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Author: Search Influence Alumni

  • Big List Of SEO Blogs … These are Blogs You Should Read!

    cast my net for collecting SEO blogs
    I cast a big net in asking all of our employees for their favorite internet marketing blogs

    We often tell our junior-most employees to read SEO blogs to expand their knowledge. (I have heard this instructed to our freshest faces about 3 times in the last week.) The more experienced staff is humble enough to say in a very matter-of-fact voice, “I don’t have all of the answers.” And in this industry where things change daily, keeping up with the latest has to be an active task by many.

    I was trying to compile a list of SEO related blogs for our newer employees to read and keep up with to help them grow their knowledge and hopefully to stir some entrepreneurial spirit. We love when we hear,

    “Hey, I was reading about this thing, and I was thinking we can try it for that client X.”

    Reading industry blogs and innovative thinking, trying to apply the things you’re reading about are all good things we encourage.

    To compile this all encompassing list o’ blogs, I cast a big net in asking all of our employees for their favorite internet marketing blogs. Wowsa! We have a lot of folks around here truly interested in the industry and in honing their own skills. I got a lot of response by a lot of team members. I have quoted 4 of our contributors because their responses were the most comprehensive.

    Joseph Henson, our resident Local Search Marketing Specialist, kicked off the responses with a fairly comprehensive list.SEO blogs from Joseph

    Doug Thomas loves research and has a real interest in the technical side of things, i.e. he likes to see what makes things tick. SEO bogs from Doug

    He mixed it up with a list of blogs clearly showing what he’s interested in and gotta love his commentary:

    Our fearless leader, Will Scott, added a few more …  SEO blogs from Will

    Julia Ramsey is our go-to for excellent writing, great editing, and extraordinary blogging. SEO blogs from Julia

    She threw in a few more blogs worthy of our list:

    We inspired Will with our list of reading sources, and in that inspiring light, he created a Google Reader bundle which should allow you to grab the whole group. Thanks, Will, for making it easy for the world to keep up with the latest and greatest in SEO!

    If you read one of the above blogs, we are interested in your feedback.  Or if you regularly read an SEO or internet marketing blog that is not listed here, please let us know. We would love to check it out!

     

    (Thanks to Brian http://www.flickr.com/photos/briangratwicke/ for the net casting image – nice pic!)

  • Online Reviews and Reviewers: Using Yelp’s Messaging Features

    I discussed the value of online reviews in my previous blog post — check it out here: The Importance of Online Reviews: What Your Customers Really Think.

    I’d like to delve more deeply into the subject to discuss the ways in which a business owner can use reviews in a proactive manner. Since you’re obviously already following the best practices I described in my last post, I won’t go into depth about them here.

    If you are actively involved in your online presence, it’s likely you have heard of Yelp! If not, see below for an introduction to the variety of tools that are available to business owners. It’s brief and very informative!

    Now that you have been formally introduced to the wonderful world of Yelp! I’d like to talk about using the messaging feature discussed in the video.

    We will dive a bit deeper into the advantages briefly discussed in step 3 & 4 and 7 & 8.

    Take some time to read all of the reviews that are on your Yelp! business page. When reading comments:
    • Be patient and diplomatic
    • Do not take complaints personally
    • Treat each review as a valuable source of feedback and a way to improve your businesses success

    Once you have taken the time to read the comments, decide which Yelpers you wish to reach out to. If there is a trend that you are able to pick up on while reading the reviews, you can bet potential customers will do the same. For example, examining a restaurant’s page with multiple reviews commenting that the ambiance is loud or the service is slow, readers might come to the (quite reasonable) conclusion that your restaurant is, in fact, noisy and badly-staffed. Now you know what you need to address and get to work.

    There are two different types of messaging options; Send a Private Message or Post a Public Comment.

    Yelp Online Reviews

    Yelp! allows Biz.Yelp Accounts to contact up to 5 people per day. Use these to either post public comment responding to reviews or send private messages to individual reviewers. Below are the top 3 things you can do on Yelp!

