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October 18, 2015 by

Pay Per Lead Discussion

One of the new advances in internet marketing for local businesses is the push to work with pay per lead (PPL) services.  There are benefits and drawbacks to this strategy.  Here is a recent page we added to this website which covers the basics of pay per lead companies and whether they are of enough interest to you to warrant further discussion:

Filed Under: lead generation, local marketing, online marketing
April 18, 2015 by

Link Building After The Penguin Updates

This is a repost of an article I was asked to contribute to Greg’s old SearchSimplicity.com website.  It is reposted in its entirety here.

Please note that SEO has changed since the time of this article (late 2013), so contact me for more up to date strategies.  Nonetheless there are some helpful tips here which are still valid.

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The Types Of Links Which May Be “Friendly” As Tier 1 Links In The Post-Penguin 2.1 Environment

Many people involved with SEO may have legitimate concerns in the post-Penguin 2.1 environment.  Even with solid strategies being employed before the update, many professionals have had their strategies rendered worthless or counterproductive since the first week of October 2013.  These strategies could have included posting inadequately-spun content on only one type of platform, having too high of a percentage of the link anchor text containing the exact keyword, placing content on properties with low authority (Page Rank, Domain/Page Authority, etc.), or having too much “spammy” link content on a third tier of a typical tiered-linking system.

There is much discussion about how to recover lost rankings for affiliate sites, client sites, personal websites and authority sites.  Such discussions have revolved around changing anchor texts on first-tier (Tier 1) links which you can control, using the Google disavow tool, getting more social signals, improving on-page loading times and making websites more mobile-friendly.  All of these are helpful strategies, but no single strategy is likely to be the “magic bullet” sought when a panic situation happens.

One strategy which can help you regain (or even improve) your search engine rankings is to create more top-quality (Tier 1) links which point directly to a page on your website.  Additionally, they have to be formatted properly and in “Penguin-friendly” ratios.  The reasons for this recommendation include:

  • You can be in control of the links, including changing or removing them if needed in the future
  • You can structure the wording of your anchor text and the words surrounding the links
  • Images, videos, infographic content, podcasts and other multimedia has the potential to be embedded and generate a quality link
  • Link building software (e.g. GSA, SENukeX, Magic Submitter) can be used to boost these new Tier 1 links, if created properly
  • Previous content, such as images or PDF content, can be used separately

The goal is to focus on value-added content, ideally which has some sort of “verification” factor to it.  For example, a video on YouTube has the ability to be pulled – or at least voted with thumbs down ratings – should it fail to provide the YouTube community with value.  Likewise, value-added comments on industry blogs must be approved by the moderator especially if there are follow-up comments.

Going forward, you have over 30 options for the types of Tier 1 links which have high likelihood of being Penguin 2.1-friendly.  What you want to do is focus on getting your anchor text ratios in order.

As a rule of thumb, consider a “1 for 10″ breakdown.  This means that for every 10 quality (tier 1) links you create, only one should have the exact keyword for which you want to rank, pointing to a specific web-page on your website (or other web property).  The other nine links can be broken down like this:

*  1-2 links can be longer tail keywords, perhaps containing the main keyword
*  3-4 links should be “generic” anchor text like “click here”, “visit this page”, etc.
*  2-3 links should be focused (if applicable) around brand names, names of people, etc.
*  1-2 links should be derivations of the URL (with or without “http : //”, using capitalization on the first letter, etc.)

Of course, you should use as much unique content as you possibly can.  If you choose to use spun content, make every attempt to have the originally unique content spun at the sentence and/or paragraph level.  If you can, include multimedia such as images, videos, audio files and other complementary material.

Here are the roughly 30 types of links which you may wish to consider for your next batch of properly formatted and created Tier 1 links.  You are welcome to add comments about these as well as strategies to create quality Tier 2 links to these newly created Tier 1 links.

POSSIBLE PENGUIN-FRIENDLY TIER #1 LINK TYPES:

1) Citations (business directory listings) like Yelp, InsiderPages.com, Kudzu, etc. — obviously for local (primarily)

2) Intelligent, unique comments on high authority sites such as industry websites and blogs (like SearchSimplicity.com) for national keywords/authority and on local newspaper, radio, TV and local magazine sites for local SEO

3) Guest posts.  These opportunities can be found using all of the appropriate search strings (e.g. KEYWORD + “guest blogger”)

4) Private blog network –> unique hosting accounts, unique/relevant content (including images & videos), unique themes, varied anchor text, varied plug-ins, and even varied platforms (not all just WordPress).  Be smart and careful with these!

5) The top 40-50 article directory sites based on Alexa/PR/Moz Authority.  Again focus on those which require some sort of verification before going live.  You also may post unique, helpful content on sites which even may pay you a little bit of money (e.g. Seekyt.com)

6) Paid press release distribution on quality generic distribution sites (e.g. PRWeb.com) or on industry-specific newswires. Obviously a release (with or without embedded video) may get picked up on other sites. If you want to be conservative, do not optimize the URL with a keyword in the anchor text.  Instead, go with a straight URL or the company name/brand name as the anchor text

7) Optimized videos on sites like YouTube + the YouTube channel

8) Podcasts w/ unique content and distributed on podcast directory sites which still have some decent PR/other authority. Also you may consider a channel w/ unique content on a site like BlogTalkRadio.com with consistently-added content

9) Niche directories which have authority. Examples: industry/trade association directories or local chamber of commerce

10) Competitor backlinks (AHREFS, BacklinkWatch.com or MajesticSEO) and then run through AHREFS for Domain/Page Authority (or through Scrapebox for page-specific PR) or those with high relevance

11) Relevant forums which have some authority on the root domain. Optimized forum profile page and optimized signature files ONLY for those forum profiles where there are actual replies or forum thread starts

12) Social media platforms with legitimate, unique content (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, plus any niche-specific)

13) Answers on sites like Yahoo Answers or similar high-authority answers sites

14) Manually created Web 2.0 pages with unique content and a decent profile page.  These are not necessarily SENuke or GSA SEREngines web 2.0 pages, but rather manually created ones which look like a real human created (or at least edited!) them

