Last week we posted our first in a series of feature posts about website marketing and its complexities. After focusing on SEO and Meta Keywords last week, we’re going to focus on Local Search Results, one aspect of Search Marketing and the benefits of building a local presence on Google Places for your business. These articles were written by our guest host, Adam Steele, who is the CEO at Nightlite Media and has expertise in SEO, social media and email marketing.

1) Google Local Results Changed the Game, Part 1

This post will break down the premise of local search marketing and give you insight on why it is an important aspect of your online presence.

2) Google Places Optimization Checklist, Part 2

This post will break down how Google Places works and offer some simple tips and guidelines to a successful Google Places page optimization.

3) Google Places Local Business Directories, Part 3

This post shows you how to take your Google Places optimization to the next level by learning about off page ranking factors.

All 3 posts above have tremendous insight into Local Search Marketing and should be a great resource when starting your Search Marketing campaigns.

For the past 3 years, we have been posting a wide variety of articles to our blog to better help our customers as they navigate through the many layers of website marketing. One of the most delicate and difficult layers can be SEO (Search Engine Optimization). SEO has many different elements from keywords to relevant website content and page names. SEO can be complex and can get overwhelming quickly, so we thought we’d take you back to the beginning and show you how to get started with some basic SEO tips that can improve your website ranking.

1) SEO Building Blocks: Meta Tags and SEO:

This post will give you a good introduction to Meta Tags and Keywords and how they work.

2) Google Keyword Tool:

This post goes step by step on how to use the free Google Keyword Tool and shows you how to create a list of potential keywords and how to pick the ones that will work best for your pages.

3) 5 Tips on where to insert keywords:

This post will give you good information on where and how to insert keywords onto your pages.

The above articles will give you a great start at understanding keywords and creating your own Meta Tags for success in organic search rankings. Stay tuned next week when we reintroduce local business marketing, a good strategy to capitalize on local geographical search results for your business.

Running an online business is, in many ways, similar to running a business with a physical storefront. However, it’s not always obvious how customer retention techniques from the “real world” can be utilized on the web. As a shopper, often the biggest reason I return to a store is because of a great experience with a sales representative. I know I’m going to get the same great service that I got last time, so I don’t even think about going anywhere else. With an online business, your website is your sales representative – so how can you give your customers an experience that will make them want to come back? Here are a few ways you can get your hard-earned visitors to return for a second or third visit.

Be Personable
Authenticity and integrity are what everyone wants when they’re shopping. What’s the hallmark of a lousy, underhanded salesman? Jargon, exaggerated claims, and deceptive practices can turn your enthusiastic shopper into someone else’s enthusaistic shopper. So how can we be personable and trustworthy online?

Everyone craves a personal experience no matter how they’re shopping. When writing about your products or your company, try to cut down on jargon and provide the necessary information in a concise manner. Smashing Magazine has a fantastic article on some common copywriting blunders that we highly recommend checking out.

Another great way to be personable with your customers is pretty obvious: put yourself out there! Many customers are still concerned about the safety of buying purchases online, and seeing that a website is run and maintained by a real person just like them will do wonders to ease their distress. A personal story, a photo of yourself and your staff, or simply utilizing an informal, casual tone when writing your copy will endear you to your visitors and turn them into customers.

Update Your Content
The concept here is pretty straight forward: if I decide to take a peek at the website I previously looked at or purchased from a few months ago, and the website looks exactly the same, what incentive do I have to dig through and see what might be new since last time?

This doesn’t have to be a huge overhaul of your website every few months, but something as simple as a refreshed home page is often enough to catch the attention of a returning visitor. If you’ve got new products, show them off! Having a sale? Your visitors should know about it! Gone above and beyond for a customer? Get a glowing testimonial and slap it right on the home page where everyone can see it! Your home page is by far the best place to focus on if you’re updating content, but fresh content everywhere is a recipe for success.

Even if you don’t have anything new to show off, update your content to showcase different things or emphasize different benefits of your product or service. All you need to do is catch their eye, and their curiosity will take care of the rest.

