quickly became saturated with a million sites all vying for attention. As this happened, Internet marketing professionals quickly learned that the only way to compete was to carefully control the content and information on a site to make it favorable to search engines. In the beginning, this could quickly bring any site to the top of the pile.

As online businesses became educated, basic SEO was a common practice, meaning that again, competition became fierce. In addition, search engine companies wanted to recognize companies with ethical methods of attracting traffic, and at the same time find ways to keep out those people who tried to make it to the top by exploiting the formulas used to create results. This meant that search engines began to look deeper into a site. They began to evaluate the quality of content on the site, and reputation of inbound links. They look at how often the site is updated, and how relevant the pages are to one another.

Now, search engines are quite sophisticated, and in order to rise to the top of Google’s results for any product or service, not only must sites fill their pages with excellent content, but they must also compete with thousands of other equally prepared websites.

With no sure way to get an edge, what can businesses do?

By looking at SEO as a marketing strategy, it’s easier to get a handle on what the SEO industry is today. To get a website found, there are limitless channels to explore, and each has its own merits. Here are the bones of a great internet marketing campaign:

• Any campaign should begin with an in-depth keyword analysis. Keywords will be the basis of all marketing, so never work with a company that ignores them, or chooses them arbitrarily.

• Organic SEO will be done using the content and code of a site, and by cultivating inbound links of high quality. This takes time to build, but can pay off for years. Blogs are often a part of organic SEO, and good Internet marketing companies should have skilled copywriters close at hand to make sure that any content written is using the right keywords at the proper density.

• Local SEO is much like organic SEO. If you’ve got a brick and mortar store, it’s important to make your physical location a part of your campaign.

• For immediate results, many internet marketing companies will run a Pay Per Click, or paid search campaign that will allow businesses to get immediate traffic as the organic results grow.

• Social media and social bookmarking are new ways to stand out. Many people are starting to use sites like Facebook and Twitter as their portal to the web. By having a presence on social media, businesses can catch those audience members who don’t get their information directly from search engines. Social media is also an excellent place to build the company brand and identity, and manage online reputation.

If you work with an SEO professional who doesn’t tackle all of these aspects, then you’ll quickly be swept aside by the competitors who do. Work with a team of Internet marketing professionals who understand all aspects of how to get a page found, and can implement not one, but one hundred ways to help you stand out in the internet crowd.

Usability Issues

If your site is not converting 3% of more of your visitors from search, then usability could be an issue. Check out these four areas for improvement:

1. Navigation – Users need to be able to navigate your site easily, even if it is their very first visit. Here are some questions to consider regarding your site’s navigation:

• Does your navigation buttons make sense. Would somebody who has never been to your site before intuitively understand where to go?
• Is it consistent throughout the site?
• Do you expect visitors to use the back button to navigate the site? The back button isn’t part of your site. If you have to use it then there is something wrong with your navigation.
• Do you have a search feature?
• Do you have a site map?

2. If you can provide quotes, do you have a Request a Quote button? It’s amazing to me how often that one is over looked.
3. Ask the bare minimum information on conversion forms. More form fields mean less conversion. Your sales guys can get the other information needed during a follow up call.
4. Provide multiple conversion options. Not all users are in the same stage of the buying process nor do they respond to the same offers and promotions. It’s important to determine what is the primary conversion goal (i.e. phone call, request a quote, etc.) and make sure this is prominently displayed above the fold, but also include other options too. Here is a list to consider:

• Offer a buyers kit
• Trials and Demos
• Request a catalog
• Promotional products
• Complete a survey for a $XX gift card
• Sign up for newsletter
• Attend a webinar
• Free analysis
• ROI tools, configurations, etc.

Messaging

Does your website have the “We We” problem? We do this and We do that. We are great. We are better than our competition. We want your money! Your website shouldn’t be about you. It is a customer service tool and should be about helping customers and potential customers. Here are two critical elements to successful website messaging for generating leads.

Find your place in the market and communicate it well. Are you the cheapest or do you satisfy a niche segment of our market. Competitive pricing doesn’t work online; nor does me too. If you are the Wal-Mart of your space and have the cheapest price, be proud and communicate this loud and clear to your users. There can only be one Wal-Mart per market, so most likely this won’t be the best strategy for you. Therefore you should also consider your niche and be very clear in that you serve this niche better than anyone else in the marketplace. Take some time and consider how your company is unique. What is it that you provide that can only be offered by you?

Make sure your site is selling the conversion not what you do. It’s your sales reps job to make the sale and the websites job to make the conversion. You need to actively communicate what you want the user to do next and what’s in it for them if they do. For example:

• What’s wrong with your site? Find out for free.
• Stay informed. Subscribe to our newsletter.
• Talk to a certified engineer and get your questions answered.
• Attend an upcoming webinar on the 10 ways to improve.
• Find out if we’re a good fit for you. Talk to one of our specialists today.

