I’m excited to announce a new free service I developed for local businesses, LeaveFeedback.org. Local Search is one of the newest verticals in the search industry bringing with it the convergence of offline (local) businesses and online search. LeaveFeedback.org has a real solution to one of the biggest problems facing local businesses: online customer reviews.
Problem: Local businesses have difficulties getting online reviews from offline customers.
Solution: LeaveFeedback.org helps local businesses to get authentic, online reviews from their customers by giving a coupon for leaving feedback at a review site, and pointing the customer directly to one of the review sites.
Benefits: This service not only helps local businesses to increase online customer reviews, but it also gives motivation to local businesses to create business listings at popular local search sites and helps local businesses rank better on sites that use customer ratings as a part of their local search rankings algorithm (like Yahoo! Local).
Businesses with multiple locations or Local Search Marketers can manage multiple businesses from one account.
2) Local business finds or creates their business listings at local review sites (Yahoo! Local, Google Maps, Yelp.com, etc.)
3) Local business creates a coupon with a code for customer to enter
4) Local business gives customer the coupon (or sends in an email)
5) Customer enters code at LeaveFeedback.org and is directed to one of the review sites of the local business
6) Customer prints off the “thank you page” or actual review and redeems coupon
As a result, local businesses will see an increase in customer reviews, ratings, and local search rankings. And ultimately, more customers!
Some other features of LeaveFeedback.org you’ll find helpful and interesting, but not shouted from the rooftops:
- Print off an actual coupon (4 per page) from an auto-generated PDF
- Create a direct link to a randomly selected local review site for your business
- Keeps track of how many times the coupon was entered and customer went to review site
- Quick links to search for or add your local business to popular local search sites and directories
Some links about Local Search that may help you learn more about it:
There has been much speculation about how personal and local search, which I term “Specialized Search,” will affect search marketing strategies in the future. Although it feels recent, the discussion of more specialized search systems really started to heat up back in 2004, when Google’s Sergey Brin made comments concerning Google’s foray into Specialized Search technologies. Bill Slawski, our industry’s legal expert, has done a masterful job of following the patents issued to the search engines for various new personalized search techniques, and he asks insightful questions on how these patented technologies might affect search in the future. Bill helps me think, which isn’t easy. Bill’s SEO by the Sea blog has a has a full category on the personalization of search. It is worthy of your time if you want to better understand the great strides search engines are making to innovate to further customize the search experience for every individual client.
Additionally, Michael’s post of yesterday entitled: Local Search is Changed Forever - Now Google Knows Where You Are also discusses the amazing trends in local search. None of us should be surprised that the search engines are going to try to improve the search experience for their clients, it is basic economic principles at work here. We have to remember that Google and Yahoo! are competitors, I would say fierce competitors, and if these companies do not evolve, and implement new & better search strategies, then they run the risk of losing market share, and eventually becoming irrelevant over time. I don’t think either company will allow themselves to become the next Excite.com in the world of search.
There are many who believe Google and to a lessor extent Yahoo! are out to kidnap our personal preferences, and somehow use this “personal” data for some unsightly purpose in the future. Yes, even in search we have our own group of conspiracy theorists. I have read blogs recently of some who feel tricked that Google has been modifying their search results, based on their personal search histories and their locations, without their permission. While I am not one that wants to lose any personal freedoms, if while I’m using Google’s service, Google saves my search history to improve my search experience in the future, it seems like a pretty good business decision in my mind. Nothing overly Orwellian about it, just a vendor trying to better help a client, and fight off competition. If I am more satisfied with my search results, then the chances of me moving to another search engine is greatly reduced. That is pretty much what all of us business people are attempting to accomplish, develop a loyal customer base, and do all we can to prevent them from going elsewhere. If we aren’t moving forward in the marketplace, we are being left behind.
