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More Trouble In Google’s Local Biz Center

Another week brings some more troubling news for small business owners and the state of their Google Local Business listings.  There are two somewhat concerning stories that have sprung up as of late that you should be aware of. If only so you can make sure you haven’t been affected.

Here’s a look at both.

Google Sends Potential Competitors Your Analytics

Late last week many small business owners and those that work with them began receiving emails about their local business results for the month of November. The emails contained  information about where the business ranked in Google’s local index, how many users clicked on the listing, how many users clicked through to the Web site, how many clicked on ‘more info’, and how many went looking for driving directions. This is all super important information for any small business owner to know and can be used to make sensitive decisions. Problem is, business owners were getting emails about businesses they had nothing to do with. Basically, they were getting other people’s site details. And if you’re getting someone else’s analytics data, well then, who’s getting yours?

Obviously, small business owners were concerned and a little upset. Mike Blumenthal covered the situation, as did search marketer David Dalka, Search Engine Roundtable and The Register. When asked, Google responded that it was “a glitch” and that less than one percent of Local Business Center users had been sent the affected emails. Of course, we don’t really know how many people “one percent” really accounts for.  It’s scary when you don’t know who has access to your information. It’s also potentially dangerous should it fall into the wrong hands.

Google Lets Competitors Hijack Your Listings

Just as small business owners were wrapping their heads around their private information being leaked, search marketer Lisa Myers showed how easy it is for a competitor to hijack your listing in Google Local Business. And she knows how easy it is because she watched it happen to one of her clients.

In her post, Lisa breaks down the exact steps that a competitor would need in order to hijack your listing. Scary is that it doesn’t seem that difficult. Just create a new listing with someone else’s company name but your address, claim and merge the listings, and then verify it via the mail. Once that’s done, any time someone searches for you, instead of seeing your real listing, they’ll see the one for your competitor and be directed there.  And just like that, your search traffic is gone. It’s just that easy and so far Google doesn’t seem to have a solution.

I’m not sure what the “fix” is for either of the issues discussed (Google hasn’t even addressed the latter). To be honest, I don’t think there is one for now. It’s disheartening to see so many issues with spam and hijacking (which sometimes happens accidentally) coming out of the engine’s local indexes with no real action taken.  I often wonder if Google’s policy of no response would be the same if it were bigger brands feeling the impact. Regardless, as a small business owner the best you can do is to be vigilant about monitoring your local listings and reporting anything that looks weird.  We’re louder in numbers.

From Small Business Trends

More Trouble In Google’s Local Biz Center

5 Steps to Successful Facebook Advertising

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5 Steps to Successful Facebook Advertising

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Currently Facebook boasts somewhere in excess of 400 million users and growing. You’ve probably heard this line by now, but If it were a country it would be the third largest in the world behind China and India only. There’s a pretty good bet that some members of your ideal target customer reside in and visit Facebook land, but the trick is to find them.

Facebook’s advertising platform is a vehicle worth exploring. The tool allows you to place small display type ads in the right sidebar of Facebook pages and profiles. At this point it’s not as effective in pure response as well targeted Google AdWords campaigns, but it’s not really the same kind of vehicle and you won’t find AdWords in Facebook, at least for now.

Like many things Facebook, setting up and running successful campaigns isn’t as straightforward as it could be. Below is a description of five steps to consider as you explore Facebook advertising. (Bookmark the Facebook Ad Help Center and return to get answers to the Facebook Ads process)

Target

One of the best things about Facebook advertising is the ability select who sees your ad using a number of variables, including keywords. You can target by geography, age, gender, education, relationship status, workplace and keywords. (I know someone who wanted to send a birthday message to his wife and targeted so narrowly that she was the only who would see the ad.) Demographics are pretty straightforward, the real trick is expanding your keywords to the point where you have a large enough audience to get the job done. Facebook used to have a tool that let you search for the hottest topics being discussed but they shelved it as they build a more robust analytics package. Check out all of your targeting options here

