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Archive for local-search

Make Your Web Pages Local Friendly

By Bill Brelsford · Comments (0)
Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

local search marketingSearch engines have become one of the primary ways that people find local products and services. This is becoming just as true for services, as it is finding a local hardware store.

If your business doesn’t show up on page one or in the first handful of local results delivered when people type “their city name + something they want” into their chosen search engine your business simply can’t compete. And with more people conducting these types of searches on the smart phones, they don’t even have to type in “their city name” because the search engines are assuming mobile searchers are looking for local results.

There are many ways to build a stronger local search presence. In this post I’ll share some suggestions for improving your local search rankings by adding local content.

There are many ways to make your web site content more localized; here are a few steps to consider:

  1. Add your physical address to every page .
  2. Add city names in navigation: e.g. “Kansas City Estate Planning Attorney” .
  3. Add your suburb and/or the name of your neighborhood into your content in natural ways.
  4. Add a local event blog and list festivals and non-profit events .
  5. Find and exchange links with relevant local bloggers using a tool like placeblogger.

Put these items on your marketing calendar today and start winning the local search game.

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Categories : Marketing
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Dominate Local Search With Today’s Small Business Week Prize

By Bill Brelsford · Comments (0)
Thursday, May 19th, 2011

localsearchprologoGetting your local business to come up early and often when a prospect searches online for local products and services is crucial for the small local business these days.

Today, as part of the National Small Business Week celebration, I’m giving away one of our Duct Tape Marketing Local Search Pro self study courses.

This course is not an exercise in theory, it’s a plan of action created by one of the leading small business online marketing practitioners. The end result of this course is that you are able to effectively and efficiently integrate integrate a local web presence into your overall marketing strategy.

Here’s the full agenda
  • Session 1 – Making Your Website Scream Local – The first step in winning in the local search game is to employ all of the tips and tricks that let the search engines know that yours is truly a local business
  • Session 2 – Building the Local Search Profiles – Google, Bing and Yahoo want to make it easier for surfers and mobile users to find local business when they are out and about and you must know the best ways to claim and enhance these special profiles.
  • Session 3 – Rated, Reviewed, Cited and Mentioned – Rating and reviews sites like Yelp and CitySearch are becoming a very big part of a small business reputation and getting proactive in this arena is essential if you want to tap the power of happy customers for local rewards.
  • Session 4 – Spreading the Local Social Word – in this session we will show you ways to get more from local by incorporating the powerful set of social media tools used by almost everyone today.

This course is unique as you will receive a new lesson each week for four weeks. Each lesson includes:

  • A video presentation
  • PDF presentation and video transcript
  • Action steps
  • Resources for each step
  • Supplemental videos to guide you through the action steps

You’ll never get overwhelmed because we give you just enough to do each week without overloading you with the entire program. Our test participants found this to be the most helpful aspect of the course.

I’ll be randomly selecting someone from my newsletter subscription list at the end of the day.

Not a subscriber? You can sign up in 5 seconds here.

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Categories : Marketing
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Winning The Local Search Game – webinar recording

By Bill Brelsford · Comments (0)
Friday, March 18th, 2011

Earlier this week, I held a webinar about the Duct Tape Marketing approach to Winning The Local Search game. The webinar is just shy of 1 hr in length. There is a slight pause at the beginning, but the slides will display.

Play Video

If you are viewing this via email or RSS reader, you may need to click here to view the Winning The Local Search Game webinar recording.

 

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Categories : Local Search Marketing, Marketing
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Google’s New Place Search

By Bill Brelsford · Comments (0)
Thursday, October 28th, 2010

Yesterday, Google announced Place Search – local search that organizes information around places. Place search returns the familiar map with the locations of your search results along with other relevant information from the web about those results.

Here is a screen shot my search for Kansas City Law Firms:

PlaceSearch

[Click on the image for a larger view]

Google will try to predict when you are searching for a place, but you can also select the Places option from the menu on the left:

Places2

For example, this morning if I search on “Kansas City Accounting Firms” is don’t get the new Places results. However, if I click on the Places option on the left hand menu, here is what I get:

KC_Accounting

We’ve been stressing the importance of local search for accountants, lawyers, financial advisors, and other professional service firms for a while now and it looks like it is only going to become more important in the future.

