The last post I wrote was pertaining to local search and the benefit that it can bring to your business.  I would like to keep with that topic and take it one step further to discuss some ways to assist you in raising your rankings within local search.  Because the competition you will be facing on the local level may be more important to you, it is vital to ensure that you get your listing as close to the top as possible.  As Google accounts for over 71% of all searches made on the web we will focus on improving local rankings via Google Maps; however, much of this information can be echoed on other local listings sites.

The first step, which is the most obvious, is to get listed.  Visit the Google Local Business Center and fill out a profile your business with as much detail as possible.  Google Maps gives you the ability to add photos and videos to your profile which you should absolutely take advantage of.  As discussed in the previous post, local search engines allow you to fill out these business profiles in order to give searchers a preview as to what they will find on your actual web site (assuming that you have one).  Once you have completed your profile do not forget to verify your account.  I recommend doing this via the phone option, as the mail option states that it may take 4-6 weeks which will dramatically slow down the process of boosting your results. 

Make sure that you keep the information in your local listing profile as current as possible as Google gives more weight to those sites who accurately display information across all local search engines  To be more specific, standardize all of the information that you have control over for these online business profiles.  If Google is able to connect all of the dots between your online profiles it “trusts” you more and thus gives you more visibility.  Ensure that you do not have multiple locations, phone numbers, prices, services, etc., listed on other sites.

In addition to making your business profiles uniform, ensure that you include the same information on your website.  Best practices state that you should include the name of your company, the full address, and your tagline on the home page of your site (all in text so that search engines can read it).  This is simply reiterating the point of conforming all of the information that you can control about your business on the web in order to build trust with search engines. 

This may seem obvious, but make sure that you choose the right categories to list your site in when creating profile.  Many local search engines will give you very hefty lists of industries to choose from which can take some time to dig through before you find the proper placement.  Generally, you will begin at a broad level and work your way down to the specific niche that you work in.  A good way to check and see if you are choosing the correct category is to run a test search and see what comes up in the results.  If you see people who you would perceive to be your competition than you have done well, if not, refine your selection.

Follow these simple guidelines and you will be well on your way to better rankings within local search.  If you have any additional suggestions that you would like to offer feel free to share them.  More to come…

Many of you may only be familiar with local search to the extent that it is that little collection of search results in Google that show up before the rest of the natural listings.  What you may not be aware of is that nearly 40% of all searches are made with local intent.  Essentially this means that people are looking for products or services online with the intent to go offline to complete the purchase.  Research has shown that people who are completing local searches are not just browsing for options, but in fact are deep into decision making close to making their purchase.  Whether your business relies on locals or out-of-towners searching for you, it is becoming increasingly important to list your site in local search.  As you might expect, because local search has a different intent than typical search, it is presented in a different manner that is more helpful to the user (most engines will supply a phone number and address on the most basic level). 

Here is one thing you may want to consider when thinking about the notion of local search….currently… it is much less competitive than traditional online search.  Local search is growing fast as more and more local businesses are seeing the benefit, but there is still time to get in on the action and give your marketing efforts a boost.  Also note that with local search you do not need to have a website to participate.  While it will always be helpful to have a website to refer searchers to for additional information, profiles provided within local search can give visitors a substantial amount of information including location, contact information, and reviews.  In fact, some business profiles (Google Maps in particular) will allow you to add a video to your profile which is a perfect marketing opportunity.  Think of these business profiles as introductions that can be great supplements to a website.

As time has gone on, we as a people have learned how to use search engines more efficiently to get the most relevant results as quickly as possible.  Specifically, searchers have begun to use geographic qualifiers such as cities and zip codes to refine their results.  As local search has begun to grow so has the number of sites that provide this service; to name a few great local search mediums….Google Maps, Yahoo Local, MSN Live Local, Yahoo YellowPages, Superpages, and AskCity.  To answer the all important question…the majority of them are all FREE.

There are several ways searchers can go about local search that you should be aware of. 

Searchers can use typical search engines such as Google and Yahoo with the addition to geographic qualifiers such as using a city or zip code. 

Searches can be made within the local search section of popular engines such as Google Maps, Windows Live Local, and Ask!City.

Searches can be made using an online YellowPages sites such as Superpages.

Searchers can use websites that provide information on local businesses such as a local newspaper site or a chamber of commerce.

Searchers can also use vertical directories or search engines which are sites that focus on a particular good or service.  Hotels.com is a great example of a vertical search engine.

