The Maine SEO Blog

For the past week or so, I’ve been writing about how to rank better in local search, specifically in Google Maps.

Here is the entire guide:

1. Submit to Google Local Business Center (Part 1)
2. Submit to Google Local Business Center (Part 2)
3. How to get Local Reviews
4. What to do when you get a negative local review
5. Measuring Local Analytics

Once you’ve completed the 5 steps, you’re not done. [I'm sorry.]

You’ll have to:

• Be on the look out for satisfied customers to review your business.
• Add new images and video.
• Update your local posts.
• Check your Dashboard for (the right) keywords.

Nicki Hicks
Go local

Last time we talked about dealing with negative reviews; today we’re going to finish this five-step series with Google Local Business measurement.

Last June, Google Local Business Center added a Dashboard and Analytics. To get started, log into your Local Business Account and click “View report”.

The Analytics aren’t as powerful as Google Analytics, but you do get some interesting data. Get a complete look at all of the Dashboard components here.

What you get from the Dashboard

Google’s gone social

I just noticed this new section in the Dashboard (perhaps inspired by Buzz?). You can now post a 160-character status update; not unlike Twitter or Facebook.

And posts go live pretty quickly…

Local posts would be a great way to advertise a sale, a blogpost, whatever you’re looking to promote!

Is your profile complete?

Google will let you know if your profile is complete. Do you have pictures and video uploaded? Are all of your categories included? Are your business hours live?

Keywords

Activity, impressions, and driving directions are interesting – and might be more important depending on what industry your company is in. But I think one of the most valuable pieces of information the Dashboard gives are the top search queries. While I wish they would provide the geographic identifier (is it Portland, Maine or Scarborough, Maine the person was searching for?), the keywords will give you a good idea of whether or not people are finding you using the right keywords.

If the search queries are different than what you’re looking to rank for, start by changing your categories around a bit. If that doesn’t help, then there’s a problem with how your web site is optimized.

And that does it! You’ve just done everything you can to rank better at Google Maps.

See the entire guide here.

Nicki Hicks
Measure, measure, measure

Last time we talked about getting local reviews; but what if they’re not always positive?

The fact of the matter is…everyone gets a bad review at one time or another. Something out of the ordinary happened, and something went horribly wrong. It happens to even the best of businesses.

So maybe you have a bad review or two under your belt. How you respond is what counts.

You have two choices.

1. Face it head on. Leave a comment right after the review and humbly apologize for their bad experience, then offer them a free night stay or a free product for their trouble. (And if they take you up on your offer, make it the best experience they’ve ever had.)
2. If you don’t feel comfortable responding publicly, a lot of review sites give you the option to contact the person directly.

One of three things could happen.

1. Worst case scenario, the person won’t respond and won’t remove the review. Think of the benefit though: you just publicly showed potential customers that your business isn’t about to let a bad experience happen.
2. The person might take you up on your offer, and then remove their negative review.
3. Or the best case scenario (and it has happened)? The customer replaces their negative review with a positive one, pointing out that a mistake was made and a bad experience had; but this organization did everything in their power to make it right.

Next time, we’ll talk about how to measure your success using Google Local Business Center.

See the entire guide here.

Nicki Hicks
Sometimes a negative is a positive

Photo by httpoldmaisonblogspotcom

Last time, we finished submitting locations to Google Local Business Center. Once you receive that precious little letter from Google, input the PIN number into your Local Business Center account…and you’re good to go!

Now what?

Some factors have changed in local ranking, some have not. The fact that more positive reviews help you rank better still certainly holds true today. Sure, you could just start writing reviews about your own business, but if we’ve learned anything, it’s Google is smart - so get ‘em from your customers.

How to get reviews

Different industries are going to have different barriers to acquiring local reviews. That said, there are a few different strategies – from the obvious, to a little more out of the box.

Ask

That’s simple enough, right? Think of some of your customers who had a great experience with you and contact them. Ask if they’d be kind enough to give you a review on Google Maps – or even their favorite review site. Hey, you’ll even give them one too!

Make it easy

I’m going to use a hotel as an example here, as this technique wouldn’t work for every organization. Start by setting up a computer specifically for reviews – in a hotel, perhaps at the check-in desk. Bookmark Google Maps, and after the customer checks out, ask if they’d take just a few moments to give you a review.