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Categories : Marketing Plan, Web/Tech
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Google’s new user interface

By Bill · Comments (2)
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

You may have noticed some changes to Google’s search results page recently. The results page now sports a three column layout with the left hand column containing some colorful new icons.

google_icons The tools in the left hand column will help you drill down into your query results. Many of these tools are not new, they are just easier to find now that they are in the left sidebar.

Let’s see how this works. If I search for a pretty generic term like “golf”, I get about 308 million results. BTW, the result count is now under the box where you type in your search phrase.

If what I really wanted to do was search for golf equipment to buy, I an click on the Shopping icon to narrow my results. From there, I can narrow my results by category, price range, brand or store.

Maybe I wanted to read about golf. By clicking on the Books icon, I can view books and magazines about golf. I can also sort books by date if I want to get the latest advice available.

By clicking on the Videos icon, I can narrow down my golf video choices by the duration, quality, how recently they were posted, and source. Yes, the results contain results from sources other than YouTube.

And of course, if I want to go play golf, I can click on the Maps icon to find some local courses. This points out a change that should be of interest to anyone who markets professional services (or any other business) – all searches now appear to bring back local matches. If I search for “attorney”, Google detects that I am in Lenexa, KS and shows me the entries from Google Maps for attorneys in my area. This means that local search is even more important for local businesses. If you are not familiar with Google’s Local Business Center (LBC), you may want to check out this newsletter article about local search.

attorney_wonder_wheel Another great tool that used to be buried but is now easily found is the Wonder Wheel. The wonder wheel shows other keyword phrases that are related to the key words you searched on. This can be a great tool for doing keyword research or when you are searching for new\related topics to post about on your blog.

I know I haven’t covered all of the changes. Which new features are you finding most useful?

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Categories : Local Search Marketing, Web/Tech
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October Newsletter – Marketing In A Down Economy

By Bill · Comments (0)
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008

I managed to get my October newsletter out in the nick of time <g>. This month's newsletter focuses on getting the most from the marketing tools you already have.

If you like the information in this newsletter, you sign up to receive it, along with a free marketing e-course, here.

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Categories : Marketing, Small Business Marketing
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How To Get Found On The Internet

By Bill · Comments (0)
Thursday, October 16th, 2008

It may be the economy, but it seems like I've been talking to a lot of people recently who want to make sure that their web site is working for them. Hopefully you are not one of those people who spent a lot of money on a web site that no one is finding when they Google. If you are, don't despair, I've put together this webinar to give you plenty of tips and tricks that you can use right away to start "getting found" on the Internet.

If the registration form below doesn’t display properly for you, you can register using this link http://www.eventbrite.com/event/188242037

Local Customers Are Ready To Buy,
Will They Find You?

As a small business owner, you need to make every marketing dollar count, particularly in today's tough economy. You have probably spent money building a web site. Is that investment bringing you customers?

New research shows 70% of US adults use the Internet as an information source when shopping locally for local products and services. These customers have money to spend and are ready to buy. Have you taken steps to make sure these customers can find you?

In this seminar you will learn simple, effective techniques that you can use today to make sure you will be found by potential customers when they search for local products and services on the Internet.

2 Ways to Get This Seminar

1. Become a member of The Biz Academy

  • Attend all Biz Academy seminars 
  • Access to previously recorded seminars
  • Access to our Resource Library

For just $97/month

Current Biz Academy members, use your discount code when registering.

2. Attend just this seminar

  • Get access to this seminar and slide handouts

For just $79 with early bird ticket

Register for this webinar

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Categories : Marketing, Small Business Marketing
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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Basics For Business Owners

By Bill · Comments (0)
Monday, July 14th, 2008

As a small business owner, you know it’s important to make sure your web site can be found by potential customers but you don’t have hours of spare time to figure out “SEO” and how to “optimize” your site. You also can’t afford to hire a high price SEO expert. What can you do?

Register your small business with local search enginesIn this article, Google’s Matt Cutts gives 5 basic tips that will help make sure your site gets found by potential customers. Here is the list in brief:

  1. Spotlight your search term on the page.
  2. Fill in your “tags”. (Bill’s note, if you  do nothing else, make sure you have unique, meaningful title tags on each page).
  3. Get other sites to “link” back to you.
  4. Create a blog and post often
  5. Register for free tools

Click through to read the rest of this article. Start with these small, practical tips, and make sure your potential customers can find you when they are ready to buy.


If you sell mostly to your local area, you should also check out the Local Search Engine Profile

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Categories : Marketing, Small Business Marketing
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