Local Online Advertising

Most people are using the Internet to find local products and services, and you need to be at the top of Google to get your share of the traffic. You are going to need a few things to dominate your local online search.

1. A geographical and service specific business name.
2. A geographical and service specific domain name.
3. A simple five page website.
4. Get listed on Google, Bing, and Yahoo local directories.
5. Links, Links, and more Links

To illustrate the best way to advertise locally and dominate, I will use a fake roofing company start up. This fake roofing company is located in Boston Massachusetts.

Step 1: A Geographical And Service Specific Business Name

Unless you already have a brand name, a business name that is being searched for locally, or is well known, you should change the name of your company*. I recommend including the initials of your state, you can be even more locally focused by choosing the name of your town. Also include a word specific to your industry.

If I were choosing a name for my Boston Massachusetts roofing company, I would go with something like Roofer’s MA LLC | Roofing MA LLC | Boston MA Roofer’s | Roofing MA | MA Roofing Co. | Etc.

You also want to make sure the domain name (example.com) is available for what ever name you land on, which brings us to step 2

Step 2: A Geographical And Service Specific Domain Name

Go over to somewhere like http://dynonames.com/ and start searching to see if the name you want is available. Google loves to see keywords in the url. If you don’t already have a hosting account, this place offers a great premium package for like 89.00 a year. I recommend buying the domain name for at least ten years. The cool thing about dynonames is that they have a super 5 minute installation of WordPress. It is included in the premium package and will do fine as your website. Which brings us to step 3.

Step 3: A Simple 5 Page Website

You want to have a website with: home page, services page, about us page, testimonials page, and a contact us page.

I highly recommend having a blog too. It does not matter if the blog is on the site, or off-site. A blog gives you the ability to create web pages that will target new keywords. There are to many benefits to list, so incorporate a blog.

Each page should be optimized for one phrase and one phrase only, this means the phrase is in the title, page description, in the text of the page 3 or 4 times and in the alt description of an image on the page.

In the footer section make sure you have the address on every page. Also make sure you include a phone number on every page. Put your business name and town name in home page title.

Put your keyword phrase in the first three words of the page title section.

Now you have an optimized website, but a website with out advertising is like a great TV commercial that never runs, or is seen by anyone. Which brings us to step 4

Step 4: Get Listed On Google, Bing, And Yahoo Local Directories

These directories are free to join, and provide local searches with local businesses listed in their directories. One your listed in these directories, there is one thing more than any-other that will get you to the top, citations.

A citation is a mention of your business on other websites. So you want to join as many other free directories as you can find. There is a great new service called Whitespark, they help you to find the best directories and places to acquire citations.

Make sure you take your time and completely fill out every profile on citation websites. One point of supreme importance it to make sure you have one phone number associated with your business address. Also, however you describe your address, business hours, business name, on your website should be the exact same way you list it on all the directories and citation websites. This can be time consuming work, if you have to dedicate one day a month until you have got some 40-60 citations.

I almost forgot to mention, get your customers to leave reviews on these directories. I offer my customers $25.00-$100 rebates if they email me their name, address, and phone number, with proof of an online review. Then you can start link building, which brings us to step 5.

Step 5: Links, Links, And More Links

Links are to organic search what citations are to local directory listings. It’s not enough to be listed in the local directories, you need to be on the first page of Google organically as well. In order to do this you need links. You need links from other web pages to yours. Some of the best links lately are coming from the BBB (Better Business Bureau), local CC (chambers of commerce), and clubs, like the Elks and the Lions.

It will cost you $500.00 or so for the BBB and another $350.00 for the Local CC, but both have payment plans. The BBB is offering a free moth right now and a $50.00 a month fee after the free month. The CC will break the $350.00 payment up into $75.00 payments.

Other simple link sources include: submitting articles to directories, writing guest posts for blog, and local neighborhood patch informational sites.

Local online advertising is big business being targeted by large corporations like Yodle. They offer local advertising specials to small businesses with a legal guarantee. They guarantee you will be on the first page of Google in your town for vertical specific keywords within 60 -90 days or you don’t pay the monthly fees.

The cost for the Yodle package outlined above is $179.00 per town per month, and no set-up fee. If you visit the Yodle website for pricing you will be directed to a squeeze page (a page to acquire contact info) before you get answers. You pay only for the first two – three months, then only the months you are on the front page of Google. However, their legal guarantee does not cover the first 2-3 months, you have to pay for those.

