Local Search Marketing Tactics

Get the details from the SMX site.

Local Search Marketing Tactics
Local search doesn’t only happen in relation what’s on a map. This session looks at a variety of local search tactics that are not necessarily tied to your physical location’s listing.

Moderator: Greg Sterling, Founding Principal, Sterling Market Intelligence

Q&A Moderator: Cindy Krum, CEO, Rank-Mobile, LLC.

Speakers:

Scott Dunlap, CEO, NearbyNow, Inc.
Matt McGee, Assignment Editor, Search Engine Land
William Scott, President, Search Influence
Guy Yalif, Senior Director, Advertising Applications, Yahoo!, Yahoo
Dennis Yu, CEO, BlitzLocal LLC

Atif Refiq speaking on behalf of Guy Yalif:

• The first part of the talk was how to use Yahoo! Search Monkey to customize local search listings.
• He stressed the power of geo targeting.
• 3 tactics for local search success:
  • Increase user sophistication.
  • Ad product mix.
  • Channel strategy.

William Scott:

• Spoke of the “Barnacle” approach to SEO. That is, attaching yourself to a larger entity and waiting for the customers.
• So, what is local search? William covered topics such as geography, age and urgency. The example given was, “If somebody does a search for ‘flooded basement’ then they are probably looking for something to happen RIGHT NOW.
• Allow yourself to be represented in all local search - not just Google and Yahoo! If for not other reason than they can all show up in the major search engines and also multiple web results within a local search result.
• A common question, especially from small business owners is, “Do I have to have a website?” The answer is no. Promote and/or drive links to social media profile pages. These types of pages are probably going to rank better faster anyway. This is a great, inexpensive solution for small business.
• Local listings and reviews sites (like Yelp) are great to exploit for local search results, so make sure that your business is well represented on these kinds of UGC sites.
• www.getlisted.org is a great place to start.

Dennis Yu:

• How do you get your multiple locations on local search without being penalized?
• Be sure to use Yahoo! SSP and enhanced listings wherever possible.
• Piggyback on other local brands and try to link among related businesses.
• Create thousands of geo-specific keyword combinations, publish, and monitor analytics for the results. Quickly remove the ones that aren’t getting traffic.
• Social network advertising is non competitive right now. Traffic is still inexpensive on Facebook, for example. Geo-target with a local phone number.
• Include compelling pictures of people or interesting photos because, remember, it’s a social environment, and eye-catching images help click-through. The downside to advertising on Facebook and MySpace is that there is currently no good API solution, so you have to create multiple accounts on each service.
• But on the up-side, the unique thing about social media advertising is the viral possibility. With PPC, there is one click and that money is spent. With social media advertising, there is the possibility of sharing and viral.
• Twitter allows for custom backgrounds. Take advantage with contact information.
• Promote UGC and reviews for good original copy.
• For professional video content, hire local journalism students.

Matt McGee:

• http://www.hyperlocalblogger.com/
• Use hyperlocal blogging to promote your local business.
• He shared stories of the hyperlocal blogs created and maintained by him and his wife.
• There is a growing interest in finding local resources online.
• Traditional media is declining.
• Local (e.g. municipal) websites are often lacking in freshness and useful information.
• Search engines love good blogs

Scott Dunlap:

• Scott shared his NearbyNow service, and related some successes and failures with tracking offline conversions.

-DREW

Tags: google local search, SMX West 2009, yahoo local

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Up Close With Google Maps and Local

Specifics about the session.

Up Close With Google Maps & Local
This session gets up close and personal with Google Maps, covering factors that influence what appears and how it is ranked. Plus, a look at concerns over listings being “hijacked.”

Moderator: Greg Sterling, Founding Principal, Sterling Market Intelligence

Speakers:

Olivier Amar, Senior Web Marketing Consultant, Compucall Web Marketing
Jennifer Chin, Consumer Operations Strategist, Google Inc.
Steve Espinosa, Director of Innovation, eLocal Listing
David Mihm, Local SEO Consultant, DavidMihm.com
Chris Silver Smith, Director of Optimization Strategy, KeyRelevance

Let’s get started…

David Mihm:

• Where do local search engine results come from? Primarily from data feeds, business owners and user input.
• He stresses the importance of claiming your listing in Google’s Local Business Center (Google the term “google local business center” and you’ll find it).
• “Citations” (also called “web references” in this same session) help you rank on Google. The more references you have, the likelier you are to rank higher for a relevant search. Web references are found on the tab that says “Web Pages” in a Google Local or Maps search (see below).

• His presentation provides his best of third-party party data providers.

