Local Internet Marketing with Google

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Hi, and welcome to today's Biznology Digital Marketing webinar. I'm Mike Moran, the managing editor of the Biznology blog. I'm also a digital marketing expert and chief strategist at Converseon, a leading social consultancy. I'm the author of 2 books, co-author of Search Engine Marketing, Inc., along with Bill Hunt, and the sole author of Do It Wrong Quickly. I'm also a veteran of IBM, managing groups in IBM.com for 8 years and retiring from IBM in 2008 as a distinguished engineer. Today, you'll be hearing from Frank Reed, the owner of Local Basics, who will present Local Internet Marketing Using Google Places. As we wait for more attendees to join, Let me review the format of our webinar. Our Biznology webinars last just 30 minutes, so you can easily fit them into your busy schedule. We record each webinar and we'll email you that link later this week. During our speaker's presentation, you can use your GoToWebinar controls to ask a question. That orange box, that orange arrow opens and closes your webinar controls. If you have a question, simply type it into the box labeled Questions at any time during the event and press the Send button. I'll select a few questions at the end of our webinar and pose them to Frank. While we're waiting for our last few attendees to join, I'd like to remind you that the Biznology newsletter and blog are available for free at MikeMoran.com. So if you're not already a subscriber, we hope that you'll sign up now. Thanks again to all of you for spending 30 minutes with us. We know how valuable your time is, so let's introduce today's speaker. Frank Reed is the head consultant and owner of Local Basics, an online marketing consulting firm for the small and medium business market. Frank has worked for companies ranging from CBS Sports to Madison Square Garden to PSI Net, to Corporate Chaplains of America. Frank has served as sales director for an SEO agency and has worked with clients on internet strategies including Sony, Doctors Foster and Smith, IBM, Quest Software, and Brinks Home Security, as well as many SMBs. He is also one of the bloggers at Biznology, and he's the managing editor for the Marketing Pilgrim blog, which is currently number 10 on the Ad Age Power 150. So if you've ever struggled with local internet marketing, this webinar is for you. Frank, take it away.