    1. Respond Publicly to Negative Reviews – For reviews that speak to issues that may have existed and been corrected since the review was placed. Thank the reviewer for their feedback and inform them of the changes that you or your staff took to address and fix the problem mentioned. Invite the guest back to experience the positive changes first hand. Do this publicly so that everyone that reads the reviews sees an active business owner that is concerned about customers’ experience with them.

    2. Respond Privately to Individual Guest Issues – For those reviewers that had issues associated with their individual experience respond via private message. If a guest complained that their meal was cold, send a private message apologizing for the cold food and invite them to come back to have a free sample of your wares. Be mindful that you are not allowed to solicit reviews on Yelp!, though. Obviously you can hope the reviewer has a better second experience and updates their original review; however, you can not directly request that they do so. I recommend that you use the private message feature for this type of complaint. You do not want to give the impression that everyone that goes to your business and makes a complaint will get something for free.

    3. Be active – Offer promotions, sales, or information on your Yelp! business page to encourage people to come back on a regular basis. An active business owner will go a long way to create engagement and interaction with their reviewers.

    These are just some of the main ways to reach out to Yelp! users. The simplest way to think about how to interact with these reviews is how you would respond if they had directed the review in person. How would you respond? What would you say? What would you do? Think about it and respond in the manner you deem appropriate; keep it professional and positive. The tools are free, so why not?

  • 5 For Friday — Links, Stories & Posts For Your Weekend

    SEO Secrets, Tips & Tricks – Why it’s Not Worth Your Your Time — Graywolf’s SEO

    Everyone wants to say they have a surefire array of “secret ingredients” that will launch your website to optimization superstardom — but like most things in life, it’s not that easy. Michael Gray takes on the phenomenon, eschewing the tips-and-tricks way of thinking for old-fashioned discovery of what works, why it works, and how to make it work again when something goes wrong.

    Google Points Out 5 Common SEO Mistakes [VIDEO] — Marketing Pilgrim

    The rumblings of a Google algorithm update are now impossible to ignore, and you should be preparing your site for the shift. The update targets “overly-optimized” sites — however, even if your website is unique, solid and purposeful, this informative video is worth checking out for the detailed explanations and helpful strategies that lead Google developer Maile Ohye offers up.

    Social Media Disconnect: It Matters, But We Have No Strategy — Small Business SEM

    A study carried out on high-ranking business executives shows a serious disconnect between the realization of the importance of social media, and the impetus to carry through with brand-building campaigns. Would the phenomenon be even more pronounced with small business owners?

    5 Interesting Pinterest Marketing Campaigns> — Mashable

    Pinterest is the new hotshot in social media establishments, drawing record-breaking growth numbers and unique visually-focused sharing. Check out some of the most notable campaigns in recent memory — getting any ideas for your own business?

    Netflix and Yahoo Pin Their Hopes on Original Content — Marketing Pilgrim

    Online video giant Netflix and has-been search engine Yahoo don’t seem to have much in common — except for their shared interest in web-only, direct-to-screen video. Find out what these companies are doing to revolutionize ad-free (but not revenue-free) video accessible to anyone with a connection, and pick up some tips for your own use along the way.

  • The Most Impactful Restaurant Review Directories (According to Google Data)

    Entrance to a restaurant in France

    We all know that online reviews are important because more and more potential customers are consulting them before they make a purchase decision; simultaneously, reviews are all over the place and popping up in web search results. Sometimes, even when someone searches for your business name, a review site is the first result. It makes sense, then, that you would need to manage your presence on these sites — but where to start?

    For those with limited resources who can’t find the time to manage all your listings (or if you’re just curious like me) I gathered a list of the most impactful restaurant review sites based on real data that I stole from Google observed in Google search results, rather than arbitrarily deeming one more important than the other.

    I decided the most impactful sites would be the ones that rank the highest on average, and show up the most often, in restaurant-related searches. To figure this out, I gathered a list of 583 keywords composed of [restaurant + city name] like [antoine’s new orleans] and [del fina san francisco] for restaurants in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, New Orleans, New York and San Francisco. Then I used Advanced Web Ranking to run searches of these keywords in Google and record the information.