Utilize Social Media
It seems like the whole world is on Facebook and Twitter. If you and your business are not, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity for what is essentially free advertising to a captive audience.

Think of it this way: if I’m a web-savvy customer (and these days, everyone is) and I like what I see on your website – whether I buy anything or not – there’s a pretty good chance I’m going to check out your Facebook or Twitter page. If I “Like” your Facebook page or follow you on Twitter, I’ve now essentially signed up for you to advertise to me at your leisure, at no additional cost to you.

That’s not to say that you should bombard your Facebook friends and Twitter followers with advertisements, but when you have a new product to announce or are throwing a big sale, who better to get the word out to than people who are already interested in your products? Furthermore, your customers are one click away from sharing your posts with all of their own friends or followers. Now that’s word-of-mouth!

Customer Service is King
We could write a whole post about how customer service can affect your business, but let’s focus on two important concepts: make it easy for your customers to contact you, and underpromise/overdeliver.

Communication is critical for anyone making an online purchase. Sometimes, even if your website is rich with info about your products, a customer may have a question. Your customers will come up with things to ask that you never even dreamed of! Providing an email contact form that’s easy to find, at the bare minimum, ensures that no question goes unanswered. If you have the resources to offer more direct service, such as a phone number, go for it – your customers will thank you. Ensuring you reply as promptly as possible goes a long way to making your customers feel good about their decision to buy from you.

Simple communication is paramount to the post-purchase process as well. From shipping questions to feedback or support, your customers will want an easy way to get a hold of you once they’ve made a purchase. Be there for them when they need it, and they’ll be back.

The concept of underpromise/overdeliver is one that’s been around for as long as the sales and service industry has existed. The idea is simple: by carefully managing your customer’s expectations, you’ve set yourself to blow your customer away with a great product, great service, and great support. When you consider the alternative – failing to live up to the expectations you’ve set for yourself – your customers walk away feeling lied to. A classic bad example is your local telecom company; many of them offer great discounts or free bonuses up front to mask hidden fees or unexplained charges

So how do you do this? The number one rule is be honest. Never make claims you our your product can’t back up – it’s that simple. The second rule is to manage expectations. If your shipping takes five days, but your website quoted a ten-day delivery, they’ll be ecstatic when it shows up in six — and that’s one day longer than it was supposed to take! They got their product four days earlier than they were expecting, and they’re thrilled.

If you can give customers more than what they expect on a consistent basis, you’ll start building a loyal base of clients who will be back often.

Improve staff productivity with these 3 tips

Every boss wants a dream team of employees who go about getting everything done efficiently and with a smile. From my own experience, I’ve found the following 3 tips have helped my staff feel more motivated and happier at work because they have a clear idea of what their part in the company is:

Create systems for daily operations and emergencies

An efficient system is one where everybody knows what they need to accomplish and how to do it. They also know what other people on their team are working on so there’s no overlap or confusion. Everyone’s expectations match. To accomplish this, you can do the following:

• Have regular meetings with your team. Give everyone an agenda in advance so that the meeting stays on track.
• Have a contingency plan for emergencies, for when you are away or for when you are short staff.
• Have an operations manual so if a staff member doesn’t know what to do, he/she can check the manual. An online manual is sometimes better as it can have the ability to search for terms.

All these items help ensure your operations run smoothly. It’s also a good idea to continually tweak your operations so you’re always optimizing the productivity of your staff.

Set clear and measurable goals

When employees know what your goals are for the company, it can help them make decisions that best support what you want to accomplish. Try to make goals as clear as possible, realistically attainable and with measurable results. For example: 12 sales per week, complete XYZ project by December or financial statements done by the end of the month. You can set smaller goals and overall company goals. You may even want your staff to help you set some of the goals. Once the goals are set and employees know what the goals are, they will prioritize their work better and spend less time on items that are not important.

