Still wondering why your local search page may be down on its luck? After reading a diagnostic chart surveying the successful factors for a page, there are plenty of ways to get back on your feet. Even though a few of them can seem straightforward, there’s a reason why they are at the top…some businesses keep missing those marks. For the time being, let’s focus on the 3rd most important factor: properly putting your business in the right category.

To better understand this, I need to go to Fantasy Island in search of a business starting from square one. How about…pets. Better yet, Pet Babysitters, Inc.! You’re an upstart company looking to corner the local pet-sitting market.

Now let’s get going to your first order of business: Google Local Listing Center. First and foremost, if you haven’t listed with Google, stop what you’re doing immediately and get your business on there! That’s one gigantic claim to leave dangling in the wind.

With that locked down, your next course of action is to scroll down to the categories. With a limit of 5 to choose from, you must carefully go through and choose the best possible categories for your business to show up in. Type as many words as you can to associate anything with pets, pet products, grooming services, etc. Depending on the variety of services your business possesses, being a pet babysitter can be narrowed into: “Dog Day Care”, “Pet Sitter”, “Dog Sitter”, “Pet Supply Store” and “Pet Groomer”. There are a few more that could be tagged along with it, but these are by far your strongest.

And while we’re at it, let’s go to the wonderful world of misguided pages! Here are a couple dreadful mistakes:

1. One and Done: Having one category or none at all is akin to putting blinders on. Simple as that.
2. Upon Further Review: You don’t look over your categories. For example, you were about to select “Dog Day Care” and instead you select the one above it, “Cremation Services”. Oops.

All in all, these errors can simply be avoided with a watchful eye. Making them as detailed as possible can ratchet up the percentage of clicks to your website. Rather than “just enough”, focus your thoughts on “not enough” and your doorbell may thank you for it later.

Everyone loves a kitten. There are calendars, coffee mug pics, greeting cards, and other devices spreading their love for kittens. There are millions of sites dedicated to just kittens. Want to know if your macho friend secretly loves kittens? Well, that’s now a possibility thanks to Google’s Social Search. After viewing the demo, I’ve drawn somewhat of a rough conclusion that Google’s new tool is a compacting of your social sites into one page for friends to see. From this, a person can view the same topics, products, or any other informational tidbits their friends searched for. From their friends to their friends and beyond, specific searches can generate leads to quality sites and maybe make people feel a little bit more trusting to what they are searching for.

This slight tweaking of the social network could make for some interesting avenues for businesses. If a local business needed more exposure, Social Search can allow more people to be directed to its website through a friend’s Twitter feed, LinkedIn account, blogs, and so forth.

Let’s pretend a local burger stand that’s been around for many years decides to take the plunge. Their website could be given a boost if a local fan base emerges from searching the local burger stand. Once discovered, their friends stumble upon it by seeing that search or by seeing their social networks rave about their experience there. A blog about their experience can lead people to click on the burger stand’s website, find the location, sit down, and enjoy what all the fuss is about. Along with the blog, a business’ product could be seen through photos, videos and much more. By viewing their friend’s photos within their search, a person may feel more at ease with either visiting the website or going directly to the establishment based off trusting their friend’s instinct. Friends of those friends can follow the same advice and test it out for themselves.

Are there drawbacks? Only if one chooses to glance over the comments about the demo will he or she see people referring to this as some sort of Orwellian device. It’s not so much 1984 as it is just another way to improve a website’s presence to others. People can control how much of their search result may be seen by their friends. They can omit the people who they feel don’t use the Internet outside of checking their bank statements, but in doing so, that person may alienate another extension of possible clients.

Besides, this whole process is just in its infancy. I remember being in college and doubting the frenzy that was Facebook. Heck, I even had a friend make my account because I was too stubborn to do it myself. Now that I’m on, I can’t stop looking for the next fake quiz or survey to come about. As much as it’s mindless entertainment for me, it’s a marketing firecracker for others. Maybe this Google tool is leaning that way as well.

Just remember, have a little bit of faith in a friend’s search and a following from it could set a trail to your business.

Let’s say you’re writing for a fan page dedicated to the growing, styling and maintenance of dundrearies, because, well, why wouldn’t you? Listen, it was the closest I could come to playing on the Something Something for Dummies book franchise and I thought it was clever, just humor me and let’s roll with it…

Edward Sothern's jaws giving birth to a... style?

OK, so you’re looking to grab more members – it’s the Worldwide Web after all, there has to be more than three of you on the planet, right? So, how do you draw these other tastefully be-bristled folks to you?

First, for the sake of this post anyway, ya’ gotta have a blog, which, quite honestly, I can’t imagine your dundreary site not having, as there has to be tons of new styling gels to test, monocle swap-meets, pretentious art house meetings to organize, political discussion, this thing should be buzzing. As we’ve discussed many times before, from a search engine optimization angle, this is the fresh content the engines adore, but they can’t do much for you if you aren’t using the right keywords in your writing. You need to find out how people are searching for your subject matter – what are they typing into the search engines when they want to know if sporting some extreme dundrearies can drown them? Is that even a common search? Let’s find out!

