Local What?

Local what?

It is no secret that local search is one of the fastest growing sectors of this crazy organic search engine optimisation industry. Everyone has talked about it, including Google’s Matt Cutts and SEOBook.com Aaron Wall so it must be true!

A few days ago I did a short post titled, “Who uses a phone book?” and the funny thing was the next day we had a meeting with a Gold Coast Golf Resort GM and that exact point came up; “Who uses a phone book?”.

To start with I thought that they had been checking out our blog to see what we are about, well I was hoping anyway. Unfortunately, this was not the case, but the consensus is that the phone book is becoming an unwanted part of office furniture for local, state and national product and service providers.

Then I noticed that the good guys at SEOptimise issued a challenge on their blog to find a location (town, city, etc) that is not represented by Wikipedia In the top ten search results.

I thought this would be a good way to show just how important it is to consider the local search market, using Wikipedia search rankings as the example.

The first destination I searched for (Yamba, where I grew up) did not have a Wikipedia ranking in the top 10. Here are the search terms & results:

Search Term Wikipedia Ranking

Yamba                                                  83

Yamba NSW                                          >100

Yamba New South Wales                       7

I know what you’re about to say, wiki is in the top 10 for the search term, “Yamba New South Wales”. True, but consider it from this point of view – the main market that will be searching for Yamba (and there is a lot) would be residents of Australia and therefore would use the state abbreviation when doing searches.

Here are the stats from the Google keyword tool:

“Yamba NSW”

880 (approx average search volume/month)

Competition 46,500

“Yamba New South Wales”

65 (approx average search volume/month)

Competition 3,390

So what does this all mean? If Wikipedia were in the business of selling holiday accommodation in Yamba through pay per click advertising and did not do any keyword research to local search patterns/terms they would be missing a lot of exposure and possible business by not bidding on “Yamba NSW”.

In natural search they may be able to rank higher for the long tailed keyword phrase, “Yamba New South Wales”, as there is less competition, but with their reputation in the www world they should be going after the more competitive search term, “Yamba NSW” for these two main reasons:

1 – Monthly search average shows that there are 13 times more searches for this phrase.

2 – Potential consumers for this market would use the state abbreviation, a great example of not knowing the search patterns of your target market and the importance of local search engine optimisation for certain industries.

Of course this may mean absolutely nothing if the search term does not convert, but that will be another blog post in the future.

More Contagious than Corporate Obesity

More Contagious Than Corporate Obesity

It is no secret that Corporate Obesity is one of the fastest spreading diseases in the world today, only just ahead of the speed that small to large businesses are adding online marketing budgets to help target more potential consumers. One of the hottest topics in Internet Marketing at the moment is social media marketing (SMM); leveraging social sites like YouTube, Facebook, MySpace to reach a specific consumer base at little to no cost. SMM sites go beyond lead generation and are becoming a popular and powerful communication channel to keep you in contact with your consumer base that will help increase brand loyalty and awareness.

SMM is a fantastic option to add to your online marketing and has several strong benefits to help aid your search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts.

101 5 Minute Fixes

The work of a search engine optimisation professional is never done! But this article is a great summary for all those looking for DIY info. We highly recommend you check it out and bookmark this info!

The summary covers the following topics:

• Copywriting
• Usability
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Accessibility
• Design
• Legal

Read the full article here.

Recession Proof Your Business

With the economical downtown effecting everyone from multinational corporations down to the lemonade stand on your street corner over the last few weeks; more and more companies are finding out that internet marketing is a way of bubble wrapping your business.

Read the full article here

Who Uses A Phone Book?

Less and less people are turning to the phone book when searching for products and services in their local area, this is due the power of search engines and their ability to find what you are looking for in a shorter time period. This opens the door for those that are a little internet minded to draw more traffic to websites, more email inquiries and more phone inquiries that of course that will lead to sales in the future.

With geographical marketing increasing at an alarming rate around the world, the popularity of local internet marketing will also follow quickly.

One of the simplest ways to achieve FREE exposure in the Google search engine is through the local business directory. This is a free service that Google provides and is pretty simple to set up, simply follow these steps:

- Go to the Google Local Business Directory here

- All you need is a Google account (if you don’t have one you can create one easily, see simply look in the bottom right corner and click on “Create Google Account”)

- Now you have your Google account sign in and follow the easy steps, make sure you ad all the appropriate information in the right fields.

- You’re done! Google will send you a postcard with a verification code; it normally takes about two weeks to get to Australian businesses.

- You got a postcard from Google! Go back to the Google Local Business Directory here

- Fill in your verification code and the job is done!

- You are now listed in the Google Local Business Directory and on Google Maps.

Now you can enjoy the extra exposure thanks to Google local search putting you in touch with potential consumers searching for a local service like our client JD Wedding Photography who have seen a dramatic increase in phone enquiries and web site traffic for their service focused around Gold Coast Wedding Photography.

Remember, this is a FREE service that Google provides and it will put your web site and phone number right in front of the consumer, it only takes a few minutes and is really worth your time!

5 Reasons To Blog

I was sitting at my laptop over the weekend brainstorming ideas for our blog when I got a call from a friend of mine to see what I was doing, you know, just one of those general time wasting calls that friends make!

When I told him that I was brainstorming ideas for my blog on a perfect sunny Gold Coast Saturday afternoon he thought I had lost it! I was called a few names, told that they are a waste of time, that they are for teenagers or for people that love to complain about the world; it quickly came to me that I need to blog about why every business should be maintaining a blog.

So here it is…. 5 Reasons To Blog!

1 – Blogs ROCK for search engine optimisation purposes. You can use them to build links into your main site, search engine spyders crawl your blog and follow your links into your site so you get crawled more often. They are great for you site’s stats as you can use them to generate traffic via social bookmarking (and build more backlinks), if your content is interesting people will spend longer on your site so the search engines think you have valuable information and this will help improve search rankings.

2 – You can control your brand reputation through your blog so don’t be afraid to approve negative comments. It is better to have the negative comments about your business in your blog over anywhere on the net that you might not find out about until it has damaged your business. Often you can use the negative comments and turn it into a positive situation with a well planned and structured response.

3 – Share the love! Add social share icons into your blogs so your clients, employees and potential customers can share your information, services and products with the world!

4 – Blogging for business is a brilliant opportunity for your employees to take an active role in promoting the company. Blogging should be done with a passion so don’t get burnt out. Share the task with a range of your employees so they can deliver a fresh perspective and have time to be creative and capture their point! Don’t forget to include photos, they are worth a thousand words, or if you are super high tech use video for that little extra!

5 – Remember that people buy your products and services, so give them a window into your operations so they get a feel for your style and post a picture of yourself and staff so they can put a face to your services and products. This can help increase your chances of getting that next deal or closing the one already on the table.

If you need inspiration to find what you can blog about, you need to see this list here.

I wish I could go more than 5 reasons, the rest will have to wait for another time.

And now my friend has a blog, we spent Saturday afternoon setting it up for him.

Hope you enjoyed and go and start a blog.