For those of us who have far-flung social networks, the impact on local queries will likely be small as there will not be enough truly local social network content to populate queries outside of some top categories such as restaurants and events.

If the current experience is any indication, I would say Google’s Panda algorithm should eventually purge many of these results as they will not generate decent click-through.

For example, here are some page one results for me when I search Chinese Restaurants:

If anything, these kinds of results might make me delete some of these guys from my Google+ network, just to avoid them polluting my results.

Of course, many people could have tight local social networks so they might get better results, but again, probably not outside of some key categories.

One of the big differences between Google’s approach to social and Facebook’s is that Facebook started with people first. Google tried starting with people, but the SPEW strategy seems pretty targeted at getting businesses to do the hard work of priming the social net. And therein lies opportunity.

While there are plenty of exhibitionists among us, I am not sure the idea of having your Google+ posts show up in Google SERPs is much of an incentive to get people to socialize on Google+.

That said, it’s a huge incentive for businesses. So get ready for some aggressive social local networking from your friendly local service providers. Some predictions:

1.  Local directories will start working hard for your +1′s Google Places has shifted a large amount of organic traffic from local directory sites to Place Pages. Up until Search Plus Your World, there was no decent way for directories to get around Places. But now, they just need you to +1 them and/or connect with you on G+ and their relevant content should start showing up high in local results.

This is going to lead to +1 promotions similar to how companies advertise “like me on Facebook” campaigns. Perhaps we might even see some “Like Plus me dude” campaigns.

2.  Local businesses will start working hard for your +1′s SMBs will be able to play this game too.  If +1′s and G+ connections improve Places rankings we are quickly going to see an entire economy built around local social business networking.  In fact, people with strong local G+ networks could easily get a business to pay them in exchange for connecting with them on G+.

3.  Google+ connections are going to become the new link

Where Google has frowned on “link schemes” to game rankings, I don’t see how it can control social promotion schemes. If I want to compensate you for connecting with me on G+ and mentioning my service, how can Google tell?

This system could put an unusual amount of power in the hands of those who have strong local social networks. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot of local entrepreneurs take advantage of this.

Tis the season to contemplate the future of the local Web marketing for small businesses (SMBs) my friends. For all of you tight-fisted hands at the grindstone, 2012 is loaded with opportunity. But are you going to be a Marley, the walking dead bogged down by the chains of your past, or a reborn Scrooge, dancing in the streets in your pajamas?

“There is never enough time to do or say all the things that we would wish. The thing is to try to do as much as you can in the time that you have. Remember Scrooge, time is short, and suddenly, you’re not here any more.” – The Ghost of Xmas Present

The Ghost Of Present Local Web Marketing

I know, I forgot the Past. The Past is done. Move on already. Local Web Marketing was and is a simultaneously compelling and confusing opportunity for small business marketers. Some present-day stats to consider – courtesy of BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor study released earlier this month at the ILM West conference:

SMBs Are Spending An Increasing Amount Of Marketing Budgets Online

87% of SMBs surveyed are spending 24% of their marketing budgets online. In a recession/post-recession/whatever you want to call this thing we’re in. Where do you think that number is heading? Certainly not down (ok it went down this year, but the long term trend is up).

If you are not focused on the Web not only are you missing out on a lot of the action, you are getting totally served by your competition who is already there.

But SMB Websites Suck!

Can you believe only 13% of SMB websites have a local phone number on their home page? I sure can. Think of all the missed opportunities. I often hear SMBs say that they don’t care about clicks to their website, all they care about is calls and people walking in the door. Well, this stat, along with the general crappiness of most SMB sites says that they really don’t care about any of it.

Forget about SEO, social media and other fancy-pants ways to get customers online. Spend a little time on your website, figure out what it is you want the customer to do there (e.g., call you) and make sure the primary thing it does is help the customer do it (e.g. put your frigging phone number on the home page).

So the Present is a bit bleak. But again, let’s move on and focus on the future:

“Ghost of the Future, I fear you more than any spectre I have seen.” – Ebenezer Scrooge

The Future Is Mobile Baby

When it comes to local search, mobile is quickly becoming where it’s at. Cases in point:

• 40% of Google’s mobile search queries (about 1 billion/month) have local intent
• 40% of Yelp’s Traffic is Mobile
• 42% of moms with smartphones use them for shopping

…and on and on and on.

