Tag Archives: Google My Business

Google Changes for Local Business (Yes, Again)

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Google+ and Social Media Walls Tumbling Down for Local Business

Read the latest on changes the Google+ is making and how it might affect your local business:

Google Mobile searchimage

Google Now Crawls Facebook

It has now been announced that Facebook is “allowing Google to crawl and index its mobile app.”

What does this mean for your local business? It means that Google Search results on Android devices will begin to show more Facebook information.

This is currently only in Beta and only available for Android devices, but if a customer or potential customer is using Google to search for something you carry, it is now possible that if you talked about it on Facebook it might show up in their search results.

Facebook logo

Not only could it show up, there will be a link that will take them directly to the Facebook app.

Of course not every status update you make on Facebook will be indexed. Currently there is only a small percentage of Facebook information that is being indexed.

As is the case with all Google searches (mobile and desktop) pages with higher authority will be more likely to be indexed and served up.

Facebook claims that your PRIVATE info will not be indexed.

web search

While it is too early to tell, there may be some added benefits for local businesses in terms of mobile search results.

This could bring more non-Facebook users to your FB page. It could also bring people in who are FB users, but not currently logged into their FB page.

One of the theories behind this shift is that Google has lost ground in the mobile search arena. Earlier this year they announced a deal with Twitter for search. Now Facebook. It may be that the social media walls are beginning to crumble, allowing for some transparency between the platforms.

Then again, this could all go away as Facebook improves its own search engine.

What should I do?

  • Keep posting on your Facebook page, talking about services/products/events that are important to you, your business, and your community.
  • Make sure your profile is optimized.
  • Optimize your Facebook pages.
  • Keep posting on other social media platforms that fit your business and community.

Google+ Redesigned

google-plus

There have been rumors flying around for quite some time that Google was going to get rid of the Google+ pages.

While it doesn’t yet look like our local business pages (no matter what Google decides to call them) are going to disappear completely, we are seeing changes in the structure.

If you have logged into your page lately you probably will have noticed the change already. Touted as being simpler to use and more mobile-friendly, the big shift is that “Communities” and “Collections” are now the focus.

They are separating functions, removing things like Hangouts. G+ is also moving away from connecting with other people, in a Facebook sort of way.

You can still have a Google+ profile, but we are told that will be migrating to a generic profile called “About Me.” Anyone can create an About Me profile, and the G+ profile will not be a requirement for commenting on YouTube videos and the like.

What does this mean for my local business?

Don’t panic if something that you used to have on your business page seems to have disappeared. It may come back.

We will have to wait to see what the future brings on all things Google. It may be that we will start to make updates on an About Me page rather than G+.

What are communities?

They are like groups in Facebook. You (personally or your business) can join various communities which are centered on specific topics. The groups may be private or open. You can choose whether or not you want your membership in a group to be public on your profile or not.

What are collections?

Collections are a place where you can curate content. Similar to Pinterest with content not just pictures. Other people can follow (subscribe) to one or more of your collections.

So if you have a business that sells two (or more) distinct product lines, you could create a collection for each. If you are a hair salon, as an example, you might have a collection on hair styles and another on hair care products. A furniture company might have a collections based on rooms such as bedroom, living room and dining room. A candy company might have collections based on types of sweets, such as chocolates, hard candies, and chewy candies.

What should I do?

Don’t panic. Don’t despair. Don’t dump your Google+ pages. Remember, Google+ is part of Google and therefore connected tightly with Google Search.

This is a beta test. Google moves in waves, so you may not even see a difference yet. Even when/if you do, it might not last.

  • Become familiar with collections.
  • Think about how to create your own collections. This is where you will be posting ultimately if things go the way Google says it will. The content you post in your collections will be indexed.
  • Keep your profile current and optimized, but make sure your website and Facebook pages are as well.