Google Places is an incredibly important part of any local business strategy, and why it's important is because basically it's important to Google, and Google has decided that moving forward to get away from its search and search emphasis with regard to how it makes money, which is with paid search ads. They want to try and learn really how to get into the social— or I'm sorry, the small business space and help to gain more revenue from the burgeoning local market. So some Google Places facts. It's important to Google, and quite honestly, because it's important to Google, the rest is irrelevant. So as business owners, whether you're a small business or you're a large business, Just because Google says it's important, then you have to realize that that's where you have to be. So why is it important to Google? Well, first, 20% of the searches on the desktop have some kind of a local intent. And that local intent doesn't necessarily mean that somebody has typed in a restaurant and a town, but they have typed in— maybe they've typed in Italian restaurant, and the return is going to be a local return because Google can tell where you're located. So they're going ahead and actually making it a local search, even though you may not have actually typed it in, but they know what your intention is. And then that number goes up drastically and becomes 40% in the mobile environment. As we get more and more smartphones in the marketplace, this is going to be even more important for Google and for really anybody who's using the internet to be able to identify local needs, and to do it quickly, and to do it efficiently. And because we're moving into this time, which for years and years we've talked about, this is the year of local, this is the year of mobile. Well, we're really here now. This is it. We have plenty of devices in the marketplace with Android and iPhones, and it's getting more and more. So local actually equals money now. And because it equals money, Google likes money, so that's why it's important to them. So when did Google Places become so important? Well, they've always been to some degree. But before October of 2010, they looked a bit different. You'll probably be familiar with what I'm going to show you here, which is a result where you had the map, which had all of the pushpins or all of the map pins in there. And right next to it, what was affectionately known at the time as the 7-pack. Which was the top place pages that were part of the search result. And this is a very, very important piece of information for searchers, and it became very important, obviously, to SEOs, because this would show up at the very top of any organic results and take up some valuable real estate in the search results. So the gaming was on, so to speak. But then Google changed the rules, and after October of 2010, they moved everything around and created an even greater importance for these pages. As you can see on the right-hand side over here, they moved the map and actually pushed down their ads, their bread and butter basically, and pushed them down. And then when you scroll through any of these, this map follows you through the scroll. And actually pushes these ads down a bit. And then they've taken these place pages and mixed them in with regular organic search results. And then over here is another spot where you can actually go and you can get to that place page. Now, you're going to see many variations on this theme. You're going to go, and you might do searches today and try and recreate what you see on the screen here. They are currently experimenting with a lot of different ways to present these, but one thing I can say confidently is that Google Google Place Pages have become so prominent, they've actually moved a lot of the regular organic search results down from when they would have been on page 1. They're now pushed down much, much lower below the fold or even pushed onto page 2. So that front page real estate on a local search is being taken up by Place Pages. And the thing is, it's not just about the little guy because Place Pages are actually in place for everything everywhere. There's about 50 million of these place pages that are in existence. Only about 10% of them have been claimed, however. They are for businesses, they're for actual locations, they're for destinations, and if you are a large business and you have several offices, as you can see here, any office in any city is going to have a place page. And the reason this is the case is that Google has taken information from a variety of different sources around the internet such as InfoUSA or Axiom or LocalEase, and they've taken this data and put it into place pages and created place pages for every location that they can find, regardless of whether it's a storefront or it's just an office. So in this case, we see here IBM in San Francisco. If you do a search for IBM San Francisco, this one box result is going to show up. Now IBM in this case does not have this particular place page optimized, so they lose an opportunity to tell a story what they do locally, even though they are a large international player. So is there more to this? There absolutely is. One of the things I found recently that's interesting, Google has taken their recommendation engine, which is called Hotpot, and that was rolled out just in the last 6 months or so. And what they've done is they've rolled Hotpot into Google Place Pages, so they're now in one spot. And what you're able to do is you're able to review these businesses using the Hotpot recommendation, and it's going to influence what kind of information is given back to you later. As you can see here, I did a search for a local restaurant in the town that I live in, which is called the Mellow Mushroom, and it was recommended because I had rated another local restaurant at 5 stars. And because that happened, this was given to them or given to me as a result. So as you can see, all of this is being integrated and it becomes ever, ever more important to own and optimize these place pages for your business or for your client's business because Google has placed such an emphasis on them. So how do you do that? Well, the first thing is that you need to claim the listing. Like I said earlier, only about 10% of these listings have actually been verified or claimed by the business owner. And as you can see here, that last result that I showed you, the Mellow Mushroom, which is a local restaurant here in Wake Forest, North Carolina, had not claimed their listing and they had not optimized anything in the listing. Basically, they're losing an opportunity to tell me about who they are, and if that particular result is going to show up as number one, the first thing that I see in a search for their business, that's a lost opportunity for them because they just can give me so much more information and I may just actually go to the place page because it's so visually tempting. I will just go there first and not even worry about trying to find their website. So once again, lost opportunity for the Mellow Mushroom, but let's not have that for your business as well. So what you need to do is you need to have a Google account. And inside of that Google account, you will go in and you will claim that business. And as you can see here, Google Places connecting your business with local customers. Once again, don't be confused by that because there is also a larger piece to this because every business, regardless of the size, is a local business to Google because they may have a local office, thus making them a local business. So what you can do, once you've claimed and verified these, well, actually you're going to go in and you're going to make sure that your name, address, and phone number are correct. Google may be getting information that could be years old. If you've moved the business, if you've changed the name, there are things that could be wrong about your business, and what you really need to do is make sure that anything that shows up in a place page also matches in an HTML form on your website as well, because that's one of the cues that