Buyers Kit Jump Drive used in WebDex Marketing

Make sure your offline marketing strategy is in sync with your web marketing strategy. Brochures, direct mail, ads, and trade show materials, should all have a Web component to them. Be sure to promote an online offer within these pieces to drive qualified traffic back to your site. Whenever I speak somewhere, I always include a link to a page on my site where folks can download the power point as well as some other free resource (after they opt-in of course). Here are some ideas to consider:

• Have your YouTube videos end with an offer for more information
• Mention in brochures that you provide case studies and white papers on the website. Include a link to the page.
• Create a buyers kit jump drive with your logo on it that includes resources and links to more helpful information on your website. Here is an example of one we created for our own company.

If you represent one of the many companies who struggle with online lead generation, then these tips a try and I am sure you will see big results. If you do, then drop us a link or comment on this post to let others know what worked. If you are having great success with online lead generation and have any other tips/ideas that would be useful to readers, please add them to the comment trail as well.

The reason that websites aimed at mobile devices has increased is undoubtedly thanks to the iPhone. Of course, mobile devices like the Blackberry, and even the Sidekick played a role initially, but since the wide adoption of the smartphone as the must-have gadget, Web browsing on mobile devices has increased exponentially. Now the release of the iPad has made mobile browsing even more popular.

While this may not mean a lot in terms of keywords and content, it does have big implications in terms of conversions. With more and more sites being visited via handheld devices, it’s important that websites are designed in a way that makes conversion on a mobile device easy. Failing that, it means making a dedicated mobile site that smartphone and netbook users can easily reach and navigate.

With mobile devices, businesses must be more conscientious of site design than ever before. iPhones and iPads can change the orientation of a page, meaning that site orientation is an issue for the first time. To ensure conversions on mobile devices, pages will have to employ plenty of white space, and large buttons. Most importantly, any data input sections should be as minimal as possible, as typing on a mobile device can be tedious. Long registrations or logins will be a hurdle to conversion on a mobile site.

It’s also important not to ignore content on a mobile site, however strong the temptation may be to simply use buttons and images for everything. There should be fresh content available on the mobile webpage, which is unique, so that search spiders will not ding page rank for duplicate content.

Of course, Flash is one aspect that should never appear on a site geared toward a mobile device. Youtube makes a great alternative as a place to host videos, since that site has a powerful search of its own, and is compatible with most smartphones. Streaming video will also be a feature best avoided. Complicated menus that include drop down animation, or rollover changes probably won’t help either. Just bear in mind that someone visiting a site from a mobile device is likely using a small screen, and probably has a less than robust internet connection.

The restrictions of mobile devices in mind, think of all the good they can do for Internet marketers. A mobile device means that a customer can access the product, or business information at any time of day, or even while on the road. For local businesses, this can be an enormous advantage. Often, the site easiest to navigate on the device will get the business. Make mobile browsing a pleasure, and conversion is sure to follow.

So for the average business owner, what does this entail? How can a business owner compete against dozens, or even thousands of competing businesses worldwide without resorting to a price war that will hurt the industry?

For starters, it’s important to understand how today’s shoppers search for places to spend their money. If someone needs an item, they’ll begin with a search for it in a search engine, like Google, or Bing. This means that at the outset, SEO and SEM will be vital for putting a website up there within easy reach -the eye level shelf of the online supermarket, as it were. But once a customer finds a site, what entices them to stay?

Customers now are drawn by not only pricing, but by the opportunity to better educate themselves about what they’re buying. There’s no such thing as blind faith when it comes to parting with money. It’s important for business owners to put aside their fears of telling consumers too much. What that boils down to is this: by telling your clients everything there is to know about what you do and how you do it, you’re not going to lose any business.

However contradictory that may seem, it’s important to understand that by providing as much information about your skills and knowledge as possible, you’re subtly showing your visitors that you clearly have a firm understanding of your industry. Not only are you skilled, but you’re willing to let them into the select club of people who know and appreciate what you’ve got to offer.

What generally happens as a result of this peeling back of the curtain is that your visitors will quickly realize how much more there is to your work than they could possibly do themselves, and they’ll find that even though they understand how you do what you do, they’ve got no interest in doing it for themselves. For example, a website that sells gourmet candy could give away the recipes for their hottest selling items without losing a single visitor. Without the access to the fine ingredients, the industry machinery, or the economy of production, no homemade batch of the candy will every taste the same or look so perfect, and the same visitors will still be buying, time and again. The only difference is that now they have a true appreciation for what’s being sold.

Of course, there is something in it for website owners, too. Adding plenty of content to a page in the form of articles or blog posts will give any SEO effort a big boost. Even without the benefit of how information influences customers, there’s no doubt that optimized content on a page will influence search engines.

Twitter’s site is a bit cumbersome for many, but tweets are appealing because they’re short, to the point, and it’s easy to link a Twitter account to feed into things like Facebook and LinkedIn. That’s why Twitter clients were created. They allow Twitter users to send tweets to multiple Twitter accounts at once, or even to multiple social networking sites at once.

At Webdex Media, we got together and thought of a few of our favorites.

