Written by Lesa Seibert | 14 May 2012
Posted in SEO Tip of the Week

 

A recent review on small business search results found that more than 80 percent of results did not point to the websites of those businesses. Instead, they pointed to social network results and consumer reviews.

Some of the businesses surveyed were restaurants, travel agencies, law firms, beauty related businesses, plumbing companies and automotive repair companies – all highly susceptible to consumer reviews. These businesses and similar consumer-facing companies need to be aware of where they stand in search results with their own websites, compared to the rankings of reviews and comments from social media users.

It is a growing trend for consumers to go to their favorite review sites and leave reviews of companies they have done business with. A lot of times the reviews and ratings might not even be justified. So, not only is it important to know where you stand on these sites but also to have resources ready to speak out (or type) on your behalf. That means recruiting brand advocates. Of course, the best way to do that is to provide quality experiences for your users and to respond quickly to any problems before they become viral hate campaigns.

Some obvious places to look for your small business reviews are social sites like Facebook, Twitter and Yelp.com, and Google Maps, Bing, Yahoo Local, City Search and Local.com. Below are a dozen more places where your business or products might be getting reviewed.

InsiderPages.com
Mainly focused on rating those in the medical and health care field. Insider Pages also features reviews on restaurants, beauty and home & garden.

MerchantCircle.com
MerchantCircle focuses on promoting businesses by using online user reviews via a pseudo paid advertising system. Businesses can create their own local coupon book.

JudysBook.com
Judy's Book provides review guides to users, such as "Top 10 Auto Mechanics" and so on. Businesses can create their accounts and get help with promotion and SEO.

AngiesList.com
Angie's List is a paid service for consumers to get certified, unbiased reviews of local businesses. It is a large and trusted network, claiming more than one million members.

TripAdvisor.com
As the name suggest, TripAdvisor helps users filter travel destinations via user reviews. A must-know for travel businesses.

OpenTable.com
Because OpenTable.com allows users to make reservations immediately, good reviews on this site can help restaurants take advantage of the convenience factor.

BBB.org
The Better Business Bureau is a relative newcomer to the user review scene but its trusted reputation makes it a must-monitor for every business.

Buzzillions.com
Buzzillions' focus is products -- electronics, computers, sports equipment, clothing, etc. Manufacturers and retailers would be wise to research their products here.

Epinions.com
Part of the Shopping.com family, Epinions solicits reviews on just about anything a person can buy online -- from autos to office supplies.

Wize.com
Wize reports "the best & worst products" by matching products based on consumers' needs. The main focus is electronics and appliances.

PowerReviews.com
In tandem with Buzzillions, PowerReviews looks to connect consumers with reviews about the producty they care about, through SEO, mobile, social networks and more.

SiteJabber.com
SiteJabber provides reviews of websites as a whole. Obviously, every online property should make sure good things are being said about them, or find a brand advocate to get the ball rolling. They claim more than 450,000 people search websites for reviews every month.

Written by Lesa Seibert | 09 May 2012
Posted in Multimedia Tip of the Week

Last we we discussed setting up a YouTube Channel and making a Brand Channel out of it.  This week we are going to discuss how to get the word out.

There are many avenues you can choose to get the word out about your YouTube Channel.  The first is to post the videos and links to your channel on your website.  Then share them on your social media sites, like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.  You can also share them on your blog and via email marketing by adding the link into your email blasts.  YouTube also makes it easy to share videos and make sure to ask your audience (customers) to subscribe to your channel.

YouTube also provides advertising options for brands.  You can advertise with a promoted video, which allows advertisers to choose which keywords their video will show up next to and only pay when a viewer clicks on the promotion and watches the video.  Other options include a partner-watch program that allows companies to advertise next to content partners; in-stream display ads, homepages ads, customer marketing programs, YouTube mobile ads and more.

Once your channel is up and running, make sure to review your strategy.  The most important aspect of any marketing plan is the analytics, because these numbers show how successful or unsuccessful the project is.