It is essential to formulate some sort of strategy before just jumping in and registering on every single site as it can be very time consuming.  It will be a much better use of your time to do some quick searching on some of the sites you consider to be more important and see what competition ranks within the existing local search results.  Ensure that you create detailed business profiles for each site and then monitor the progress you make with whichever analytics tools you use.  I hope you find this useful and there will be more to come…

The wildly popular new internet browser released by Google, Chrome, was able to gain 1% of browser market share in its first day alone (as noted by data from Market Share).  It is common knowledge that Google essentially dominates the search market with their wide array of tools and programs, oh right…and their nearly 70% market share of web searches.  But with Chromes release to the masses, a few questions arose, mainly, how will this new browsers functionality affect search? 

One of the main features of Chrome is its omnibox, which makes recommendations for the user based on favorites, popular web pages, and most recently visited pages.  While this feature is extremely helpful and speeds up the search process, how will it affect natural search and PPC?  I do not believe that the omnibox will have much of an impact on natural search as users will more than likely still  be directed to Google search results the majority of the time (unless of course they are going directly to a URL).  Pay-per-click on the other hand, I believe will take more of a hit.  As it stands now, paid listings in Google only receive roughly 25% of the clicks (where the other 75% are for the natural listings).  With users having their results targeted and displayed for them before they even reach the search listings, paid/sponsored listings will receive less impressions, which will result in less clicks, and ultimately less conversions for those who are not ranking well naturally.

There are a few things to consider…first of course; this is all speculation on my part.  Second, Google Chrome only has a small portion of the market share, and we have seen how long it takes even for the best browsers to gain market share (Firefox…you deserve more).  Lastly, just because one form of advertising/marketing takes a hit does not mean there are not plenty of other EXTREMELY viable avenues to consider *wink**wink* SOCIAL MEDIA *wink* wink*.  I say this because yes…Chrome obviously uses Google’s algorithm for universal search (indexes blogs, forums, videos, etc.)…just sayin….but that will be for another conversation!

As Director of SEO&SEM for a leading travel website, I was responsible for the strategy to convert existing websites to new platforms, launch a new domain and rebrand websites all at the same time! Search Strategists don’t typically work in a vacuum and have to answer to C level executives and sometimes the Board. Here is what we did for one of the sites that was in a very special situation.

During early 2005 there were conflicting opinions on whether 301’s or 302’s were better for launching a new platform or migrating a site to a new domain. This was before Big Daddy which has pretty much put the topic to rest and 301’s are widely considered the best and only tactic for migrating or re-launching websites. However there are some very special situations where a 302 redirect may be necessary during a website re-launch.

Here is what I experienced as we re-launched a large website with a new look and platform:

The challenges for launching this site on a new platform were:

1.       Maintain traffic and conversions

2.       Flat site architecture to dynamic search driven platform.

3.       Startup staff in development and customer service

4.       Loyal customers were familiar with old navigation.

5.       Change in site content.

The SEO / SEM plan:

Document pre-launch rankings, traffic and conversions to effectively measure post-launch results. Use 302 redirects to get the site through peak traffic / conversion season so that the old pages would still be found in the SERP’s while we worked to build rankings for the new pages. This tactic by and large worked for this particular situation. The old pages slowly drifted down in the SERP’s while we worked like mad to get the new pages to index and rank well. When the new pages began to challenge the old pages, which took about three months, we changed the 302’s to 301 redirects and focused completely on the new pages. Site traffic sank during the launch but didn’t take a deep dive during a critical traffic period. We used the ppc campaigns to bolster traffic/conversions in locations that were not performing as well as they had the previous year. Additionally email campaigns were launched targeting troubled areas to support the level of conversions necessary.

To make the most of our ppc spend, we did extensive keyword research, built out ppc campaigns maxing out the number of adgroups/keywords allowed precisely targeted to what the searchers were looking for.  We grouped the paid ads to maximize conversions and spend. We also engaged efrontier, a bid management company to manage the portfolio. Through their intelligent tools we were able to assign a value to our conversion events which proved to be more efficient and more scalable than we could do manually.

This tactic might work for your website re-launch IF the new pages content is significantly different than the old pages and you are entering or in a peak traffic/conversion period or you cannot afford to buy the traffic to fill the traffic lost when your site re-launches. However based on experience I wouldn’t use 302 redirects unless it’s absolutely necessary to get through a few weeks of a peak traffic period.

After every site that was re-launched we did an extensive review of results and determined as best we could the cause….took our lessons and applied them to the succesive site re-launches with increasingly better results.