Most articles on SEO and marketing blogs are all about answers. This one’s all about questions — seven questions that all small business owners should be asking about their online marketing strategies, tactics, and results. If I missed an important question or two, help me make this article better by adding it in the comments. Continued

When it comes to local search optimization and, in particular, the Google Maps algorithm, you’re likely to get 10 different answers if you ask 10 local SEOs, What are the most important local search ranking factors? The answer to that question, like just about every other SEO question, is, It depends. It depends on your location, the industry you’re in, the keywords you’re targeting, and many other things. Local SEO is harder than many SEOs think.

This is an updated version of a post that I first wrote on this blog in February, 2007. It represents a summary of my contributions to David Mihm’s 2010 Local Search Ranking Factors survey, which includes the thoughts of a couple dozen local search marketers. I highly recommend reading that for wider perspectives on the issues I discuss below. Continued

Few things grate on me more than hearing my fellow SEOs talk about how easy local SEO is. There’s less competition! The competition isn’t SEO savvy! Keyword choices are limited! It’s a piece of cake, they say. That’s about as accurate as me saying that traditional SEO is a piece of cake. Sweeping generalizations are often wrong, and below I’ll show why local SEO isn’t as easy as many think it is.

Have a look at the seven-pack results on Google for san francisco bakery: Continued

For decades, small businesses have been naming themselves “A1 This” or “AAA That” because yellow pages and similar directories listed businesses alphabetically. They optimized their company name for the primary marketing vehicle of their time; they wanted to show up first in those listings.

The online equivalent, to a large degree, is choosing domain names. And SBSM reader Laura recently sent in a question about optimizing domain names with SEO in mind.

Continued

Marketing success is all about numbers. We measure what we do in terms of

• revenue (i.e., numbers)
• profit (more numbers)
• visits/pageviews (again, numbers)
• fans, followers, subscribers (more numbers)
• etc.

But different numbers matter to different businesses. The key is to know which numbers matter to your business in your situation. Continued

It’s bad enough when vendors offer real estate SEO services and/or advice that isn’t worth a dime … but what about when the national organization that’s supposed to support real estate agents starts spreading around misinformation to its members?

The National Association of REALTORS® offered up some SEO tips in its official magazine last month via an article titled “6 Weeks to Better Search Engine Results.”

Continued

This is one of the most common questions small business owners and new bloggers ask. Blogging is uncharted territory. What should I write about? How often do I need to write? How long should a blog post be? Good questions all, but I’m focusing on the last one in this post.

First, though, I need to share my perspective on what a business blog is. This is how I described it at the GetListed Spokane event earlier this month:

It’s your chance to be real, to be yourself, and to be part of the conversations that are already happening online. It’s your voice, but only with more legitimacy than your main business web site offers. I love Jeremiah Owyang’s quote in this blog post:

The corporate website is an unbelievable collection of hyperbole, artificial branding, and pro-corporate content.

There’s a lot of truth in that, I think. And blogs can provide the opposite — more believability, less artificiality, more real content. So keep that in mind as we get back to the original question.

How Long Should a Blog Post Be?

My answer: As short or as long as it takes to say what you need to say.

1.) There’s no perfect length for a blog post. It’s like the idea of keyword density in SEO; there’s no magic number for keyword density on a web page, and there’s no magic number for how long your blog posts should be.

2.) A variety of blog post lengths is a good idea. For me, the most enjoyable blogs to read are the ones that offer variety; the ones that offer the unexpected. I think a blog is easier to read when there’s a mix of short posts, mid-length posts, and long posts. Too much of one type of post can be monotonous for the reader, and invites the reader to start tuning out.

3.) It’s natural to have posts with different lengths. If you believe that a blog is conversational in nature, then think about your blog posts as individual conversations. Important question: Is every conversation you have the same length? Of course not! You have conversations that last 10 seconds and you have conversations that last 10 minutes (or longer). This is how we communicate. So, if you’re trying to be natural on your blog (and you should be), your blog should have a mix of blog posts, some short and some long.

Blog Post Examples

I’m going to use this blog as an example to answer the question, How long should a blog post be?