Now I know what you’re thinking. It’s too early. It’s not for my type of business. There’s not enough volume, etc. Well, in a sense that all may be true. The mobile marketing biz is in its infancy, but out of the mouths of babes consider the following:

1. As mentioned above, mobile search volume continues to grow at an astronomical pace, and the new smartphones unleashed over the holidays should keep that trend going.

2. Mobile-optimized websites should have a natural advantage in mobile SEO. Why wouldn’t Google and Bing want to send a mobile phone user to a mobile site instead of a normal website?

3. The competition for mobile advertising at a local level is low. Most of your competition can barely wrap their heads around standard search advertising, let alone mobile advertising. This means that a mobile AdWords campaign are cheaper on a per-click basis.

Check out the following list of common local search keywords and the comparison of their CPC for desktop queries v. mobile queries:

According to AppStack, a SMB mobile marketing start-up (Full disclosure: I am an advisor to AppStack), local mobile advertisers are currently saving about 50% on cost-per-click via Mobile AdWords on a consistent basis. Now I don’t know about you, but when I see I can save 50% off my ad budget and get the same clicks, I pay attention.

Mobile-optimized websites can convert mobile traffic at much higher rate. According to Google, mobile optimized ad campaigns can see a 49% increase in conversions. Combine this with a lower cost-per-lead and you are looking at big potential savings on your cost-per-conversion.

So my advice to you, dear reader, is to explore mobile this year. See if it works for you. At the very least, optimize your site for mobile traffic. Make sure your phone number is displayed prominently and offer a limited set of options for visitors that will look good on a phone browser.

And for those of you who choose to ignore the mobile in 2012 here’s one last quote:

“I’m just mad because I’ve lost my money… my shineys.” – Scrooge McDuck

As Yelp says, “negative reviews can feel like a punch in the gut”. Even better, according to a recent study by Cone Communications, four out of five consumers have changed their minds about a recommended purchase based solely on negative information they found online.

But there’s a lot of lemonade to be made from those review lemons. After all, negative reviews can increase sales. Negative reviews can help potential customers feel like they have “done their homework” which moves them further towards making a purchase decision. Negative reviews can also add credibility to your positive reviews. And perhaps most important, negative reviews give businesses a chance to respond and show how awesome they really are.

So when your business gets slammed on a local review site, be it a legit complaint or a crackpot customer, you can’t afford to ignore the negativity.  So let’s look at how to turn these major bummers into teachable moments.

1. Have A Game Plan

As Mike Blumenthal recommends in Responding To Negative Reviews – Your Prospects Are The Real Audience: ”Never respond to reviews unless you can own the issue, describe how future customers will not have the issue, and offer to fix the issue”. He also recommends that when you do respond, you “write with your prospects in mind”.

2. Understand The Tools At Your Disposal

Get to know the sites that all merchants to respond and learn how to use their tools. Miriam Ellis has a great post Edit, Remove and Respond To Reviews – Tools for Conflict Resolution that outlines what kinds of merchant responses are allowed on different local reviews sites. I have adapted her list to create the one below.

3. Learn How To Mine The Gold From Negative Reviews

Check out this video of Seth Godin interviewing Top Chef’s Tom Colicchio and Food Network’s Sarah Moulton about how they use bad reviews – and bad reviewers – to make their businesses better. Thanks to Al for pointing this one out to me. Check out his post on Tools for Managing Negative Customer Reviews for more great words of wisdom on the subjet.

4. Study At The Feet Of The Masters

Take a page from R.J.Hidson’s Place Page,  R.J., an Edmonton Wedding Photographer displays a textbook example of how to respond to a negative review when he got slammed for showing some ‘tude at a customer’s nuptials.

I’ve got to say I like RJ’s ‘tude.

5. Don’t Ignore It. It Won’t Go Away

Lisa Barone puts it thus about what can happen when “a review develops legs”: “Staying quiet simply because you don’t think it’s serious enough to warrant a response is almost certain to invite the fire to spread beyond Yelp and onto other blogs and news sites. You don’t want that to happen. The best way to contain the mess is to handle it at its source. If something is gaining legs, get in the conversation and help calm it down. Often just a few words from you will be enough to soothe the hype and get the conversation back on track.”