Chris Silver Smith:

• He provided a list of the top ranking factors for Google Local search:
  • Proximity to center of city: Businesses that are closer to the city center still tend to get preferential treatment.
  • The total number and positive sentiment of reviews.
  • The overall SEO-health of the business/destination website.
  • Keyword relevancy of the listing. If possible, try to use geo phrases in title tags and on the destination page.
  • Preference is given the to business whose address is in the city being searched.
• Solve common issues by building a unique page on your site for each city or geo area. He stressed that a single site is better than multiple or micro sites). Another option is to obtain a local address and telephone number. This, however, is frowned upon by Google… but it still works.
• Google will return non-pinpoint listings when it can’t determine a physical address.

Steve Espinosa:

• Use Yahoo local listing to link to your Google local listing. This will help improve your Google ranking.
• Get users or clients to review your product as much as possible.
• Buy Yahoo’s enhanced listing service.
• Add YouTube videos to local listings results. Create an individual page for each video because each one can get picked up as its own web reference. It’s best to own as much of the first page of results as possible.
• Steve cited a study that showed 3.3 times more calls were made to listings that had videos on them.
• Social media profiles and pages can be picked up as web references. Create pages and/or accounts on different social media and cross link among them. For example, link from your business website to your Facebook page in order to show that they are related.
• Do everything you can to put keywords in the title tags of web references.
• He finished his presentation by pointing out a nifty and free way to set up phone tracking via a Google Adwords audio campaign.

Olivier Amar:

• The majority of Olilvier’s presentation is a case study.
• Good landing page design is key, and he encourages the use of Google’s Website Optimizer product. Also, he recommends placing accreditations (like BotW, etc.) near the top of the page.
• Again, as many reviews as possible will help ranking. Incentivize clients to reivew your products… even if it sounds a bit unethical, getting reviews is huge.
• Spam in local search remains a big problem, so constant monitoring is necessary. And in many cases, reporting abuse to Google is the right thing to do.

Jennifer Chin:

• Jennifer’s presentation deals with the hijacking of local listings.
• Near the bottom of Google’s local listings, there is a message in green that indicates whether or not it has been claimed by the owner.
• Google community edits (basically the Google-driven wikipedia of local search) can help you refine the accuracy of your listings. You may also mark listings for removal via this feature.
• Google almost universally will prefer the business owner’s data over community edits or data feeds.
• If you want to report abuse, but you want to do it annonymously, you can report spam through Google’s help center.

Q&A

• How to get more reviews and how to deal with rep management on local search?
  • Reach out to negative reviewers and try to make it right.
  • Reward people (as a thank you) who were probably inclined to review in the first place. By the way, it was pretty obvious that everybody on the panel wanted to say, “Just bribe people to provide reviews”, but it probably isn’t a good idea to say something like that in from of Jennifer Chin.”
  • For those businesses that offer free WiFi, default the landing page to your reviews page.
  • Provide step-by-step instructions on how to create reviews.
• Definitely claim your listing for the sake of mobile which only shows the top few results.

-DREW

Tags: google local, SMX West 2009

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SMX West 2009 in Santa Clara

SEOMFG is in Santa Clara, CA this week covering SMX West 2009. It’s a relatively small conference, but I have already met some interesting people.

More information about the conference is here: SMX West daily agenda

I’m presenting for the first time ever today, so I’m pretty excited about that. I’ll be speaking on a panel about YouTube optimization, and I think I have some decent tips to share. I’ll also create a post specific to the session.

SMX makes all of the conference presentations (PowerPoint files, usually) available as soon as possible. Considering that most folks are making modifications until the last possible moment, they likely won’t be ready on the site until the conclusion of the conference. But I’ll do my best to have the relevant ones here so you can download them.

If you’re at SMX West, stop by Up Close With YouTube today at 4:30 and say hi.

-Drew

Tags: SMX West 2009

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Search and Social Synergy

MODERATOR:
Dana Todd, CMO, Newsforce, Inc.

PANELISTS:
Mike Grehan, Global KDM Officer, Acronym Media
Adam Lavelle, Chief Strategy Officer, iCrossing
Julie Sun, Senior Manager, SEO, MTV Digital Media
Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, SearchEngineLand.com

Here is a quick overview of each speaker and their major points.

Danny Sullivan:

• Honestly, I didn’t take notes for Danny’s presentation because he said the whole thing would be blogged the next day on Search Engine Land. Well, I couldn’t ever find it. If you can, can you post the link in the comments or email me?

