As the use of mobile and social platforms soars, the importance of local data escalates, regardless of business size.

Google has placed a much greater emphasis on the Places pages as they try to move into other areas of the Internet like review generation (Hotpot*) and their latest social effort (Google+1).

At the end of the day, if you are letting others determine what data is correct about your business you are running the risk of getting less return on your information (the other ROI).

So here are a few reasons why data will rule in 2011.

1. Accurate data is a foundational need

This is true now more than ever, for any business to succeed online. Control and management of the building blocks of Internet data for business will determine whether many businesses succeed or fail in the online space.

2. Accurate data means more and better citations

Citations are the local search world’s equivalent of links as they relate to Google Places pages. With the recent changes in how Google presents search and its closer ties to website SEO, this data accuracy concern has never been greater.

3. Data can make or break lead generation

Nothing is worse than having all of your marketing efforts come together to get a prospect to the point of becoming a lead, only to stumble due to bad contact information about your business from a source you weren’t monitoring. You may not lose the business, but why throw an unnecessary roadblock in the way of a potential sale?

4. Accurate data implies being a business that has it together

Have you ever tried to track down a business and you find several different addresses in different places? You may know where the business currently is, but leaving a trail of moves or bad data can give the impression that your business is not stable— which is never a good thing.

5. Data builds upon itself and leaves a trail

If you have left your business data accuracy requirements to the various data aggregators then you are risking having your information look like a jumbled mess—to the search engines in particular.

The simple use of LLC or Inc. in a business name can generate more than one listing which will cause confusion across the Web. If left unattended, these inaccuracies will take on a life of their own and create issues for online marketing efforts far into the future.

6. Nothing is worse than a data surprise

A data surprise is when you connect with a prospect who says “Oh, I went with your competitor because the number I found online for your business was disconnected. Sorry!” Business people hate surprises so this is just inherently bad.

One of the best investments a business can make in 2011 is in tools or services that can ensure the accuracy of the online data published about its business.

Thankfully, there are some excellent turnkey services available today designed specifically for SMBs to manage their online business identity without a major capital or time investment.

Editors Note:  April 8, 2011 – Google announced “HotPot” is now a part of Google Places.

I acknowledge that it’s useful to have a label to refer to this concept, but is it revolutionary? Or, is it the next stage in an evolutionary process?  Stay with me a little and I’ll explain why I think it’s an evolution, and also what small and local businesses should be doing about it.

I recently attended the excellent Local Social Summit 2009 event where I had the privilege of contributing in a panel discussion moderated by Greg Sterling on the subject of “Local Gets Social – The Impact of User Generated Content and the Promise of Real-Time Search.”  My fellow panelists were Seb Provencher of Praized Media, Andrew Hunter of Qype UK, and Sokratis Papafloratos of Trusted Places.

It was an interesting discussion (you can read Greg’s summary of the event here), firstly because not everybody agreed on the actual definition of the term “Real-Time Local Search”, but secondly, because it became clear to me that there might just be a big jug of Kool-Aid being passed round here.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying this isn’t important, only that we need to be a bit grounded and realise that this is an evolution not a revolution. Let’s explore a few thoughts on the subject

The definition of real-time local search

So, lacking any universally agreed upon definition, allow me to make a suggestion at least for the dimensions it encompasses (and please commenters, any insight on this is most welcome.) There are (at least) 3 dimensions that I can see:

1. Timeliness, ‘current-ness’. The information found should have some element of timeliness. For example, discovering that there’s a restaurant on a particular street corner is not timely in itself, but discovering that there’s a restaurant on a particular street corner that’s offering a two-for one deal tonight might be.
2. Localness. Of course, it’s in the title, but what does it mean?  Well, here I’m a little confused, because, you see, the definition of local varies for different people, and for different services, at different times (so that’s at least three variables at play here).Allow me to illustrate: For those living in city centers, life may very well revolve around a relatively small area, and so, in many of their daily needs local does indeed mean local to them at almost any time.

   However, for those living in the suburbs, life is much more likely to extend to a somewhat broader geography so that, at the point of time of looking for a service, location may be very different to the location at which the service is to be consumer, especially if the need for that service is not immediate but is at some future point in time (i.e. any time we plan ahead – busy people take note).