Remember, Google seems to like to make changes for local businesses. In the end, their goal is to provide a good experience for their users. Those users are the people who are searching for your business! Does Google always get it perfect? Nope, but they do seem to be willing to say “mea culpe” and try to fix it.

Focus on your business. Use the tools you have that are working for you. Learn some new ones if you don’t have enough business or have mastered those.

Don’t try to know it all–be willing to admit that just maybe you aren’t perfect at it all either, and reach out for help if you need it.

Lifesaver

Thanks to Social Media Examiner and Silicon Valley Business Journal for the intel!

Search Tips for Local Businesses: Your Site Name

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This is part 5 of a 6 part series on search tips for local businesses

Should Your Site Name be Your Business Name?

Search Tips for Local Businesses: Your site nameFor many businesses, they want their website name to be the same as their business name. And for many this makes sense. Especially if you are a big, well-known brand. Someone looking for a hardware store in your area may just type in the name of one of the big box stores rather than using keywords. In those instances have your site name (your URL) match your business name is important.

If you aren’t a big brand, you might consider using a keyword in your URL, possibly in conjunction with your business name. If your business is specific to a town then you may want to also consider using your town name in your site name. Both of these can help the search engines know what your business is about and where you are located.

When people search for a Mexican restaurant they may not include the town they are looking in. That’s okay, because the search engines are smart and know the IP address the search was made from—and the town that that IP address is located in. It isn’t perfect, but it means that they will tend to serve to the potential customers the Mexican restaurants nearer to them, not ones across the state or country.

By including your town in your URL you can help the search engines serve up your listing to people in your area.

One word of caution—if you have your town in your URL then you do not want to put your town in every page and description. Sometimes that can be misinterpreted by the search engines as “keyword stuffing”

OK, you want to build a brand and therefore you want to have a website with your name, not a keyword based URL. That’s okay. There are ways that you can have your cake and eat it too. By having two URLs you can take advantage of local search strategies and still build your brand and name recognition.

Search Tips for Local Businesses: Local Search Optimization

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This is part 1 of a 6 part series

Local Search Optimization

local search marketing

Be sure your business is optimized for local search. It is important to note that this is different from traditional SEO practices. While having a website can be a great idea, it is not necessarily the first place you should start–even when talking about getting found online! (I know, sacrilege, right?)

What local search optimization does for you is it actually helps the search engines and your potential customers to fine you online. It also helps them to find what content is most important on your site, if you have one.

The first thing you must decide as a local business owner who wants to improve their local search rankings is what is most important for YOUR business. And that depends on the type of business you have. The needs of a retail shop will be different from those of a restaurant and those of a doctor, for example.

Most local businesses want more customers to come into their physical location. As one friend puts it, “boots in the door.” With that goal in mind, you want to focus your web presence on getting local search results.

If you don’t have a website yet, this is the ideal time to get it done right. A website is not just about looking good. It is about being found, and that requires the right structure. It takes some planning, but really is a pretty logical process. You can take this on yourself if you have or get the right training. Otherwise, hire someone who specializes in websites for local search results. This is a very important distinction to make when having your site built.

Already have a website? No worries. You can tweak what you already have to get found more easily by Google. If you don’t know how, give us or another local search company a call to improve your results.

The tools of the trade to get results: website structure, optimizing each page, using tags properly, and adding keywords, links, and metadata.

Social Proof is in the Pudding

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Social proof is a common catch phrase these days, but what does it mean?

It is being suggested by many “experts” that social proof is something new, something that business people didn’t have to think about before.friends talking

Perhaps I just think of social proof more globally than some other internet consultants, but I think that idea is crazy. Social proof is not a new local business marketing concept at all, but how it works today is quite different from the past when it was neighbors talking over the fence or over a beer.

Businesses have always relied on social proof in one form or another. It is just that the form changes and now we have a convenient label for it.

Word of mouth advertising has long been the standard for social proof, and is most certainly not a contemporary construct. Businesses large and small have long known that if they can get their happy customers to tell other people about them and recommend them that it is the least expensive and most successful advertising campaign they have.