15) A service like AutomaticBacklinks.com which puts links on pages w/ PR and some measure of relevance (not always perfect, but okay a portion of the time)

16) Helpful, unique infographic images uploaded to infographic-sharing sites.  Also, you can provide source code to have people embed your infographic on their websites, linking back to your desired web page

17) Getting broken links on relevant sites cleaned up.  You can ask the webmaster to provide a link back to your web property; or, if appropriate, have the webmaster change the link from the broken one to your desired web property

18) Pinning relevant, interesting images on Pinterest and Instagram.  You also can upload, and link back to your desired web property, on image-sharing sites so long as the content is relevant and interesting

19) Interactive content such as quizzes, widgets and other interactive/dynamic content.  These can be added to sites like Quizilla and widget-sharing sites.  Make sure that the content is unique, timely and relevant.  Like the infographic content, you can provide source code to have people embed your infographic on their websites, linking back to your web property

20) Syndicating your blog content.  You can do this by syndicating your RSS feed, using WordPress services which share your content on other websites, sharing content via blog directories, etc.

21) Getting your content shared with volume on social news sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, etc.  This is different than traditional social media properties like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.

22) Links acquired from sources other than traditional “guest posts”.  These include assisting reporters through services like Help A Reporter Out

23) Links on sites which permit discounts, incentives, giveaways, etc.  Focus on those which require some sort of verification process to minimize being in a “neighborhood” with spam

24) Relevant comments on EDU, GOV, MIL and other “hard to get” domains.  These can be tough to acquire, so be sure that the time invested is worth the effort

25) Sponsorship and/or donation links on scholastic (EDU) and organization links.  Ideally, see you can get social media or industry (or local) press about the donation to generate further links

26) Networking to get links.  An example at the local level is to ask a local hotel to provide a link to a local taxi website if the taxi service provides the hotel’s guests with quality service

27) Have others post on your website and then have them share the link to the post on your website through their social media accounts

28) Uploading relevant software to software directories to get links.  Be sure that this isn’t spam software, but actually valuable content which can be given favorable reviews and/or be worthy enough of being shared on social media

29) Any other types of links which can be generated by providing content through networking like Buzzstream and/or Buzzbundle

30) If possible, create helpful tutorials and share them on tutorial sites

31) Share unique content via PDF or slide content on sites like Scribd.com, Slideshare.net and similar document-sharing sites.  Some e-book directories may qualify here; but focus on those which have the high levels of traffic and search engine authority to get a quality link

Additional quality links could be established by “paid reviews”/”paid blog posts”, classified ads (though most are temporary), getting other people to bookmark your content on their social bookmarking accounts (especially relevant ones) and a few other possible methods.

If you do not feel comfortable using any of the 30+ link types mentioned as Tier 1 links, then you likely can use them as Tier 2 links pointing to the Tier 1 links.  This allows for the customized indirect linking which Greg mentioned on his October 22, 2013 post.

Thank you for reading this far.  Feel free to comment on additional types of Tier 1 links which you believe which are Penguin-friendly going forward into 2014 and can drive direct traffic plus help with your overall SEO efforts.

 

Filed Under: link building, SEO
April 15, 2015 by

Repost – How To Use Youtube For Local Business Marketing

This is a repost from Greg’s old Search Simplicity website which no longer is active.

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Local B2B Search Engine Optimization Using YouTube

If you are looking to get exposure for B2B (business to business) phrases in the search engines, then you may find that using YouTube is a great way to get started.

This is especially true if your current SEO efforts are either just getting started or your website is in the early stages of recovering from a Google penalty.

Since Google owns YouTube, you may be able to bypass some of the “sandbox” time, Panda/Penguin penalties or other situations which may have caused a drop in your rankings.

 

 

Local B2B Search Engine Optimization Using YouTube

This is applicable whether you represent the company wanting to be found for local B2B phrases or if you are a marketer hired by the company to help.

Just be sure that the B2B phrases you choose:

  • have some sort of demand nationally
    • you want search engine exposure in major metropolitan areas or for state-wide searches
  • are indicative of a possible qualified prospect
  • the audience would not mind seeing a video instead of an actual page with words

Regarding B2B keyword research, especially at the local level, you will want to rank for as many possible phrases that are relevant to the core product or service.

For example, if you are a marketer working on behalf of a commercial carpet cleaning company (this is deemed to be B2B because of the “commercial” intent of the searcher) then the searcher likely will want to see that your company serves the searcher’s particular area.

This also will work for smaller cities where the business population is growing.

You may want to rank for suburbs where you know that there are new office developments, medical buildings, and other commercial properties starting to get tenants.

The reason why is that people will be searching for B2B services because they may not be familiar with the businesses that serve their new location(s).

 

WHAT TYPE OF VIDEO SHOULD BE PRODUCED

A valid YouTube video could show before/after examples of your work, commentary on how cleanliness keeps morale up, how carpets being cleaned prevents losing customers, or any other topic which conveys that the cleaning company offers legitimate value.

Customer testimonials can be integrated into any YouTube video so long as you have legal permission from the customer.

Yes, even a “music slide show” video can be the video of choice when it adds value such as showing a “walk through” or “step by step” example of a process.  One example of a music slide show working in the Fort Worth Texas area is the phrase “parking lot repair Fort Worth”.

A YouTube “walk through” slide video shows up in the first few organic results.

For more advanced B2B services, you will want to showcase the “wow factor” your company offers.  For example, I am helping a friend who offers “experiential marketing” and “disruptive marketing” across the country.

His agency is based in Dallas, so he would like to rank well for the “Dallas” versions of the phrases relevat to those two topics.

Since Dallas is a growing business community, especially for major corporations, he wants to get in front of those directors of marketing & advertising who could find his skills beneficial.

We ultimately chose to use a video from a recent project where his firm helped the Perot Museum and the new donors for a specific wing of the museum.

Those donors are tied to the ownership of the Kansas City Chiefs NFL team, and their star running back was chosen to be featured as part of the interactive museum exhibit.

Even though his firm likes using Vimeo, for what his team says is quality-related reasons, we took a truncated video and optimized it for YouTube.