TweetDeck : This is a great Twitter client that can make posts to Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, FaceBook, and a whole host of other social networking sites. TweetDeck will also allow users to log into multiple twitter accounts at once, and displays a feed of activity. Spam is rooted out, and there is even automatic URL shortening.

Seesmic : Seesmic is a great client that will access both Twitter and Facebook. In addition to URL shortening, Seesmic will also allow users to post pictures and videos, and will let you dictate image hosting accounts.

SocialToo : SocialToo has an autofollow feature that allows you to follow those who follow you, but filters out spam as well. There is also a way to make cross-network surveys using this program, which would be ideal for business owners searching for feedback on their products and services.

Twitterfox : For Firefox users, Twitterfox serves as a discreet notification tool that lets you keep in touch with your followers by showing you what they’re tweeting about. Not particularly robust, it’s still good as a realtime feed that you don’t have to exit your browser to see.

Tweet All About It : Ever run across a bit of text, and thought “This would be great to share with my clients!” Tweet All About It allows you to do that simply by highlighting the text, and right clicking it to send to your twitter account. The tools tells you your character limit too, if you’re using Firefox.

Of course, there are plenty of other Twitter clients out there. Some, like Event Box, or Tweetie are especially for Mac computers. Just find a client that meets your needs best, and you’re ready to go! In a survey by LifeHacker, TweetDeck scored the highest as a favorite Twitter Client, so you may want to save some time and try it out first. Happy Tweeting!

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That being said, online April Fools pranks have become very popular over the last few years, Google being one of the most notable pranksters with hoaxes dating back to 2000. And with the increase in popularity of social networks like Facebook and Twitter, it doesn’t take very long for said pranks to spread like wildfire.

If your timing is right (and if the joke is appropriate) it can actually help increase your brand awareness. So it won’t increase sales, but your brand name will travel quickly by word of mouth (if it’s absurd enough for people to tell their friends about it). Here at our office, we dedicated maybe about 5 or 10 minutes of idle conversation to the pranks we’d seen so far. That’s 5 or 10 minutes in which your company or brand could have been mentioned in other offices around the world.

Here are examples of some of this years pranks:

• Topeka.com – As mentioned before, Google is one of the most notable pranksters. This year their home page proudly showed off their new name Topeka. “Early last month the mayor of Topeka, Kansas stunned the world by announcing that his city was changing its name to Google. We’ve been wondering ever since how best to honor that moving gesture. Today we are pleased to announce that as of 1AM (Central Daylight Time) April 1st, Google has officially changed our name to Topeka.”
• If you logged into Gmail yesterday morning, you may have noticed the login page looked a little weird. That’s because Gmail had a “vowel” outage. “At 6:01 am Pacific Time, during routine maintenance at one of our datacenters, the frontend web servers in that particular datacenter started failing to render the letter ‘a’ for a subset of users. As error rates escalated, the strain spread to other datacenters. We worked quickly to avoid a cascading failure of the entire alphabet by implementing a stopgap solution that limited the damage to the letters ‘a,’ ‘e,’ ‘i,’ ‘o,’ and ‘u.’ As a result, we’re experiencing Gmail?s first temporary vowel outage. (We?re still investigating whether the letter ‘y’ is impacted and will post an update here shortly.)” This one was cute, but I think my favorite Gmail prank was the Gmail Paper hoax back in 2007. They created a multi-page microsite for that one
• Starbucks almost had me with their “new” Plenta and Micra sizes, I will admit. But then as soon as I saw the photos I thought, oh yeah, it’s April Fools day In their “announcement,” they said they were now listening to customer suggestions and offering 2 new sizes: the Plenta and the Micra. The Plenta was advertised as being 128 fl. oz., which, by the looks of it, looked a lot like a KFC bucket. The Micra was only 2 fl. oz. (barely larger than a cap of cough syrup).

Want To Join In On the Fun? Keep These Things in Mind

Is it REALLY appropriate? Just because big names like Google and Starbucks are doing it doesn’t mean you have to. First of all, think of your target audience. Would they be ok with an April Fools prank? Second of all, is this part of your company culture? If it is, then you could probably pull it off. If it’s not, it might be too out of the ordinary for you to achieve a successful April Fools’ campaign.

Timing is everything. You may consider a little preplanning when coming up with an April Fools hoax. You don’t want to execute it first thing in the morning when people are still asleep, but at the same time you don’t want to wait until the end of the work day after everyone has already been pranked out. By then the jokes have lost their luster and everyone’s just ready to go home.

You may want to avoid REAL product launches on April Fools day. If anything, real product launches that occur on April 1st could in fact backfire. Consumers may be even more wary on this particular day with “new and improved” services or products. If you do have a new product to launch, do NOT choose April Fools day to do it.

It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye. When coming up with a hoax, you don’t want to do anything too cruel such as telling your customers you’re shutting your doors and liquidating all assets. Believability should be a factor, but there needs to be a certain amount of silliness involved. You don’t want an April Fool’s joke to leave a bad taste in people’s mouths. Ultimately have fun with it and just use common sense Has your company ever completed a successful April Fools day campaign?