As with any good keyword hunt, I find it’s best to start with Google AdWords to sprinkle some seeds and see what sprouts up. I spotted AdWords “dundrearies” and “dundreary” and this is the best it could muster:

Hmmm, doesn't appear to be a popular search in Kansas City... or anywhere else.

Wow, that’s a little disappointing. Clearly, we’re dealing with a fairly niche lifestyle choice here, but hey, we have a better idea now of how people are searching for their information and which words carry the most strength. Starting with the keyword “dundrearies” we now have a breakdown of which of the *sigh* four words and phrases should be included the most in your future posts.

Armed with this knowledge be careful not to overdo it from here on out. A good guideline to follow is to not go over 5% keyword density in your writing because not only will the search engines start thinking you’re trying to manipulate them (they don’t like that), but your writing starts to look like crap. So, for example, lets say you’re putting together a feature on the best new pomade for styling your dundrearies into stylish curls and the word count is roughly 500 words. Multiply 500 by .05 (for my mathematically challenged brothers and sisters out there, that’s your 5%) and you come up with 25, which means you don’t want to go beyond stuffing 25 keywords into the entire piece. That’s a total by the way, I don’t mean for you to try that with each and every keyword, that could get messy.

Simply maintaining your blog gives you the opportunity to not only build on existing keywords, but if you check periodically you can also seamlessly plug in new keywords should they arise. And by doing a good job you show yourself as an authority on your subject matter, and provided you’re constantly researching and staying on top of your industry, then you really and truly are – right? Yes, imagine, the online leader in dundreary technology… dare to dream my friends.

Just over a week ago Verizon Blackberry users discovered a slight change in their default search browser, losing the quick buttons for Google, Wikipedia, Dictionary.com, and others for the singular, shiny and new (to them) “Bing” option. It remains to be seen whether the rumored exchange of a cool $500 mill. from Microsoft to Verizon is worth the customer outrage, but hey, that’s… business?

Further rumored details are that this is part of a five-year exclusivity plan, so Verizon smart-phone users may not be seeing the end of this anytime soon. The question for us cool SEO kids is, as always, “How does this affect me?” Though this isn’t the point of my question, if you’re a Verizon user, then you have to actually type in Google to get there, losing seconds of precious time EVERY time. Oh noes! Personally, I use T-Mobile, primarily because I was led to believe Catherine Zeta-Jones visits your house… *ahem* and I’m still waiting. But I digress…

The thing is, this is still too new to see what impact it will have on the search engine arms race. Verizon’s the big dog here in the U.S., but will Bing gain much market share with this move – will we start to see it in our Pay Per Click budgets? Is Bing looking ahead to try and bully into the future smart phone search market? Or, what seems to be most likely at the moment, will “google” remain the most searched term in Bing’s search engine?

Back in September we talked about how the simple act of claiming your Google Local Business page would give you a small boost in your Google 10-pack ranking, which, as we covered, translates directly to fame, fortune and the domination of all who oppose you. Well, should you want to buttress this newfound popularity a bit let’s cover another factor in this land of Local Search Visibility: the volume of your customer reviews.

That’s right, it’s not good enough to just claim the thing and leave it by its lonesome, now you have to actually nurture it. Let’s think about what it will take to get your customers to bother actually going all the way to your listing, and then having to type words… “Ugh, I didn’t expect homework, I just wanted to buy a pair of shoes!” See, this imaginary person I just made up doesn’t even want to do any of that!

How about if we incentivize this whole thing for them? Maybe a 5-10% discount on their next purchase? Maybe you run a competition for a month or three where a random commenter wins a prize? You could even incorporate a video into the listing (yet another boost in the Google 10-Pack – ho-ho!) where you pick a name from a hat, throw a dart at a wall of names, see which bowl the neighborhood cat eats from, however it is you decide to divine your winner. Make it fun, make people want to go and at least check it out, and make it fun for you, or whichever lackey you put on it, to actually do it.

Local Search can be a boon to businesses of any size, all it takes is a bit of attention and maybe just a bit of imagination.

With Thanksgiving gone and the holiday buying season having bashed us square in the face this past week, I started thinking about how best a DIY shop owner can prepare and position themselves for the carnage this time of year brings. Thing is, I quickly realized that in regards to SEO, it’s essentially already too late to ponder such a question. If you want your site to organically rank for this season’s hot items you really need at least a two-month lead. Not only do the search engines need time to index your content, but you also must remember that if you’re targeting the Christmas rush, those people have kicked off their shopping spree already. Sooo, PPC campaign, anyone?