Several years ago, a ego-maniacal little blogger found himself on the wrong end of some bad service and blogged about it. To say this review “developed legs” is putting it mildly. But the merchant ignored the problem and likely lost business because of it.

If said merchant had followed Lisa’s advice and merely contacted the pesky little blogger to explain his side of the story he probably could have saved himself a lot of grief, and perhaps he would have even gotten some business out of it.

I am particularly intrigued by the new Ripples feature, which allows you to see who has shared a post and track it as it gets shared by others. It is, in fact, like watching a ripple.

Ripples strikes me as much more of a feature for marketers than for consumers. I suppose Google+ wants to attract power users who typically have more of a marketing mindset than the average Joe.

So of course the first thing I thought of was that Ripples would be an excellent tool to find local influencers on Google Plus. Here’s how:

(Warning: The techniques described below are merely for educational purposes. I take no responsibility for the potential spam and privacy issues Google has unleashed here.)

1. First Find Google+ Users In Your Target Location

I am sure Google+ will eventually have some nifty ways for you to find people near you who share similar interests, but let’s say you wanted to find those people today. Perhaps you want to engage with them about subjects you share in common.

Maybe you’re a vegan restaurant in the Bay Area and you want to build a network of local vegans to share recipes with and perhaps at some point get them to promote your restaurant. Well there’s an app for that — a search app that is, called Google.

Go to Google and do the following search:

This query shows you URLs of Google+ members who use the word “vegan” and whose profiles show that they live in the Bay Area. Depending on the query, you may need to play around with this a bit by adding additional filters. For example, if you were looking for people in Brooklyn but didn’t want to find people named “Brooklyn,” you would add “-intitle:Brooklyn”.

Here are the top results of my Bay Area vegan query:

2. Find People Who Are Interested In What You Have To Say

Google gave 2,740 results for this query, which means that you now can find several hundred people who might be interested in your vegan vittles. You could click on each of their profiles and figure out which ones seem interesting and willing to engage, but first:

3. Find The Most Active/Influential Ones

Go back to Google and do the following query:

This query, in theory, will show you all of the posts for a particular member — in this case, me. As you can see, I have made 191 posts thus far (nothing about vegans, though):

If you want to see if the person has been active recently, click on the “Show Search Tools” link at the bottom of the left-hand navigation on the Google SERP:

Set the filter to “Past 24 hours” or “Past week” or a custom range to see how active the person is.

Once you have found the right people, it’s time to check out some Google+ Ripple action. Review the posts by the member that contain the keyword you are interested in by doing the following query in Google Plus:

When you have found a post that looks relevant to your subject click on the “View Ripples” link on the drop-down menu in the upper right-hand corner of the post:

Now, you can see who else has shared this post:

This data shows you how influential the person is, how popular the post is and who else is interested in the subject. By examining this data for each member, you can start to figure out who is most influential about your subject matter in your area.

Once you have built the list, then it’s up to you to figure out how to engage with them in a way that will be mutually beneficial and help get your message out.

Now it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyhow: These techniques are only valuable if you can convince people to invest their attention in you.

And there are no magic queries in Google that can do that for you.

1.  Duplicate Content

Just as in traditional Web SEO, duplicate content was determined to be the biggest negative factor. And while plenty of news sites create duplicate content on their own, those surveyed focused on the use of other sources’ content on your site, particularly scraped or plagiarized content.

Google is getting better at determining the original source of the content and degrading the rankings of the sites that “borrow” it. And if you are distributing press releases on your site, make sure you separate your original news content from your press releases by creating two different sections on your site and adding “nofollow” tags to all links to press releases.

2.  Vague, Abstract Headlines

This is a fancy way of saying headlines that don’t target specific high value keywords. I remember when Eliot Spitzer got caught with the hooker and the NY Post ran the headline “Ho No!” Awesome headline. Amazing linkbait.

If you can write a headline like that, then go for it, but everyone else should stick to “Spitzer Caught With Hooker”. If you are writing headlines for a news site, you need to learn how to do keyword research.

3.  No Google News Sitemap

I am always surprised when I find a news site not using these. I have seen dramatic differences in crawling, indexing and rankings as a result of using a Google News Sitemap. It’s not particularly hard to implement. What are you waiting for?