    In the chart below, the Average Rank column indicates how a particular domain was ranked, on average, for the 583 restaurant searches. (To see the full list of keywords and stats, check out the Google doc here). As you can see, Yelp is far and away the highest ranking, and therefore the most impactful.

    Domain Average Rank
    yelp.com 3.3
    opentable.com 5.3
    urbanspoon.com 7.1
    menupages.com 7.2
    tripadvisor.com 8.1
    citysearch.com 8.3
    zagat 9.7
    chow.com 11.4
    local.yahoo.com 12.4
    allmenus.com 13.3
    yellowpages.com 13.7
    gayot.com 13.9

     

    Yelp’s dominance isn’t only revealed in how high it ranks in the SERPs for these queries, but also in its share of the searches. A Yelp link was present in the top 20 results for 97% of these searches! The closest competitors are Urban Spoon (87%), Trip Advisor (77%), and City Search (73%). After Zagat at 66%, there is a huge drop off. See the chart below.

    Domain % Share of Searches
    yelp.com 97
    urbanspoon.com 87
    tripadvisor.com 77
    cityseearch.com 73
    zagat.com 66
    opentable.com 43
    local.yahoo.com 38
    menupages.com 36
    chow.com 26
    gayot.com 25
    allmenus.com 18
    yellowpages.com 18

     

    What all of this really means is that if you don’t know where to start, you should probably just start with Yelp, Open Table and Urban Spoon. Or, if you have a chain of restaurants that need immediate attention, start with Yelp, Urban Spoon and Trip Advisor, since those sites seem to have a presence on most SERPs.

    How high a review site ranks matters because it has the power to reach your customers before you do. I’ve blogged about this in the past: you need to tell your story in your words so that others don’t end up doing it for you because that can get ugly. Of course, the best way to do this is by having such a great product that no one can complain, but there’s always going to be the guy who gets really, really pissed when you don’t have black napkins.

    About the Data

    Please note that this is an extremely small set of keywords, and these are probably not statistically significant figures, since our sample is extremely small compared to all of the possible local restaurant searches in the United States (although, I still think the findings are meaningful, since the difference between Yelp and most of the other sites is consistently large). Also, as you can see on the Google doc, those aren’t live calculations, I did them in Excel and didn’t have time to convert them to doc formulas. Lastly, know that, of course there can be some bad data in here (perhaps a certain keyword didn’t turn up restaurant results, and therefore skewed the results). Feel free to point out any mistakes with my assumptions, data and calculations. Most of all, please chip in if you have a list of restaurant names and let me know which city they’re in, and I’ll update the information accordingly, as it was a lot more difficult to find a raw list of restaurant names than I thought it would be. Don’t forget to share you comments below!

  • The Yelp Review Filter is Broken

    A few months ago I came upon an EpicFail image that I found amusing. The image was of a supposed Google review. The review was actually a positive review, but it was the content that really grabs one’s attention:

    “Wendy’s SoNnNnNnN This place is BAWLIN’ yo. Chicken nuggitz be crispy like you never SEEN. I tried one and I was like ‘WHAAAAT! Are you serious Wendy?’ Mean girls workin’ the frier tho. This one chick wouldn’t let me holla. I was like ‘please you ugly anyway.’”

    I was intrigued. As the marketing guy for a pest control service, I love positive customer reviews. I love using them in marketing. Makes the job of marketing really easy. So I decided to hunt down this fantastic review and find out if Wendy’s was using it.

    Lo and behold, the review was actually found on Yelp… odd, since the original image was of a Google review. It is possible the reviewer was so ecstatic about his crispy chicken nuggets that he left the review on both Yelp and Google. It happens on rare occasions. Well to my astonishment this Yelper was an ELITE! Yes sir, Mr. Joseph W. is an Elite Yelper. No wonder the review was so fantastic!