So as search results become more based on individuals, what effect will that have on SEO, and SEO strategies? It is an interesting question. If each of us are getting manipulated/personalized results based on our personal search history, then how can the SEOs “prove” their worth to their clients? I mean if we can’t see our sites rocketing up the SERPs, and show our friends, how will we know what we have paid out has been it? Or how will be know our personal SEO efforts are effective? While the benefits of SEO work may not be as obvious and homogeneous on the SERPs, we can be hopeful the resulting traffic driven to our sites will become more qualified, and our conversion rates will hopefully climb a bit. We have heard many times, we should rather have 10 people visit with 5 people purchasing, then 1000 visiting with only 1 purchase (assuming we aren’t a big Adsense site).
I believe specialized search will also increase the importance and necessity for more online competitive analysis strategies. Michael and I have been discussing other competitive analysis tools to add to SoloSEOs current tool set to further improve our clients abilities to understand what the competition is up to, especially when compared side-by-side to their own site’s performance. Then clients will be able to use the trends these metrics provide to accurately measure how effective their SEO strategies are within their competitive marketplace. Competitive analysis will provide more of the confirmation we need on our SEO strategies, especially as SERPs continue to morph to meet the personalized needs of search clients. It will be exciting. I will be interested to see if specialized search might possibly give those who didn’t get out online as quickly as they had wished, an increased ability capture new specialized clients by focusing on long-tail keyword phrases relevant to their specific market.
It is going to be fun to watch and be apart of all the fast approaching changes, and it will be fascinating to see which of us figures out how to capitalize on the new opportunities of Specialized Search.
We are looking forward to meeting many of you at PubCon in a few days, I did enjoy it last year. Please travel safe and enjoy. As an alum of UNLV, I know from personal experience, Vegas can be great, and Vegas can be absolute crap. I hope the former Vegas for all of you. If you to make is to PubCon, please come up and say “hi,” we are going to be handing out some SoloSEO SWAG, which is pretty cool. Quantities are limited. I may resemble one, but I am not a pack mule. )
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November 29th, 2007Aaron R Stewart
Instead of showing you restaurants, hotels, and stores related to your keyword search, now Google automatically knows where you are at. How?
Some cell phones are GPS-enabled, and Google will use this for very accurate positioning. For cell phones without GPS, positioning is determined based on cell tower triangulation and Google Maps, accurate within 10 city blocks.
What are the implications of this to local search?
You better be listed. Having a listing with Google’s Local Search will be more important than ever. This way you can not only make sure you are listed, but that people can find you based on your menu, product lines, and services. Take the time for meaningful customer-based descriptions with lingo that your customer will use to find you.
It’s a Win Win Win. The consumer, your business, and Google all win on this one. For customers, this is a dream to have instant access to local businesses in your hand. For the small mom and pop shop to the big corporation, if you have location then you instantly have a one-up on competitors. This gives you more access to more customers than ever before. For Google, it’s a gold mine for getting more advertisers, more competition for ad bids, and happy advertisers with better conversion rates.
Below is Google’s video introducing “My Location” as they call it, which is still in beta.
This opens up a whole new game of Local Search. What other implications does this have to Local and Mobile Search?
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November 28th, 2007Michael D Jensen
A good friend of mine, Thayne Peterson, called up yesterday and asked what he should do with his website to just help it perform a bit better. As you can imagine we get that question quite a bit around here, especially now that more people have kind of figured out what SoloSEO is about. This friend owns an auto dealership in Provo, UT (free link alert) and deals mostly in high-quality, used BMWs. He also has a repair shop as well, where they specialize in repairing most German made cars (this needs to be stated more clearly on the website). He, like many of us, just wants to be a bit more visible online.
In our conversation he mentioned he was considering signing up for a local online business directory, and perhaps purchasing some advertising on their site. He wondered if I thought it was a good idea, so I took a look. After some initial poking around, it was soon obvious that signing up was free, and the site existed solely on ad space it sold on the site. So I had no problem with him signing up, at least it is a new link to him, and this directory is well put together and has quite a comprehensive overview of local business, organized by category. I didn’t tell him if I thought purchasing an ad on this site was a good move or not, I don’t know enough about this directory’s traffic mix, or his business to understand if online advertising will provide a high enough ROI to make the ad price worth the investment. I will leave that decision to him.
