Using Twitter to engage with local customers and clients

local-twitter-marketing-planAfter trying to use Twitter in several different ways and finding little success over the years, I think I have enough failures under my belt to provide a little advice about how a business might use the platform effectively to connect with local Tweeps.

The big thing that I’ve learned is that you can’t just dive in with both feet without a strategy. This is how people get frustrated and end up saying that Twitter is an ineffective marketing tool. Having an organized strategy is essential and it just takes a little planning and know how to get started on the right foot.

Let me say too that using Twitter to connect with a local audience is completely different than using Twitter for your own entertainment or education. Also, using Twitter to connect and engage with local customers is completely different than a business who needs to connect with a national audience. You also need a completely different strategy than an individual who is trying to use Twitter to establish their own personal brand. I’m sure there may be exceptions but hear me out.

Disclaimer: I don’t claim to be a Twitter Ninja. If you have a better way, that’s great! This is what works for me. Read More…

Why Local SEO can be hard

difficultIt should be said before you begin a local SEO campaign, successful local SEO can be HARD.

As with all good things in life, your success is not going to come easy — regardless of what others might say. Ultimately you may find that you’re not as successful as you want to be, simply because there are factors outside of your control that influence your rankings. As an SEO or small business owner you never want to hear this but it’s Google’s world. We just search in it.

Here are just a few that you should be aware of.

1) One of the biggest hurdles to proper SEO is time.

Local SEO is time consuming. If you think that there’s a simple, magic sauce that you can learn and dish out in an afternoon that will solve all your problems you can probably stop reading now. Successful local SEO takes time and knowledge. If I had to pick one of the two I would wholeheartedly say that success depends on the amount of time that you can devote to this work ongoing. If you don’t have time now, consider enlisting a professional or at least trying to bribe a friend that has the required time and knowledge. Claiming and optimizing your local listings does not guarantee success. It’s a great first step but ultimately just one of many. Read More…

An effective link building strategy for 2013

link-building-tactic-2013I’m a huge proponent of building links through developing great content. We’ve had tremendous success generating traffic and links for our clients using this tactic alone. But sometimes you need more.

Linking building. Yes, I hate the term as much as you do. It’s time consuming. It’s HARD. The ROI is grey. I have a hard time devoting a ton of time to it when I could be doing things that are more tangible. Especially when I’m working with a small, local business that has a limited budget.

So what I’m continually trying to do is identify tactics and best practices that are easy AND return value to the client. Definitely a tall order.

Recently, I’ve taken notice of a tactic that seems to be working well for others. Here’s the guts of it.

Interesting link building strategy… Read More…

Local Business Data Distribution – How to now online

Over at the Sanctuary Blog I recently posted my thoughts on why it’s important to optimize and consistently distribute your business data and ultimately how to get the job done in the most efficient and affordable way possible.

In a nutshell what you need to know is within Google search results (and around the internet) there are many websites, directories, portals, niche services, apps and services that provide us with information — especially when it relates to local searches for small business products and services.

You may say “Yea, but not enough people use these secondary websites and portals to make it worth the effort”. But here’s what you need to know: There are millions of local searches a day — and many of those start with Google, yes — but they the Google search results contain category and listing results from these secondary websites! These secondary websites ARE the results for searches related to local goods and services. Read More…

Yext, Localeze or UBL for Local SEO

I recently answered a question over at SEOMOZ and weighed in with my opinion on the value of these local search/business data distribution services and the differences between their offerings. I’ll be talking more about Localeze here soon because it’s the best of the 3 in my opinion. But here are my top level thoughts regarding how these services compare.

Yext is over priced but does give you nice control over you listings. You just need need to weigh if the cost is worth the eyeballs that will ultimately find you on these secondary sites. That answer will be different for everyone. Read more about this service in detail here.

Localeze is the #1 data distributor in the U.S. and they can help you build a solid core of citations. But to get an enhanced listing with categories, logo, description, etc. it will cost you $300/yr. unless you’re part of their partner program. ($3500/yr. entry fee) Definitely worth it if you are doing a large volume of client submissions. NOTE: Localeze along with Yelp provides data to Apple Maps which will be important in the future. If you have a lot of locations, manually claiming on Yelp is going to be a lot of work. With Localeze they’ll distribute your information much more efficiently. It will just take longer. Read More…

Why the Yellow Pages is not an Internet Marketing Strategy

no-yellow-pagesPeople are continually asking my opinion about the Yellow Pages. My first question is “Which Yellow Pages”? Are you talking about the book that shows up each year (that ends up in my recycle bin) or are you asking about YP.com, Superpages.com, Switchboard Yellow Pages, Yellowbook.com, yellowpages.aol.com, or even some mutant local yellow pages site like the one provided by our local newspaper.

