Local social media marketing gets unintended Google boost!

Filed Under (Search Marketing) by Gogo on 15-04-2009

Content only websites in danger

Content only websites may be in grave danger

This news may change the fate of many small internet businesses for the worse..

I recently came across some information that’s been hidden behind some highly specialized SEO-master sites for a few weeks now. Apparently Google has made adjustments to their search engine rankings in such a way that big brands have seen a sudden upsurge in their SERP (search engine results page) rankings.

What’s so bad about this is that it would signal the end of the digital democracy that small marketers have enjoyed with superior targeted content and greater investment in off-page search engine optimization.

For instance, according to an excellent analysis by Aaron Wall over at SEObook, some brands like Radio shack just recently started and suddenly ranking for electronics. When you consider that some big brand names were already on the 1st page of the ranking, you begin to get the sense of a fearful future for content only niche sites.

What you should do about this if your dominant traffic strategy has been through content building

First. Go “Long tail” and build a huge base.Content as a superior strategy for the small player is not going to go away overnight (especially if you build your websites using the Long tail-CTPM-Strategy espoused by people such internet marketing pioneers as Dr. Ken Evoy of Sitesell and other.

Second. If there is a local element to your business, emphasize “local qualifier + keyword” phrase content. For example instead of optimizing your web page for “web marketing strategies”, you might want to build content for “Denver web marketing strategies”.

Third. Create and implement social media marketing plan fast. This you want to begin to do as soon as possible. Start with creating profiles on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Create a content curriculum of interest to your market niche (or local niche), and disseminate using blogs (like this one), podcasts and videos (youtube, viddler and tobemogul.com -for free distribution). I hope this helps.

Till next time.

Gogo Erekosima

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3 Huge local internet advertising mistakes…

Filed Under (Search Marketing) by Gogo on 10-04-2009

If you read my last post, you already know about the “Jerk Carpet Cleaner”.

If you’re the owner of a small local business, here are 3 huge local search marketing mistakes you’re likely to already be making:

MISTAKE #1 – Letting the random internet reviewer represent your company and your marketing message on the internet.

  • Our hero the rude carpet cleaner from the marketing mistakes post doesn’t realize that his 25+ years in the local business area doesn’t count for anything with today’s “what have you done for me lately and how can I google it?” crowd. Even worse, a search for his business on Google brings up the word, “J-rk!” followed by 2 negative reviews.
  • On top of that, a huge proportion of the time, money and effort this poor entrepreneur is spending on local telemarketing is being contradicted and counteracted by a single solitary act of one disgruntled “prospective” customer (sheesh…not even an actual customer).

MISTAKE #2- Depending on business directory websites as your primary internet presence.

How would you like to pay $300+ dollars a year for the privilege of having your nearest competitors steal internet prospects who happened to be looking for a business like yours or even for you?

I was recently looking for some more information about a particular acupuncturist whose name I’d come across somewhere. When I googled the business, a directory listing page came up. When I clicked on it, it took me a while to find the business I was actually looking for because nearby competitors were listed ahead of them on the search results page!

Directory listing services often cite the listing your business on their directory websites as a strong benefit. What they don’t mention is that their search results pages are not optimized to your benefit. Rae Hoffman’s blog has an excellent post about how one of the business directory listing sites (ironically the same one where “jerk carpet cleaner” was reviewed) view search engine optimization.

MISTAKE #3 – Spending gobs of money (or not much at all) to create invisible websites that generate little or not web traffic or customer leads.

I see this most often in dentist websites, accountant websites and with other professional practice websites. They usually sign up with hosted website packages that purport to deliver all these benefits that miss the main point.

If you’re a professional practice or professional service firm, your website should be a core strategic marketing asset from which you can easily:

  • Attract, engage and convert leads into clients
  • Obtain referrals by creating a content based website that people in your community refer others to.
  • Position your business as the first and the best with your clients, the media and the larger marketplace.

All these reasons will allow you to build a business that grows, give you the possibility to engage your clients with more frequency (a proven key to building a sellable business), help your cashflow with derivative revenues (consulting for instance) and help you get more and better clients while spending less.

Which local small business owner in her right mind wouldn’t want this?

So if you find that you’re making any or all of the mistakes above, go to www.TurnAttentionIntoDollars.com to learn hands-free methods to convert your expertise into paying clients.

Till next time,

Gogo

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Local business Search engine marketing mistakes

Filed Under (Search Marketing) by Gogo on 07-04-2009

A few days ago, I got a call at home from a local carpet cleaning company.

Apparently a family business, a sweet sounding, seemingly older lady made the initial pitch. Since I was engaged, I asked her to call back in 1 hour and she agreed. About an hour later, a gentleman called and introduced himself as the proprietor of the carpet cleaning company and explained that they had been in business for over 20 years in the area. After about  5 minutes with this guy on the phone, I was fed up…

He constantly interrupted me, put words in my mouth and exhibited a somewhat aggressive tone. Being a marketer (and former telemarketer) I kept my patience all the way till we got to the price quote. That’s when things finally out of hand.

His quote seemed a little high to me but I was expecting him to tell me the “special reasons” why his business was different and worth paying more for (other than “just” being in business for 25 years). That’s not what happened.

What happened instead was this guy was virtually berating me on my own time for possibly thinking about calling him back…so, sadly,

…I hung up on him.

Of course I quickly googled this company and found that the first search engine result was titled, “Jerk”!

It was a negative review by another prospect complaining about his treatment on the phone by this same owner.

If you own a local business, you have to make sure this does not happen to you!

One of the advantages of adopting the content based website strategy I recommend is that you can very easily win the search engine battle for your business name. Other ways to keep an eye on your online reputation include using services like Google news alerts.

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