Archive for the 'Local Search' Category

Anticipating Google+ Brand Page Features

Tuesday, September 6th, 2011

Catching up with Facebook’s count of 750 million users will be tough for Google+.  However, winning over brands to the search giant’s new social media service looks to be easier if it can solve brands’ troubles with Facebook that include restricted customization, post-click tracking and paid search problems. These are massive weaknesses when attempting to qualify traffic and reveal valuable user information. Without these insights, advertisers can only guesstimate if media dollars are, in fact, being wisely spent.

In a short while, Google+ will establish its brand pages that advertisers are keenly anticipating.  Google+’s brand pages should offer a much better marketing experience compared to Facebook.

Better opportunities for search – Facebook generates a low click-through rate (CTR). increasing cost per click, which has meant a low efficiency struggle for advertisers.  It is anticipated that Google+ brand pages will have search benefits and these would a strong reason for local search engine marketing to move to the new network.

Greater customization – Facebook brand pages are restricted to mere ads with polls or videos thrown in, and do not permit creative branding opportunities.  Google+ would do well to allow customized skinning of its brand pages.

Great analytics – Google already has a topnotch analytics app and this certainly should be integrated into Google+ brand pages to assess all fan data to help marketers prioritize, organize and create more relevant content and also optimize media spend.

Google+ must learn from Facebook’s mistakes. While Facebook will remain valuable to social brands such as celebrities, Google can fill the needs of brands that are innately less social, like health and insurance for instance.

Facebook Plans to Integrate Music into the Network

Tuesday, September 6th, 2011

Plans are in the offing to make Facebook a social entertainment hub with streaming music, movies and videogames available to users, according to reliable sources.  This is an extension of how users currently utilize Facebook to share videos and photographs.

Music services like Rdio Inc. and Spotify will be allowed to publish activity on Facebook pages, similar to “liking” sites and “adding” friends. It seems that music would be available on a player on Facebook, so that users can listen without leaving the website. Users may be required to sign in before being able to listen.

Once settled, the launch of this initiative will possibly be announced in the last week of September at the social media giant’s f8 developer conference. Though it was denied that the new arrangement constitutes partnership with a specific music service, it is obvious Spotify stands to gain most as it provides more free music than other services.

This innovation is meant to integrate Facebook with services that allow users to stream unlimited music either for a monthly payment or free. Amazon and Google too have recently launched services offering ‘cloud’ music to users that allow upload of music collections online which can be listened to remotely.  Apple Inc. has similar plans on the anvil.

Warner Bros recently has started renting movies on the social networking site. Users can watch movies on Facebook that is delivered via this third party. 30 to 40 Facebook credits (each worth 10 cents) are charged for each rental, with the website claiming a 30 percent fee.

Meanwhile it remains to be seen if other online businesses will be able to leverage this new music service for advertising, perhaps through local search engine marketing agencies.

The SEO Evolution

Tuesday, September 6th, 2011

Search engine optimization (SEO) has undergone quite a rapid and amazing evolution in the last few years. Here are some of the factors that have been part of this astonishing transition in this new age marketing tool.

Content is paramount – Simply put, if your site has no content it has no rank. SEO has now moved on from just a matter of easy link building to creating meaningful, quality content that keyword specific. This is because leading search engines have been continuously modifying their algorithms to focus on content. So today websites must have keyword rich, yet relevant content in order to rank well on search engine result pages.

Not just content is indexed anymore – search engines now index and cache everything from documents, to images, videos etc.

Meta tags no longer have any influence on a site’s ranking – search engine algorithms have moved far ahead of mere meta tags.

Google now leads the search engine traffic race with over 65 percent market share. For this reason, every website must be first optimized for Google, followed by other search engines.

Search results are now more personalized and aimed to getting tasks done – Bing has introduced app like results with streaming music, video and other content available right on the results page. This approach is a shift from Google’s ‘relevant’ list of links.

SEO is quickly turning into a professional field – Earlier almost anyone armed with some essential knowledge could optimize a site. Today that task is not that simple and it takes much expertise and in-depth research to do so. Many webmasters today opt to utilize the services of professional local search engine marketing optimizers for SEO.

Social Media Marketing is Very Essential for Any Business

Thursday, June 30th, 2011

To stay in a business for a long time needs patience to cope up with ups and downs in the market, clever marketing mind to strategize the business promotion and money matters. The basic and essential part to start a business is marketing. The entire life of your business depends upon how you market your business and how you reach out to the people. Bigger companies depend on the marketing agencies for their business marketing and the smaller companies do permutation and combination about their creative ideas and their money factors. Nowadays social media marketing is becoming very popular that every stand up businesses and also start up business wants to signup for social networking sites to promote their business through local search engine marketing. This can generate more potential customers than the traditional way of marketing. A small business of Canada can reach out to the world in a minute in social media marketing, but this can’t possible in traditional marketing.

The popular social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. are having steady amount of traffic everyday and became a very popular hub for promoting businesses. The more people are rely on social media marketing because firstly it is free or rather low cost compared to traditional kind of marketing for promoting businesses. The social networks are always in traffic and in turn it creates traffic to your website also. And, more people believe that website information is lot more reliable than newspaper advertisements.