What exactly are you buying when you buy the yellow pages?

In my local area, the Yellow Pages means YellowPages.com or YP.com. They have an army of people with the sole purpose of convincing you that they’re the perfect choice to build your website (seriously?) and market your business online. Their employees go through extensive training on how to convince you that if you don’t stick with “old reliable” that you’ll be lost to the world.

The problems with The Yellow Pages:

The Yellow Pages is a machine that’s built to sell. But what they don’t tell you is that their influence is waning… and they know it. That’s why they’re being so aggressive with their sales and marketing. It’s the last battle charge before they get mowed down by the conquering army. Read More…

Local Search N.A.P. Template, Best Practices and Processes

I’ve found that processes are essential in business. Local search and SEO is no different. Having solid system and reviewing them on a regular basis is really important to your success.

With local search I believe it all starts with your NAP. Basically this is your business name, address and phone number but for our company it goes WAY beyond that where we’re essentially researching, collecting and verifying data, creating images and photos and even setting up some citation sites before we consider our client’s NAP document complete.

For example, how can you distribute information to Localeze without preparing a logo graphic or doing keyword research? How can you fully optimize a Google+ Local Business Page without having links to your Twitter page, your Facebook business page and all the rest? Read More…

A Local SEO Glossary of Terms

NOTE: This is an ongoing work in progress. Please email me if you’d like to contribute to this glossary.

To help you get started with the terms associated with local search I’ve provided this guide to the terms and techniques used in the process. Many of these terms are behind the priority local search ranking factors. Please feel free to comment and add to this ongoing.

N.A.P. – This is the heart of your business identity online. It stands for Name, Address and Phone Number. It’s essential to establish this based on the registered name of your business and it should match everything across the internet. If possible it’s ideal to have your product or service in your name but don’t do this if your name is already established. NAP Consistency as you go forward is essential so get it right from the start.

Citations – A citation is a listing of your business NAP somewhere on the internet. A citation can contain more information about your business including a link back to your website. Citations can be claimed by the business owner and enhanced with keyword-rich descriptions, multiple categories, logos, photos, reviews, etc. Often, claiming a listing will give you extra visibilty in the results where it will label your listing prominently with “Owner Verified” or similar text to establish trust. Read More…

Setting up multiple fake offices to get Google listings – Hades Awaits my friend

faking-locations-google

Image credit and tutorials here. Pretty kick ass image, No? http://tinyurl.com/cx8kys

You may be tempted to try and setup multiple fake offices around town or in your region — maybe even in other cities so you can have a presence there. It makes sense. If you can get an actual address and phone number then you can do almost anything — including setting up and optimizing multiple Google+ pages for your business.

There was a detailed discussion of this practice in NYC when I attended GetListed Local U. The guy from Google was there and they obviously frowned on this practice. From their perspective you should be able to call a local number for a local business and drive there to get service. If not it’s going to be bad for you

Here’s the big issue that you should be concerned about. Google has minions overseas that randomly verify businesses. They’ll call the number listed and if they can’t speak to a real person, they can’t get directions to that address or that they somehow find out that the business is not actually located there, they will instantly zap you from the listings and your listing for that location will burn in Google hell for all eternity. It’s happened to people like lawyers and doctors that try to setup multiple “offices” but route the phone number listed to the real central office. If the minion calls and asks for directions to the location and they give directions to another office it will be bad for you. Read More…

Ooohooo… Local Search Engine Optimization Tools!

local-search-toolsLinda Buquet over at The Local Search Community recently launched the Local Search Tools section of her popular forum. I LOVE tools so this is right up my alley. Get over there, participate and check out all the goodness.

Right off the bat I was reminded to check out placesscout.com (which I will in due time) It looks great and is only $200. Here’s the thing though. I think it runs on your PC and it’s not web-based. In today’s SAAS world this is surprising. But if it kicks ass, then it kicks ass and I’ll consider using it. More to come. Thanks Linda.

Local Search Tools Forum

1 2 3  Scroll to top