At the time of this posting if you were to type in the local B2B phrase, “disruptive marketing agency Dallas”, you would see the thumbnail to his company’s YouTube video (thumbnail is the NFL running back).

Over time, I want his video also to rank for other in-demand B2B local keywords such as:

  • marketing agency Dallas
  • interactive marketing Dallas
  • experiential marketing agency Dallas
  • digital marketing agency Dallas
  • (same as above except for “Fort Worth”, “Texas” and the nearby cities with good business growth and a population base of over 100,000 people)

The question is what to do with a video once you have one that conveys “value”.  The first question is what is deemed to be of “value”?  Here are some thoughts which might help convert YouTube viewer traffic into a possible B2B customer/client:

  • Intrigue
  • Humor (risky to use, but it works well if done artfully for one’s prospective customers)
  • Proving a fact and/or refuting a myth
  • Testimonials
    • Try to offer more in your video than just these because otherwise it can be perceived as too “sales-oriented” by your prospects
  • Introduction of new products
  • Elicit a business-minded searcher’s problem(s) and then show how your company’s product/service will reduce/eliminate that problem
  • Recordings of a lecture or interview which are useful to the prospective B2B client/customer.  Make sure that the inforation is conveyed in a way where it is easy to listen to the person
    • Do what you can to prevent a “bland” or “boring” tone!
  • Making your prospects aware of new cutting-edge technologies or legal happenings
  • Any other quality way to convey value to someone watching a YouTube video

From there, you can optimize the video (like on-page SEO) with at least these actions:

  • add the keyword into the actual filename of the video
  • add no more than 1-2 keyword phrases in the video title
  • have a good, lengthy, value-added description.  You can use an article that you might have had saved for article marketing purposes, and you can configure the article to read appropriately for a YouTube video description
  • Be sure that your keyword AND lots of related phrases (synonyms, antonyms, acronyms, industry jargon, etc.) are included in the description
    • Just stay relevant to the video and you should be fine!
  • Tags –> try to keep the number under 10.  Occasionally you will go over, but keep the tags under 10 if you can
  • Under the “Advanced Settings”, set all of your parameters; and then include the specific location of the company
    • Think of this as a “citation” that Google will use to match up with your Google Plus, old Google Places, Yelp, BBB and other local high-authority web pages which have your address & phone number

There are other on-page (“on-video”) actions such as altering the transcript, using the various annotations, etc.

The ones I listed should put you ahead of at least 80% (if not more) for most of the local SEO competition (in YouTube) for B2B phrases.

 

WHY DO THIS?

Remember that if you want to rank for lots of local business-to-business keyword phrases that you always can make more videos!  YouTube/Google also may reward you for posting lots of videos over time on your optimized YouTube channel.  This is because YouTube wants returning visitors to your channel so it can show YouTube-sponsored videos and/or ads.

Much like a local TV station, you want to have more than just 1-2 shows playing on “loop”.

The same applies to YouTube, so consider drip-feeding at least one video a month (ideally more frequently) for a minimum of six months.  Should your videos be free from complaints, lots of “thumbs down” or other negative social signals then you are proving to YouTube/Google that you are willing to be a contributor to the community.

Doing so will build your authority within the YouTube community and, over time, Google may reward you for those consistent and quality contributions.  Remember that you also can post your video on other outlets; but YouTube posting is one of (if not the) best methods to give your video exposure in the search engines.

From there, the next question is how does the YouTube video get traffic to it?

Here are several ways to get quality views to your video from local IP addresses.  I mention the last one in case Google one day is able to track “purchased views” then they could discount (or even penalize) any video optimized for local phrases that does have a large number of local views/likes/subscribes/etc.

 

FREE WAYS TO GET TRAFFIC TO YOUTUBE VIDEOS

  • Rank well in YouTube for the desired keyword phrase(s) and related ones
  • Share with your local e-mail list (if appropriate)
  • Share on your Facebook and Twitter pages, assuming that most followers are in the local area
  • Pinning the video on Pinterest and sharing on Instagram
  • Linking to the video in any free press release service you use, targeting the local area
  • Getting the YouTube video to rank well in Google for the desired keyword(s).  When this happens you likely will be # 1 or # 2 in YouTube and somewhere on the first page of Google for the same keyword at the same time.
  • Share on your personal (and company) LinkedIn pages
  • Share on other relevant social media profiles
  • Share on relevant local business forums
  • Obviously, embed on your website/blog in case you currently are getting local traffic to it through other means
  • If appropriate, share the link on various local classified ad sites (including your local area’s Craigslist section)
  • Add the link to the YouTube URL in your e-mail signature and any outbound marketing already going to prospective customers.  You can use a QR code in lieu of a long, ugly URL if appropriate
  • Other local free traffic to your website (e.g. links in the blog comments section on relevant local blogs, especially when you craft a well-written manual response)

 

 

PAID WAYS TO GET TRAFFIC TO YOUTUBE VIDEOS

  • Use the various methods of buying traffic within YouTube.  One way is to target your company’s competitors’ videos
  • Geo-targeted Facebook paid advertising (post “boosting”).  Be very precise on your interests-targeting here, such as industry trade publications and those who are members of a national industry association, who live within X miles of your desired geographic area
  • Create optimized landing pages on the company website with the YouTube video embedded plus any sort of call-to-action.  Use Google AdWords search network for this.  You also can use the Display Network if you know what you are doing.  You can re-target here
  • Yahoo and Bing PPC services
  • Other search engine PPC services (not imperative)
  • Paid ads on relevant geo-targeted business forums and/or ads on trade association forums, but emphasizing the local area you want
  • Purchase an expiring domain with relevance (and either industry-specific or geo-specific “authority”) to make your own “mini site”.  Embed the video and have a call to action for the person to contact your company
  • If appropriate, and if offered locally, consider having your local chamber of commerce send out the link to your video on any monthly/quarterly e-mail newsletters sent to all chamber members
    • Same as above for local business networking
  • Paid advertising within Linkedin
    • Be smart and careful with this AND be smart with your targeting!
    • LinkedIn ads can get expensive quickly, so be sure to monitor and track your spending and clicks very carefully

 

TRACKING

You can track the success much like paid advertising:

  • Look the number of views, clicks to the website, subscribers and other data provided to you by YouTube’s Insights for your channel
  • Track with Google Analytics or a similar service
  • Use a third-party automated lead management software which can track how many visit came directly from YouTube.  Such a service should be able to do much more, but this is important
  • Use link shortener URL’s
  • Include a tracking phone number, ideally a local prefix number
  • Opt-ins or other tracking from the specific landing page (e.g. “Pretty Link Lite” plugin for WordPress or similar)
  • Any YouTube video/channel likes, subscribes, shares, re-Tweets, and other tracked activity of social sharing

Doing all of this for local B2B phrases very well may help your company (or client) notice an increase in overall quality inbound traffic.