I am going to mix the pro’s and con’s of doing your local online advertising with Yodle

Negative: They do not optimize your website, they create you a new website by using your websites content, and host it on one of their domain names.

There are many negatives to this, which include:

1. Having two domain names with the same content is a Google no-no, Google penalizes websites for having duplicate content. If they out-rank your existing website, it will be your website that gets penalized for having duplicate content, not theirs.
2. As soon as you stop paying them, you own nothing, they redirect traffic to someone else, maybe a competitor.
3. If you had invested this money with a local online advertising company like mine, Your website would be yours and continue to produce leads for years to come, even if you stopped paying for services.

Pro’s: This is a better system than Service Magic or Roof Networx

This is a lot like lead generation because all money goes to generating leads and as soon as you stop paying the company, you have nothing to show for your investment, but hopefully you made some money off the leads, hopefully more than you spent for them.

Yodle is better than Service Magic because they generate leads only for your company, and Service magic sells their leads to two competing contractors

Also with Lead gen sites, you pay per lead, Yodle fees are fixed at a maximum monthly fee. So do the math: If Service Magic charges 30.00 a lead, and gives you 30 new roof leads a month you pay $900.00, but if you can generate more than 6 leads a month with Yodle, each lead after the first 6 is essentially free.

Negative: They provide you with a call tracking phone number

It doesn’t sound like a negative when they say it. They tell you the call tracking phone number is so you can track all the leads your getting from them in a report. The report shows how many phone calls you get from their online advertising.

Sounds good right? Well this is one more way they own you! If you stop feeding the machine they stop redirecting your calls to you. People looking for your brand will find Yodle’s phone number not yours.

Also, they put their phone number on your Yahoo, Bing, and Google local directory listings. So good luck ranking locally, or even reclaiming your own business on these local directories. Google for one hates two different phone numbers for one address. They will think your trying to spam their directory, even though your not.

Pro: They put you on the front page of Google and have a legal guarantee

Down side seems limited, if they don’t do what they say they will, you don’t pay. The loss is limited to 2-3 months of $179.00. They will keep working to get your business listed on the first page of Google for free after the first 2-3 months, free until your listed.

I would caution anyone thinking of using the Yodle for local online advertising, be very specific about what qualifies as being on the first page. Make sure they are guaranteeing you get on Google for competitive keywords and not the name of your business.

It is too easy to rank well for your own unique company name. It is generally pretty easy to rank well for keywords with geographical modifiers (adding local town names to keywords).

Remember this when thinking about keyword rankings difficulty:

1. There are ten spots on the front page of Google for every Keyword phrase in existance.
2. “You don’t have to run faster than the bear, you only have to run faster than the person next to you!” Unknown- Or the other 9 people so to speak.

Local online advertising & return on investment

Advertising successfully means making money, if you can give Yodle $179.00 a month and they can give you one or two new customers a month, would it be worth the investment? You need to know what your average new customer is worth, and how much search demand there is for the keywords you want to advertise for.

Local online advertising is like a billboard on a highway, every keyword has a highway with billboards, but some people just don’t use that highway. So paying to advertise on that billboard is a waste of money. Just Sayin’

Why Rent When You Can Own

It is plain to most people that it is better to own than to rent for obvious reasons. The problem with promoting your own website is the same for some home buyers, they can’t come up with the down payment.

It does cost more in the beginning to compete in the local online advertising market, than it would to begin with Yodle or Reach Local, or any of the big corporate online marketer. But the return on investment does not compare.

Consider what your business would be worth should you go to sell it in five years dependent on a lead gen site for new business, versus owning a website that generates a 100k per year in new business for free. Investing in your own online presence builds equity in your company while also providing leads.

I believe people who only have a small amount to pay for attracting new customers, might be better off learning Google Adwords, or working with a local online advertising company, and investing in their own online presence. An online presence that will pay them back in leads for years after they stop paying for them.

I was coming up number two for a search with basically no competition, and a 3.00 cpc bid. So I used the preview tool to find out who the new-comer in my space might be. See for your-self below. It’s Google!