Google takes to say this is an actual local business. Not only do they have a place page, but they also have a working website that they're paying attention to. So that's a critical component of what you should be doing, making sure that these work in concert. Originally, these place pages were simply going to be done And some people were saying they were going to replace web pages for small businesses, but Google has gone in a different direction, thankfully, because I don't think that they would do enough information or give enough information. You can give information, vital information like hours and specials. You can actually offer— there are offers now through Google. So there are all kinds of things that are going to be going through these place pages. Make sure you own it, understand what you can do with it, and why it's so important to your business. You can even monitor reviews from around the web. And this is a critical component for any local business because if I am not aware of somebody, I'm going to go in there and see what kind of reviews people are giving. And you can even go in and answer reviews that are from Google Maps. And what that means is if somebody is logged into Google Maps, they did a review as a Google user, you as the business owner can actually go in and answer that. So if it's a negative review, you can go in there and publicly ask what was wrong, what can we do, how can we make it good? So you get to show people that you're interacting with these customers even if there's trouble. And what Google likes to do is they like to aggregate all of these reviews from around the internet using CitySearch, Yelp, and Yelp is in there, sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, depends if they're yelling at each other or they're mad at each other, meaning Google and Yelp. You see OpenTable, TripAdvisor, and then at the bottom you see reviews by Google users. So what else can you do? You can insert up to 10 images, and I've actually seen more inserted in some place pages, so I'm not quite sure that this is a hard and fast rule. But you can put in 10 images. You can show the inside of your store. You can show the storefront. You can show products. You can do all those things that will give more people information about what you do, who you are, and why they should choose you. You can even put in 5 videos. So any videos that you have, you can insert into the place page. They will be there for people to view. I've seen this work very well with orthodontists or people who do cosmetic surgery, cosmetic dental surgery, showing before and after. There are a lot of different ways that you can use this that are very, very helpful. You even get separate performance stats that are separate from Google Analytics. Now one trouble is that they are actually separate, and they are not integrated with Google Analytics. So that's one troubling piece. So you have 2 separate analytics things to keep an eye on. But it's good information as to how many impressions you have, and how many actions have actually been taken on that place page. And by default, one of the nice things about Google Places, it actually provides a basic mobile strategy. What you see here is a split screen. There are 2 different versions of an Android screen using the Places app. So on the left-hand side, you see if you want to go in and find a restaurant, you would click on restaurants. And then the next screen, which would be to your right, is a list of restaurants in the area based on, obviously, your location using your GPS. And this list of locations are place pages. So by creating a good, strong presence using Google Places, you are by default creating a basic mobile strategy, which could be very, very important for any business, especially what we saw earlier with 40% of those searches on smartphones in particular having local intent. And then what's even more important is the idea that you're going to be able to rated and reviewed by that customer using their mobile phone, and all they have to do is go down here to rate and review, click on how many stars, and they're going to tell everybody what they think about your business. So how do you rank these? How do you get on that front page? Because restaurants in a huge city, let's say New York City, it's, you know, there's a lot of competition. Well, there are certain things that you can do, and the biggest one is to get citations. Which is the place page version of inbound links. For those of you familiar with SEO, inbound links are one of the most important elements of being able to rank your website. Those are people who have pointed to your website and basically voted for your website. Well, the place page version of that is called a citation. It's not an actual link where somebody links back to your place page, but it is a mention of your business on their website. So this is where directories come into play, and it's very important to have your information correct, meaning that name, address, and phone number basically across all the different varieties of directories that are out there. There are services that exist to do this. One is Universal Business Listings. There's also Local-ease, and I personally know of one competitor that's coming on board that I'm pretty excited about. I can't really say anything about it right now, but in the next month or so, there's going to be some serious competition to these players who have set up these areas where you can go in, give all your information, and then they disperse it accurately across all these different varieties of places, meaning directories. And then the last thing that you want to do is you want to make sure that you're doing SEO on your website. The combination of the two, of optimizing, claiming and optimizing your place page and then doing SEO on your website is a signal, a very, very strong signal to Google that you are a serious player and that you should be considered for ranking and being in those first positions, however they come up on that first page. So it's not just one or the other. What Google is asking you to do is have a complete presence and to care for that complete presence online. Now, one of the ways that you can figure out When I say figure out, that's kind of relative. It's difficult to figure this out, but you want to know what are the elements. I highly recommend that you go to this website, and there is an annual survey of local SEOs who tell you what are the most important factors, and they list the top 50. This year, it had to change because because there's now these blended results, which we saw earlier, where there's organic results mixed in with place pages, it actually had to be split in 2. So you find out, if you're just looking to rank from pure local factors, you're going to be given what are the most important signals. And then on the blended side, they'll also give you what the most important signals are. And you'll be able to get a copy of this and to get this information From Mike, from Biznology. So if you don't have a chance to copy down this URL, that's fine. We'll make sure that we get it to you. But I do highly recommend that you go there and you check this out because it's going to give you an in-depth, maybe an overly in-depth version of what you should be doing in order to rank your business when somebody is looking for your business, when somebody has that itch that needs to be scratched, when somebody goes to Google and they say, I I'm looking for such and such. In order for you to be there, you're going to know from these factors whether you're doing the right things or not. So once again, my apologies for our little technical glitch, but we do have a few minutes left. And there's so much more to explore. There's so much more to talk about. This is not a quick and easy, here's your cookie-cutter approach and you can do it that easily. It's not like that at all. There's also a lot of issues around Google Places. But this is a good introduction to give you a— kind of get your feet wet with regard to it. So are there any questions, Mike, that we have from the audience?