Hopefully you will notice that the extra traffic converts to sales or other methods to monetize first-time visitors, especially if you are offering significant amounts of value in the video and/or the page to which you send traffic from YouTube.

If you have questions then you are welcome to contact me.

Please help me to spread the word about this blog post by sharing it on your favorite Social platform.

Feel free to comment below, if you have questions. I’ll be more than happy to help, in any way I can.

Filed Under: b2b, lead generation, local marketing, search engine marketing, SEO, videos
April 13, 2015 by

Repost – Local SEO And Lessons From The Stock Trading World

Greg used to run Search Simplicity, a website dedicated to SEO and other online marketing topics.  This is a repost from a guest post he added to his site back in the early Fall of 2014.

 

Stock Trading Lessons Applied To Local SEO Search Phrases

The author’s views below are entirely his or her own and do not reflect the views of Search Simplicity

Can Stock Trading be Applied To Local SEO?

In the world of trading financial instruments, such as stocks, many market participants like to time their entries and exits using charts.

A common phrase used to describe the advanced study of using charts in the financial markets is called “technical analysis“.

The big question is, “What does that have to do with local search engine optimization?!?”

Great question!

With the underlying assumption (presupposition) that most local businesses don’t care much about “branding”, and instead just care only about new leads/prospects/phone calls/walk-ins and e-mails, a basic principle from stock trading technical analysis can help you get those new leads and phone calls rather quickly from the search engines.

This principle goes to the core of what SEO was founded upon:  keyword phrases.

 

In stock trading technical analysis, there is a principle called “Multiple Time Frame Analysis“.

Multiple Time Frame Analysis means nothing more than looking at a particular stock symbol or index (like the S&P 500) on charts, representing different time frames.

Doing so allows the market participant an opportunity to develop at least one (or more) competitive edge, in order to profit.  The typical “time frames” for any stock or index are as follows:

  1. Yearly charts – where every bar (or “candle” on some stock charts) represents the high/low/open/close price for an entire calendar year
  2. Monthly charts – where each bar/candle represents one month’s data of the four price points (high/low/open/close)
  3. Weekly charts
  4. Daily charts
  5. Intra-day charts (these could vary from 1 minute charts to hourly charts)

You are welcome to look at some of the various stock trading websites and stock charting software packages to get more familiar with these types of chart representations.

Remember that you are looking at the same stock (or index) at the same point in time, just represented in different time frames; and each may give you reason to buy, sell, initiate a “short” position (attempting to make money when a stock drops in value), or be “flat” (not have any position).

The lessons from the principle of multiple time frame analysis can be applied by anyone into Search Engine Optimization (SEO), including local SEO.

Please Note:
For the remaining of this article, let’s use the example of a competitive market, something similar to; Real Estate Broker in Lexington Kentucky (a major city) – (called “CITY” for the rest of the article) or very large suburb.

We can determine if, nationally, there is demand in the search engines for specific phrases related to any particular industry.

We then can assume that a certain %percentage% of people in the local metropolitan market will use the same keyword phrases to look for similar phrases, but at the local level.

Here is how the stock trading time frame charts principle could be applied in a similar manner:

1) YEARLY CHART = the major keyword which would be “Realtor CITY“.

All participants (the Realtors themselves and the clients they help find new homes, plus independent lead-generation companies) are aiming for this keyword.

It’s going to be highly competitive and, even if you reach the first page in (Google) the organic search results, you could possibly drop very quickly, depending on how solid your rankings are and well they’ve been optimized.

Nonetheless, by ranking on page number one, you’ll likely be generating LOTS of highly targeted leads, in a relatively short time frame.

Assuming that the Real Estate Broker has decent search engine visibility, a professional attitude, and does a great job in customer service then he/she may expect a certain percentage of the new customers to become repeat customers.

Follow-up methods such as email marketing, social media marketing, or other methods to keep the Real Estate Brokers name on the minds of (clients) home buyers, could generate repeat business or even a snowball of consistent, referral business.

This is just one very small perk of being in the top spots of Google!

2)  MONTHLY CHART = a modification of the word “Real Estate Broker“.

This could be “24 hour Real Estate Broker CITY”, “local Real Estate Agent CITY”, “licensed Real Estate Agent CITY” or any other similarly targeted search phrase , which has lots of demand (according to the Google Keyword Tool/Planner or other search engine keyword demand estimator).

You won’t have as much demand for this keyword at the local level, but the conversion rate (if you rank near the top) is very high.

Most people wouldn’t type in “24 hour Real Estate Broker CITY” or “licensed Real Estate Broker CITY” unless they have a specific reason for doing so.

The odds of the Realtors website (or other web property like YouTube video, Facebook page, Google Plus page, Yelp listing, etc.) generating conversions, are pretty good here.

Going after business-to-business (B2B) phrases works here as well such as “Real Estate Agent CITY”.

 

 

3)  WEEKLY CHART = a sub-niche of the industry which has lots of demand nationally.

For example lots of people go to the search engines to type in phrases related to certain aspects of Real Estate, like “home buyers”, “luxury homes” or “houses for sale”.

While there LIKELY will be (not necessarily) less demand for “buy cheap house CITY” than “Realtor CITY”, the person searching likely will convert into a phone call or e-mail.

It is then up to the person answering the call or e-mail to make the prospective customer feel enough reassurance and confidence to use the Real Estate company.

Please Note:
The niche (industry) you’re involved in doesn’t matter.