Social proof has always been about customers indicating their support for your business. That has not changed.

What has changed is HOW they demonstrate their support.

Today your customers are online every day. They get most of their information from the internet, more than the television or radio, more than print publications. And this trend continues to accelerate as we are seeing the millennials and younger folks ever more tied to their electronic devices.

Whether shopping locally or buying something across the globe, more and more people are relying on the internet to gather information before making a purchase.

Social proof has always been part of that research process, it is just easier to get these days. You no longer have to talk to lots of different people to learn their opinions and experiences–it is all there online.

What is social proof in current terms then? It is how your business is supported online. This can be done by customers posting a review on Yelp, Angie’s List, or any number of other review sites. It can be comments left on your blog or your Facebook or G+ page. It can even be that someone links to your business website on their blog or Facebook page, or that someone shares a post that you have written.social media icons

How do you get more social proof for you business?

Excuse me for stating the obvious, but you have to get social. Nope, you don’t have to do it all. Unless you have a lot more time on your hands then most business owners I know, you can’t anyway.

Learn a little bit about the various types of social media and pick one, give it a go and see if you like it. I’m a firm believer that if you enjoy it, you will have better results. If you find you aren’t enjoying it, you can try a different avenue.

If you are a visual person or you have a visual type business, then Pinterest might be a good choice for you. If you naturally talk in sound bites, you might try Twitter. If you are in a B2B field, or are looking for professional connections, check out LinkedIn. Facebook is gaining ground on the major search engines and gives businesses some more flexibility in their posts and pages. These are just a few of the many options that are available to your local business.

There is no one best social media, one that works for every single business in every single market. Find where your customers are online and start there. Then dive into that online “pudding” and get some social proof.

Ranking #1 in Google is Best: Myth or Reality?

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It was common just a few years ago for business owners to insist that they want to be ranked #1 in Google search. And just a few years ago that was both more critical. And it was actually possible to achieve relatively easily. Google_logo

Nowadays, not so much.

With all the changes in the world of internet search, updates to search engines (remember the cutely named, but not so cute in results Panda and Penguin?) this has become more of a challenge.

Especially for local businesses, we have seen the search results change dramatically month to month as the search engines change the way they deliver results to the customer.

So what should you do?

First, keep in mind that searching on the internet is organic–meaning that it changes and evolves.

Second, recognize that the search engines underlying goal is to make money. Sure this includes taking in money (a  lot of money) in advertising. But if that is all they did they would lose the end user–the people who are actually using their service. For free. That means they will keep changing and tweaking their systems in an effort to give the best results for the person conducting the search.

Third, face the fact that people are placing more and more faith in on-line reviews and ratings.

What does this mean for the local business owner?

Be willing to keep learning about local search, or be willing to pay someone to do it for you. The old days of placing the same old ad in the phone book or newspaper are gone. Not that you can not or should not advertise there. For some businesses print media is still a very valuable marketing tool.

Know what works for you–know how your customers are finding you right now. We’re finding that this varies by region as well as by business type. And of course, it changes over time. You need to keep asking your customers or clients how they found you. Don’t assume that just because last year most of them found you on Yelp* that next year they will too, any more than you would assume that because the phone book worked for you in 1990 it is still the best bang for the buck today.

Ask your best customers if they will give you a review online. Don’t offer them a free service or a discount in exchange for a positive review. That violates most terms of service. Simply ask them if they are happy with your work if they would do you the courtesy, or a favor, by writing a review.

Don’t worry if you are not in the #1 position on Google. Look to see who else is in the results with you. Take your business owner hat off and try to look at the results like a potential customer would. Which listings stand out the most? Is it the #1 listing? Maybe not.

Current studies indicate that listings with more reviews and especially lots of positive reviews with stars get clicked on more often–even if they are lower in the search ranks.