We've got a few teed up, but it's not too late for people to type in a question. That question box in your GoToWebinar controls, right now you can type in a question and we'll tee it up for Frank. So Frank, that was a terrific presentation. So first, we want to thank you for the great job you did in explaining the basics of local internet marketing with Google Places. Let me read the first question. Can someone else claim your Google Place page?

Well, that actually used to be a very big problem, but Google has gotten smart, just like they have when it used to be with search that you could game them, so to speak, and keyword stuff and do the kind of stuff that we remember from the late '90s to the early 2000s. The same thing has happened in the evolution of place pages where it used to be easy and anybody literally could go in and claim a place page. There are now many, many checks and balances put into place, the biggest being the verification process. And they're going to have either one of two ways to do it. And I recommend if you have the opportunity, if they give you the opportunity to do it by phone, To do that because it will be quicker first of all and also it's an indication for them that there's trust because what they're going to do is you're going to hit call me and you're going to get immediately a phone call back at the number that you've put in your place page for your business. So if it goes into a voicemail system, that's not going to help. You've got to have somebody literally pick up the phone. You'll be given a PIN number, and then you put that PIN number into the Google Places request, and then you're off and running. The other way that that happens is a postcard is sent with that PIN number, and then you input that PIN number into it. So it can still happen. There's no doubt about it. Anything can be gained. But it is much, much more difficult and much less common than it ever has been in the past.

Great answer, Frank. Let me read the next question. What's the average cost for using a vendor such as Universal Business?

You know, it's a little bit varied, and the reason it's varied, if you're going to do something basic with them, it can be as little as $40, and that's a one-time fee, and then there's annual renewal. But each one of these listing services has a variety of other services that they package. So you're going to be able to go in and make a choice as to whether you are able to do just a basic, all right, I just want to get the information out there and make sure it's clean, make sure my name, address, and phone number is clean across the internet. That's going to be your least expensive option, but I would pay attention to some of the other ones, and they fall maybe in the range of $100. I would say at the absolute most, maybe $200 with a renewal that usually falls in the $50 to $100 range. So it's a low cost to make sure that a very, very important part of your internet presence is cared for in a large amount of places. I've had people that know this stuff inside and out tell me, you should only be in as many directories as you can track. What they mean by that is if you try to do these manually and you try to put in 100 directories and then all of a sudden for some reason you've moved your business or the name of your business has changed, You've got to go in and manually change all those 100 in order for you to be in good standing with Google. That's not a good thing. So that's why these services have become so important, because they can do it en masse and make it much easier for the little guy to do.

Thanks, Frank. So next question. Can you give any kind of comparison between internet Yellow Pages and Google Places usage, or a comparison with With physical Yellow Page books?

Well, I mean, physical Yellow Page books, everybody wants to sound the death knell for them. And yes, they are fading in their importance, but there are still places where they're very relevant. I saw a funny thing on a show the other day. It was a group of 20-somethings, and they needed to get information about something. And the first thing the guy grabs is the phone book. And I was shocked. But he puts it on his lap and puts his laptop on top and says, my laptop gets really hot. I can't let it burn my lap. So he was using the phone book to prevent his laptop from burning him while he was getting information off the computer. So it is definitely skewing in that direction. And because Google, depending on where you are in the world, has up to 95% of the market— in the US, it's roughly 65%— of the search market, as you can see, they're using those place pages and putting them ahead of any listings from anybody else. Now, some people say that's unfair. I'm a free market guy. It's like, you know what, they built the system, they should be able to do that. I don't have any problem with it. So we have to play that game, and I think personally that Google Places is much, much more important than any listing in an internet Yellow Pages. Now, not to say to you to neglect it. But I think you're going to get a lot more play and a lot more juice out of a Google Places page, so make sure those are right.