But after a quick review of his site, I just gave him a few ideas that I think will help its performance in the search engines. First off, he does an excellent job of keeping the inventory of current cars up to date. As soon as they receive a new car, they clean it up and takes some nice pictures of the car, and then put those up with a simple description of each car on the site. I suggested that they should spend a bit more time on creating content for each car, focusing more on some keywords they are targeting, as well as the specifics of each car. These keywords should come from what they feel their strengths are, with local references included, like Provo, UT, Northern Utah, 40 South of Salt Lake City, UT, as examples. Additionally, I would have them use SoloSEO tools to analyze other local automotive sites doing well in the search engines, and then start targeting those keywords as well. Finally, they should also make sure the photos for each car are labeled clearly, and using an occasional keyword here and there, in a picture description, isn’t going to hurt rankings either.
Once a car is sold, they currently take the content and the pictures of that car off the site. I think this is a mistake many of us make. Rather, I would suggest they create a sold page, or past inventory page, then organize all the cars by model and year on this sold/directory page. Keep all that content written about each car, and the descriptive photos for each in play for the search engines. If they spend time creating the content, then they should continue benefitting from it. Plus, it might help potential clients find a model of car they are looking for. Thayne does a great job finding cars according to a potential buyer’s specifications. He did this for me, and it worked out great. So, if a potential buyer found a car on Thayne’s site by browsing the past inventory, which takes no time from Thayne’s sales people (truly a major benefit of any well conceived site), and Thayne gets a new client to work with, along with all the specs he needs to find a similar car, it is a win/win for everyone.
Next, I would suggest they start a company blog, it is another easy way to add content. We of course love WordPress Blogging system, we use it ourselves, and highly recommend it to everyone. On the Independent Import’s blog I would have them blog about sales they are having on certain cars, about automotive tips, about information on recalls, about new performance parts or options to “pimp our rides,” and even about the new innovations BMW is coming out with all the time. The automotive industry is one of constant innovation and change, and this provides excellent and frequent topics for a blog. Keep the blog fresh, with one or two posts a week at least, and also let his current and new clients know about the blog. Many new car owners are passionate about their cars (especially BMW owners), and reading new info about their brand of car and possible improvements/options, is very interesting and will increase business. I’ll bet Thayne could get quite a good subscription base fairly quickly, I know I would sign up.
I would guess there are many of us who feel like we need to do better online. Our site is there, but we need it to perform better, if at all and bring us some new clients. This is most easily done through search. Look for ways to increase your content, adding new pages, and a blog. Then write about products, changes in the industry, and keep your content, don’t ever throw it away. It may need to be tweaked or placed on an archives page of some sort, but you worked hard to create it, let it continue to work for you, it will make a difference in search engine rankings. As far as all the free advice to Thayne, I will take it on trade for a M3 convertible, black… of course.
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September 7th, 2007Aaron R Stewart
Much of a discussion on marketing can be broken down into what is termed “The Marketing Mix, or the 4 Ps” namely; Product, Price, Place, Promotion. Product being the service or product we sell, Price being the retail price a customer will pay for the product, Place being the locale where the product is purchased and Promotion being how we get our message out to the masses, and what we attempt to communicate in order to convince them to buy. The goal of a marketer then is to properly address the 4 Ps for their specific situation and to sell as many units of product as is potentially possible.
The online world is a bit of a different marketing animal. Some of the 4 Ps haven’t changed much, and others have. Our Product essentially remains the same. The Price is also not changed too much, although with increase access to information, and more access to online resellers, economists would expect at least a downward pressure on price, if not overall lower prices altogether. Place can also can be a bit different, while many of us may still have a store front, there are some small business owners who only sell their products online. So presently, we either sell both online, and through a brick and mortar store front, or we just sell online which is a new spin on “Place.” Finally we have Promotion, which in some cases is very similar to how we promote offline. Using banners and Ads on webpages. As an example, at the top right of Andy’s Marketing Pilgrim home page, we see ads prominently displayed to Andy’s thousands of visitors. This can be a very good online advertising option, as we are able to target clients who we can predict visit sites with a certain theme, and we have a degree of control on the content, color and message of our ad. Advertising our revolutionary new socks for example, on a site developed to provide marathon running tips to novice runners would predictably be a good advertising opportunity/match.