The social media marketing is easy and takes your time and patience. Once you know the networks then it will be an easy task for you. You have to post as many links as you can to popularize your site. You can also write blogs and articles and post them to different article directories to create more traffic for your site. You have to be very clear about your products and services in social media because people will believe and react quickly and if your contents are wrong there is a shear chance of losing your potential customers to your site. This is one thing you should take care of.

Tips for Your Blog to Become Success

Thursday, June 30th, 2011

Social media is one of the easiest and convenient ways of marketing blog, business, etc to make money on the internet. Off course it’ll not bring success immediately to your local search engine marketing but, definitely it’ll generate money for you. It’s not a bad idea to start a business at home, give time to understand the internet and the people read your blogs, and put efforts to build your business as a strong entity then you’ll generate a lot of money sitting at home.

There is no specific reason and specific terms and conditions to start blogging in local search engine marketing. In fact the internet is a medium to present yourself to the world, expressing your thoughts and opinions on the topics you like. But your blog can generate money for you only if your blog is appealing to the readers. Here are some ways to gain the readership and engage your readers to be on your blog page –

  1. Take care in preparing the layouts and design your blog. Look at the recent blog posts which always appear on top before going to post your blog to get a glimpse of the particular site. Do similar formats for your blog posts also and give tags. Don’t write too much keep it simple and give links to the relevant sites only.
  2. Your blog must be interesting and try to write the original content and post everyday so that you cannot loose your daily visitors to the site and your local search engine marketing will boost credibility.
  3. Do take care in choosing the background color and font for your blogs. Although you can change the font and color anytime. It is preferable to use light background against dark text fonts because it’ll not affect the eyes and the brain don’t feel stain while reading your blogs.

Tips on Local Search Engine Marketing

Friday, June 24th, 2011

SEO has become very popular in local search engine marketing today. SEO is a tool which gives wings to the website in search engines if used it properly, otherwise it’ll become a headache for you. The SEO will help your website higher up in the search engine’s optimized result pages. It’s not enough for the company website having a nice look and related contents but also needs the high page rank in popular search engines for promoting the website and drawing real time traffic to that.  To draw traffic to your company website you need to know the local search engine marketing tips:

  1. The first step is to get the inbound links from other websites to your site. The more inbound link to your site, the high page rank for your website in the search engines. It is important to build a link of your site in other popular websites to get high page ranks in the search engines because it gives credibility to your site.
  2. Social bookmarking allows you to bookmark your site where all the people attention goes first. Your website will get extra benefit from the social networking sites zooming around in the search engines.
  3. Article submissions are the great tool to generate real time traffic to your website because the backlink you provided in the article will direct the audience to your site and so the popularity of the website will be increased in the search engines.
  4. Directory submissions are also helpful in building a link to your website. There are so many free directories which will ensure your website’s online presence.
  5. One of the best way of local search engine marketing is having a sitemap for your website. The sitemap will tell the search engine about the number of pages on your website and to give the page rank in effective way for individual pages.

Simple Ideas for Social Media Marketing

Thursday, May 12th, 2011

The social media or social networks are becoming more popular than expected. The more people are involving themselves into the social networks to share their ideas, meeting far away friends, to get the business ideas etc. The famous social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, YouTube, LinkedIn is seeing more people nowadays. Apparently for the business professionals the social networks or social media is a boon to promote their business to the world. But the marketing can be very difficult. If you know the social media usage and if you are intelligent enough and using simple social media marketing tricks and tips then it will be very easy.

  1. The first and foremost thing in local search engine marketing is to know the social networks very well to promote your business. Every social network has unique in its operation. First you have to know the operation, in and out of the social network to promote your business quite smoothly. You should be very clever and get used to social media to pursue your marketing efforts better.
  2. The second step is to know the audience or people who are interested in the business like yours’. The majority of the social media users are between the age group of 18 to 40. So, if your business is for some age group then don’t forget to appeal.
  3. After knowing these two steps you must look at the possible dangers to your social media campaign. Don’t simply put the videos and comments about your content which shows nothing about your website content because there is a chance to lose the credibility of your site and then lose your potential customers or users of your website.
  4. Don’t expect too much from your online marketing ideas. Some will work for you and some will not. Strategize your online efforts according to your marketing needs.

Win in natural local search

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

Just reading a blog post from Marketing Pilgrim about local businesses moving away from paid search and stating that “roughly 50% of businesses that buy search ads directly from Google and other Internet search companies don’t come back the following year, and even higher for businesses like Yodle, ReachLocal and LookSmart”.

They go on to state that small businesses don’t fully understand or track what’s happening to their accounts and the next minute their hard earned dollars are gone. I must agree with that for the local business owner, it isn’t easy to run a business and manage everything else, but that isn’t an excuse for ReachLocal etc., they should be on top of this putting in the negative terms and helping their customers get the most out of paid search, obviously not!