Short Blog Post

How to Choose the Right Category in Google’s Local Listings — the main point of this post was to share a link with my readers to Mike Blumenthal’s Google categories tool. Aside from a quick explanation of why categories are important, I didn’t have much to say. The results:

Paragraphs: 4
Words: 135

Medium Blog Post

Alerts on Place Pages? I Want More From Google — the point of this post was to share a list of things I wish Google would add to its local business Place Pages. It was written when Google announced that business owners could post alerts on their pages, and I had seven other ideas of my own to share. So it needed more depth than the post above, but I didn’t need to write a novel. The results:

Paragraphs: 6, plus a list of 7 items
Words: 448

Long Blog Post

Why Reputation Management Matters for Small Businesses — this post was written to expand on one of the concepts in my SEO Success Pyramid. I knew I had a lot to say on this subject and, to be frank, I also wanted to write the type of blog post that others would link to, and that would have a shot at ranking highly for a term like “small business reputation management.” The results:

Paragraphs: 26, plus three lists
Words: 1,538
SEO: number one ranking for “small business reputation management” on Google (not signed in), Yahoo, and Bing

This last post — the long one — also received a very healthy 29 comments, which is often another benefit of the occasional long blog post.

Final Thoughts: How Long Should a Blog Post Be?

I consider all three of those example blog posts to be successful, because they accomplished the goals I had for them. If you’re a new blogger, keep this in mind:

1. Don’t feel like you have to limit your blog posts to a certain length — whether short or long.
2. If you can say what you need to say in 150 words, stop there and hit the Publish button. If it takes 1,500 words to say what you need to say, that’s okay, too.
3. For best results, I think a variety of short and long posts is a Good Thing. It keeps your blog from getting predictable.

Your turn: What are your thoughts on how long blog posts should be? If you’re a marketer, what do you tell clients who ask about this?

Postscript: Having published this post about 25 minutes ago and now just going through my feed reader, I’ve discovered Glen Allsopp’s excellent and related article, Bloggers: This Is How Long Your Posts Should Be, in which he examines the average length of posts in the top 5 blogs across various industries.

Here’s the latest addition to Google’s Local Business Center: a tool to add alerts/updates to your Google Maps Place Page. The widget you see here is only available to businesses that have claimed their listing in the Local Business Center; this update window appears in the upper right of the “View Reports” page. It lets you place a 160-character alert on your place page, and if you use it, your alert will expire after 30 days.

Google’s announcement positions this a tool for business owners to post daily specials or upcoming events. My wife, the real estate agent, doesn’t offer daily specials and rarely hosts open houses (they’re not very effective), so I had to think how we’ll use this. I found something Google doesn’t mention in today’s announcement: The alert box won’t accept HTML code, but it will turn a URL into an active link. So you could use it similarly to how you use Facebook or Twitter.

This is all fine and good, but when it comes to Google, I tend to want more.

What I Wish Google Would Do to Place Pages

Here are seven things I’d love to see Google do with its Local Business Center and Place Pages.

1. Follow the lead of Citysearch and let business owners pull in their Twitter updates for display right on the Place Page. (I’m betting that Google’s already working on this.)
2. A lot of businesses are on Facebook these days via “Fan Pages,” so let the business owner post one of those Fan Page widgets you see on web sites everywhere.
3. Even though some of the content will overlap with what’s already on a place page, let business owners pull in data from their Yelp profile page. Let them post a Yelp badge/widget on their place page.
4. In addition, let businesses add links to their Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, Flickr and other social profiles.
5. On that note, let business owners pull in photos from Flickr, like you already can on on a Google profile. Photographers and bakeries and other local businesses with a highly visual element to their business would love this.
6. Let business owners pull in content from their event listings on Upcoming.org, Zvents, and similar sites. Nightclubs and event-based businesses would love this.
7. Of course, do all this while still keeping the Local Business Center easy to use and without cluttering up the Place Page.

In a nutshell, I want Google to turn Place Pages into a local business owner’s online headquarters. Make it the one page the business owner wants all of its prospects and customers to find, see, and use.

I’m not asking too much, am I?