4.  Poor Quality Content

Google News has ways of algorithmically and manually determining if your site tends to misspell words, use poor grammar, and generally produce poor quality content. There’s no excuse for bad writing!

5.  Blocking Googlebot Via Robots.txt

This is one of those classic SEO screw-ups that keeps a SEO consultant’s phone ringing in the middle of the night. If your organic traffic just tanked, one of the first things you should do is check your robots.txt file and make sure you don’t see these two lines:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /

6.  Poor Site Performance

If your site is slow and/or produces a lot of 500 errors, your rankings are going to suffer. Google wants to send people to fast-loading pages. There are variety of tools you can use to monitor your site’s performance including the Crawl Stats and Site Performance reports in Google Webmaster Tools and Google’s Page Speed Tool.

My favorite technique is to use a script to track your server logs for when Googlebot gets 4xx or 5xx response codes, then send out an email to the team notifying them of the errors. Whomever is responsible for performance will have a heavy incentive to keep the site error-free and keep those emails to a minimum.

7.  Poor CitationRank

CitationRank is the measure of how well a story on a news site gets linked to from or referenced on other sites, particularly other news sites. These kinds of citations demonstrate that the story is authoritative on the subject. If you can’t get others to link to your story, it’s going to be harder to get it up on top.

8. Low PageRank Domain

If your site’s overall SEO program is not competitive, you will have a harder time ranking. Make sure you are at least getting the basics right. Make sure your site is accessible to search engine robots, targets high value keywords and regularly gets links from other sites.

9.  New Site

Just as new sites can have a harder time ranking in Google’s Web results, sites with low/no trust and/or history in Google News will have a harder time ranking well.

New sites must demonstrate trust by getting linked to from other authoritative sites, by getting well-shared via popular social media channels and by getting well-clicked-on relative to other sites in Google News for a particular story.

“Category Authority” was deemed by our panel to be the most important ranking factor, so new sites will likely have the best luck if they focus on a specific niche to be expert in.

10. All Syndicated Content With The Same Titles As The Source Site

While this is basically the same thing as Duplicate Content, the panel seemed to think this case deserved special mention as more and more news organizations put more reliance on syndicated content, without even bothering to rewrite any of it.

If you don’t put your own spin on the news, you are not going to do well in Google News.

For more information on various Google News Ranking Factors, check out www.googlenewsrankingfactors.com.

In my experience, when it comes to reviews there are four types of businesses:

• Businesses that get most of their business from referrals, don’t get any online reviews and could care less about them (perhaps the biggest chunk of businesses).

• Businesses that get most of their business from referrals, get online reviews and think that nobody reads them or cares.

• Businesses that think reviews are hugely important and work hard to get a lot of them.

• Businesses that think reviews are hugely important and work hard to get them, but don’t get many, if any.

What the types that rely heavily on referrals and ignore reviews don’t realize is that some time in the next year or two someone is going to write something about them online and there’s a good chance it’s going to be negative.

If you search Google for “kids backpacks”, you’ll see a “Nearby Stores” link displayed just below the image/shopping results, the most prominent section of the SERP.

If you sell kids backpacks, you’ll probably want to rank well for queries for it year-round, but back-to-school time is probably when it really pays to rank well for the term. In this case, you’d want to make sure that your inventory is available in Google Shopping so that you can show up in the Nearby Stores SERP.

As you are considering your SEO efforts, you should be thinking about the seasonality of your business as well as how it effects how your local customers use search.

For seasonal and locally focused SEO campaigns consider the following tips.

1.  Plan Ahead

If you want to rank for a seasonal keyword like “back to school sale” in your city, you’ll probably want to try to rank for the query ahead of time. While putting up a great piece of content and getting links at the time of the event can work, as people are more likely to link to something that’s current, I have found it’s more reliable to get your content indexed and linked way ahead of time.

During the actual time you want to have the best rankings, you can also add additional content that targets variations of the keyword and links back to the original page you are trying to rank. This can both bolster the original page as well provide an additional URL that can rank.

2.  Understand The Time Window

Planning for your New Years Eve party usually starts around December 1st. So if you’re a restaurant, you’ll want to rank for “New Years Eve menu” well before New Years Eve comes around.

