As Google continues to beef up its online product offerings – Google+, Google Places, and now a hotel-specific search, review and referral system being rolled out – opportunities for small businesses to use cost-efficient local advertising and highly tailored, location specific search engine marketing are better than ever. And in many cases, these advanced SEM techniques will be offering potential customers a valued service just by delivering information. Some sources suggest that of the roughly two million Google searches conducted every minute, over 400,000 include local keywords. That means 20 percent of searches are already attempting to target local businesses. So those that effectively craft their ads and SEM campaigns to tap into Google places and this huge targeted mass of searches stand to gain exposure...
Most local business owners are often confronted with the teething problem of how to gain maximum exposure for their business online. Online marketing is a sphere that is mostly dominated by the big wigs with the most resources. In such a scenario how does a local business compete and gain a foothold without being dwarfed by the hot shots in the industry? In this article we shall provide you with valuable SEO tips for your...
Let us assume that you have a restaurant and you have been operating in your area for a couple of years. You already have your regulars who come into your restaurant and enjoy your food every so often. But times are rough and you want new customers. How do you go about doing that? There are the tried, tested and traditional ways of getting posters up, distributing fliers, and advertising in the local paper. However, if these...
Location-based services are part of the hottest trends when it comes to local business marketing. Startups like Foursquare and Gowalla has enjoyed great reception and Facebook is trying to replicate their success with Facebook Places. This location-based application allows Facebook users to “check in” when they get to a brick and mortar store. Each “check in” is displayed on the user’s wall as well as in the news feeds of the user’s friends as well...
Local search is where many businesses are losing out on a lot of potential traffic and consumers. As fewer people turn to their phone books today, and go to their search engine with specific needs in mind, it is important for your business to appear in those results. If you are not optimized for local search, you may as well be sending customers to your competition. Take a look at...
For over 100 years, telephone customers have been receiving printed directories of phone numbers, addresses, and advertisements relating to local business and individuals. Though the separation of Ma Bell caused an increase in the number of disparate yellow page brands, one company still holds the rights to the “real Yellow Pages”: AT&T. Millions of people all over the world are familiar with the tomes that get dropped on our doorsteps every three months or so. Though...
Online business people and marketers know the importance of Search Engine especially Google in their life. I hope everyone have noticed the changes Google bring in his organic search results couple of weeks back and if you don’t let me give you a quick one line overview of that, Google now started to show places results in search engine that means if your business is not registered in Google places...
You've got your company listed on all the Local Directories (Google Places, Yahoo! Local, Bing Local, Yellow Pages, Yelp, etc.) but you are 15th on the lists! Here's how to move up those lists: 1. Add your location and the keywords you want to rank for in the title tags of your website pages. They should look something like "Bakery in Tampa, FL". 2. When you link to your contact page, make sure the anchor text of the...
We tend to spend much of our time focused on Google, yet Yahoo has local listings for businesses as well. Just like Google the basic service is free to businesses. Yahoo! Local Listings gives businesses the ability to provide detailed business information like products and service local consumers on Yahoo! Local. Yahoo! does have some requirements that businesses need to adhere to in order to take advantage of this local business...
Google Places is a free marketing tool for local businesses. The benefits of these listings include showing up in web search results and mobile search results. Updating these listings is free and available to the business 24x7x365. Not something you can easily do with the traditional yellow pages. Definitely something you need to consider beyond Google and tap into multiple local listing websites and search engines. Here are a few...
