One Simple Tactic That Can Give You an Unfair Advantage in Local Search
Posted on 07. May, 2012 by John Jantsch in Blog, Duct Tape Marketing, Local Search, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, video, YouTube
Showing up in local search results is a pretty big deal if you’re any sort of local business. When people search online locally, but plan to buy offline locally, being the organization they find first and find when mobile could mean the difference between growth and death.
While lots of people publish tips about Google Places pages, local web content, address citations and the sort, not enough people are talking about the power of local video when it comes to gaining an advantage in local search.
Many people are talking about video from a content standpoint and I agree, but what about locally optimized video for SEO. I’ve seen this intentional tactic produce some pretty incredible results in a very short time – particularly when it comes to a Google and YouTube combination.
See, here’s the deal – Google wants to give people interesting search results and as often as possible that includes a mix of local Places pages, videos, products, images and blog posts all mashed together on page one for specific search phrases.
Local businesses that get good at producing and optimizing video can find their YouTube videos zapped to page one for highly competitive search terms with very little effort.
I did a little test over the weekend to prove this theory. Granted there may be other factors at play here, but here’s what I and I believe you can do it too.
I am hosting a couple workshops in Kansas City in June. Since this is for me a rare local play I wanted to see what could do to get some local search results. So, here’s what I did.
- I created a very brief video recorded directly to YouTube.
- I even did a little bit of editing using the new YouTube Tools
- I named the video Kansas City Marketing Workshop and Training
- I added a description with this term
- I added keywords that related to the term
- I saved the video
- I embedded the video on a page on my site.
- I pointed to the video on YouTube from my Facebook page
Total time invested was about 15 minutes. About 30 minutes later this video showed up on page one for the search term – “Kansas City Marketing Workshop”
A day later it moved to the #2 position for the search term and #4 position for the term Kansas City Marketing Training. I conducted these searches logged out of my Google account and even received the same results using private browsing in Safari.
There’s no telling how long this video will stay at the top of the results for my search term, but it certainly reinforced the idea that this is a powerful way to gain additional local search results while creating useful content.
Below are tips to keep in mind as you explore this tactic:
Do the keyword research
Use a tool like WordTracker or Google Keyword Tool to hunt for some search phases that make the most sense. You’re not looking for hyper competitive terms like “Marketing,” you’re looking for longer, less searched phrases that you can quickly impact.
Also keep in mind those frequently asked questions. Focus on making videos that address those issues.
Create multiple videos
The idea behind this approach is to create dozens of simple videos that allow you to build a library of content that addresses many of the things your prospects are searching for.
Make the videos sell
Make sure you add URLs and annotations to your videos so you can send people to pages that give them even more information.
Optimize for specific terms
Use the search phases you uncover as your video titles, in descriptions and as keyword combination. Do a search on YouTube for the phrase you are trying to win and see what comes up. Once you find the top videos in your search term make note of the keywords and borrow liberally.
Point to the videos
Google loves it when other sites point to videos that are hosted on YouTube. You can give your videos even more juice by linking to them from your web site, Facebook and other video hosting sites.
Experiment with the intriguing little tactic and you may uncover some pretty fantastic results for frequently searched terms that might not otherwise stand a chance of competing for.
One Simple Tactic That Can Give You an Unfair Advantage in Local Search is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
5 Ways to Improve Local Search Results for Business
Posted on 17. Nov, 2011 by John Jantsch in Blog, Duct Tape Marketing, Local Search, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
5 Ways to Improve Local Search Results for Business
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
“This article originally appeared on the OPEN App Center. Visit www.theopenappcenter.com for more information and resources for streamlining and growing your business.”
Increasingly, when folks turn to a search engine, they aren’t looking for something around the world, they’re looking for something around the block. The good news for local businesses is they aren’t just looking; they’re jumping in the car, going out and buying what they find when they search.
Make it a priority to improve search results for your business, because this new way of finding and buying locally means that your business better show up in the top results when people turn to a search engine to shop locally.
Below are five local search engine optimization and search engine marketing plays that you can do today to improve your chances of coming up big in the local search game.
Be Geographically Complete.
Search engines want to return the best local search results, so make sure you have lots of local markers on your pages and pointing to your pages. Things like addresses, city names, suburb names, neighborhood names, zip codes, area codes, maps and directions are all markers that say your business is local. Sprinkle this kind of data liberally throughout your site and make sure you use city names in high priority text such as internal links and headlines.
You should also have geographic links pointing to your business. You can do this by adding local links and descriptions that point to your site in social media profiles and exchanging links with other local businesses and strategic partners.
Lastly, make sure the location data in the primary directory and data service providers is accurate and complete. Two of the best ways to accomplish this little technical piece is to visit GetListed.org or use the annual listing service of UBL.org
Be a Community Resource.
Another powerful way to improve local search results and amplify your local search opportunities is to create content that is related to your community, regardless of whether it directly relates to your products or services.
A great example of this might include coverage of local sporting events or festivals. A B2B example might include maintaining a calendar of networking events or business related seminars.
Using a little RSS magic and a bookmarking tool like Delicious, you could even automate the aggregation of news and other related content for neighborhoods with very little work.
The net effect is that you’ll improve local search results by creating content that offers value to local readers and this is just the kind of information the search engines value the most.