In online promotion we also have the opportunity to start an ad campaign and purchase ad space on search engine results pages. Both Yahoo and Google have programs for doing this. So if we search for “marathon running” in about any search engine, we will not only have organic or unpaid results, typically found in the center of the page, but we will also see a column of paid ads down the right hand, and sometimes even across the top of our results page. Again this type of advertising allows marketers to target potential clients they believe would be most interested in their product. However, these results page ads are frightfully limiting compared to other forms of both online and offline marketing. The ads all look the same in color and size, there are limitations on what can be stated, and on how many words can be used to get the message across. So it is much more difficult to really stand out through ads on a results page, I personally rarely look at these ads. Imagine driving down a Freeway with all the billboards having a white background, with an underlined blue heading (sometimes it may be bolded, wow!), black text of approximately 10 words, and a green URL link at the bottom, that’s it. Not many keen marketers would pay the billboard owners for such a poor advertising opportunity, but it may be a good way to get rid of all the billboards. Now, I am not a big supporter of billboards in the first place, in fact, they don’t make much sense to me at all. It has nothing to do with whether they work or not from a marketing perspective, I just don’t understand why we want these colorful distractions taking the attention of drivers moving along at 70 mph, with other distracted drivers all around them. It seems smarter to keep all the attention focused on the road, hey, maybe billboards painted right on the road? And don’t tell me these billboards are mainly for the car passengers, the HOV lanes around the country prove there aren’t many passengers in all those cars.
Anyway, to make standing out or ranking well on search engines results page even seems more difficult, when we learned earlier this summer from Google’s Udi Manber, that 25% of all search queries are brand new, and never have been used previously. So how to do we target those evolving clients?
In this apparent increasing difficulty in search engine marketing, we should really be seeing an opportunity to become specialists at anticipating the keywords our clients will use to find what they need. I see a very interesting research project here. It would be cool to analyze the behavior of a test group when they are all given the same, random items to search for online. It would be amazing to see how each would construct their query to best find what were looking for. It is this intellectual process we need to focus upon as online marketers and small business owners, how potential clients are conjuring up their searchers, what is the basis of their search, how do current events and trends influence their queries? With these questions in mind, creation of new keyword phrases will keep things fresh and relevant. We need to remember that due to the thousands of pages thrown on the Internet each day, the process of search has become quite different and more complex. Many of us understand that our searches need to be more detailed in order for us to truly find what we want, quickly. Searchers actually use long-tailed, localized keyword searches to get around the garbage Wikipedia like pages, and the miserable “informational” websites only created to rake in Adsense revenue. My average search queries are now at least 5 words, and usually contain a localization aspect to them.
So if we are mindful that 25% of search queries are new, and potential clients are using longer and longer tailed searches to find what they need, then we understand our creative juices really need to get flowing to benefit from the new long-tailed keywords trend. And we need to be addressing these long tail keywords possibilities for all our sites on a regular basis. Whether we create a new web page, change some product descriptions, or add a blog post using our new keyword phrases, it needs to be done. It is actually quite amazing how quickly one can rank number 1 when the keyword phrases used are unique and well placed. And many will be surprised when some of these phrases not only start bringing in new clients for the specific phrase, but also start ranking well for just portions of the original long-tail phrase originally created.
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August 30th, 2007Aaron R Stewart
Mike Moran’s post today, entitled Should Small Business Ditch the Web? discusses, well… I was going to say an “interesting point,” but I think instead I will say “ridiculously obvious point.” Mr. Moran essentially uses some of this post as a rebuttal to a comment to a prior post, by someone with the screen name of “Ikey.” It is Ikey’s view that big businesses have taken all the good keywords, and dominate the online marketplace to a point, that we as small business owners really have nothing left to live for online, and we might as well pack it in and move our marketing efforts offline, to more traditional forms of advertising.
