Internet Marketing Tips, Tools and Strategies

In the United States a small business is defined by the SBA (US Small Business Association) as a business that has 500 or less employees and $7 million or less in annual receipts. There are 29.6 million small businesses in the United States.

This is great news if you're one of them because over 60% of us prefer to do business with a local business in our own neighborhood. This includes all kinds of businesses from auto repair shops, hair salons, restaurants, electricians, attorneys etc.

The bad news is that there is competition out there even on the local level and when doing an internet search there is a chance that your business is not standing out as you would like it to.

Every major search engine has a business mapping application that allows you to claim and set up your own business listing. It will show up with your physical address as well as any other information that may be valuable to the consumer. When a local customer searches for "attorney" in Google there would be millions of listings however Google makes the assumption that you are looking for a local attorney. They can tell this from the IP address from which your search comes. They will then return a maximum of 7 local matches to your search.

It is possible that your business has been automatically listed within this map application however there is a very good chance that the listings may not be current and probably have very limited information.

Search for your own business and see how it shows up. When you see your listing click "Place Page" to go to your listing.

If you see the listing hasn't been validated, because it has a link to "Business Owner?" above your name then you need to claim your listing.

You will need to create a free account for yourself  and fill out the listing with as much information as possible. Upload your logo, video, photos etc. The more complete this listing is the more likely you are to rank at the top of the search engine results. Once you've filled everything out there will be a short process to become verified and then you're done!

Look into all of the top search engine sites for your listing:

Google Places (Maps): http://www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter

Yahoo! Business Listing: http://listings.local.yahoo.com/

Bing Maps: http://www.bing.com/maps

Yelp: http://www.yelp.com

Search engines have finally surpassed the Yellow Pages (print versions). Think about....when was the last time you opened your Yellow Pages? The shift in how we find products and services we want is being dominated by search.

The graph below from webpro news, shows that search engines have finally surpassed the Yellow Pages.


Why have search engines overtaken the Yellow Pages and why are they more effective:

• Yellow Page ads often appear next to your competition. (Search engine ads do as well most times, but you can differentiate your business with proper targeting (keywords, location, niche markets), good landing pages, social media, and more).
• An optimized, well planned website, you can differentiate yourself from your competitors. It's hard to tell which company is a better fit for you when looking at Yellow Page ads.
• It's difficult to determine what business came from your Yellow Page ads vs. your other marketing mediums. Yellow Page ads are costly and provide low measurability.
• Using web analytics you are able to track the how, what, where, and when of your online marketing campaigns.
• Establishing a content marketing plan, your website will become a resource and asset to your business.
• Search engines deliver quicker results and allow you to quickly gather more information about the products and services you are interested in. The Yellow Page process is just that....a process that takes far too much time to gather the information you need to make an informed choice.
• Search engines allow us to compete on a level playing with bigger brands. This is not possible with Yellow Pages without having a large marketing budget. Using long tail, niche keywords in your search marketing efforts, you can drive affordable traffic and new leads for your business.

As many people may know, Google has always worked hard at their ability to deliver the most relevant search results for their users. This is in large part due to their advanced Search Algorithm that helps determine where a website should be positioned in their search engine results page (SERPS). But with the rapid rise of "live web" or social media sites, the web tends to be dominated by social book marketing sites as well as viral videos, and sometimes, not in a good way (at least not in Google's eyes). This has lead to the beginning steps of Google changing their algorithms again, which is going to be a good thing for your business and when searching on the major search engines.

These new steps by Google are an attempt to prevent what we call "Black hat SEO" - the unscrupulous optimization (spamming) of a website by using often illegal methods such as page hi-jacking, cloaking, link blasting, and other methods. As Google gets smarter in dealing with the search spammers, they get smarter in terms of getting around new Google updates. Every time this has happened in the past, we have been able to adjust our Search Engine Optimization methods to ensure compliance with Google. And now, we are adapting again to Google's attempt to stop "Live Web" spamming and how they look at incoming links.

The upcoming changes by Google will lead us into a new era of search called Personalized Search Optimization (PSO). This new search focus will be dominated by great content on a website, effective blogging and social media, quality videos and podcasts that engage your audience, and basically your site will be ranked on how well your site effectively personalizes content to your audience. People will no longer be able to "trick" the search engines to achieve a high ranking, you will have to develop great content and use advanced search engine optimization and social media marketing to effectively market your site on Google.

Also, search rankings in Google will be heavily influenced by Google Analytics - tracking the conversion rate of your site and goals, bounce rate, and more. If you aren't using analytics now, you better start or have a Certified Google Analytics Consultant at WSI help you set this up and manage this for your business.  Google is going to be using the data from analytics to determine the relevancy of your site which will affect your search engine positioning amongst other things.  And if you have a Google Adwords PPC campaign running, and you have a low click through rate or poor conversions, Google is going to take this into account as well as to how your site will rank organically.

These changes by Google are all about delivering quality search results and a quality user experience to Google users. We all want to search for a product or service and have it deliver exactly what we want without having to skim through page after page of irrelevant websites. With these new changes and Personalized Search Optimization (PSO), the user experience will increase dramatically, but it will make it that much more difficult to drive quality traffic to your site without the help of an expert.

For more on this topic download our Whitepaper on the upcoming changes for Google in 2009.

Google Changes for 2009: What They are and how they affect us? (67 KB)