Thanks, Frank. Let's see. How can negative reviews impact your Google Places page, and is there any way to weed out attacks on your business?

The negative reviews— here's an interesting phenomenon. People are smart enough to see that if you've got 25 reviews and they're pristine 5-star reviews across the board, That's just as bad as seeing a negative review because most people are suspect and they'll think that something's been gained. So having a negative review, it's like anything else in life. It's not so much the problem, it's how do you handle the problem. You're not going to be able to handle it publicly. What I mean by that is you're not going to be able to put in a written response to CitySearch or Yelp. I mean, you can, but it's not going to show up on your place page and each one of these reviews review sites has their own rules about that. That's why I tell people to, and encourage them to try and get people to review them inside of Google Maps, because that gives you a chance to respond. Now, how it impacts you, it really does not impact you with regard to your ranking. There's a very famous case recently where one gentleman was taking negative reviews, and because it got him so much, it garnered so much interest, he was actually able to trick Google in a sense, and the New York Times broke open this story and his negativity ended up getting him more traffic. Now, Google has made adjustments that will no longer happen and that gentleman is in jail, so I do not recommend you go that route. But I will say that negative reviews are not going to kill you because Google is realistic. They understand that businesses have rough times. Once again, it's how do you handle it. My thing is you always go and try and track down that reviewer and try and handle it, even if you can't do it online, right? in front of everybody else. Try to do something that will help that person and they may actually go in and they may actually say, you know what, these guys helped me out, that review from before doesn't matter. It doesn't always happen that way, but you've got to give it a shot.

Thanks, Frank. I have another question. Is name, address, and phone number enough for your Google Place page listing?

It's enough to help you, but it's not enough to do the best that you can possibly do. What I mean by that is if somebody clicks on there, there's one thing that was not shown in the presentation. If you don't put a lot of extra information in about your business, it would be your hours of operation, about specialties, coupons, and things like that, there's a spot that shows up that's called related places. So what Google does, they try to force your hand and say, look, you better fill in all this data. And give us as much as you can because what we're going to do is in this related places spot, we're going to show all of your competitors. So if you just have the name, address, and phone number, nothing else about your business, what's going to happen is they could say, well, gee, I don't know really anything about these guys. Well, look at this. There's 6 other guys that do the same thing. I'm going to try one of these. So while it's okay, and it's— as long as you verified it and it's correct, you're in the right direction. But I don't recommend that you just do that and leave it alone. You really should optimize your place page.

One last question. If you work with a universal business listings company, who owns the listings, UBL or the business being listed?

Make sure you own the listing. Everybody that I've worked with is, you know, the listing. Now, the one thing I will caution you on, please be very careful of this, everybody. If you're using an SEO firm, Implore them, make sure that you own that listing because what will happen, you'll find some folks that may end up being a little bit unethical and they'll end up putting it under their information or their Google account. So in essence, they can hold you hostage. If anybody— if you cannot get the answer from them saying, yes, this is yours and you own it and it's going to go under something that is your account, then do not do business with them. Because there's more services out there that do universal business listing, LocalEase, than some of these other guys do. So you have to be very, very careful. Just make sure that you are working with someone who is reputable, and if they are not going to say, yes, it's yours, you could be in for a world of hurt really, because you may not be able to get that information back out and they can control that place page moving forward. Now, at that point you have recourse with Google, but Google is pretty famous/infamous for not being great on support on these things, at least not yet.

Yeah.

So that could be a long and very, very strenuous and annoying process. So make sure you own it.

All right, Frank. Well, one person that I know who's extremely reputable and a local search expert is Frank Reed. And thanks to Frank for your great tips and ideas. That's all the time we have for today, but do check out localbasics.com so that Frank can help you with whatever your local search problems are. If you had a question that we didn't have the time to answer, it's not over. You can email your question to Eileen, E-I-L-E-E-N, at mikemorangroup.com, and she'll be sure to get them to Frank for an answer. Later this week, we'll send you all a link to the recording of this webinar to listen to again and to share with others. We also invite you to mark your calendars for our next Biznology webinar. Become a Twitter Power User that I'll be doing, scheduled for 11:00 AM US Eastern Time on July 19th. So that's it for us. Thanks— thank you everyone for your time and your patience, and I hope we'll see you again next month. Thank you, everybody.