    I decided to find where else in the Internet review world Joseph may have dropped this hyped up review. So I went back to the search engine and searched “Wendy’s SoNnNnNnN”. Most of the sites found were sites about this particular review, but were not the review. And then I stumbled upon a 2nd yelp page in the search. This 2nd page was not the same Yelp reviewer. Mr. Joseph? …Digging a little deeper, I found the following:

    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-old-fashioned-hamburgers-saint-paul-3
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-sunnyvale
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-old-fashioned-hamburgers-gainesville-5
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-new-york-5
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-waltham
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-old-fashioned-hamburgers-lawrenceville-2
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-old-fashion-hamburgers-oceanside
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-restaurant-la-mirada
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-portland-4
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-sunnyvale
    http://www.yelp.com/biz/wendys-old-fashioned-hambergers-restaurant-joliet (Note the spelling)

    11 duplicate reviews on Yelp. Different users. Different Wendy’s locations. All of these are showing and not being filtered. I was shocked. I was appalled.

    It’s a funny review. What’s the big deal?

    Yelp prides itself on their review filter. “We try to showcase the most helpful and reliable reviews… Not all reviews make the cut, and those that don’t are posted to a separate “Filtered Review” page. Filtered reviews don’t factor into a business’s overall star rating…”

    Why does this bug me? I understand that Yelp wants legit reviews. I do too. I think the world would be a better place if everyone were honest. But at times, this filter is dishonest. It cuts honest reviews. While some of these review filters are easy to spot and the rules easy to understand, there still seems to be this oddity about what reviews actually show up and what reviews don’t. I struggle with this because I’ve got some competing pest control companies with a higher Yelp review count and rating showing than Bulwark because of this review filter. If all reviews were to be counted I’d have both the highest rating and the highest number of reviews. And despite their statement of “Businesses cannot pay for favorable treatment,” the fact that a competing exterminator is a Yelp Advertiser leaves suspicion that the filter favors advertisers. But back to the matter at hand.

    Yelp is publishing all 11 of these fake reviews! Their filter is broken! Further more, they have deemed Joseph an “Elite Reviewer.” In my opinion, Joseph can no longer be trusted. Nor can the rest of these reviewers. It seems to me that if Yelp truly took this higher standard for reviews serious that all of these reviewers would be removed. Is calling for a removal of the users a little extreme? For those of us that must sit back and simply have faith in the Yelp review filter, this is a huge slap in the face.

    Thomas Ballantyne is the Director of Marketing for Bulwark Exterminating, although he prefers the title of “Pest Control Guy.” He frequents Online Marketing Conferences and on occasions speaks at events about small business marketing. His career at Bulwark has put him in the trenches of Local SEO, Reputation Management, Paid Search, Conversion Optimization, and Online Review Strategies. Outside of bug life, he enjoys family time with his lovely wife and five children. And he’s an avid “Board Gamer” ready for a game of Settlers anytime, anywhere. Find him on Twitter: @Thos003

  • 5 for Friday: Links, Stories & Posts For Your Weekend

    Client Horror Stories: The Nut Job – SearchEngineJournal

    Sharing client horror stories is a popular happy hour pastime in the marketing community. At SearchEngineJournal, they’ve been running a series about the types of nightmare clients we all run into. If you are new to the industry, this could be a great way to learn how to spot a potential problem before it arises and get the respect you deserve from those clients that just don’t want to accept your input.

    WSJ Says Big Google Search Changes Coming? Reality Check Time! – SearchEngineLand

    The search overlords have been talking big in the press lately about a potentially earth-shattering update scheduled for the coming months. Can Google back up all the talk? Experts debate the actual impact that adding direct answer features or semantic search technology will have on the vast majority of web sites. Despite all the hype, marketers may not have to worry about major algorithm changes affecting their strategies.

    4 Creative Ways to Use the New Facebook Brand Pages – SearchEngineWatch

    By the end of March, all Facebook Brand Pages will be on the new timeline look. Marketers responsible for company Facebook pages know what a headache it can be keeping up with the social media giants updates and changes. Here’s a guide to making the most of the new look with examples from top brands like Coca-Cola, Starbucks and Red Bull. Learn how to reinvent your pages while playing by Facebook’s rules.

