There are far too many businesses that don't pay attention or take advantage of all of the local opportunities there are on the web. From location based services like Yelp to your Google or Bing local listing, you must give your website/business the opportunity to be visible to local searchers. In the past couple of months I have tried to check in to various restaurants that either had incorrect addresses on Yelp or just weren't on there all together.
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As we have been telling our small business clients for some time, it has been made very clear that social media will soon have an effect on search engine ranks. Well, it looks like the time has already come. In a blog post released today, Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land revealed some insights into how Google and Bing are currently using social involvement in their algorithms.
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By now most of you have already planned out your Black Friday shopping. You will likely stay up the night before and hit the stores at midnight or wake up extremely early to make sure the items you are looking for aren't sold out. One benefit nowadays that wasn't available in the past: if you can't get what you were looking for on Black Friday or can't make it to the store, there's always Cyber Monday!
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This week Google rolled out yet another feature for their search engine called Google Instant Preview, which lets you take a sneak peak at a website before actually visiting it from your list of Google results. There have been extensions for web browsers, such as Mozilla's Firefox, that provided this exact functionality, but now it works across all modern browsers and is supported by Google natively. With that said, you may be asking yourself an important question:
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Inevitably most small businesses that we meet or talk to think of excuses not to blog instead of reasons to blog. Most of these are the same businesses that feel like they should get involved with social media, but only because they hear Facebook and Twitter on TV or from other businesses telling them they should, not because they actually see the value. Needless to say, these businesses are not generally successful at either. Let's take a look at some of the common excuses and why they are wrong.
Read moreUnless you have been away from the computer, TV, or radio for the past few days, you have probably heard of Google's latest feature, Google Instant Search. Basically the search engine starts showing results as you start typing your query. There have been a lot of mixed reviews and suggestions. One of my personal favorites was from @GregBoser:
Read moreTablet computing has been the buzzword among hardware manufacturers and software developers since the first credible Apple tablet rumors came to light at the end of last year. Now it seems like you can’t turn around without a new tablet prototype being featured in an Engadget article, but many folks are quick to forget that tablet computers have been around for years. Ten years ago Bill Gates stood on-stage at the Consumer Electronics Show and demonstrated the benefits of using tablet devices, and since then Microsoft has run Windows on countless tablet PCs. Despite that the tech industry’s perception of what a tablet should be has changed drastically in the past year, and there are rumblings coming from Redmond about a new tablet offering from Microsoft.
Read moreThe former Talking Phonebook has put a lot of marketing dollars into their latest identity, LocalEdge. I assume they moved away from having the word “phonebook” in their name because who uses a phonebook anymore? The new LocalEdge sales people make their rounds relying heavily on the words SEO and social media. They give free seminars about the subject, but these just end up being another sales pitch. See below from a local chamber newsletter:
Read moreThere has been debate for some time now regarding whether or not bidding on multiple match types for the same keyword is an effective strategy or not. An example would be purchasing:
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If you are executing digital marketing, congratulations! You are most likely already one step ahead of your competition, and making strides to meaningfully connect with prospects online. But, how do you know if you’re seeing continual success year over year, and improving your metrics?
Without the tools in place to analyze and benchmark your efforts, it is impossible to scale your online marketing and ensure continuous success.
