Small Business Search Marketing

One of the most important things a small business can do with its listing in the Google Local Business Center is choose the right category(ies). In fact, “Associating LBL w/Proper Categories” scored very highly in last year’s Local Search Ranking Factors survey (see image at right).

Mike Blumenthal, aka Professor Maps, has just released a tool that he previewed last week at GetListed Local University in Spokane. It’s a searchable database of categories in Google’s Local Business Center. If you’re not sure how to choose the right category for your business, this tool makes it easier so you can get your listing correct right from the start.

You can access the tool here. And here’s Mike’s brief explanation of how it works.

Add this one to your bookmark folder of “Local Search Tools.” Good stuff.

“Fantastic.” “Really great.” “Excellent.” “Very helpful.”

Those are the short versions of the feedback I received from speaking with four attendees after last week’s GetListed.org Local University Spokane seminars. And I feel the same way. It was an excellent day of local search marketing education, and the fact that this was a first-time event is almost mind-boggling. It just went so well. And to get reps from both Google and Bing to show up? Even better.

What stands out for me more than anything was the quality of the discussion and questions from the audience. It’s funny … at some of the bigger conferences, the Q&A time is sometimes the worst part of a session. But in Spokane, the Q&A sessions were all really good. We had smart audiences.

The folks from Klundt Hosmer, one of the sponsors, have shared their thoughts on the day. And here are a few of the tweets from attendees:

mchlldnn: Thanks to #localu crew for a fantastic seminar in Spokane today. Can’t wait to apply what we learned!

reilly3000: #LocalU what a great conference. You guys should beg getlisted.org to come to your city. Great stuff on local search and sm for all levels

Menkema: Getlisted.org’s conference has been incredibly helpful. Thnx @Google, @Ed_Reese & @mattmcgee #localu

I took some photos both during our low-key dinner gathering the night before Local U., and during the morning seminar. Here’s that slideshow.

You can find more photos on the Launchpad web site, too.

Plans are already underway for the next Local U. and I, for one, can’t wait.

Small business owners: Just when you thought it was safe to send prospects and customers to your Google place page, think again. Google has added a new content section to place pages — recommendations of other nearby businesses. And as I point out on Search Engine Land, those recommendations often include your competition.

In that piece, I suggest this idea: If the small business has claimed its local business listing, then Google should turn off the nearby recommendations. Reward local businesses that claim their listing, don’t punish them.

The bigger question here is, who owns the place pages? The obvious and correct answer is Google; Google can do what it wants with place pages. But in Google’s never-ending quest to promote local business listings to small business owners — Google just sent a rep from Mountain View to Spokane for Thursday’s GetListed Local University seminar to show about 125 business how the LBC works — there’s never been any indication from Google that it might start showing information about other businesses on a place page.

It’s a strange thing for Google to do, that’s for sure. When I said I wanted more from Google’s place pages, this wasn’t what I had in mind….

If you’re reading this while at the GetListed Local University seminar, a big welcome to you. Thanks for visiting SmallBusinessSEM.com. In my presentation, I mention a couple dozen web sites, articles, and other links that you may not have had time to jot down while I was speaking. If that’s the case, here are all the references I made in chronological order:

Trust
SEO Success Pyramid

Stats
Nielsen: Led by Facebook, Twitter, Global Time Spent on Social Media Sites up 82% Year over Year

Blogs
Jeremiah Owyang: Web Strategy: How To Evolve Your Irrelevant Corporate Website
HubSpot: Study Shows Small Businesses That Blog Get 55% More Website Visitors
Dr. Cynthia Bailey: OTB Skin Care Blog
Mike Blumenthal: Understanding Google Maps & Local Search
Seth Godin: The number one secret of the great blogs

Twitter
switchwinebar
AlbionsOven
WoodhouseSpa
YogiJones (Berry Chill)
Twitter Advanced Search
NearbyTweets
ChirpCity
LocaFollow

Facebook
Search Engine Land fan page
SearchEngineLand.com (fan page widget in right column)

Reviews
Nielsen: Consumers Trust Real Friends and Virtual Strangers the Most
Local Search Ranking Factors
Yelp FAQ (most reviews are positive)
Bazaarvoice Industry Statistics (most reviews are positive)

Reputation Management
Google Alerts
Yahoo Alerts
TweetBeep
SocialMention
BlogPulse
Yelp Business Owners’ Guide

If you have any questions or feedback about my presentation or the session in general, feel free to leave a comment below. There’s also a Contact button at the top of the page. I’d love to hear from you!

Whew. The 3rd annual SEMMY Awards are finally in the books. The winners in all 17 categories were announced this morning, and it’s a really great collection of articles. I’m proud to say that there are several first-time winners on this list, from several blogs/sites that were never even nominated before. That makes me happy, and suggests to me that the SEMMYS are on the right track. (I’m also proud to see my guest post on Small Biz Trends from last year win — it’s the one in the Small Business category below.)