    Link Building Tools We Use at Distilled – SEOMoz

    Heading into the Linklove Link Building conferences in London and Boston, the team at Distilled is in a sharing mood. In this post they list many of the link tools they use to get results for some of the largest companies in the world. Maybe your client list isn’t as impressive, but your results can be if you use the right tools and strategies.

    Google and Bad Ads – MarketingPilgrim

    Nothing can inspire some transparency quite like a $500 million slap on the wrist from the Justice Department. When Google was reprimanded for allowing advertisement of illegal activities like gambling they promised to pull back the curtain on their Adwords operation. A recent post on the Google blog may have appeared to offer some transparency on the surface, but it might just be a public relations stunt that is part of a behind-the-scenes battle with other search companies.

  • Fake Google Places Pages: When a Wiener Joke Outranks You…

    internet is serious business

    SEO largely depends upon undisclosed and constantly evolving criteria for page authority, making it inherently unpredictable. Google makes the rules; the industry responds accordingly.

    Local results in the SERPs exemplify this. Whether they appear, as well as how they appear, is entirely at Google’s discretion. That being said, Google’s discretion is sufficiently discreet in most instances. Furthermore, most people pay more attention to local results in the SERPs than they do to organic ones, which vindicates their prominence. However, local can get pretty sloppy sometimes. Unrelated businesses weasel into the results here and there.

    I recently saw a meaty example of this in a 7-pack for the term “pools dothan al.” By virtually all measures, that is an unremarkable keyword. I was understandably not expecting anything noteworthy.

    Primarily, the businesses in the aforementioned 7-pack sell and install pools, but a couple listings are for billiards halls. Pool is a homonym, which makes it difficult for Google to distinguish which “pool” a user is looking for. Regardless, I would guess exactly 0 people in Dothan, AL are looking to play some “pools” at the local bar this weekend.

    This made me realize what problems homonyms and homographs create for local search. For example, take the keyword “bank” and the location Westbank, a suburb of New Orleans. If I search for “westbank bank,” no relevant local results appear. If I then click on the Maps tab from that same results page, Google drops me onto a Wendy’s in Iowa. I’m sure there are a million other similarly dysfunctional examples; that’s just the first that came to mind. Joseph, our Maps guy, noticed a strip club twerked its way into the 7-pack for “new orleans pools”. But I digress.

    What really caught my eye in these results was a listing titled Penis Pool. Yep. Penis Pool. I’ve seen plenty of features sophomorically revised in Mapmaker before (for example, one enterprising young cartographer removed the J from a feature previously titled Janus Automation), but I’ve never seen a Place page like that.

    Penis Pool

    I was very curious how Penis Pool snuck its way into the bottom of the 7-pack. I asked a few people to check it out, and Joseph quickly pointed out that the pool does in fact show up on the satellite view. Once I saw it, I couldn’t really disagree with the name or Penis Pool’s status as a landmark in Dothan.

    How did this happen? Presumably, somebody spotted this on the map, added a Place page, and subsequently shared it with all of their friends. Glowing reviews ensued and the link eventually found its way to a few different blogs. Considering this cannot be an especially competitive field in a very small town, Penis Pool’s local authority grew into a veritable Leviathan, and perhaps even rudely whipped some other business out of the rankings.

    Penis Pool satellite view

    Should you be worried about a Penis Pool near you? Maybe. It is safe to say the internet’s propensity for wiener jokes > your local SEO efforts. With the right mix, it’s easy to imagine similar examples popping up elsewhere. Just hope nobody starts digging a phallic-shaped pool in your city.

  • 5 For Friday – Links, Stories & Posts For Your Weekend

    1.
    Google Is Watching You (Or Not): New Privacy Policy Takes Effect Today – Search Engine Land

    — Google says their new privacy policy will open the door to new products and services for the public. The idea is to simplify privacy across all of Google’s properties without affecting user’s experience. Browsing and search history controls should remain unchanged, so why are there so many articles warning “Google is watching you?”

    2.
    What Susan G Komen Doesn’t Understand About Communities and You Should – SEOMoz

    — Global neighborhoods don’t form around organizations; they form around the major issues of the day. When an online community responds to a breaking headline, they can pop up, grow, and disappear overnight, but their impact on your business could be lasting. Online reactions to the Susan G. Komen public relations debacle offer insights into how you can leverage a network to build your brand and manage your reputation.