3.  Understand The SERPs For Your Keyword

While Google and Bing update their various SERP displays regularly, having a handle on the different SERP inventory available for your target keyword is a good idea.

If Google is showing a lot of images, then you know you need to work on image optimization. If there are Shopping results as in the backpack example, you know you need to get your inventory in Google Shopping.

For event-based keywords like “Black Friday Shopping”, Google often shows relevant News links above the organic results around the time of the event. For the News results, consider writing an article on “Black Friday Shopping” for your local newspaper.

Often times, SERPs with News results also show blog results, so this would be an indication that you might want to add some content about the event to your blog. If it’s a hot term, update your blog regularly throughout the day, as Google will often update these links with the latest content.

4.  Create An Editorial Calendar

One of the challenges (and opportunities) with the Web is that it forces businesses to start thinking like publishers. But businesses should already know when their hot seasons are.

They also should know the types of products people will be looking for and the types of questions they will be asking search engines. Map out the seasons that effect you in a editorial calendar spreadsheet and start figuring out where your areas of SEO opportunity are going to be over the next year.

To help you get started, I have created a Local SEO Seasonal Calendar that shows some of the major events for the year, complete with relevant local business categories/keywords for those events and the window of time for each.

And remember, with local SEO, ’tis always the season.

How Google+ Could Become A Killer Local Marketing Channel

The Places Stream

One day, we are all going to wake up and find “Places” as a default stream in our Google+ experience and a business’ “Plus” stream as part of the default Place Page experience. When this happens, it will be like local search chocolate meeting social media peanut butter.

Circle Your Customers

In some ways, Google+ Circles are no big thing. Numerous social nets, including Facebook, have allowed members to categorize their contacts, but most have failed at convincing people that it’s worth doing (see Exhibit A). But Google+ has made Circles, its metaphor for categorization of social contacts, a core part of the experience and in my view, has made it more compelling for people to categorize.

So what does this mean for SMBs?

When you start communicating with potential/existing customers via Google+, it’s extremely simple, not to mention satisfying, to group these people into different categories (e.g. Current Customers, Ready To Buy, In Research Mode, Asking Questions, Used a Coupon, Daddy Warbucks, Repeat Customer, Annoying, Complainers, etc.).

You can start segmenting your audience and targeting specific communications to them. I know, you’re already doing this with your email service right? Well, we doubt it’s this easy. And by the way, you don’t need to get someone to give you their email to put them in a Google+ Circle.

So, suddenly a business can have a very simple way to manage who they are talking to if they choose to “go social.”  And I wouldn’t be surprised if over time we see a much more comprehensive business communications suite that involves Google+, Gmail, Google Analytics, Place Page data, Google Mobile, Talkbin, etc.

Customers Circle Your Business

When businesses are permitted to join Google+ it will be simple for people to put your business in a Circle. When this happens, I wouldn’t be surprised if Google offers pre-made Circles for your favorite local businesses. We could easily see them suggesting businesses that you have already reviewed on Google Places, businesses that you have +1′d, businesses your friends have reviewed, etc.

But even if they don’t, it will be simple for Google+ users to categorize their favorite local businesses into a Circle. For example, you could easily create a “Fave Restaurants” Circle and start adding businesses to it. Your mom might not do this, but I might, and in the future I’ll be able to share my Fave Restaurants Circle with mom.

Local Interest Circles Right now, the Google+ Sparks section is pretty lame, but it could become the key to local service provider discovery. Sparks are basically search/news results for any given topic. So an “SEO” Spark would show whatever Google+ thinks are the most relevant SEO articles from its index.

Right now, it is very challenging for local businesses to rank in Google Web results for “national” terms like “how much does a face lift cost?” But over time, I would expect the Sparks algo to get much more sophisticated,so if I were interested in getting rid of that damn turkey neck and searched for it via Sparks, the UI would know to show me content from local plastic surgeons who specialized in turkey neck removal highlighted in the stream.

Social Adwords

While I doubt that Google will be showing ads in Google+ any time soon (keeping the experience “pure” and all that) at some point, they are going to turn on the monetization and that’s where things will get really interesting.

If Google is able to aggregate enough users and activity, it could yield a demographically targeted ad network that is as powerful as Facebook’s. SEM experts like to say that Adwords is “intent driven” media while Facebook Ads are “interest driven”. Combining these two notions into Adwords would be powerful for marketers.