4)  DAILY CHART = low-demand, high-margin aspects of the industry.  In the plumbing industry, certain plumbers are licensed and experienced with high-margin needs such as foundation plumbing testing or backflow prevention.

There likely won’t be much demand for “foundation plumbing test CITY”, but the competition against that keyword likely won’t be very high.

The margins on what that phone call could generate a pretty impressive (!), so it might be worth doing some basic Local SEO for keyword phrases like these.

Make sense?

5)  INTRA-DAY CHART = esoteric aspects where there is some demand and/or modifying a keyword with a brand name.  For example, in the plumbing world some customers want a plumber who specializes in a particular brand of water heater.

They actually may type in “BRAND water heater repair CITY” or a similar phrase.

There isn’t much demand for these phrases, but they do have high “buyer intent”.

For the “Daily Chart” and “Intra-day Chart” type of keywords, you likely won’t need too many inbound, high-authority/quality links to get respectable rankings.

In these cases, make sure that the words are visible to the search engines (e.g. readable text and not just words in an image file) and take care of your basic on-page SEO efforts.

Place the new content on a new page or an existing page that can be accessed through the sitemap and navigation menu, or at least through properly-structured internal page linking.

Continue to earn quality links to your website’s home page and main inner pages, like Greg recommends.

You then will want a few social mentions of the page(s) with the new content such as the brand names and/or high-margin sub-niches.

Mix up Google Plus, a Facebook share, at least 1-2 Tweets for the URL and a few others like:  Pinterest, Stumbleupon, Delicious, Reddit (if appropriate for your industry), etc.

If the sub-niche is a new service (or product) being offered by your company then you may consider an online press release as it would be justified at that point.

For the “Weekly Chart” type of keywords, you will need some quality links.  If you have an official business address, citations always will be great to have as long as they are on high-authority web properties.

Some quality Web 2.0 properties, with unique content and relevant images and/or videos, should be a solid play.  You also can get links from a quality private blog network.

Yes, a REAL private blog network like Greg recommends… not one advertising itself for everyone in the world to join!

For the “Monthly Chart” and “Yearly Chart” major keywords, you will likely need a combination of really good on-page SEO optimization, high quality local citations, high quality links, a strong social media presence and social sharing signals, mentions on local websites (e.g. the local chamber of commerce directory and the BBB) and some properly-constructed tiered link building.  Greg’s suggestions for tiered linking in 2014 (and into 2015) should be sound for you to pursue.

When it comes to these high-competition phrases, you can consider it a “win” if one of your other web properties ranks as long as it has a link to your website and your phone number.

For example, if one of your YouTube videos or your Yelp page ranks # 1 for “plumber CITY” then consider it a win even if it is not your own website ranking.  Use some of the profits generated from the new customers to purchase more authority links and create some terrific unique content.

You also could purchase relevant websites or expired domains that have a clean backlink history AND search engine authority (Moz Domain Authority, Majestic Trust Flow, AHREFS Domain Rank, etc.).

Then convert those into value-added websites/blogs with links pointing back to your website, YouTube videos, Facebook page, chamber of commerce directory listings, etc.

Be sure to mix up the link text (called “anchor text”) using each grammatical version of the keyword no more than once or twice.  Also include lots quality links that have as the text:

  • your business name
  • relevant brand names (e.g. BRAND water heater repair CITY)
  • generic text (e.g. “click here” or “visit this page”)
  • URL (e.g. “http://www.YOURWEBSITE.com”)

Please note that you are NOT subject to a fixed number of five different types of keywords like the stock chart time frames (i.e. yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, intraday).

The big picture is to understand the core principle.  All it means is that you are not mandated to go after only 1-2 major keywords.

Since a local SEO effort is designed, first and foremost to keep the company’s phone ringing each month, be sure to get inside the mind of the customer.

Use the multiple time frame/stock chart principle as a shortcut to help make the phone ring by addressing the main reason someone looks up a local business category in the search engines in the first place:  the prospective customer has a problem and is looking for a business to provide a solution.

Keeping that in mind, take some time to understand (and quantify if possible!) the types of problems that encourage someone to go the search engines in the first place.

By addressing those problems/solutions on your website and other web properties, AND by “playing nice” with the search engines by not over-optimizing or spamming your website, you will be one of the few companies in your metropolitan area to take legitimate steps toward letting the search engines help make your phone ring with new customers or clients.

If you would like more information on this topic then you are welcome to contact me with your questions.

The “multiple time frame” core principle will be the same, but the actual process may vary depending on the type of new local customer or client you are seeking.

Filed Under: keyword research, lead generation, local marketing, Page One, search engine marketing, SEO, small towns
April 5, 2015 by

Case Study – Restaurant Grand Opening Marketing Online

In future blog posts I may add some case studies to determine what has or hasn’t worked when using online marketing to help generate new business.  A recent project is worth a short case study due to the fact that it simultaneously both worked and did not work as well as expected.

OVERVIEW:

A fast-casual and drive-through restaurant chain, with the majority of its locations and headquarters, is based in Northern California.  The company desired to expand and chose the Dallas Fort Worth region as its main expansion focal point.  This is due to the influx of people and businesses moving into the DFW Metroplex area which meet their primary demographic audience.

There is significant competition for the type of food that they serve.  With that understood, one of their differentiators is to have a grand opening where they give away free food and offer some light entertainment (music, bounce house for kids, etc.).

THE CLIENT’S BELIEFS

Their belief is that free food, like it does for high school and college kids, is enough of an enticement to get people to show up.  From there they believe that the word-of-mouth should take over and help boost day-by-day traffic to the restaurant in conjunction with basic social media and real-world marketing:  coupons, flyers, direct mail, etc.

They asked me to help promote the grand opening event with various online marketing elements:  SEO, paid ads, free listings, etc.  The end result was their best turnout ever for a grand opening, despite the weather being less-than-ideal during a cold Saturday afternoon in February in North Texas.

WHAT WORKED:

In terms of what worked to promote this restaurant’s grand opening, from the online marketing perspective, it boiled down to three elements:

  • Targeted Facebook paid ads
  • Online event calendar listings via the classified ads
  • Dallas Fort Worth-specific “things to do” calendars

The clear winner, of the three, was the Facebook paid ad method.  Although people surveyed at the event mentioned the above 3 virtually to the exclusion of other methods, the Facebook paid advertising method was the best far and away.