    3.
    Why Small Businesses Need BOTH Social & Search – SmallBusinessSEM

    — Local search and social media are two essential ingredients for a successful online presence. Recent surveys like the Local Search Study show that the answer to the question, “should we be spending more on search or social media?” is both. The study found that 63 percent of consumers were more likely to engage with a local business if they are available on a social network. However, the study confirmed that consumers avoid social networks when they need to search.

    4.
    Twitter Brand Pages Adding E-Commerce, Contest Features? – Search Engine Watch

    — Following in the footsteps of Facebook, Twitter will be allowing developers to create “experience” apps for business brand pages in 2012. Increased user engagement would mean more time on Brand Pages and a bigger share of advertising revenue for the social media giant. Is e-commerce the next step for the Twitter platform?

    5.
    Are You Using the Right Keywords On Your Site? A Simple Three-Rule Test – SearchEngineJournal

    — There are plenty of quality keyword tools. However, there is also no shortage of metrics that claim to help you determine the value of a particular keyword. While some of these stats provide insight, you should not rely on them when making your selections for SEO and PPC. Here’s a quick three-rule test for making better choices when it comes to keywords.

  • Getting A Virtual Office For Your Google Places Page Is Risky Business

     

    Virtual offices have many uses. They are great for having a professional space to meet a client when you don’t have an office in the area. They can also be really useful if you are searching for a permanent office space and need somewhere to get business done in the meantime. However, using a virtual office address in a Google Places business listing is not something that will benefit your business. In fact, this practice technically goes against Google’s guidelines and could end up hurting your rankings in the long run.

    According to Google, there is only supposed to be one business under the same address in Google Places. This isn’t an issue if each business at that address has a different suite number as they would in a traditional office complex. The issue with the majority of virtual offices is that, in order to keep the cost low, they assign all businesses the same address and suite number. This is where the problem with virtual offices truly lies: their ubiquity.

    Virtual offices have become a popular way to, in essence, spam Google Places. Want to rank for Phoenix but your office is actually in Mesa? Not a problem; simply do a search for “Mesa virtual office” and with $100 and 30 minutes you can have your very own prime downtown address to use. Sound like a great deal, right? It should. In fact, some virtual office companies are using this as a selling point. However, as with many great deals, this one is just too good to be true.

    Just as Google caught on to businesses buying UPS store P.O. boxes and using the store’s address as their own, it is catching on to virtual offices. When the virtual office provider is the first result to come up when searching for the virtual office address, it isn’t hard for Google to create an algorithm that can connect the dots. Not to mention there are a host of Google reviewers out there that are quick to flag a Places page that they believe to be associated with a virtual office.

    Another thing to keep in mind when considering using a virtual office address for your business’s Places page is the fact that Google Places often merges different business’s listings together. This can happen to businesses that are across town from each other but might happen to have a similar name, phone number or even their profession. This common issue poses a significant problem for businesses that choose to use a virtual office address for their Places page. For instance, I’ve seen one law firm’s Places page share the same exact address and suite number with the Places pages of 17 other businesses. Some of them were other lawyers that would (or at least should) be attempting to rank locally for the same key phrases. Even the virtual office company itself had a Places page using that same exact address. This is common, especially for virtual offices with prominent addresses in large cities. It wouldn’t take much for Google to mix up information with so many businesses, some quite similar, sharing the same address.

    Then again, maybe you could get away with it. Your business could end up being the exception and slip past the eyes of the spam watchdogs. Maybe your listing will beat the odds and stay free of merged information. But eventually, just as Google has done many times before, they will come out with an update targeted at the crack that your business happened to slip through.

  • Guest Post — Will Scott on the Steps to Facebook Success

    Our CEO Will Scott has a guest post up on CPA Practice Advisor today, covering essential steps to Facebook success. Click here to see what he has to say about getting your business’s page up and operational, curating content for your market, engaging your fan community and more!