Create Neighborhood Pages.
If you serve a number of communities in a large metropolitan area, it’s probably a good idea to add suburb- or neighborhood-specific pages with extra information personalized to that part of town.
Some of your information on these pages might be identical, but try to make them as unique as you can so that the search engines see them as different pages or you won’t get them seen. You should add unique images with local descriptions, unique geographic terms and neighborhood descriptions or news.
You can also use these pages as landing pages for offline ads as well. If you want to promote your business in a suburban newspaper, for example, you can send readers to the unique page you’ve created for that suburb and create a more personalized experience.
Encourage Ratings and Reviews.
The local search directories created by Google, Bing and Yahoo play a large role in the local search results. If Google, for example, is convinced someone has a local intent in their search, either based on physical location or a geographic term in the actual search, they will return results of local Google Places pages.
It’s critical that your business claims and enhances its Google Places, Bing Local and Yahoo Local pages, but you must also start to proactively build reviews from happy customers on these pages as these reviews are a key contributor to a business showing up high in the local results.
Simply asking for reviews and pointing people to your Google Places page is a good way to start the review ball rolling
Take Advantage of Local Real Estate.
The final local search suggestion involves placing videos, images, and slides in a number of sharing sites such as YouTube, Picasa, Slideshare or Flickr. These free sites allow you upload videos and other assets. You can use these sites to host and stream your videos on your own site, but you can also use the fact that many people search these sites to draw local search traffic.
When you upload your files to these sites make sure you give the file local names, tag them with local terms and describe the content of the file with rich local descriptions. Most of these sites also allow you to geotag where the video or image was shot.
The various tactics to improve search results described above may seem like little things taken individually, but collectively they can add up to big results in the increasingly competitive local search engine game.
Google Finally Weaving Local Strategy
Posted on 21. Jun, 2011 by John Jantsch in Blog, Google Boost, Google City Pages, Google Offers, Groupon, Local Search, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media, yelp
Google Finally Weaving Local Strategy
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
Google has the money, resources and clout to compete in any market they enter fully. Problem is they also seem to suffer from a focus problem. They tend (or at least it appears to me) to release features without strategy.
Of late, however, it looks like they just might be getting their local strategy together and marshaling a suite new features combined with existing assets to put themselves in position to take a giant leap in the local reviews, local offers, and local social games to go with their strong local search position.
Two barely noticeable moves in the last couple weeks give hint to the this focus strategy. I took note of both and wrote quick updates – The first was the addition of optimized reviews in Places Pages and the second was the addition of reputation management features in Profile Pages. Both of these moved signal a renewed focus on making both Profiles and Places pages more important in their ecosystem and perhaps ultimately in a social network of some sort.
Of course the Google Offers play – their answer to Groupon’s success – has been unfolding for a few weeks, and I had my doubts they would do what it would take to slow Groupon, but hey, it’s Google and you never know.
This week they slyly unleashed what could only be called City Pages – hat tip to the always informative David Mihm for tracking this down – City Pages, like this example for Portland, are a necessary piece in the puzzle if they are to compete with Groupon, but they also further the importance of claiming and optimizing a Place Page, appear to show in the Index and really put the spot light on the reviews. (Only a handful of cities are currently live.)
Business owners are invited to claim their pages, create special offers and try out ad products such as Boost right from the city home page. There’s also an interesting integration of acquisition TalkBin, a tool that makes it very easy for people send SMS messages to any registered business.
The cities chosen for the City Page beta test closely align with the first Google Offers beta tests and can be supported by the local Google sales and support staff. With Google’s ability marry advertising with offers and a local portal this could prove very disruptive to Groupon, but also to many local portals services such as Yelp! and CityPages.
Did Google Just Create the Click to Schedule Ad Unit
Posted on 09. Jun, 2011 by John Jantsch in AdWords, Blog, Google Calendar, Hotpot, local, Local Search, Places Pages, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media
Did Google Just Create the Click to Schedule Ad Unit
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
The GMail blog team announced what looks like a much needed enhancement to Google Calendar this week called appointment slots.
This functionality allows anyone to create a public showing calendar offering up times when appointments are available. The idea is that people can visit your calendar and schedule a haircut or consulting session any time day or night.
Services such Tungle, Doodle and TimeBridge were created in some ways to fill this obvious gap. (Although they offer much functionality for, say team scheduling, you do have to wonder how hard this will hit them.)
Once the service is rolled out to all users you’ll see an extra link with the schedule box pops open that allows you to schedule blocks of time that are open for appointments. Choosing this function essentially creates another calendar and since every Google Calendar has its own personal appointments sign up page; you can embed it on your website or give the URL directly to friends and clients. You can find the URL for your appointment page at the top of the set-up page, which you can access via the Edit details link.
Right now, one major limitation appears to be the both the owner of the calendar and those scheduling an appointment must use Google Calendar – not such a big deal for internal teams, but likely a deal killer for a hair salon.
However, think about the implications of Google creating a “Click to Schedule” function for AdWords units, Places Pages, and Review Pages like those in HotPot. For many industries this could be a game changing kind of social action and another big revenue generator for Google.
From a local business standpoint it gives Google another lever into the transaction while adding functionality for both buyer and seller.
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