Instead of paying to have people “like” the Facebook page, or paying to have them leave Facebook and be taken to another website, we crafted a basic post to go on the Facebook page.  It answered the “Who, What, When, Where, Why, How” questions; and it had a graphic of the free food which would be given away that day.

In order to overcome resistance, we emphasized that the person didn’t need to bring any coupon or have to show anything at the event.  All that was required was to show up and eat free food.

METRICS

We split test different ads to determine which would have the best “metrics”.  Unlike regular online ad metrics, paid ads in social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) have additional measurements of success which include:

  • “likes” of the post
  • shares of the post (the biggest one as it reaches people via a “tacit” endorsement)
  • post comments
  • clicks through to the website to get more information

Remember that the restaurant business, especially in a high-competition environment like Dallas Fort Worth, likely will draw people from no more than 5 miles and, likely, more like 1-3 miles.  In order to address this, we targeted the paid advertising to JUST the zip code where the restaurant’s location is.  This can be altered in your case if your location is near the line of two zip codes; but the restaurant in this study was in the middle of its zip code.

We then targeted the Facebook paid ad (promoting the SPECIFIC post on the Facebook business page) by this method:

  • zip code(s)
  • genders (we targeted both men and women)
  • language spoken (in this case, just English)
  • age range (we chose ages 30-40)
  • interests:  we chose interests based on those which would be “liked” or groups liked by parents with kids in the 30-40 age range.  These include local youth soccer, PTA, kids TV shows, etc
  • marital status:  we chose all, but your specific post could targeted those who are only “married”, “divorced”, “separated”, “single”, etc.
  • workplaces:  we did not narrow the list to those only working for specific companies, although you have that flexibility if you are running a Facebook ad promotion for those working for major employers in your area

END RESULT

The Facebook paid (promoted) post got shared/commented/liked over 700 times according to the paid ad stats provided by Facebook.  Based on predetermining percentages of those who took action, with those who showed up, the client and I figured that the efforts produced somewhere in the neighborhood of at least 250 people showing up as a result of the Facebook paid advertising.

The cost to have one person actually show up, based on the total ad spend, was around $0.80 (eighty cents).  The acquisition cost-per-new-customer was more successful than they imagined it would be.  In conjunction with their real world efforts, such as promotions at local schools and churches, the efforts led to a combined turnout better than they ever had at any grand opening in company history.

THINGS WHICH DIDN’T WORK

While the above is great, a case study wouldn’t be beneficial to you without understanding what didn’t work.  The following list doesn’t mean that these techniques are bad.  It just means that they didn’t work for this particular grand opening in February 2015 in the DFW market for the type of food being promoted.

  • Press release:  not enough distribution through social channels to reach the very-defined audience in one zip code.  The retail consumer’s ability to be accessed via basic online press releases (for just “free food”) is not newsworthy enough.
    • The press release DID WORK, however, in terms of ranking in the search engines for “XYZ food TOWN Texas” and “XYZ catering TOWN Texas”.  This gives merit to the press release strategy for getting new walk-in customers and catering orders months after the grand opening is completed
    • The press release has to be optimized for these phrases, however, so be sure that you know what you are doing
    • Link building to the press release helped the press release stay on top of the search engines.  Contact us if you need help with boosting your previous press releases for certain keywords in the search engines
  • Contacting the “things to do” people in Twitter for that town.  Even though this made good sense, it just didn’t work out as the people running those Twitter channels either didn’t care or weren’t given enough incentive to make repeat endorsements to their followers (which supposedly had hundreds from that town)
    • If your grand opening really has something newsworthy, like a famous band or pro athlete appearing, then these Twitter channel owners may help you; but otherwise their influence appears to be exaggerated
  • Using Twitter hashtags for the specific town
    • It just didn’t work for this case, despite 5 tweets all using the city’s most in-demand hashtag (supposedly)
  • YouTube videos from previous grand openings in nearby cities
    • Nobody seemed to care, as the view counts, despite being marketed to the new town just never increased markedly.  No comments/likes/etc. of the video from the previous city’s grand opening
    • This was weird as both the client and I thought that “social proof” (seeing other people having fun at a recent grand opening) would generate some anticipation of what was to take place at the upcoming grand opening.  It just didn’t work out that way
  • Relying on friends and employees to tweet, like, share the information.  Unless forced or paid to do so, the staff just “never got around” to promoting the grand opening’s “Who, What, When, Where, Why, How” information to THEIR OWN friends and family
    • This can be deemed “sad”, but it confirms the stereotype of the “employee mindset” when they have no vested interest in generating one new person to appear
    • Corporate office is rethinking the incentives on certain days (not just grand openings) to give employees a financial incentive to market to those they know; but that process is still in its infancy
  • QR Codes:  this didn’t work because the staff barely gave out the material with the QR code to those who attended early in the afternoon to “check in” or leave a review on Facebook which would entice friends to attend the event later in the afternoon.  The few who handed out the material couldn’t convey why someone should scan the QR code
    • This ties in with the employee mindset mentioned above
    • It also shows a lack of understanding by corporate office, as they realized later the power that QR codes can have on generating positive reviews on sites like UrbanSpoon.com, Yelp, and other review websites

TAKEAWAYS FOR YOU

Thank you for reading this far.  I want you to have an honest look at what did and did not work in this particular case study.  Some of the methods COULD have worked, but they needed more time or refinement; and, in some cases, they needed to give their own people more incentive to promote the event.

As for your upcoming grand opening or other event that needs online marketing to help increase attendance there are some takeaways:

  • Give staff some sort of incentive to promote the event
  • Free works, but not in all online media
  • Some methods, which you expect to work, will fizzle (i.e. the YouTube video of the previous grand opening for a city 20 miles away)
  • Hyper-targeted paid ads, even though they are paid posts, likely will generate a very low cost to acquire a new customer (client).  This has to have lots of planning beforehand, however, in order to maximize your ad spend
  • Sometimes an effort can generate business in the long term, even though it lost out in the short term
    • The press release is the example in this case

I hope that all of this helps you better understand the role of online marketing when having a live grand opening for a local business.  If you need help with any aspect, especially the paid ads, then you are welcome to contact us for strategy and/or implementation assistance.