Here’s the full list of winners:

• SEO: Surviving and Thriving as an Ecommerce SEO
• PPC: Discovering Keywords On the Cheap
• Social Media: 7 Reasons Your Social Media Marketing Failed (and how to fix it!)
• Local Search: Google Maps’ New Rules – Thoughts on Assumed Names and DBAs
• Link Building: 10 Goals For Link Building Campaigns: Moving Beyond “Get More Links”
• Blogs & Blogging: Guest Blogging: The Ultimate Guide
• Viral Marketing: 5 Must Do’s After A Successful Viral Marketing Campaign
• Analytics: Google Analytics For Local Search: Tracking Traffic From The 10 Pack
• Reputation Management: Be Proactive With Your Reputation Management
• Small Business: If I Were Launching a New Small Biz Web Site Today
• Google: Google Enables Real Time Spam and More
• Search Tech: The SEO geeks guide to information retrieval
• Design & Usability: Everyday Usability – 14-Point Checklist for Success
• Online Marketing/General: Thinking Positively About Negative Reviews
• Industry: 10 Questions to Evaluate a Social Media ‘Expert’
• Copywriting: Does Your Copy Need a Makeover? 7 Tests That Measure the Verbal Impact of Your Business Message
• Rants: Ignore the Silly Man, SEO Still Matters For SMBs

What’s Next for the SEMMY Awards

Every year there’s some grumbling and griping about the SEMMYS and how they’re organized. (BTW, if you’re not familiar with how it all works, I had a good conversation with Kim Krause-Berg in the comments of her post here.)

There was a lot less griping this year, which obviously pleases me. But I’ll say what I’ve said before: If anyone has constructive ideas and suggestions for how to make the SEMMYS better, I’m all ears. There’s a contact form right on this blog.

For now, the eight-person nominating committee is already busy nominating articles for next year’s awards. The committee will do that all year, and then next January I’ll roundup the judges to choose finalists in each category and we’ll go through the process again. I’m thinking it would be nice to find some new judges next year, not because I’m unhappy with the folks volunteering as judges now — but because it’s been mostly the same group for three years now, and there are a lot of smart, new people in our industry who I think would add a good voice to the process.

Thanks

First, to web designer extraordinaire David Mihm for all his time and energy keeping the SEMMYS web site in great shape.

Thanks also to the volunteer judges and nominating committee members for their time. They’re all listed in the Contributors & Judges blogroll on semmys.org.

Thanks to the folks who voted for winners in any/all of the 17 categories. There were more votes cast this year than either of the last two years.

Thanks to everyone across the industry who chooses to embrace the SEMMYS, especially those who do so without taking it too seriously. It’s odd to me that some well-known sites/blogs ignore the SEMMYS, but that’s their choice. Life goes on.

And thanks to all the excellent writers and bloggers who continue to teach me and the rest of us with your great articles, blog posts, and other types of content. I hope you see the SEMMYS as a token of the industry’s appreciation for you, whether you win or not.

Here’s my roundup of the best search/marketing posts I found and read during January. If you’re new to this blog, this is a monthly feature that began way back in 2007. You can find earlier “Best Of”s for each month in the Link Roundups category archive. I never include my own posts in these end-of-month recaps.

Small Business

• Bill Slawski/SEO by the Sea: Web Self-Help for Small Business

SEO

• Rob Ousbey/SEOmoz: Explaining SEO, Role by Role

PPC

• Andrew Goodman/ClickZ: Five Quality Score Myths Busted
• Giovanna Wall/PPC Blog: PPC Copywriting
• Glenn Gabe/SEJ: Will Your CMS Cause Paid Search Problems?
• George Michie/RKMG: How Important is the “Tail”? An Emperical Study

Link Building

• Russ Virante/The Google Cache: Getting Links from the Top 50 Domains

Social Media

• Michelle Bowles/Online Marketing Blog: 5 Ingredients for a Perfect Twitter Marketing Recipe
• Amber Naslund/Altitude Branding: Practical Social Media Measurement: Awareness, Attention, Reach
• Susan Cooper/BuzzEdition: How To: Get Your Twitter Account Suspended Or Banned
• Jason Falls/Social Media Explorer: Four Styles Of Marketing On Twitter
• Amber Naslund/Altitude Branding: Breaking A Goal Into Metrics
• Amber Naslund/Altitude Branding: 10 Ways to Get Serious About Social Media

Viral Marketing

• Tamar Weinberg/Techipedia: 7 Traits of Highly Effective Viral Videos

Blogs & Blogging

• Michael Gray/Wolf-Howl: How to Use Tags on Your Blog or Website
• Darren Rowse/Problogger: The Power of Uniqueness [19 Starting Points for Being a Unique Blogger]
• Glen Allsopp/ViperChill: What You Can Learn From The Most Tweeted Blog Posts Ever
• Michael Gray/Wolf-Howl: How to Speed up Wordpress
• Virginia Nussey/Bruce Clay Inc.: So You Wanna Reap the Marketing Benefits of a Business Blog?
• Lisa Barone/Small Business Trends: 100+ SMB Blogging Ideas to Kick Start 2010

Copywriting

• Karon Thackston/Marketing Words: Copywriting Secrets I Learned from the Kirby Vacuum Cleaner Man

Analytics

• Will Critchlow/SEOmoz: How To Get Past Last-Touch Attribution With Google Analytics
• Avinash Kaushik/Occam’s Razor: Five Sweet Web Analytics Resolutions To Kick It Up A Notch