AAAAAAAANNNNKKK! Wrong answer, terrible advice, and even sillier logic. Mr. Moran aptly points out that offline forms of advertising are much more expensive, which is true, and depending on the product, I would add they may not be as effective, or as beneficial to a small business in the long-term. I unfortunately took (wasted) the time to go and visit this Ikey’s site, and frankly it was, well… icky. It is my opinion Ikey isn’t going to sell anything from the site as now constituted, no matter how many folks happen to find him online. And this is probably where our online business discussion needs to go. Ikey’s site looks like many other cheap ebook, promise the world, deliver very little, type sites, and it is delivered in the almost cliche, early 90s look and feel, animating GIFs, etc. Now I realize that “retro” is cool with clothing and perhaps some models of cars right now, but retro isn’t cool with web site design. To really be successful online, I believe you must start with your site and company image. Online, the site essentially becomes the salesperson, and if the site looks cheap and sleezy, it reflects badly on the company, no matter the quality of the content. It is perhaps sad to admit the online world is as superficial as the offline world, but that has been our experience.
Being online is also important for small businesses because we never know who is going to find us. Michael and I have been surprised, no frankly shocked, at the number of clients that have found our companies, even some Fortune 500 clients, despite our poor performance in some search engine rankings. And we have been even more amazed at the keywords these clients used to find us.
Which kinds of leads us to another interesting post. Marketing Pilgrim posted an article entitled Business Doesn’t Need SEO by Jeremy Luebke last Thursday. Now it was quite an eye catching title, and thankfully the message was very appropriate. Do we as business owners need SEO to be a successful business? The answer is simply no, I know a number of business that have done very well without much help from an online presence, and they have done very little, if anything, in the form of SEO strategy implementation. I am sure you know companies like this as well. But is that the question we should be asking ourselves? Do we need SEO as small business owners? From my standpoint, no we don’t need it, but I believe we should all be doing it, at least a little bit. SEO is the difference between doing well, and doing extremely well for a long period of time. SEO strategies position a site to do well not only now, but even more so in the future. As a site improves in the rankings through implementing focused SEO strategies, and is indexed for a longer period of time, the search engine cred of the site will increase. As content is added, and links increase with time, the better the site’s ranking will become, and the better the chance potential clients will be able to find the site, even if it isn’t on the first SERP page. SEO efforts build on themselves, and where that takes a business in the future is anyone’s guess, but without a doubt it will drastically increase the potential that new clients will find us.
And what about these potential searchers/clients, who are they, and how do they eventually find us. This is an interesting phenomena as well. We are seeing the way people use search change, they are getting better at search, as they have learned how to better use long-tail search queries to more quickly and precisely find what they are looking for. Additionally, potential clients, both old and young are now not afraid to look online until they find a company that fits what they perceive they are looking for. Even my mother and father have become Googleites, and can find what they need very well. We have heard from some clients that they were just “searching” around and essentially stumbled on to us, if we had not been online, or at least trying to be visible online, this would not have happened. People are willing to look for what they want, and spend time doing it, because they have learned it does make a difference in their experience. I would also suggest that many searchers understand that the best company for their needs might not be on the first page of the search engine results page. Experience with the search engines results has taught us all this reality.
So if we add it all up, an online presence, meaning a welcoming site, with a good product/service, and good customer service equals a good chance for a successful small business. However, if we then throw in a good dose of SEO strategies, coupled with an ever-improving and discerning search population, and you have the recipe for steady to exceptional growth over time. So just stay online, going offline is just, you know…
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July 31st, 2007Aaron R Stewart
I love a challenge. In fact, if I don’t take on a challenge it drives me nuts. So when Darren Rowse came out with his group writing contest (project) with the topic of “Top 5″, I had to come up with an entry. I thought I would get creative and make a top 5 list of top posts from top experts in SEO.