Make time to get feedback from your staff

Usually your staff will have some of the best ideas for making improvements and will have the best understanding of what’s not working. It’s worthwhile, from time to time, to sit down and talk with your various employees to give them a chance to voice what they think about the current operations. You can do this one-on-one and/or make time at staff meetings. When ideas from staff are implemented, they will buy into your system more since they helped create it. Giving praise for good ideas will also encourage your staff to come up with more ideas. The end result is everyone is working toward improving the company as much as possible.

By doing the 3 tips above, you show your staff that you value their time and their opinion. You’ve removed confusion and inefficiencies. You’ve given them a forum to know what’s going on in the company and to give you feedback. You’ve set realistic goals so when they are accomplished your staff will get a chance to feel proud of what they’ve done. The end result is happier, more productive employees.

Guest Post:  Adam Steele is the CEO at Nightlite Media. His expertise includes SEO, social media and email marketing. This is Part 3 of Google Local Results Changed the Game.

In my last two posts, I explained the 5 W’s of Google Places (who, what, when, where & why), as well as how to go about optimizing your own Google Places page. A year ago, this information would have been enough to earn you a first page ranking, and in some smaller niches and/or cities, this is still the case. HOWEVER, if you want to play with the big boys, and take your Google Places optimization to the next level, then your next step is to learn off page ranking factors.

Off page ranking factors covers a huge scope of potential topics. First, it is important to understand the difference between off page and on page factors. When it comes to Google Places optimization, on page factors include your website and Google Places page. For simplicity, we have only covered your Google Places page, which was the topic of my last post. Off page factors include major link building. That is, building links on other sites, and having them link to your website. In this article, we are going to focus on one type of links: citations.

Citations are occurrences of your business information online. In fact, it doesn’t matter where online it appears, as long as the citation includes your business name, address and phone number (NAP). A common misconception is that a citation is a profile on a local business directory such as Yelp, Superpages, Insiderpages, Judysbook or Citysearch. While these are excellent sources for citations there are not citations themselves. They are local business directories.

Local business directories are certainly the most common place to create citations for a lot of reasons including: it is free, easy, authoritative, of  high quality, traffic-rich etc. For all these reasons, we will focus on these directories and go over what you need to know about them.

Firstly, yes, they are FREE – well mostly. Many of these directories offer everyone a free business profile, which allows them to add their business information, pictures, videos, link to site etc. Not a bad deal! However, these directories stay in business because they hope to sell you extra incentives, including advertising, better ranking on the site and a multitude of other products and services. Do not be surprised if you receive a call or several email solicitations immediately after signup. It is a necessary evil I am afraid. For those of you who want to entertain these offers, I suggest you tread very carefully. Most aren’t worth their weight.

Creating profiles on local business directories is dead easy, but you shouldn’t take the easy, quick route. Although I haven’t proved this yet, it is my feeling that a more complete profile will lend more authority. That is, Google treats a bare bones profile differently than one that has been carefully completed. This may not be the case right now, but I have no doubt that in future this will be the case. So go ahead, add pictures, videos, great content, etc. Another good reason to create these carefully is accuracy. Any inaccuracies in your business name, address or phone number will hurt your ability to improve your Google Places rank.

Authority and quality fall in the same boat. When I say authority I am usually referring to the credibility that Google has assigned to a website, or in this case the local business directory. All the more popular directories have lots of authority, which is in part, passed off to your business when Google finds your business information on it. For all intents and purposes, it is considered a ‘vote of confidence.’ By this, I mean that a link or citation from these directories will have a positive effect on your rankings. Google has deemed them quality websites.

If a local business directory has all the before mentioned characteristics then it also will be traffic rich. What does this mean to you? Well, many of these sites attract consumers looking for local
businesses. If consumers are able to find you, and in a good light (thanks to your robust profile), you may score yourself some extra business. In fact, I find that my clients tend to receive 3-5% of their traffic from these directories. If their monthly traffic is 1000 visits, 30-50 extra visits is nothing to scoff at.

Here is a small list of the more popular local business directories:

These are just some great directories you can submit your business to. There are literally THOUSANDS. Per usual, we have a reward for your readership. We want to send you a list of 100 of the best local business directories online. This is the list that we submit our clients to and one that we have carefully cultivated over the last 18 months. Send me an email adam.steele@nightlitemedia.com and I will quickly send it your way.