Filed Under: Event, grand opening, Local Business Revenues, pay per click Tagged With: ,
January 11, 2015 by

Making The Phone Ring Part 1 – Local SEO

phone

If you are a local business owner then you know that the bigger picture is that all online marketing actions (SEO, social media, pay-per-click, etc.) should focus on a few things:

  • Getting new first time customers/clients
  • Enhancing profitability for the business
  • Expansion of awareness/exposure if your “brand” is an issue
    • Although this always is taught first, getting new clients and becoming profitable should be any business’ goal, especially if the business one day wishes to sell the business to another party

A local business often faces a series of challenges when it wishes to grow and expand.  One of the biggest challenges is to enter a new geographic where it has no physical presence, even though the business knows that it can fulfill customer demand for the desired product/service.

There are over 20 online methods which can be considered by any local business owner wishing to grow and expand into a new geographic area.  Not all are “search” related, and these methods MAY be beneficial to your business.

You are welcome to review them and then filter them to which are most appropriate by:

  • What your prospective clients would deem as acceptable and appropriate for your business category
  • Then filter further the methods by what best represents the image you want to convey for your business (or that of your client)

Over the upcoming series of posts, you will become familiar with the basics of the 20+ methods.
Today’s post will cover the first method:

Traditional Local SEO

Please note that some of these principles may refer to something called “Parasite SEO” or “Next Best SEO“.  That is where you rank another web property other than your main website for the desired keyword.  Such a “parasite” property could be:

  • One of your YouTube videos or your company’s YouTube channel
  • Your company’s LinkedIn business page
  • Your location’s listing on Yelp
  • Your local chamber of commerce directory page (if you have a page dedicated just to your business)
  • Your specific page on the local BBB site
  • Etc.

Traditional SEO And Its Core Principles

Even though this post is about reaching new geographic areas, a brief history on traditional SEO needs to be discussed.  If you do not understand these, then you risk being “left in the dark” and have significantly-lowered chances of ranking in the search engines for the towns in which you wish to expand.

You also risk spending WAY too much money by making basic mistakes!

Traditional search engine optimization is based on several principles.  Those principles drive the need to consider the strategy as a viable marketing option because it can help make the phone ring, get new walk-in customers, or get new e-mail subscribers/social media followers.

Those principles are:

  • Your website is ranking at/near the top of the organic (free) search engine results for keyword phrases (user queries) which have some sort of demand AND possible “buyer intent”
  • The fact that the search engines are ranking you at/near the top is a tacit “endorsement” that your business (or that of your client) should be deemed more trustworthy than other options
  • If someone took the time to enter such a query (keyword phrase) into the search engine AND clicked the link to some page on your website (home page or other page) then there is a PRESUMED increase in likelihood that the person may take further action and contact you, show up at your location, purchase something from your website or join some sort of list that you control

Do people today make buying decisions from online properties OTHER than the search engines?  Yes they do.  There can be business review sites, social media sites, classified ads and other properties which can generate new business; and to say otherwise would be wrong.

Does a number one organic (free) ranking, however, still help you increase the odds of increasing profitability?  Most certainly!  This is because you are providing what people are seeking (e.g. a solution to their problems).

Why It Is More Difficult To Achieve The Same Outcome (A # 1 Ranking) Than In Previous Years

Ranking your business’ website (or your client’s website) however is significantly more challenging than it was even just 3-4 years ago.  The actual hard costs to anyone doing the marketing likely are much higher than they were from the 2009-2011 era.

Many of the reasons for this cost increase stem from the various Google Panda/Penguin (and other) search engine algorithm updates.  Here are just a handful of reasons why the costs went up and the difficulty to earn a # 1 ranking became much more challenging:

  • For a third-party consultant/agency to help a client reach a number 1 ranking in the search engines back in 2009-2011, most of what was needed was acquiring a volume of links which had the optimized keywords in the actual text of the link (aka “anchor text”).  It didn’t matter where those links appeared so long as you had a volume of sites pointing directly to your website.  On-page optimization, for some time, appeared to have dropped in importance.
    The consultants/agencies didn’t have to spend too much “hands on” time on a client’s website.  All they had to do was invest in “bulk link building” software and cheap overseas virtual assistants to pump out high volumes of links.
  • Google made its change in 2012 with the beginning of the Panda/Penguin and other updates.  These required the SEO professional (company employee or consultant/agency) to begin to evaluate where to start acquiring links from authoritative websites.  This required more “finesse” than just bulk-volume link building.  As in most industries, with the need for finesse comes premium pricing.
  • Some of the Google updates then forced the SEO professional to also prevent the “too good to be true” scenario from happening.  Many companies had links which were almost “too perfect” and were properly-optimized everywhere.  Google updated its algorithm to “slap” (drop the rankings for) websites which didn’t have a “link profile” which was more natural-looking.  Hence, the need for “de-optimized” links became more important.  Again, more finesse was now required.
  • The same thing later happened with the on-page optimization.  If a company’s website pages were “too perfect” and had too much properly-optimized content then it didn’t look “natural”.  The SEO professional now had to invest more time on the actual website’s on-page SEO factors.
  • A website’s structure and usefulness also started to become important for the rankings.  Google started looking at how long a visitor stayed on a website, how many pages the average visitor visited on the website, how “mobile-friendly” the site was, does it have Schema/Rich Text markup, and basics like a sitemap and privacy policy visible somewhere on every page.  Again, this required more time and hands-on attention.
  • The SEO professionals who then built their own TRULY private blog networks also got “slapped” recently because some of the way they structured the sites that they used to help clients.  Many of these outside websites were structured in ways which left blatant “footprints”.  Once the search engine algorithm picked up on these footprints, it was able to negate any benefit that these privately-constructed sites were bringing to help a client’s website rankings.
  • Finally, Google is starting to evaluate the quality of the content on OTHER pages which link to your page, not just the text of the link (“anchor text”).  The need for quality articles, videos, images and other media – on authoritative websites – linking back to your desired web page has started to skyrocket.  Again, with the need for quality – instead of bulk volume – comes higher costs due to the need for finesse and more precision.