Obviously I couldn’t cover more than 5 industry experts, as they are many more than 5. Also, if you don’t have a “Top Posts” page on your blog I couldn’t include you. Stuntdubl highly recommends you do that.
Other than press releases, another way to get into sites like Google news is to write articles and submit them to publication web sites and also blogs that are already getting picked up by Google newsbot. Perform a search on Google News for relevant keywords and note the sites that are getting picked up. Find out if they accept articles and press releases and submit.
4) Rand Fishkin (SEOmoz, which I prefer to pronounce as sea-moss just for fun) has a most popular ever page but you can also break it down to the past day, week, month, etc.. The top post ever related to SEO (first is his proposal) is Ranking Factors Version 2, which actually points to the actual article, but discusses its overall findings. This Ranking Factors gets help from industry experts to decide on what is important, what is not, and to what degree, in terms of ranking factors for search engine optimization. It is a must read (and must study) for everyone in SEO.
5) Brian Clark (CopyBlogger) is one of the blogs that really made a significant impact in our content business, and is a staple blog for anyone in Internet Marketing. In the sidebar of his blog he lists popular posts, and one that I love is How to Attract Links and Increase Web Traffic – The Ultimate Guide. He links out to an incredible list of resources that combat the topic of attracting links and increasing traffic. Refer to this list often, and you will find your SEO starts improving quickly.
These experts and others have provided a wealth of information for SEOs. Without much formal instruction in search engine optimization, this is where we can dive in and learn everything we can about optimizing for both users and search engines. This is one amazing facet of SEO, that SEO experts that charge thousands and thousands for this information will share it freely on their blog. It’s a fantastic community, and I have certainly grown in my knowledge by leaps and bounds just from learning from the experts.
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May 7th, 2007Michael D Jensen
Lee Odden blogged about Google Categories yesterday. I wasn’t able to duplicate the categories look, but it did get me thinking about the ramifications to online competition if categories in search become commonplace. As well as how categories might influence our SEO strategies as business owners.
Competing in the non-online marketplace has been a focus of research, and resulted in various competitive philosophies put forth by some of the most respected academic business minds in the world. Michael Porter of Harvard fame is one who has essentially dedicated his entire academic life to the concepts of competitiveness, and is seen my many (including myself) as the foremost expert in traditional competitive strategic analysis. But it is interesting to note, competing online is a different animal, and requires a different approach many traditional marketers aren’t quite comfortable with. Let’s take the shoe industry for example. Locally I can think of maybe a couple dozen places I could go and buy shoes, depending on what type of shoe I was looking for. So these local shoe resellers now compete against one another to attract my business. They buy newspaper and radio ads, do mailings, maybe rent a billboard, but they each attempt to get their message out to us, to keep us coming to them, and hopefully staying away from their competitors. But they now also need to keep our attention away from online shoe retailers, which is quite a different task, but important as more potential clients find online shopping appealing. Personally, I can’t remember the last time I bought shoes from a local brick and mortar store. I usually buy from Zappos.com… because I love the huge selection, the customer reviews, the free overnight shipping, and the free shipping on returns. It is a fabulous, no hassle system. Not to mention I don’t have to drive to the mall, deal with the crowds, or with my 2 year old daughter demanding to ride the “wee” (her term for slide) at the mall’s germ ridden treehouse (playground). It is a cesspool of all things icky (bless my wife for always having some Purell on hand to keep me sane).
So as more brick and mortar shops finally decide they also need to have an online presence, they will quickly determine the online competitive environment is very different, and can be intimidating. Not only are there far more competitors, as the geographical bounds are erased, but there are also non-retail sites competing for the same precious keywords. For example, if you type in “running shoes” in Google, you will see both online shoes stores, but also sites which review running shoes listed in the SERPs. So online retailers have to not only compete against more than just other retailers for keywords, but against information sites as well, as they attempt to squeeze onto the first SERP.