Julie Sun:

• The Digg community doesn’t typically like big brands (in fact, there can be some ugly backlash if the brand isn’t fully transparent). But is a great place to read feedback. Example:MTV launched a new video site, and some of the immediate feedback was along the lines of, “Oh great. Another video site that doesn’t work outside the US.” In actuality, the site worked just fine outside of the US, and after addressing the issues that led to the problem in the first place, this issue was nipped in the bud.
• Julie pointed out a potential flaw and/or exploit on Facebook. She said that when you do a Facebook search, the first results page will be whichever one was created first (pizza example). is this true? Does anybody know for sure?
• Facebook recently opened up their pages (not profile pages) to crawling, so we’ll probably be seeing them show up on the SE’s SERPs more often.
• Use Yahoo! Answers to get a #1 ranking before your site even launches. I liked this one. Everyone knows that Yahoo! Answers is one big SEO racket, but why not use it as a surrogate for your brand until your site goes live? Good stuff.
• Don’t blindly jump into a social media marketing campaign just because you have a good idea. Make sure that you have the proper resources before starting. No sense in starting something potentially great that you will have to abandon once it builds steam.
• Know your goals beforehand. Are you branding? Are you looking for traffic?

Mike Grehan:
This presentation was all about the crossover between search and social media.

• The communituies will drive the engines. This is the likely future of search.
• Librarything.com is an excellent example of user-driven search. Check ou its tons of UGC.
• Mike talked about an example of making a short video that he published to several different video hosting sites. He tagged it in such a way that it would compete with a moderately competetive term (he didn’t say which one). Within 3 days, several of the videos were ranking in the top 10 for that term. The point? Google is obviously listening, and HTML is not the future of content - nor is it what the search engines will eventually be prioritizing.
• Textbook SEO will disappear completely (nothing new there).
• DAO: Digital Asset Optimization. This is defines as offsite SEO using social media.
• Mike claims that the number one source of Google’s information is their toolbar. He didn’t elaborate, but I’m curious to know why. Mike? Are you reading this?
• He Quoted Andrew Tomkins who suggests that HTTP and HTML will become obsolete.

Adam Levelle:

• If you think that you are in charge of your own brand, you are not. Eventually, nearly all information about any brand will be UGC. Most will be crap, so the SEs will be in charge of filtration.
• Case study: The company was able to radically decrease negative sentiment by merely answering questions. Here is a great argument for getting involved. You don’t even have to initiate anything - just answer people’s questions.
• Clive Thompson of Wired is quoted: “Google is not a search engine. Google is a reputation-management system.”
• Measuring social media is still very difficult. One tactic that Adam tried was to track the links posted and clicks received via every different social media site on which they had activity. He mined the Omniture data in order to do this, and it was horribly tedious.
• Measuring social media is not the same as ROI.

-Drew

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Tags: ad:tech New York 2008

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Mobilizing and Leveraging Consumer Insights

Mobilizing and Leveraging Consumer Insights: Best Practices for the Digital and Social Media Age

MODERATOR:
Jeff Flemings, Senior VP, Renaissance Planning, VivaKi

PANELISTS:
Kay Madati, VP, Audience Experience, CNN Worldwide
Michael Lazerow, Chairman and CEO, Buddy Media, Inc.
Jeff Hunter, Innovation Toolkit Director, Cereal Partners Worldwide, General Mills, Inc.
Marc Ruxin, Chief Innovation Officer, Digital, McCann Worldgroup San Francisco
Chris Pan, Head of Brand Solutions, Facebook

Discussion highlights included:

• CurrentTV’s election coverage that ran a  Twitter feed and a Digg feed below video window.
• Dont’ try and create something new. pick something you know people will already engage with and center your social media campaign around that.
• Obviously you have to give people a reason and a chance to engage.
• Don’t merely set up a SM listening system. Create concrete goals for engaging and make a plan for converting participation (offline or online) into a way to generate revenue.
• Brand relationship networks (groups of brand enthusiasts) can help you understand why/where to engage and develop new ideas and campaigns.
• Consumers now have more of a face than ever. Therefore, even though so much of social media is driven by technology, there needs to be a layer on top of that that is driven by emotion.
• The challenge isn’t finding people but rather learning about them and knowing which content to direct them to.
• How do you build relationships with consumers? How do you create one-on-one engagement with an ongoing dialogue? If there is a local event, how do you communicate it to the correct people? The quest to answer all of these questions is driving the evolution of a new type of CRM. Can you create or nurture fans that will help you promote your own brands?
• Any advertiser who is getting involved with any social media space needs to understand the expectations of that space before getting involved.

Take-aways

• Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day is a must-read for any social media marketer. It’s available for sale at Amazon:
  It was written by Dave Evans of ClickZ, and it came highly recommended from several members of the panel.:

Tags: ad:tech New York 2008

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