Or, perhaps your company already sends out monthly postcards or mailers to customers. Why not include a line at the bottom asking them to give you a review – just make sure you include the link!

Likewise, are you running an email campaign? Include a link in the bottom to your Google Maps listing, your Yelp profile, your Yellow Pages listing – whichever you want to improve. (Remember that Google Maps actually pulls reviews from a number of sites, not just their own.)

Post a sign

You’ve probably stepped into a local shop or restaurant and seen the Yelp stickers on the door. If that’s not an incentive to go to Yelp and leave a review – or at least check out what other people said – I don’t know what is.

Give them an incentive

Speaking of incentives, why not give customers a reason to help you out? Whether you offer a percentage or money off your product, free shipping, or free samples; it will be money well spent.

Obviously these tactics aim to get you positive reviews - but next time we’ll talk about what happens if you get an (eek!) bad review.

See the entire guide here.

Nicki Hicks
Local Reviewer

Photo by ropobby

Yesterday we started the submission process to Google Local Business Center. Today, we’ll finish up!

1. When are you open? Add your hours of operation.
2. How can I pay you? Add your payment options.
3. Add pictures. If nothing else, make sure your logo is uploaded.
   



4. Add video. Have a YouTube channel? Make sure that you include (up to 5) videos!
5. Any other information? Do you have free parking? Free WiFi? Let your customers know!
6. Click finish.

And you’re done! Choose whether you’d like to be contacted by phone (immediately) or by postcard (within a few weeks). You’ll have to input the code they give you either way.

That’s all for today. Tomorrow we’ll cover the next step of ranking better at Google Maps: local reviews.

See the entire guide here.

Nicki Hicks
Rank Locally

For every local client we have, we always submit and verify them to the major local search engines – including Google Local Business Center (essentially Google Maps). Recently, Google added a great addition to the works – the Local Business Dashboard! Here’s Google’s official story on it.

Some say the addition was simply for those with limited web presence, although if sites are even showing up in local search results, I’d say they’re doing something right. Regardless of the reason behind it, these statistics will be helpful for any local business: from those with a huge search presence to those with none. Furthermore, even with Google Analytics, this information is awesomely powerful; not to mention, you wouldn’t be able to figure it out any other way.

Your business info

If you already have an account, you know that there is a ton of information you can include in your local listings –  from what you do, to payment taken, to business hours, to tags, to photos, to video. What’s more, the dashboard acts as many social profiles do, with a % complete meter – to further persuade you to continue filling out information.

Activity & Totals

Activity is set up very similar to Google Analytics – impressions indicating how many times (in the past month – or whatever timeframe you select) your listing has shown up as a result. What I find even more impressive is the fact they drill down into actions: those people who click for more info on the Map, for driving directions, and those who click the link to your website.

Top Search Queries

Here’s where you can verify that you’re being found for the correct keywords. The only problem I can see: you don’t see the locations searchers used. In other words, for flyte, all of these keywords look great. But we don’t know if they were looking for website design in Portland, Maine or Kennebunk, Maine. My guess would be the former; but for a lot of our clients who are in lesser-known towns in the middle of Maine, that information is vital.

Where driving directions requests come from

Again, priceless statistics: who’s thinking of coming to your location? Are you investing in those opportunities enough? This information may be a little less important for a company like ours than, say, an Inn or hotel who finds they get a ton of driving directions requests from the Boston area. That might convince them to advertise a little more in Massachusetts.

Coupons are another addition to the dashboard. You can further enhance your local listing by adding coupons for customers who find you via Google Maps.

Nicki Hicks
What are you waiting for? Go submit your local biz!

I just noticed today a new little addition to Google Maps: markers for the paid search results!  Now, I’m not sure if I was simply late to this news; but no where in any of the major search news blogs or even the Offical Maps Blog is there any mention of this.

I’ve noticed the addition for nearly every industry – every one that would have AdWords ads.  This search was for “hotel portland maine”.  The top three results seem normal enough. One paid search result and the next two organic.

What floored me was on the map, the Holiday Inn now has a marker!  What’s more, is this result shows up above other result closer to Portland.  As a matter of fact, this particular Holiday Inn isn’t even in Portland, but South Portland; and as we’ve seen, results are based upon proximity to the city or (possibly) reviews.  Is it possible that now bids can help you get on the first page of local listings?