Guest Post:  Adam Steele is the CEO at Nightlite Media. His expertise includes SEO, social media and email marketing. This is Part 2 of Google Local Results Changed the Game.

Overview

97% of consumers search for local businesses online. You definitely want to be there when they’re looking for you with Google Places for business.

Google wants to show its users the most relevant, up-to-date, quality information (including companies) possible. This is its mission and just one reason it is the biggest. As such, when it comes to optimizing your Google Places page, you should keep this in mind.

The following are some simple tips and guidelines to a successful Google Places page optimization. The quick tweaks will improve your chances of securing better positions for your business. Please keep in mind that Google Places is constantly changing, and what works at the time of this checklist may change dramatically in 30 days. Saying that, we have tried to keep to the things that have remained a constant for some time now.

Initial Process

• Select the area/city you wish to target
• Keyword Search: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. Put in a word that you “think” the average person would type in Google when looking for a business in your city. (NOT the name of a business, but a word or phrase.) Example: ‘Dallas electrician’. Google will suggest other popular words below that term. View the ones that are popular and record them. Make sure you deselect broad and select exact (on the left) and focus your attention on local volume/searches, not global.
• Identify keywords you would like to dominate in your local town/city and search them for yourself. Not all keywords will trigger Google Places. So, you need to make sure the ones you go forward with bring up Google Places results when you search for them.
• Record on a piece of paper the top 5 -10 keywords and rank them in order of priority (keep on hand).

Submission

• Set up a Gmail account if you don’t have one already here.
• Search for your company to see if an existing Google Places page is already setup. Go to http://maps.google.com and put in your phone number with area code to see what comes up. Try more than one phone number if you have more than one for your business.
• If after you check, you DO have a page, then you will simply want to “Edit Page” if there is anything you want to change (check below to see if your current Google Places page has the appropriate content listed below.) If you do NOT have a page after entering your phone numbers, then you will want to create one!

Creating A Google Places Page

• After you have created a Google account, you will want to set up your Page. Answer every question (Leave nothing undone – Google views this as “incomplete”.)
• Company Name (Without keywords) DO NOT get fancy here. Stuffing your title with keywords is just going to get you in trouble. In the past, stuffing the title offered an SEO advantage, but now it is both risky and unnecessary. Simply put your business name here as it is recognized everywhere else.
• Street Address: Your business address as it occurs everywhere else online and offline. Consistency and accuracy are KEY. If your business has existed for some time, try and search your own address. Look for the most popular address for yourself and go with that one if it’s applicable–otherwise update it. You would be wise to go back and adjust all those addresses that are different than what you use in your Google Places page. NOTE: If later you decide to make any changes to your address, Google will very likely request to send you a post card before updating.
• City/Town: Self Explanatory. NOTE: This is the city that you will have the best chance of ranking in for your keywords.
• Main phone: Same principle as your street address. Take a look how your phone number appears already online. Is it in (xxx) or xxx? You want it to appear in Google Places the same way it does elsewhere online.
• Website: Use http://www. You want it to be hyperlinked.
• Description: I would typically suggest using the same one that occurs in your site’s meta data (description tag) for consistency. Keyword rich is fine, but don’t make it spammy. Also, consider your click through rate (CTR). Searchers will see this, and decide whether they want to click or not so don’t be afraid to be a bit ‘salesy.’
• Category: Few things to know here. Stay the heck away from city modifiers. That is, your category should be ‘electrician’, NOT ‘Dallas electrician.’ Doing the latter will get you in trouble. Google gives you 4 custom categories and one pre-defined. Make good use of them and align them with the keywords you want to rank for. Similar to the Company/Organization field, categories are being screened and the same sensitive keywords apply. Custom categories don’t really have to be too coherent. If you have a lot of keywords you are targeting, try and combine them with other keywords, but again, not too spammy.
• Service Area and Location Settings: Pretty self explanatory. It is commonly used if you are using an address outside of the city/cities that you want to rank in OR you want to rank in all your surrounding cities. Use this function to define your service area(s). NOTE: You aren’t going to rank in San Fran, if your address is in Austin. Obvious, I hope. However, if your address is in the suburb of San Fran and you want to rank in San Fran and its surrounding suburbs is doable. Being outside of the city you want to rank in puts you at a disadvantage. If you are trying to rank for a competitive keyword and you are not located in the city you want to rank in, you could be hooped.
• Hours & Payment: Just make sure this is consistent with everything else that is published online.
• Photos: Yes, you should add photos. Photos uploaded should be saved as ‘cityname-state-keyword’ and then uploaded. Google also gives you the option to “Add a photo from the web.” I like to add a picture from the website. This creates a connection between your Google Places page and your website. This is a good thing.
• Videos: Yes, you should add video preferably of a testimonial like a customer (not you). These can be YouTube videos. Remember to make sure your files are named after a keyword.