Attract and Engage

The first thing you must do is decide whether you want people to be directed to your own web page or something on Facebook like a Page, Application, Group or Event. If you are already the administrator of your Facebook Page, Group, Event, or Application, you can select it from the drop down option. The thing that’s nice about using ads to promote your pages and events is that Facebook puts a “Become a fan” or “RSVP to this event” button right in the ad. People don’t even have to visit your page to take action. There are some pros to sending them to a link on your web site (better tracking options) but by sending them to assets on Facebook you have the ability to multiply their actions through the natural social wall activity that occurs when someone RSVPs to an event. (All their followers automatically see that action.)

Some users find Facebook ads a good tool to promote events or get new fans to the pages. From an engagement standpoint think in terms of using the ads to promote content and value and not so much to sell something. The most successful use of ads on social networks is to create deeper engagement so you have the ability to sell once trust is built. Think about putting white papers on your Fan Pages and promoting that content or creating a free event, like a webinar, and advertising that event. In both of these cases you’ll have the opportunity to sell a bit once you’ve proven you know your stuff. (One quirk of note – when you promote an event created with the Facebook event app the title of the ad will automatically default to the title of the event, so name your event wisely )

You don’t get much space in these ads so use it wisely. Your headline (25 characters) should grab attention immediately with a benefit. You’ll get another 135 characters to describe and entice in the body of the ad. You also have the option to upload an image. Take this option. It may be the most important aspect of your ad so choose wisely. Facebook users are very image driven (it’s the largest photo sharing site in the world) and the visual graphic you choose will make or break an ad. This is an element you must plan on testing (see below)

Budget

Facebook advertising works a bit like AdWords in that you bid for keywords and compete to get your ads shown. How effective you are at this depends upon the competitiveness of your keywords. You can choose between a cost per click (CPC) model where you pay only for clicks or a cost per thousand (CPM) model where you pay per 1000 ad views. Most research I’ve read suggests that the CPC model is slightly more effective in terms of ROI. (Here’s a nice Glossary of Facebook Ads terminology in case this is starting sound buzz wordy.)

To start your campaign you must determine a bid per click and daily budget. You can set both of these numbers very low, but don’t expect much. Initially you are just testing so you’ll want to set your click bid somewhere around the Facebook suggested amount and a daily budget you can live with, something like $50 or more to start. You can always adjust these. Learn about the Facebook Ads Manager here.

Test

No matter where or what you should always test your advertising. Online applications like this make it pretty darn simple. You can and should create multiple ad versions. Once you create an ad you will have the ability to create similar ads and run those as well. You’ll be able to easily view which ad is performing the best based on clicks. Facebook does need to approve your ads so make sure you are familiar with their guidelines.

The simplest thing to test is your image. I’ve seen ads go from no response to mega response with a better picture. Mind you I had no idea it was a better picture or I would have used it in the first place, but testing told me so. Here are some suggestions from Facebook on improving your ads.

Analyze

Once you create and launch your campaigns you need to start tracking and tweaking. Facebook has a tool that gives you some information on actions taken inside the Facebook platform. So, if you are running an ad for an event or Facebook page you can use the Facebook Insights tool to monitor interaction.

Facebook Insights is a nice reporting tool as it can give you information about the actual, not targeted demographics and interests of the people clicking on your ads and keywords that drew that interest. This will help you narrow or broaden your targeting. Page admins can access Insights by logging in and viewing the box titled Insights in the left sidebar. This is only visible to Page admins. If you click on See All you will get full reporting. More information on Insights here and from the very useful blog Inside Facebook.

Facebook does allow you to run ads that point people links outside of Facebook and in order to track these ads you simply and monitor them using your own analytics tool such as Google Analytics. If you are using Google Analytics simply use the URL builder tool in Analytics to create a link to your page that contains tracking parameters and place that in your Facebook Ad as the destination link.