Nicki Hicks
Small Business SEO

Thanks to Barry Schwartz and Keri Morgret from Search Engine Roundtable for taking the time to live blog many of the SMX West sessions!  Here are a few of my notes from Tuesday, Day 1…

Technical SEO Issues for Developers

(Archived version from SE Roundtable)

• Disallow certain forms from being crawled (like Contact Us page)
• Use Webmaster Tools
• Need both human and XML sitemaps
• Canonicalization (www vs. non-www issues) fix: stay the same throughout the site; the fix when someone links to the wrong version: redirect it
• Meta/title tags: HAVE them, CHANGE them
• Be simple.  Use static HTML, meaningful page titles, clear anchor text, don’t link to spam.
• Brevity is GOOD for URL’s, make them simple, stable, and scream COPY ME!
• Improve crawler discovery by leveraging robots.txt (use only if fully understood, validate with Google), sitemap, and metatags
• Use Yahoo Site Exploreer and Google cache to see what’s indexed
• Use easy-to-crawl and search friendly URLs, keep titles and content close to the top
• iFrames = good for gadgets, bad for homepage
• Eye tracking software results: put your BEST keywords FIRST in the title tag (people read them first, and don’t always read all the way to the right)
• Absolute URLs = BETTER

Up Close with Google Maps & Local

(Archived version from SE Roundtable)

• Google Local data from:
  1. Google Local Business Center
  2. 3rd party providers
  3. General web crawl
• Submit/verify your site at: infoUSA, Localeze, Yahoo, Best of the Web, OpenList, CityVoter, InsiderPages, SuperPages
• Search for “your city and blog” for good blogs in your area
• Factors that influence Local rankings:
  1. Proximity to city
  2. Reviews, number of reviews, positive reviews
  3. Overall SEO health of site
  4. Keyword relevancy
• Make sure your address is on your homepage, contact us page, etc.
• If you have multiple locations, submit them ALL to local sites; you still only need ONE website
• No permanent address? Use a PO Box.
• Claim listings with ALL applicable categories
• Add videos!!
• Track calls for free:
  - Pretend to start a Google AdWords account
  - Go to Audio Campaign page
  - Get free phone number
  - Track calls!
• Large companies with multiple locations: create landing pages for geographic locations
• One speaker encourages customers to follow up with work done with local reviews with Visa coupon incentives for next services
• Remember – you CAN report Google Maps spam! (They welcome it!)

(more…)

Moderator: Greg Sterling, Founding Principal, Sterling Market Intelligence

Speaker: Mike Blummental, Partner, Blumenthals

• Huge growth for Google Maps – catching up to MapQuest
• Google maps is seen over a wide variety of devices (SMS, Smartphones, etc.)
• Check for your site in Google Local, Yahoo Local, niche local sites
• The “new” PageRank: location prominent score: explicit anchor text, score of website, number of links referring to the business, highest rank of linking site, NOT PR score)

Speaker: Tony Wright, CEO/Founder, Wright IMC

• Consumer reviews/local business links: Yelp, Angie’s List, Zillow, ServiceMagic, CitySearch
• Local reviews can make/break business
• Set up alerts: Google, Twitter

Speaker: Craig Greenfield, Director, Local Search, Performics

• Businesses with multiple locations: each location should have its own page, with main URL having sitemap for spiders

Speaker: Steve Espinosa, Director of Product Development, eLocal Listing

• Set up local profiles on sites
• A/B Testing is key
• Looking to the future: local listings w/ customized profile
• 5 star reviews are incredibly powerful
• Helpful to have keyword in business name
• Helpful resources: InsiderPages, Open List, Google coupons, Meetup
• When submitting at Google Maps, link videos – adds web reference
• Phone tracking through Google: pretend to make an audio campaign, “call reporting”, track phone numbers!

Q & A

• People are still ignoring modifiers (above regular google ten pack)
• H card format for Local
• Keep check with local reviews
• Google TV – distribution onto TV
• Synergize site with local listings
• Submit to Google
• Other speaker: Eric Stein, Director, Local Markets, Google

NOTE: These notes are the major points of the presentations, and do not include every point the presenter made.