I have mentioned in previous posts that we use SEO techniques to improve our sites, so they perform better than our competitors sites. We pay little attention to other sites competing for the same keywords, who aren’t selling the same products, or are just informational sites. For example, we personally don’t care if Wikipedia ranks higher than our site for a particular keyword(s), since a potential customer can’t buy the products we sell from Wiki. We don’t consider Wikiesque sites an important aspect to our competitor focused SEO efforts. But how would Google’s Categories SERP influence competitive SEO efforts? In the Google screen shot in Lee’s post, we can see the categories listed as Comparison Shopping, Reviews, Stores, References and Others. I would be interested to know how these categories were decided upon, and if these will be the only categories for every search return, or will the search categories change based on the term searched? Is the order of the categories consistent, or will it change based on the keyword searched? We will need answers to these questions to properly prepare our SEO strategies. Obviously Google will need to be aware of those which will attempt to game the system and get their site listed in the top category, or in as many categories as possible, without regard to which category they should properly be placed within. I would imagine Google will only allow any given domain to be included in one category, period, or will have some protocol in place to best deal with these issues and how to police the system to hopefully be as efficient and relevant as possible.
Despite all the potential headaches Google might face, I like the idea of searches organized by category. And what I like most as a business person is through a search engine category system, the online competitive environment would more closely mirror the non-online competitive world. Now retailers could compete to be included in the Stores section of a SERP, and Wikipedia and others will be relegated to the References or Reviews sections where they belong. Also, as a searcher out to buy a product, hopefully it would be possible to set my preferences to drop the sites in the Reviews, References and Others sections, so I would just get a page full of retailers for me to peruse, perfect! Then, if we also throw the whole concept of Local search into the discussion, all of a sudden I could see the same couple dozen local shoes stores mentioned earlier listed on a locally-based, shoe oriented SERP. That would be pretty cool, I still won’t buy from them, but it would be pretty cool. As they now would compete against one another, as they have been doing in the “real world” for quite some time. Pretty interesting stuff.
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April 19th, 2007Aaron R Stewart
I am surprised I didn’t hear about this from any typical news source, but Google has launched a 411 information service powered by their local search engine.
When you call 1-800-GOOG-411 it first asks for your city and state, which you give verbally. Then it asks for a keyword or category, I said “pizza” for my first query. Instead of the top 10 it gives you the top 8. At any time you can say “start over” or say the number of the listing for more information or to be connected.
When you’re in the details section you can say “text message” and instantly you’ll get the address and phone number of the place you were interested in.
So what does this mean for you? It means that local search SEO is more important than ever! Now instead of just computer users having access to local search, people driving around town everywhere will depend on Google for finding you, not the yellow pages they keep in the car.
I’ve been using Google SMS for a long time to find addresses and phone numbers of businesses locally. You just send a text message to 46645 (GOOGL) and type in “pizza near columbia mo” and you’ll get about 3 listings back with addresses and phone numbers (mine arrive in 2 separate text messages).
If you haven’t started on local search SEO for your site, it’s time!
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April 11th, 2007Michael D Jensen
There has been much speculation about how personal and local search, which I term “Specialized Search,” will affect search marketing strategies in the future. Although it feels recent, the discussion of more specialized search systems really started to heat up back in 2004, when Google’s Sergey Brin made comments concerning Google’s foray into 
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A good friend of mine, Thayne Peterson, called up yesterday and asked what he should do with his website to just help it perform a bit better. As you can imagine we get that question quite a bit around here, especially now that more people have kind of figured out what SoloSEO is about. This friend owns an 
Much of a discussion on marketing can be broken down into what is termed “The Marketing Mix, or the 4 Ps” namely; Product, Price, Place, Promotion. Product being the service or product we sell, Price being the retail price a customer will pay for the product, Place being the locale where the product is purchased and Promotion being how we get our message out to the masses, and what we attempt to communicate in order to convince them to buy. The goal of a marketer then is to properly address the 4 Ps for their specific situation and to sell as many units of product as is potentially possible. 
Mike Moran’s post today, entitled 
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