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SEO 101 in 60 seconds

SEO is marketing.  You are merely marketing a business using a digital medium, rather than a traditional offline medium. A component of Marketing exposure.  seo is about creating exposure. A business exposing themselves to the right audience, buyers, where the business product or service solves a buyers problem, yields the best conversion from a lead to a [...]

How to Make Your Homepage Copy ‘Pop’

One of the most frequent requests I get from content creation clients is to make their site copy ‘pop’. And I’ll be honest that I still don’t really know what that means. I think it means that they want their pages to grab someone’s attention. They want their content to stand out and to be compelling enough that it encourages potential customers to dig deeper into the Web site. That’s the goal of any great home page. But how can you accomplish that?

Below are a few suggestions for sites that want their content to ‘pop’, whatever that really means.

Make the content scannable: It’s said a lot that people don’t read on the Web and that they just bounce around from site to site until they see something that finally forces them stop. I’d argue there’s a heck of a lot of truth to that, which is why creating scannable content is essential in getting people to take notice of your site. How do you make your content scannable?

• Use bullet points
• Implement proper use of bold and italics to highlight the terms they’re looking for
• Use both headers and sub-headers to break out topics
• Write short paragraphs
• Leave lots of white space
• Use links

Put your call-to-action above the fold: If people are just scanning your content, then sticking one call-to-action at the bottom of the page probably isn’t a good marketing strategy. You don’t know they’re even going to make it that far! Instead, find natural ways to include multiple calls-to-action so that you’re guaranteed people see them. Use one at the top of your page with a graphic, put another at the bottom of your first paragraph and then put another down towards the end of the copy. Litter them throughout the page so that they’re guaranteed to get visibility. After all, your call-to-action is the thing that’s going to get your visitors to do what you want them to do. Make sure they see it. If you need some help with call-to-action best practices, Smashing Magazine has a killer article on the topic.

Make it readable: Have you ever tried to read your Web site copy aloud? If not, I dare you to give it a shot. If you have a hard time getting through it, then it’s safe to assume that a potential customer is facing the same difficulty. Many business owners will attempt to ‘impress’ their audience with big words, industry jargon and other comprehension roadblocks. Lose all that. Instead, write your home page as if you’re talking to the customer standing right in front of you. How would you introduce yourself and explain what your business does to them? Find those words and put them on your Web site. Use the words they would be most likely to use. Leave the impressive jargon for your competitors that you don’t really like anyway.

Be visually appealing: If your home page isn’t appealing to the eye, customers aren’t going to stay on it too long. They’re going to find a site that is. Things like site animations, videos that play automatically (and scare people) or huge, never-ending blocks of text are all things that may send a potential customer running. Instead of sending people out, use images to draw people in, lots of white space and some of the different scannable text strategies like the ones mentioned above. When someone lands on your site, they should feel confident that you’re trustworthy and not get bogged down in what’s happening on the page. Make your home page inviting.

Look to the present: Talking about yourself in the past tense is boring. It’s passive and it makes it really easy for a visitor to scan right over your content without stopping. Instead, switch over to the present or future tense to add some extra oomph and excitement to your words. It’s a very subtle change that can make a big impact.

Watch page length: Though the Internet gods have blessed us with the scroll bar, don’t make visitors scroll on for days. Because the truth is, they won’t. They’ll get bored and head somewhere else. You’re far better off creating shorter, easy to digest pages that will capture a visitor’s attention and encourage them to dig deeper into the site to learn more. After all, the goal really isn’t to keep them on your home page –it’s to get them into your site and onto a conversion path that you defined.

Watch your language: People land on your site with a mission. They’ve performed a search looking for information or the answer to their question – your home page should take that into consideration. This is where keyword research comes into play. You want to use the exact words and phrases on your site that a user would type in to find you. The more your site ‘matches’ what they were searching for, the more they’re going to consider you relevant to their needs. And they’re going to stick around to learn more. You want to write content that shows that your site has the answer to their problem. If you don’t know why people are landing on your Web site, then you need to first do some market research. However, hopefully you’ve already done this as part of your keyword research strategy.