Verification: More than likely Google will want to send a post card. The post card typically takes 5-8 business days to arrive. When it arrives, log back into your Google Places dashboard and enter a PIN code to verify and activate your listing.

Similar to my last post, there is a perk for reading. This articles perk is 3 months of FREE Google Places page optimization…a $300 value!! To enter the draw, send your answer to the following question to adam.steele@nightlitemedia.com. Also, if you like some of the tips above, follow me on twitter for more at http://twitter.com/nightlitemedia.

Question: In the categories section of your Google Places page, doing what can get you in trouble?

Last week, I wrote about blog SEO (search engine optimization) and how a blog can help drive traffic to your CityMax estore. The main point is you have to write a post at least twice a week and then optimize it for search engines.

So, you sit down and get ready to write the most amazing article…and then your mind goes blank.

Let’s face it, it isn’t easy to come up with interesting topics that will mesmerize readers. To help you out, I’ve come up with a list of 47 blog topics:

1. Tips related to your product or service (e.g. 8 Tips for…, 10 Ways to…)
2. Write about “hot topics” in your industry and how it affects you or your customers
3. What inspired you to do your business
4. Show off new products that have just arrived and feature the ones you personally like best
5. Show photos and/or videos you took at conferences and write about what you learned
6. Show photos and/or videos you took at seminars and write about what you learned
7. See what’s trending high on twitter and relate it to your business
8. Interview someone in person, on the phone or with a list of questions via email
9. Write about a mistake you made in your business and what you learned from it
10. Write about a good customer experience
11. Write about a bad customer experience and what you learned from it
12. Read the newspaper and relate popular stories to your business
13. Expand on an article you read in a magazine related to your business
14. Come up with a list of 10 best blogs for your industry
15. Put together a list of best blog posts relating to your industry for the past week or month
16. Invite a guest writer to submit a post
17. Take a customer question you get asked a lot and post an in depth answer (with pictures and video, even better)
18. Have a debate with someone and post both sides of the argument
19. Have a contest (have people post a comment to get entered in it)
20. Review a tv show, movie, documentary, etc. that has or mentions products/services in your industry
21. Compile a list of shows where your products have been seen (show pictures of the scenes)
22. See what other blogs in your industry have written about for ideas
23. Write about something you did several years ago and how it affects your business now
24. Snap pictures anytime you see something your customers or potential customers might be interested in
25. Review a book
26. Put together a top 10 list of books
27. Write about any charity work your business does and why you chose the charity
28. Make a prediction about the future of your industry
29. Check discussion boards related to your business for topics that have a high number of posts
30. Write about how products in your industry have changed over the last 10, 20 or 50 years (it might be humorous)
31. Put together a list of events your customers or potential customers might be interested in
32. Give tips on what not to miss at upcoming events your customers/potential customers might attend (anything from what speakers to see, where to park, where to eat, where the cleanest washrooms are, which booths to visit)
33. Relate your product to an upcoming holiday like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day or Christmas (e.g put together the perfect gift for a father, wife, teenager, etc.)
34. Relate your product to an upcoming event like the Olympics, Superbowl, etc.
35. Do a case study of how a customer benefited from your product/service (include quotes and photos)
36. Write about a scam in your industry that readers should be aware of (e.g. how to identify counterfeit products)
37. Write a how-to for something people commonly need help with
38. Put together a list of marketing successes and failures in your industry
39. Post a list of 5 people you want to meet in your industry and why
40. Compile photos from Flickr (do an advanced search for Creative Commons-licensed content only) where your products shown
41. Put together a list of resources for your industry or customers
42. Write about what happened at a company event, retreat or training session (include photos)
43. Write about celebrities who have been seen with your product
44. Explain how you’ve had to use creativity in your business
45. Write about where you draw inspiration from for your products and services
46. Describe how products are typically created and designed
47. Write about how laws or government policies might affect your industry and/or customers