Now, from a single dashboard, a local plastic surgeon could simultaneously target a campaign at people searching for “tummy tuck in Atlanta” Google Search, Atlanta women 35-50 with household incomes over $100,000 who are talking about plastic surgery on Google+, and anyone who has hit an Atlanta plastic surgeon place page in the last 30 days. Oh yeah, and they can do this on an a la carte basis or just turn it into a flat rate automatic package for SMBs with limited budgets.

Place Pages Become Truly Social

The real win here is complete integration of a business’ Place Page with Google+. Here’s what we would expect to see:

• When a Google+ member hits a Place Page, there’s a message to add them to a Circle and/or to join the business’ Circle. We wouldn’t be surprised if there were some kind of default “local biz” Circle that shows up on the Place Page that you can easily drag the business’ Google+ badge into.
• Google Offers becomes a default Circle so you can see local offers in a stream on Google+ whenever you want, filtered by interest and your social graph.
• When you hit a Place Page that is either a member of a Google+ friend’s Circle or has been reviewed by a Google+ friend, you see your friend’s social history with the business.
• Businesses with claimed Place Pages are able to incentivize you to add them to your Circle.

Here’s one Google+ user’s rendition of what a Google+ Places integration might look like:

source: Sean Percival

If Google+ is seen as an enhancement of Google’s Place Search, then this could be a real point of differentiation for Google from Facebook Places, which has virtually no local search experience (at the moment). Marrying the “intent”-driven nature of search with the “interest”-driven nature of social media at a local level seems like the holy grail.

Put all of this together, and Google+ may be the last step in closing the full local commerce loop. Social signals baked into Places, Offers and mobile (not to mention Google Checkout and Wallet for payments) could put the company squarely at the nexus of the merchant/customer relationship. And if Google+ can attract wide adoption, it will get its hands on more granular user data to target ads both within the social network and across its suite.

Oh, and lest we forget, the search ramifications. If (and when) Google bakes + and +1 into organic search to influence page rank, businesses will feel a more urgent need to participate. So they got that going for them, which is nice. Goonga galunga.

I was particularly intrigued by Mike Ramsey’s presentation on research he had done where he compared 28 listings that ranked in the top 7 results for some local queries to 28 listings that did not rank as well. Mike started things off by warning the audience that “correlation does not equal causation“.

In other words, this data is interesting, but that doesn’t mean if you use it for SEO that you are going to rank #1.

First, Mike compared the high-ranking listings to the low-ranking listings for some of the factors mentioned in this year’s Local Search Ranking Factors Survey:

As you can see, both the high- and low-ranked listings had about the same number of claimed listings and exact categorizations on their Place Pages – two factors that were given high importance in this year’s survey. The most striking difference is that many more, but not all, high ranking listings had reviews on IYP sites.

While many of the listings had relatively few citations (references to the business on other supposedly relevant sites), searching for information about the business in Google Web Search told a different story:

High ranking listings appear to have significantly more “offsite data”.  A similar gap appeared when checking Open Site Explorer for links to each business’ website:

Similar patterns showed up when checking for exact match keywords in anchor text to the listing websites:

and keywords in the anchor text:

Another great point was how making simple tweaks to the landing page URL like adding the address and phone number to the title tag can result in quick results:

Will Scott spoke about how you really have to work the system to to improve your Google Places rankings such as making sure you clean up listings that might be causing you problems, such as a Place Page for someone who used to work in the same location as yours.

One case study on a Place Page that had duplication and location problems showed how it took seven edits to the Place Page over three months before Google fixed the issues and started ranking the listing on page 1 for target queries. Local SEO does indeed take patience and endurance.

Will also showed off a variety of citation sources including Article Engines (be sure to include all of your location information on any articles you syndicate out about your business), Facebook and “Other” (a.k.a. SPAM).

In my experience, these relatively low value links do indeed seem to do the trick, but in the long run, you’ll want to supplement these kind of tactics with more solid citation sources, which of course are much harder to get.

David Mihm’s presentation had all sorts of good information with a focus on how to maintain a “geographic scent” for your website with the #1 recommendation being having a consistent name, address and phone number appear for your business across the Web.

