Category:
Local Search
Your business thrives on customers and sales, and a great way to increase both is to jump on the online review site bandwagon and use them to your advantage. When it comes time to make a purchasing decision, today’s consumers are turning to sites like Foursquare in order to see what businesses are in the area, what deals they can snag, and what other customers are saying—and all of this information impacts whether or not they purchase from you. So whether you’re an Internet-savvy marketer or still unsure what Foursquare truly is, here are a few must-use tips to help you be successful with the popular online review site. 1. Choose a check-in location. Foursquare is a location-based service, and in order for your customers to enjoy the perks of “checking in” to your establishment, you have to have a location set up. Simply set up an account with Foursquare and create your establishment’s listing. This way, when customers visit – Read the full article
Search engines and Search directories are common buzz words in the internet era. The invention of web and search mechanisms draw people to go on the internet to surf and browse. Oftentimes, sharing useful information through rich content oriented blog sites, social networking sites, etc., the abundant information resource is available online by means of Search engines and search Directories. Let us examine the key differences between the two, as we are normally caught using these terms for our convenient marketing purposes. Search engines A database can simply be described as the collection of information in human readable format. The collection is similar to how books in a library are categorized and kept for easier reference. For search engines, “robots” build the database in the same way a spider builds its home, wherein the robots add the information to the database by visiting a website. Search directories Search directories are man made resources wherein real people actually edit and manage – Read the full article
The most prolific marketing campaigns today happen on the Internet. After all, why pass up an opportunity to reach out to thousands of people inexpensively and quickly? If you don’t yet have the resources to hire Internet marketing professionals or SEO rockstars, don’t worry: just use your smartphone as your essential marketing tool. Check out these mobile apps that will help you in enhance your presence on the Web and drive your business: Raven Tools It’s a free (but there is a subscription charge) and all-inclusive toolkit, with an on-the-go dashboard for all of the website campaigns you’re managing. Raven Tools also covers SEO indicators often ignored by other similar apps: social mentions, connection between marketing expenditure and incomes. Yelp (for Mobile) Users can interact with business owners in this app, so you should use this to listen to what your customers are saying. Keep checking in to spots where you go often and write good reviews. The ripple effect – Read the full article
Are you looking for new ways to get your website noticed? If your business has a physical location, you can use Google Maps SEO to help rank high on local search results. When people start searching for your company or the type of services you offer, your website will show up at the top of the results page of Google Maps. This means more traffic, customers, and sales. It’s important to be at the top of the Google Maps search engine since most people only look at the top 5 results on any page they end up on. The higher up your company website is, the better your chances are at improving your rankings. Google is a major search engine giant and ranking on Google Maps can do a lot of positive things for your business. Before you can use Google Maps for SEO purposes and improving your rankings, it’s important to understand how Google Maps works. How it all works – Read the full article
Supposing you have a local business targeting customers from within a particular geo-location (e.g. a catering company serving San Diego, California), then you can make use of the Internet to reach more prospective customers – by building business presence for local search. Local marketing is one very important Internet marketing step you can take to bring your business to the next level. Below is an example of a Google search generating business websites that are optimized locally. What does local marketing mean? The term ‘local’ can have different meanings from different people. But I think Mike Bluementhal, a reputable local search and web marketing consultant, has delivered a very clear insight by defining local marketing as: “all and any of the Internet options that are available for marketing of physical location on the Internet – driving people (prospective customers) to your door, driving phone calls, driving sales. It’s anything but based around a physical location of business.” In that sense, – Read the full article
Links are a very important element when it comes to search engine optimization. Sites that have many quality links coming in from other websites are usually ranked higher than those that have fewer incoming links. How do you leverage the power of SEO to get others to discover your images? The following are some awesome link building tips for photographers. 1. Build links slowly You need to come up with a strategy for building links gradually. If you build 40 links in a single day and then go for a whole month with no new links, your rankings might improve for one day only, and then go down for the rest of the month. Search engines value websites or blogs which have consistent activity, whether it is building incoming links or posting fresh content. 2. Join photographer communities Find communities and forums for photography and create a profile. Remember to include a link to your site in the profile. Each – Read the full article
Google Places offers people the chance to merge duplicate business listings in an effort for business owners to concentrate on just one business listing and let them comply with Google rules of having only one listing per business location. Google also uses data from other parties to make sure that duplicate listings are identified and merged it into one. But this can be a problem for some businesses. For example, a competitor hijacks your Google Maps listing by merging it with an account that they control, changes your contact information like your phone number, and adds their own business name to the listing. You can remedy this by manually changing your contact details and everything that has been changed by the competitor. But just when it is changed back (which could take some time), your competitor hijacks your listing again. For most, however, it is a matter of inconvenience and lost business rather than unfair competitive practices. Some merged business listings show – Read the full article
Somewhere out there, a person is talking about you. Your business. Your brand. Of course, you’ll want to listen and join the conversation. You have to, right? The Internet, though, is a pretty big place. If before, the reviews and comments of your customers only came in literally by word of mouth – well, today that’s no longer the case. A bad review on a site like Yelp or Google Places, a nasty blog entry by a vindictive, loud-mouthed critic, an unflattering picture of your establishment posted online, or even just a single unfavorable tweet: it can undo your life’s work. It can offset all the great things that you, your employees, your brand managers, your publicist, and your ad agency have been doing. And it can keep tons of potential customers from walking through your door. (One study even says that a single bad review can cost you 30 customers!) No matter how big the Internet is – and – Read the full article