CLICK TO ENLARGE

I don’t understand how they can legally push my paid ads down to promote their product! The beauty of AdWords was that the little guy could compete with the big guys, but with Google them-selves driving up the cost of paid search for every and any keyword, I may have to direct clients to other mediums. It is not fair!

Google Offers is basically Groupon with the Google name!

OK regulatory commission, rip Google’s frigan head off! I’m so serious, they want to monopolize advertising, and have. I believe Google has been begging for a smack down for a while and with this move in to the online coupon game, they have gone to far.

I loved Groupon from day one, there marketing strategy should have been on the TV show “The Big Idea” (maybe it was?), it was brilliant twist on couponing. Their only weakness in my opinion was this scenario, someone in the advertising space with a strong brand name copying the idea.

If there is a Groupon Stock I will be shorting it till it is dead dead dead! In all fairness any big marketing brand could have stolen the groupon cheese (Refrence: Who Moved My Cheese – Book). I mean any other marketing giant could have branded there own version of groupon and bought ads on the paid serps. But Google doesn’t need to spend the billions of dollars the others would have had to for the keywords.

The headline of this article could have easily been different, but “Google Offers: Screwed Again! Groupon & Adwords Advertisers Take It On The Chin ” seems to put the hammer on the nail. I apologies to my none American readers for all the colloquialisms, “but if the shoe fits?”

Google has been pushing down the natural results hurting the SEO industry, and now they’re pushing down the paid search ads with just one more of their own ads. I can’t wait to see serp results: ad #1 Google Offers (I almost called it Groupon Offers), and #2 ad 75 dollars of AdWords, # 3 ad who ever, cause I’m just sick to my stomach.

Thx for reading and please tell me what you think in the comments.

Google Local Results

Many local businesses will show up in the local listings if you do a search for their type of service and add the name of their town in the search. (example: Boston + Web Design).

If you have accomplished the sometimes tough task of showing up in Google Local results for your main Keyword + your-town searches, and would like to show up for the same keyword in neighboring towns. Add those towns to your page in the form of text.

Example:

Service Area:

Boston, MA | Woburn, MA, | Cambridge, MA | ETC…

If you have a blog on your site, and you want to rank well for a specific neighboring town, write a post about a memorable job you did there.

How to get more calls from website visitors

More and more people are using smart phones to surf the internet and to find local products and services. I assume you know if your website is mobile friendly, meaning it loads fast etc… Visit http://www.howtogomo.com/en/#homepage to test your website.

But, is your phone number above the fold? Is it clickable from mobile devices?

You want a clickable phone number at the top of every service page, to make it easy for mobile user to “click to call”. 15-25% of your online search maybe coming from mobile.

I can’t tell you how many small business websites I have seen with no phone number on the page, and if there is one, it’s in a photo so users have to find a pen, a piece of paper, write it down, type it into their phone. When all you had to do is put a clickable version on your site.

If you have emergency services like a locksmith, or towing businesses, this is a must!

Lowering bounce rates will lead to more conversions

You need to have pertinent information above the fold. People do not want to work to find what they’re looking for, and if you make it so a user has to scroll to find information, a lot of them will bounce (leave the page immediately).

Having a message that tells your visitor they have found the right page as soon as they land, or a message that promises to answer there questions in a catchy title at the top of the page will cut down on the number of people who bounce.

Just consider the keywords they typed into the search engine to find your page, and craft a message that will entice them to continue reading or to call you right away.

Summary:

Adding a clickable phone number and local geographic keywords to your webpage in text format, will help you to rank better for more local customers and get you more phone calls from this new traffic.

Written by Michael Kern

Serve Better Ads

To make the paid ads more relevant in search results, Google implemented the AdWords Quality Score Attribute / algorithm. No longer is the number 1 ad position given to the highest bidder for a specific keyword / phrase.

It might be possible Google was also trying to cut down on the practice of brand name keyword arbitrage. Because you can basically bid on any keyword, but are not allowed to use Trademark names in your ads, Your QS goes into the toilet, dragging your whole campaign with it, keyword cost go up discouraging this practice.

Quality score can be driven down by different variables, even when your doing everything right! Of course a seasoned AdWords manager can quickly observe CTR for a given keyword, and check the bounce rate for the same keyword in Google Analytics to determine the true quality of a keyword.