Since much has been written in these pages about how to do this, I thought I’d focus on a couple of David’s points that were “extra credit”:

1. Submit a KML sitemap in Google Webmaster Tools. This helps send Google the “I am really located here” signal. Here’s an easy tool to help you do it GeoSitemapGenerator.
2. For multiple locations, claim all of your Google Place listings in a corporate Google account. If you are submitting a bulk feed, get it verified. Your Google Account must match the URLs of the Places you are submitting. Each location must have its own unique phone number or it won’t get approved.
3. If you want to generate reviews, find customers with Google and Yahoo email addresses. Since you know they have accounts with these sites, you can send them links asking them to write a review for you on them and they’ll likely already be signed in.

All in all, it was an awesome session. I encourage you to check out the panelists’ sites as they all share a lot of great information:

• Nifty Marketing
• Search Influence
• Get Listed

I ran to the computer and started to search – Ahhh Los Links!

My wife gave me the hairy eyeball. Did I mention it was Mothers Day? I dug out the book and called the plumber with the two-page four-color spread. Crisis averted.

Last week I was reading about the War on Yellow Pages and I realized that many of us online types have been at war with the book because we have a vested interest in the book dying. There are plenty of good reasons to be down on print Yellow Pages as a marketing vehicle and I won’t repeat them here.

But today, because the Yellow Pages saved my ass, and possibly my marriage, I thought I’d return the favor and sing their praises.

Some factoids:

• 75% of YP advertisers are service businesses or installed product (think floor covering) businesses. The more service-heavy, the more valuable the directory.

 

• Businesses that have large, infrequent sales (roofer, divorce attorney, windshield repair) are very likely to receive a big return compared to a donut shop. A roofing customer is out of the market for 20 years after a purchase. That’s a lead worth capturing.

 

• When the customer’s location is the work site, local SEO is exceptionally difficult to optimize and a directory can assist in exposing a business to their desired service area. About 35% of YP advertisers are home-based businesses that need visibility. The print directory can act as one of their store fronts.

 

• Categories that are dominated online by national brands and deep pocketed lead generation companies are also big beneficiaries of local directories. Examples are insurance (your local agent can’t outspend GEICO online), pharmacy, finance, real estate and educational institutions.

 

• But print YP ads aren’t for everybody. Gas stations generally aren’t good YP advertisers because the decision to purchase is habitual, opportunistic, and more driven by price than research.

 

• Another rule of thumb is research. The more a decision is researched, the better the ad return is.

Trust is also a major factor. If trust is necessary, (typically a requirement for a large purchase) the more valuable the ad. While advertising is not always a guarantee of trust, oftentimes online it’s harder to gauge trust when comparing a set of free listings or gamed review sites. A licensed, bonded, certified member of the local chamber of commerce with 30 years experience can look pretty similar online to a guy who knows a little SEO and will work for Gagaville credits.

Print directories are made for emergency services.  When my buddy Dick Larkin’s 2 pound new Maltese puppy got into the ant poison and was having convulsions, his wife did not research online for emergency vets. She looked at the book in her drawer, made a quick decision, and drove.

If a tree is about to fall through a house, the home owner won’t bother with a lead generation site that requires personal information and I doubt he’ll have a friend who’s the mayor of the local tree guy. And let’s never forget the Great Pleasanton Mothers Day Flood of 2011 (moment of silence please).

So how do you reach the local person who is actively making a buying decision regarding the products and services you sell? One way to reach that person is through skillful online development and optimization. Another way is through the directory that was delivered to their home (assuming they haven’t opted out). Both answers can be right.

Plumbers can get a much higher ROI via online marketing versus print if they know what they are doing. But print leads are still significant enough that they most likely can’t go without them. The fact is that for a number of big ticket businesses, an occasional customer pays for their YP ad.

If you talk to a print YP publisher off-the-record, they will inevitably show you a chart that shows a decline in usage, effectiveness and revenues related to the print directories along with a dramatic increase in the metrics for online directories and lead generation. Then, they’ll flip the chart to show you the margins for each where print dwarfs online.

Until those paths cross and the positions change (and it will), the print book will still be pushed by YP publishers. And until the leads dry up, print yellow pages will continue to be a piece of the puzzle for many local marketers.

Ok, back to my day job of hastening your demise helping you guys figure out this online thing.

Photo from Flickr user ideowl. Used under Creative Commons.