Sometimes it can be difficult to analyze how video views turn into conversions.  YouTube provides many statistics to help brand channel managers analyze the popularity of specific content.  Recently YouTube updated its analytics data with the launch of YouTube Analyitcs.  This is a tool that provides a quick overview of important information, detailed  reports, as well as how much of a video the viewers are actually watching.

These statistics allow brands to analyze what type of content is the most popular with its audience.

Written by Lesa Seibert | 07 May 2012
Posted in SEO Tip of the Week

Last week we discussed the importance of and how to optimize listings on local directories.  This week we are going to look at optimizing your website itself for local search.

Optimizing your actual website content should also be an important part of your local awareness efforts on the web.  Optimizing titles, descriptions, header tags, body text and alt text should all be focused on the city/region for which you are optimizing by including the city/region name liberally throughout the landing page or site pages being optimized.

If your business has more than one location, but only one website, it is imperative to have a landing page for each and ensure that the information is current and has proper address tags.  The landing page will have information on each locality that is specific to that location. 

Another important step is to use a geo sitemap and a regular site map and make them accessible from the root directory of your website. 

A final note is that you have a lot of competition out there and one way to make sure there is some interest in the search terms you want to rank for is to user the Regional Interest Map on Google's Insights for Search -http://www.google.com/insights/search.  This tool allows you to see which state and metropolitan areas index high against search volume for a particular word or phrase. 

Written by Lesa Seibert | 03 May 2012
Posted in Internet Marketing Tip of the Week

PayPal has put themselves in an enviable position on the web as of late with a 22% increase in revenues in the last year.  With mobile payments on the verge of erupting into a multi-billion dollar industry in the next few years, analysts are predicting that PayPal's revenues will overtake those of eBay's Marketplace by 2014.

What make it even better is that PayPal is a very accessible partner to any online business.  PayPal recently announced some new procuts that are exciting web professionals:

• PayPal for Digital Products - this is a micropayments solution that lets consumers pay for digital goods such as games, music and videos in as little a two clicks without ever leaving the publishers site.  This new solution will be integrated into Facebook to make PayPal the social network's new digital goods payment method, offering users the safest, fastest and most cost-effective solution for sending and receiving micropayments of under $12. 
• Mobile Payments Library - A new functionality targeting subscription businesses that will enable pre-approved, chain and split mobile payments to be process through PayPal accounts.
• PayPal Here - A mobile app that allows you to accept credit and debit cards, PayPal and checks anywhere you do business.
• PayPal Fundraising Tools - PayPal offers multiple fundraising tools to make it easy to collect donations for your favorite cause(s).

Written by Lesa Seibert | 02 May 2012
Posted in Multimedia Tip of the Week

YouTube combines two of the hottest online marketing trends today, video and social media.  The platform receives more than 800 million unique visitors every month and more than 3 billion videos are viewed on the site every day.  YouTube is the second largest search engine next to Google.  So, do you have a YouTube Channel yet?

First go to www.YouTube.com and complete the basic setup process.  Once that is complete, a business must send its username to a YouTube representative and request to have the account converted into a brand channel.  Brand channels offer features that aren't available on standard channels, like a channel banner image, side column image and video page banner.  They also provide the ability to specify demographic filters and offer user tracking.

Once your channel has been converted to a brand channel, customization is the next and most important step. During this process, the brand is starting to set the tone of the channel.  You should remember that the final channel appearance and content should be cohesive.

Next it is time to start creating content.  You can produce many different types of videos for your company from a company overview to product or service overviews, client testimonials and how-to videos.  One thing to remember is to keep your videos short.  A good video length is between 45 seconds and two minutes.  If it requires longer, think about spitting it up into a series so that your audience does not get bored or overwhelmed with information.  The quality of the video is more important than the quantity. 

Next time we will talk about how to use your videos and spread the word.