Focus on making your current customers happy. Ask for reviews.

And if you need more help, call in a professional–just don’t let them tell you they will “guarantee” that you will be #1 in Google. Now you know they can’t and that isn’t the bottom line anyway.

Latest Google Fiasco: How’s Your 7 Pack?

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How’s your 7 pack looking these days?

Nope, I’m not asking you to check out your body in the mirror before you go clubbing, so relax!

If this sounds new to you, the “7-pack” is the term given to the group of business listings returned when you do a search on a keyword term. For example, if I am sweltering in the summer heat and want to go swimming and search on swimming pool I might get the following results.

Google search 7 pack

Google search 7 pack

This is a classic 7 Pack. Some of the listings are for swimming pools, one is for the swim beach at the Lake Loveland, and one is for a business that one presumes services or sells swimming pools. Then there is the School District office which doesn’t have a pool to my knowledge, but some of their schools do so…there you go, not an exact science, but one we are used to.

Google has been experimenting with the 7 pack for several years. Sometimes you will get 7 results, sometimes 10. Other searches will yield 5 listings or only 3.

 

Map Problem #2

You know how you could click on the “Map results for swimming pool” and it would take you out to Google Maps and provide you with page after page of listings. After I get over the motion sickness this process inevitably induces (but that’s for another story) I can see a few mapped results and then I have to click yet again to get additional listings.

In essence, Google has been making it more cumbersome to get the information we are looking for as consumers!

It used to be if I was looking for someone to clean my pool, repair my pool filter, a place to buy some pool chemicals, or I wanted to install a pool, I could find all of that information by searching on swimming pool. Kind of a one-stop-shop. Cool.

Google map search

Google map search

So I know we aren’t the swimming pool Mecca of the world here in Loveland, but are there no more than 9 swimming pool related facilities and/or businesses in the area? Because 9 is all that comes up.

I don’t mean in the pack.

I don’t even mean on the first map page.

I mean TOTAL. This is page one…and there are no further pages.

What About a ZERO Pack

Even worse, for lots of terms there are ZERO business listings returned. Lately it seems that more and more are resulting in ZERO listings. What gives with that?

Of course you can try adding more words to  your search, but that is a PITA and why should I have to if it was working before?

Clearly, someone has decided it wasn’t working and they have tried to fix it.

The Problem for Local Business with Fewer Results

Someone has apparently decided that we can’t handle the volume of choices we had before and they have developed a system that gives us fewer results.

It stinks. I want my choices back.

I did a search today looking for a particular service–and 33 results came up. That should be more than enough, right?

It would be except that they were for 3 different companies–in their various locations. Some of the locations are over 50 miles away.

That is not local. At least not in my town.

So Google–fix this fiasco! When I’m searching for a local service, I want local. I am not going to drive to Denver to find it when I know I can get it here. And I certainly do not need a listing of every single store in a chain. Not helpful.

 

 

 

Google Changes Names Again

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If you run a local business then chances are very good you have a web page courtesy of Google.

Hopefully you already knew that! google-plus-240px

It is fantastic that Google has created these pages–they can really help your business get found, but really only if you set them up correctly. And maintain them.

If you haven’t already claimed your page, or if you don’t know what I’m talking about, then you can start at the very beginning. Which as Sister Maria would tell you is “a very good place to start”. Amen to that!

However if you have already claimed your page some time ago then you may be confused about “Google My Business” and what that means. Google, in their infinite wisdom, after creating these pages has insisted on changing the names of these pages numerous times.  Google My Business is the latest incarnation.

There are some advantages to the GMB structure in that you can now have a brand page become a local page.  Click here to read more about that.

This is the link to the Google support center for more information on Google My Business, Google Places and Google+ for businesses.

So no matter what these pages are called, Google Places, Google Local, Google+, or even Google My Business, they are only a good business tool if you know HOW to use them–and then take the steps to get them working for you.