Regardless if you’ve been caught flat-footed and are scrambling to cobble together some PPC ads, or are, I dunno’, on the ball and prepping for Valentine’s Day, let me show you a handy tool that can help you position yourself for glorious windfalls no matter the occasion. Let’s check out Google Trends.

And let me quickly tell you that the graph and numbers are only relative to the, “average search traffic in the chosen time period,” which creates a baseline where the, “subsequent terms are then scaled relative to the first term.” Yeah, I stole that from their FAQ, but it usually seems to be the first thing that comes up when I show this to people, so I wanted to keep you from getting too excited.

Anywho, go ahead and type in, “long stem roses,” to see a terrific example of a powerfully obvious trend. You probably could’ve guessed the result beforehand, but let’s say you’re running a small toy shop and are wanting to gauge consumer interest in a couple items. I can tell you that the new Space Police Lego sets have been forced into a lot of conversations by my eight-year-old son lately, along with some kick he’s on with working on cars, so there’s an erector set in the mix as well. Using these as search examples, our imaginary shop owner can compare and contrast the old standby erector set with this new Lego line to see which is garnering the most attention from consumers.

Here we see an alien learning to respect crosswalks.

If you perform this search today you’ll see the Space Police are noticeably cooler at the moment, though both are on an upswing, clearly riding the wave of the holiday season, as shown by the previous years’ data. From this information our imaginary owner could pick a direction for a PPC campaign, use it as an additional way to forecast demand in regards to ordering product, or plan future SEO campaigns. This could allow our owner an opportunity to build some nice organic results for the timeless erector sets, while leaving a PPC budget for whatever the next super-awesome, super-cool, “all my friends have one, so I need one,” toy-thing of the season. So, go play with Google Trends and see how it can help you and your business.

No matter how at odds you might be with computers, the Internet, or technology in general, Mr. or Miss Business Owner, I have a simple tip (hey, with video instruction!) that can help you help people in your general area find you… to, you know, give you money. Now, this is but a fraction of our local search visibility package, but we’re talking about Google, the most-used search engine in the world, so this is not minor.

What this video fails to mention is that your website is more than likely not included in your listing until you claim and edit it. There are so many people who see their physical address and numbers are correct and leave it at that, of course most of them don’t even realize the possibilities and options right in front of them either.

The second thing is that by simply claiming your site you immediately get a boost in Google’s 10-pack (that list of businesses beside the map in certain searches). It’s a tidbit that gets picked up in Google’s algorithm and gives your listing a nice kick in the pants for the smallest amount of effort on your part.

It’s time to break out of our old-timey phone book mentality and take advantage of the little angles we can be working online; naming your business “A1” anything may still get you listed first in the big book of yellow pages, but with more people searching for products and services online than anywhere else, becoming just a bit more Internet savvy can be a boon to your business.

Have you heard of Google Alerts (www.google.com/alerts)? This is a great tool setup that will constantly scan the Internet for absolutely anything you may be looking for, reporting back to you via email with a link and brief description every time it locates a match. Properly utilized, this can be a great tool for any business – let me show you how:

1. Find New Customers: Google Alerts makes it easy to find new customers. These days consumers are talking more and more online, giving their opinion on products and services and taking advice from one another. These are exactly the type of conversations you want to be involved in, especially when it relates to your products or services. Try using terms that someone looking for your product or service might use when looking for recommendations or answers. To use Adcuda as an example: we utilize Google Alerts to find people interested in our services using search terms such as, “looking for SEO company,” or, “recommend online ad agency.” Doing this for multiple long tailed terms sends us great links to conversations or “threads” on different sites where we can then jump in and offer our advice or drop our company name. This simple, personal engagement leads to multiple contacts, people connecting with us in regards to our services.

This can be just as effective for an online retailer as well. Let’s say your company sells golf equipment, you could use search terms such as, “best Callaway driver,” or, “any suggestions on a driver.” This gives the retailer the opportunity to join the conversation, make some useful suggestions, and provide the customer the ability to visit your online store. This customer now has a personal experience with the company, and has built a good amount of trust based on the insightful driver suggestions you gave. Just be sure to not cross the line into spamming these sites with only your information. Always make sure to offer insight and expertise first and foremost.

2. Track Your Brand: Using Google Alerts to track what customers are saying about your company is an easy way to not only gauge public perception, but also observe the speed in which your name is spreading. Again, you have the opportunity to directly connect with customers, answering questions about your product while building trust by proving yourself helpful and attentive to your clientele’s needs.

3. Track Your Competitors: Google Alerts is also a great way to keep tabs on what your competitors are doing online as well as what their customers are saying about them. This allows you to maintain your market position concerning price, value, etcetera, by matching any observed sales or services offered by said competitor.

4. Target Keywords: Try adding keywords for terms you are trying to rank highly for. This lets you see where Google is finding and ranking pages for this term and gives you the opportunity to try and backlink from this location. This also helps you identify your competition for this phrase.

You can get good information on how to setup your Google Alerts here. Its easy, do it today.