Those are some very easy ways to add some power and ‘pop’ to your home page. What’s worked for you?

From Small Business Trends

How to Make Your Homepage Copy ‘Pop’

More Trouble In Google’s Local Biz Center

Another week brings some more troubling news for small business owners and the state of their Google Local Business listings.  There are two somewhat concerning stories that have sprung up as of late that you should be aware of. If only so you can make sure you haven’t been affected.

Here’s a look at both.

Google Sends Potential Competitors Your Analytics

Late last week many small business owners and those that work with them began receiving emails about their local business results for the month of November. The emails contained  information about where the business ranked in Google’s local index, how many users clicked on the listing, how many users clicked through to the Web site, how many clicked on ‘more info’, and how many went looking for driving directions. This is all super important information for any small business owner to know and can be used to make sensitive decisions. Problem is, business owners were getting emails about businesses they had nothing to do with. Basically, they were getting other people’s site details. And if you’re getting someone else’s analytics data, well then, who’s getting yours?

Obviously, small business owners were concerned and a little upset. Mike Blumenthal covered the situation, as did search marketer David Dalka, Search Engine Roundtable and The Register. When asked, Google responded that it was “a glitch” and that less than one percent of Local Business Center users had been sent the affected emails. Of course, we don’t really know how many people “one percent” really accounts for.  It’s scary when you don’t know who has access to your information. It’s also potentially dangerous should it fall into the wrong hands.

Google Lets Competitors Hijack Your Listings

Just as small business owners were wrapping their heads around their private information being leaked, search marketer Lisa Myers showed how easy it is for a competitor to hijack your listing in Google Local Business. And she knows how easy it is because she watched it happen to one of her clients.

In her post, Lisa breaks down the exact steps that a competitor would need in order to hijack your listing. Scary is that it doesn’t seem that difficult. Just create a new listing with someone else’s company name but your address, claim and merge the listings, and then verify it via the mail. Once that’s done, any time someone searches for you, instead of seeing your real listing, they’ll see the one for your competitor and be directed there.  And just like that, your search traffic is gone. It’s just that easy and so far Google doesn’t seem to have a solution.

I’m not sure what the “fix” is for either of the issues discussed (Google hasn’t even addressed the latter). To be honest, I don’t think there is one for now. It’s disheartening to see so many issues with spam and hijacking (which sometimes happens accidentally) coming out of the engine’s local indexes with no real action taken.  I often wonder if Google’s policy of no response would be the same if it were bigger brands feeling the impact. Regardless, as a small business owner the best you can do is to be vigilant about monitoring your local listings and reporting anything that looks weird.  We’re louder in numbers.

From Small Business Trends

More Trouble In Google’s Local Biz Center

Google Adds Mobile Search to Maps

Another reason your small business should not only be on Google Maps but optimized for it: local search for mobile. Google is making it easier for people to find businesses on their mobile devices. Get this right and your business will show up when people come looking.I’ve written about how people are going online to find local businesses like yours they have the “Yellow Pages” on their phones. It doesn’t matter if they are locals or just on vacation or visiting, you want to be sure you’re found. It’s now easier to find locations on a mobile device (think iPhone) thanks to the new mobile local search. Customers will be able to find your business hours, read reviews, see photos, and even get coupons. To make it easier for people and cut down on typing, Google has listed categories. For example, someone wanting to find a local movie theater can easily go to the ‘Entertainment & Recreation’ section and execute a search. Local Search for Mobile is limited to users in the U.S. and China. Give it a spin: http://www.google.com/m/local, or click on the Local tab on http://www.google.com – and if you need assistance with your listing, check out our Maps Optimization service. We’ll make sure you’re in directories like YellowPages.com and other local directories for the terms people are most likely to use to find you.