 

A Helpful Acronym To Remember When It Comes To Online Marketing

All of the above, and much more, force a quality SEO professional (in-house or third-party) to understand better how to make a company’s website meet three basic measurements.  The acronym you are welcome to use can be “A.R.T.”, “T.A.R.” or “R.A.T.”  Those three measurements, at a “birds eye view”, are:

  • Authoritative:  Is the website attempting to rank # 1 authoritative for that particular keyword phrase (query)?  If someone from Google manually reviewed the # 1 ranking (instead of the robot/algorithm doing the “reviewing”), would that person deem the current # 1 site to be authoritative on the subject?
  • Relevant:    Is the website attempting to rank # 1 offering relevant, timely (or “timeless”!!) information that truly can benefit the website visitor?
  • Trustworthy:  Is the site, overall, trustworthy?  Is it free from spam, mobile-friendly, have practices in place to protect visitor identity, have full disclosures, and other security/reassurance measures in place?

Why Does Google Need All Of This?

The reason why Google – and any other major company in the internet search/social media industry – need to have so many hurdles and filters now to earn a # 1 ranking?  The primary reason is that they are publicly traded companies (see here)!

They need to generate revenues AND beat quarterly analyst estimates just like any other publicly traded company.  They assume that the harder they make it for the average business to earn a # 1 organic (free) ranking, the more likely that business is to resort to spending money on the paid advertising platform (e.g. Google AdWords).

That is the primary way that the search engine makes its money.  Remember that making a search is free to you, so they have to monetize each page somehow!

Pay-per-click advertising is a very viable strategy, and it will be discussed in a future post for local businesses.  Companies, however, which were used to getting traffic from the search engines – but had search rankings drop – typically “stampede” into pay-per-click in an attempt to make their phones ring. With any new marketing strategy, however, they are going to make mistakes and likely overspend.

Guess who benefits at that point?  That’s right, the search engine or social media platform!
That makes reaching their quarterly earnings estimates a lot easier!

The search engine companies have to make institutional investors (mutual funds, hedge funds, etc.) want to invest in internet companies as an industry overall.  They also compete for dominance within the industry itself.  Each search engine company (and social media company) wants mutual funds to consider its company to be the leader (from an investment standpoint) within the internet company sector.

All of this means is that they need to gain institutional investor market share on two levels.  To do so, they need to make their OWN platforms the most “Authoritative, Relevant, and Trustworthy” that they can.  By doing so, each attempts to convince the average searcher to use their platform exclusively over all of the other options… and hopefully click those paid ads on each page!

“Thanks For The History Lesson…. But What Does That Have To Do With The Website I Want To Rank?”

Great question!

Even though all you care about is using the search engines to help you expand your business into a new geographic area, please consider re-reading the above history.  The reasons why I recommend this are:

  • By understanding what is really going on, you likely won’t be subject to someone selling you a “black box”
  • You may be able to reduce your costs to expand into the new area
  • You will know what to post on your website (or other web properties you control) in order to get someone from the new geographic area to take action
  • You MAY be able to expand and get results faster than you expect
  • You can use pay-per-click budgets more artfully and get better data to then use for longer-term  SEO strategies
  • There is less risk (no guarantees of course!) that your website will incur some sort of penalty from the search engines

If nothing else, you also may be able to refute easily the false promises of the multitude of SEO solicitation calls and e-mails you get each week!  Use the above history to shut them down.  Hopefully, you will be removed from the contact lists of the substandard online marketing companies just looking to trap you in some kind of unhelpful, long-term contract.

Expanding Your Geographic Reach

With all of this history, here are some simple ways to make it possible for your website to gain exposure in a new geographic market.  For this, you will want to achieve as much Authority/Relevance/Trust as possible regarding the new geographic area:

  • If appropriate, add a new page to your website specific to that new market.  Consider this to be a “landing page” and add lots of beneficial, unique and helpful content about the specific new area.
  • Should a page on a local authority website for that area (e.g. that town’s city government page, the convention and visitors bureau website, or school district website) provide confirmation about your service then have an “outbound” (external) link to that content on your new region-specific page.  This way the search engines see that you are linking to something relevant and authoritative in order to make your page helpful to any page visitor.
  • Since you want someone in that new market to do business with you, consider some sort of incentive (if you are legally permitted) to have them contact you.   If nothing else, make it easy to have that person contact you.
  • However you can, get links from authoritative sites in that new geographic area to link to your new page.  If you have to make a small donation to a charitable organization in that area, and have them link to your new page, then do so.  Otherwise contact a quality local SEO professional who knows how to get local links.
  • Make sure that the new page is in your website’s sitemap.  This makes it easier for any search engine to index/crawl the new page properly and quickly.
  • If appropriate, syndicate an online press release with a link to the new geographic-specific page.  Use a quality press release distribution service and attempt to have something truly “newsworthy” to share so that the press release readers derive actual value.  That “value” can vary, but make sure it is worth someone’s time to read the release!
  • Hire a good SEO professional to help you gain further trust online in the new geographic market.  The SEO professional does NOT have to be local, but it should be someone who understands the principles of gaining trust in any local market around the United States.

Wrapping This Up

Thank you for taking a few minutes out of your day to read this post.  I hope that you now understand a bigger picture of search engines, from the perspective of the search engine company.
Remember that by doing so, you likely can:

  • Make your website (or parasite page) more authoritative, trustworthy, and relevant in the search engines and get your phone ringing more
  • Cut your overall marketing and advertising costs because you will be much more precise with your budget
  • Have higher odds of longer-term rankings because every time something is published on your behalf it is quality and looks natural.  This likely would cut your costs because you wouldn’t need to “stampede” into pay-per-click advertising and make high-cost mistakes in the process
  • If the quality is good you even may have people voluntarily share it with their friends and colleagues.  This cuts your costs to acquire a new customer/client

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about how a deeper understanding of this big picture can help your business grow by, hopefully, making the phone ring with new customers or clients!

Filed Under: lead generation, local marketing, search engine marketing, SEO, small towns