Lets quickly define doing everything right:

Keyword your bidding on appears in the ad copy on the first or second line, the keyword is in your landing page title, and on the landing page a few times, you know the ad is good because your CTR is good, and people who visit the page for that keyword via paid search don’t bounce, or your bounce rate is under X%.

If you doing everything right but your Quality Score is in the 3 and 4 range don’t panic, but check to see if you:

• Have any other campaigns in your account with low keyword scores like; 2′s or 3′s. Your keywords have to match the ad copy and landing page, that goes for singular versions and plural. Either make changes to your ads, tittle… or move keyword to a new ad group.
• Make sure your CTR are good… Low CTR’s will negatively affect your QS. Try testing a new ad to improve CTR’s.

Quality Score Ranking Factors Include:

• CTR
• Ad copy relevance
• Landing page relevance
• Current and historical Account keyword quality Score / performance.

CTR – Ad Copy Relationship

We talked about how to improve CTR by trying or testing new / more compelling ad copy. Ad copy has to stand out – few corporate PPC management techs will bother to do this check- They know the best headline to use, compelling tag line… the problem is- so does everyone else, so you look at a SERP for your keyword and all the headlines match. Try reading Seth Godins book “Purple Cow” or check out his blog Seth Godin for ideas about how to stand out.

Make sure you use the ad preview tool under the tools and analysis tab in the campaign management software to check on ad copy, no need to lower your own CTR’s!! New customers are so blow away by their name being on the first page of the SERP’s they constantly perform searches, try to discourage this. But no matter what you say, they will do searches, and most will even click their ad costing themselves money just to prove it’s working.

Ad Copy

Ad copy relevance we discussed, and is simple, use the words in you copy – plural or singular, think about putting all singular keywords in their own ad group. Be original -

Landing Page Relevance

Again we talked about this already, but as Anthony Robbins always says “repetition is the mother of skill”… And I can expand a bit…Make sure keywords are in the first three words of the page tittle, on the page at least three times (top, middle, and bottom). Put keyword in an image alt field, and bold the keyword text once on the page. Sounds a lot like On-page SEO, hmmm.

If you are not in charge of the webdesign or SEO too – you may run into some headwinds from other departments. I hope for your sake there is someone with a wide view managing the SEM and integrating all elements into a cohesive strategy.

One last thought – Don’t expect to see immediate results after optimizing your campaign and landing page, which brings me to my next point.

Historical Account Performance

Once everything is cleaned up and your campaigns are optimized you will have to wait. Google wants to see better performance before they bump up your keyword quality score rankings.

Myth: By bidding a lot of money to be first on the SERP it will improve your CTR and improve your quality scores. This is a bogus myth, probably started by Google, but definitely propagated by people that don’t know what they are talking about.

If you made it this far, please share in the comments, and follow me on twitter @Inform_Local

Written by Michael Kern

If your in a local service business, you may want to include the town you are located in, into your business name. People searching online will add the town or state where they live into their query. If someone living in Boston is looking for a local mechanic to fix their car, they will type something like: “Boston mechanic” “mechanic Boston” & “Auto repair Boston”.

Businesses That Begin With A/Number/Symbol

In the past, the yellow pages were the main source for people looking for a local service. Businesses listed with a symbol were listed first, then businesses listed with a number, and then it was alphabetical. So to be the first business option in the book, business owners used to named their company something like: AAA Auto Repair, or Acme Tire Shop, #1 Auto Repair, you get the idea.

Nowadays businesses are listed on search engines by relevance. Every website is crawled by search engine bots and ranked for the words on their page(s). But there is still an advantage to having an A/number/symbol as the first character of your business name.

Every link on a webpage passes link juice or ranking juice if you prefer to the site it links to, and the links that are at the top of a page pass more juice than the links lower on the page. Online directories group companies into categories, and then all the companies are listed alphabetically, and the ones at the top of the page, all your A companies, 123 companies, and # companies will get the most rank juice passed to them.

When naming your local business, remember to do a little research with Google’s keyword tool (just search for [Google keyword tool]), to discover what people are searching for the most in your area, that is keeping with your service, and if you name your business after that phrase, you will be on the road to success.