The bigger piece that they are all missing is natural search.
Get ranked for your keywords and enjoy the second largest amount of activity on the Internet ‘local search‘.
I am saying this to a lot of small business owners, “if your business isn’t ranking in local search in the next two years you could be out of a job”!

Small Business Web Site Needs to be Optimized for Local Search

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

Advertising dynamics are changing. The days when running a weekly ad in the local newspaper and having a sign painter artfully stencil your logo on your storefront were sufficient to assure your spot in the local market place are long gone. Having a small business web site that can be searched and found on the Internet by customers – and potential customers – looking for the products or services you offer in their city is becoming a key marketing tool for small business success.

For the first time ever, spending on TV advertising is set to outpace spending on newspaper ads this year, according to the latest report from market analysts Veronis Suhler Stevenson, a private equity firm in the media and communications field. And Internet advertising is expected to surpass even TV advertising by 2011 – in three year’s time.

Local search, the ability to have customers find your products on the Internet when they are specifically searching for goods and service in your city or region, is a key component to Internet advertising for small business. ComScore, a leading Internet research firm, notes that in a recent survey 47% of local searchers on the Internet contacted or visited a local merchant as a result of their online search. The Kelsey Group, another leading research firm, estimates that by 2010, the local search market, which is already competitive, will grow to be a $6.2 billion market in the U.S. alone.

The importance of having an effective small business web site that can be found in a local search for products and services over the Internet has newer been stronger, and if forecasts are correct, the necessity of having a local search capable small business web site will only grow.

“According to industry analysts, approximately 80% of an indi­vidual’s income is spent within about 50 miles of their home,” says marketing expert, Michael Flecishner. “With 95% of the potential local search advertising market today remaining untouched, this is a huge opportunity for businesses.”

As small business move their marketing and advertising efforts online, however, the inevitable problem of overcrowding in the local search results pages of Google, Yahoo! and other Internet search engines is increasingly apparent. It is not enough to merely create a small business web site. Your site needs to be engineered (search engine optimization, being the industry term) so that it can be found and ranked by Google and the like for the key terms that describe your business. Doing so is an art and a science. Effective keyword research, function-based web design, Internet linking structures and quality on-site content all drive the ability of a small business web site to rank on the major search engines.

Starting from scratch, as many local small businesses do, it can take thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours (yours or someone else’s) to design, build, and optimize a small business web site that will allow your small business to compete for its share of the local search market. And the effectiveness of your efforts are by no means assured. Sesimi.com offers an affordable alternative for building and optimizing a small business web site. Sesimi.com offers a unique subscription service that can provide your company with an optimized small business web site that will rank consistently in Internet search engines’ local search results. In as little as 48 hours, the web design and search engine optimization specialists at Sesimi.com can design, build optimize and host an effective one page small buiness website on their unique small business web domain that will rank in local search results – converting web traffic into foot traffic at your storefront for as little as $39 per month for optimization and hosting.

A Small Business Web Site Can Dominate Local Search Results

Tuesday, August 5th, 2008

Properly marketed, a small business or small business web site can dominate the local search results on Google, Yahoo! or the other Internet search engines. Improperly marketed, and no one may ever find your local, small business web site. As illustrated in a recent article on local search in Canada’s National Post, something as simple as omitting to register your small business with Google Local may mean that your potential customers are finding your competitors, but not your small business web site from their Blackberry or laptop.

While something as simple as registering your small, local business with Google Local will get you some limited search engine exposure, ensuring that you small business web site is ranked well on Google and other search engines will depend on a number of factors, as the National Post explains – particularly if the person searching for the products or services you sell is searching the INternet from a Blackberry or similar mobile device, which is an evermore frequent occurrence.

“Google itself explains that all of its search results ‘are based primarily on relevance,’” says the National Post. ” But Google Maps also ranks business listings according to geographic distance from the requested starting point. But that’s all the help you’re going to get. ‘Sometimes our search technology decides that a business that’s farther away from your location is more likely to have what you’re looking for than a business that’s closer,’ says Google — which likes to keep these things secret to discourage people from trying to manipulate search results.”

Accordingly, it can be a difficult matter for a small business owner to optimize his or her small business web site for local search, as well as mobile search from iPhones, BlackBerrys and the multitude of new smart phones customers are using to sear the Internet for local products or services. There are a number of costly mistakes that can preclude a local business from being ranked or ranked well on the leading search engines – aside from neglecting to register with Google Local.

Sesimi,com provides a one-stop solution to have your small business website built, designed, optimized and hosted by Sesimi on its unique small business web hosting domain. The domain itself, along with each unique small business web page is optimized and connected to the wider Web in a manner proven to put your small business at the top of the Internet search engine rankings.

“Of course, there are lots of search-engine optimization (SEO) consultants who can help you get better results from standard Google searches,” as the National Post notes, “but they may not be paying attention to Google’s local-business service.” Or to other local search ranking criteria, either.

If your small business is dependent on local traffic – both foot traffic and web traffic – sign-up online for a unique small business web page designed, built and hosted by Sesimi.com. Each small business web page built by Sesimi.com is specifically optimized to dominate the Internet’s local search rankings.