There will probably be some days where your writing is stellar and other days when writing anything is tough. Go easy on yourself. Not every article has to be a winner. Remember every post helps you get points with search engines for having fresh content, so no matter what blog topics your write about you’re getting ahead.

Blogging is a great way to drive new traffic to your CityMax estore, but only if you use a successful blog SEO (search engine optimization) strategy. Blogs are easier to get higher ranking for on search engines because:

• They tend to have new content regularly.
• They have the ability to accept comments which are looked upon as more new content.
• Each blog post can be focused on specific keywords you want to target.

Blogs are also inexpensive to set up. I’ve used the blogging site WordPress for a few years, but Blogger is also an easy to use free program.

Here are some tips on how to get your blog SEO working for you:

1. Check out competitor blogs

Search Google for successful blogs in your industry. The ones that always seem to be at the top of search engines already have a winning formula, so copy their strategy. Specifically look at:  what topics they cover, which topics have the most comments, how often they post, what category names they use, what tags they use and how many images they use in their posts.

2. Choose keywords wisely

Use the free Google Keyword Tool to find the keywords which have high search volume and low competition. From the keyword tool page, click on any keywords you’re considering to see what kind of search results appear. You only want to use keywords that have search results that match with the blog post you’re writing.

3. Insert keywords into your blog posts

Use keywords in your blog posts, blog URL (web address), headings, image file names, image titles and alt tags (the text that appears when you mouse on top of an image) and blog tags. You can also create category names for keywords you want to target. As a general rule, don’t let inserting keywords trump quality writing. Remember someone will be reading your post and you want them to come back and read more.

4. Link back to your estore

Typically, you’ll want to make sure there’s a constant link to your estore in the column beside your blog posts, just like we have for CityMax at the top right. For some blog posts, it may make sense to include a link there too.

5. Post at least twice a week

Generally, you should post at least twice a week just to ensure Google notices your blog has regular fresh content. From my own experience, twice a week usually results in Google indexing my blog weekly.

This should help you get on your way to a successful blog.

So, it’s my first week here at CityMax.com, and as a dedicated web coach one of my first assignments was to dive right into the easy business website builder. After getting used to making my way around the application and understanding how to take advantage of all the tools available, I’ve found five helpful tips for the newbie CityMax.com user!

1. The “Edit Site” tab will always be your go-to button.

When you sign up for your free 10 day trial, or if you’ve just made your website active, the “Edit Site” tab when you login on the top left beside the “Dashboard” tab is the most important tab for navigating your website. This tab will have five helpful sub-tabs: View Site, My Pages, Add Page, Design, and Domain & E-mail. You will be able to access all your pages here (under “My Pages”), as well as change and customize your template (Under “Design”). This is the best place to keep your website organized.

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Guest post – Andrea Baxter is a senior marketing professional and a co-founder of Smart Cookies, founded in early 2007. Educating women on how to be smart with their money while living fabulously, the Smart Cookies have appeared on CNN, Oprah, MSNBC, and ABC News. They have published two best-selling books and host their own TV show.

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As a businesswoman, more importantly, an entrepreneur, I have come to learn that there are 3 very important people you must surround yourself with in order to help your business grow and make it successful: trendsetters, influencers and connectors. Why? Because these are the people who are going to believe in you, believe in what you are doing and will want to help you grow your business as ferociously as you do.

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