Written by Michael Kern

Google has been reviewing all new AdWords accounts, or at least accounts that redeem a coupon for a free $100.00 of AdWords spend. Then an “AdWords Expert” will email the new client, telling them they looked over their new account and seen “potential for improvements”, and that they can help, essentially saying it looks like the campaign you just paid someone set up for you, should be optimized by a “real expert”, and that your agency is apparently doing something wrong!

Letter Sent To My Client From Google AdWords Team

In football jargon this is a major C’on Man!

How can Google make suggestions and point out “potential” improvements without understanding the clients goals? I believe I am fulfilling a much needed service to very small businesses, that would be better off leaving their PPC campaign for me to run.

Could very small businesses get more leads if they spent more money? Of course, but some are selling services with tight margins, and looking for maximum return on investment.

Client Goals For Paid Search

Not concerned with growing brand, only attracting potential clients close to his location that are ready to hire. Looking for maximum return on investment.

AdWords Client Campaign Set-up

We targeted keywords deep in the buying cycle, targeting a 25 mile radius around clients Geo-graphical area, negative keywords include: how to, videos, instructions, employment, etc… Ad copy also tends to discourage the do-it-your-selfers (DIY), and information seekers from clicking the ads.

Google interprets low volume and especially low click through rates as a failure.

There is of course plenty of DIY information on the website for seo purposes, but I don’t want my client paying for traffic that is unlikely to convert. We could of course design content to convert information seekers and the DIY, but with a small budget I feel obligated to go after the lower hanging fruit – which is of course people ready to hire my client.

Thank you Google, but three views and zero clicks is exactly the look I’m going for, put plainly I’m cherry picking!

Do Low Click Through Rates Sound The Death Rattle Of The Inexperienced PPC Manager?

To a customer who doesn’t know the difference between CTR and QS, I believe it looks like they have tied their wagon up to a dead horse. After all, who should know more about Google than Google?

I’m A Skeptic Turned Cynic

I personally believe in the long run it would be in Google’s best interest to keep me (AdWords Management Agency) out there convincing people to try AdWords, and helping clients be successful, than to encourage people to go it alone.

Google must believe more money will be made by people – trying AdWords – failing – and quitting, than by building a successful campaign where the client is successful and continues to spend money on ads. Why else would they undermine their affiliates (I am a sad member of their Google Engage program).

I once believed in Google, thought it was great company, but the shine has come off the apple, and I see them for what they are – Responsible stock holders looking out for them-selves alone.

Written by Michael Kern

Page 1 – On The Top Of Google – Boxing Page-Rank Analogy

Originally Posted on January 25, 2011 by Michael Kern

In order to be positioned well on the search engines, to get on the top of Google’s page 1 results. Your webpage has to be the most relevant of all webpages for a given keyword or phrase (relevance as determined by Google). this requires some SEO (search engine optimization) work.

One of the major indicators used by Google to determine the relevance of a webpage are inbound links (a link to your webpage from somewhere else). The ideal link will have the keyword or words you want as anchor-text (the highlighted words in a link are called anchor text), the link will come from a website in your vertical (genre), and that website will have a high page rank (pr).

If you imagine your website as professional boxer, how would you know if he is any good? With a boxer you would look at their record, look at the quality of their opponents. Who have they been fighting? Just like Google looks at who is linking to you.

If you discover your boxer has been fighting no-name losers with poor fight records, what does that tell you about them as a boxer? Nothing! Now, what if your boxer has beaten Mike Tyson, and Evander Holyfield? This says you need to respect him as a boxer. They have earned a high level of respect/rank – even if they have only had two fights.

What if your website only has two links coming to it? Even with only two inbound links, if they came from websites with a really high rank, it would say a lot about your website, like our boxer who has beaten Tyson and Holyfield. Links from proven websites says your proven too.

If you have links to your websites from other websites with no page rank, they have no authority to pass on, like our boxer who wins fighting losers. In order to rank well your goal should be to acquire back-links from websites in your vertical with a pr5 or higher.

Quick Note About Personae Links:

Google, Twitter, and Facebook have been tracking us via our “likes”, our tweets, our webpages, blogs, books we bought, and know us pretty good by now. If my online marketing company got a link from Rand Fishkin, that said “online Marketing company”, it would pass along some authority. I mention this to give you an idea of how important social marketing will become to SEO in the near future (*Cough – NOW!).

Written by Michael Kern