3. Relevance. Results must of course be relevant but, when you’re dealing with information that has both timeliness and localness dimensions, the potential for irrelevance increases. ‘Regular’ search engines ( maybe we’ll have to start referring to them like this to distinguish from real-time) use ranking algorithms to display results in some order of relevance, but what is the algorithm that determines relevance when you introduce the new dimensions of timeliness and localness (perhaps OneRiot has at least part of the answer).

What’s the popular demand for real-time local search?

Well, you see here, I think it rather depends upon who you are, what you’re searching for, and when you need it. For me, it keeps coming back to those three dimensions above.

I do believe in some cases this thing that’s being called Real-Time Local Search is incredibly important, but it’s not important across the board.  The best way in which I can illustrate this is to offer a few user scenarios (I’m sure you can think of many more) where I try to assess whether real-time local search is likely to be important to me (consumer) or a business (supplier).

Scenario 1: I’m looking for a concrete cutter to cut a slab in my driveway at my house in Winchester (from where I take a 60 minute commute to London for work each day) to install a new manhole cover.  I’m time-poor and the only chance I get to do the research is at work (London).

Conclusion: The service is extremely unlikely to have a real-time component, and the point of consumption of the service is far from the point (in space and time) of search.

Scenario 2: My conference wraps up at 6.00pm and I want to network with colleagues over food immediately after the event at some convenient nearby location.

Conclusion: Highly likely to have both an immediate timeliness and a localness dimension.

Scenario 3: My conference wraps up at 6.00pm and I want to find a spot for dinner with my wife when I eventually get home after a long commute.

Conclusion: Less likely to have an immediate timeliness dimension, and localness dimension is complicated because the location at the point of search is not same as the location at the point of consumption.

Simply speaking, there are many permutations of who’s doing the searching, timeliness, and localness that are a bullseye for Real-Time Local Search and others that are way off the board. Admittedly, what’s missing from my discussion is any idea of how often we have a hit compared to a miss, indeed I’d be interested to hear any views on this.

To be truthful, my sense is that there are relatively few categories of business for which Real-Time Local Search may be very important, but let’s not allow my gut-feel to confuse the picture. There are some smart, creative businesses out there that can take a non-time-sensitive business and make it time-sensitive to great effect.

Indeed a story comes to mind, as told to me by a friend in Boulder, CA, of a local baker that tweeted each time he was about to pull a fresh batch of cookies from the oven. Surrounding businesses, as I’m told, stood still as workers who followed the baker on Twitter quit their desks to line up for fresh cookies (I couldn’t resist Googling this, looks like they’re not the only one).

Similarly, it’s obvious how businesses like bars, clubs, pubs and restaurants (even child-minders, dog sitters, and more) do have a very strong local component that’s tied to the location that the consumer is actually in, but less so for businesses such as accountants, brokers of many sorts, and web designers.

Is there a popular demand? I don’t know, but I think in time we will see.

Guidance for local businesses

In all the hoopla, it can be hard for the (business) man-on-the-street to make sense of it all, especially to know what (if any) action to take.

My thoughts? Don’t worry. If you’re already engaged in the local and social web, you’re probably doing just fine. Continue to be engaged in social sites like Twitter and Facebook (there’s already plenty of information out there on using these tools for your business – e.g. here’s what Chris Brogan says on the subject) as well as local directories and the local listings in the search engines. Being active in all those places is important.

Maximise the reach of your activity in those places by utilizing widgets to spread your real-time wings across your other web presences, for example, get your Twitter feed into your blog or website, and link to your Facebook profile or show your status updates if you use Facebook to promote your business.

Also you might consider how you can get closer to real-time with your customers by utilizing widgets like BookingBug’s real-time availability and reservations widgets on your websites, blog, Facebook page and more.

Basically, continue to get stuck into and engaged with social and local media. A lot of the innovation in this space is occurring in Internet companies that are providing real-time-like search experiences for consumers and businesses, rather than in the local businesses themselves, and they’re trawling their content from the same places in which you should already be playing.

Evolution not revolution

I guess if I was to try to summarise this piece, it would go something like this: don’t get hung up on the label “Real-Time Local Search” – at least, not just yet. I’m not convinced that the ‘Local’ bit isn’t a bit of a red-herring in the wider scheme of things.

For some people, at some times, and for some needs this is really important concept, but remember it’s not (yet) universally applicable.

It’s useful to have a label to refer to, and so “Real-Time Local Search” works as well as anything for me, but is it revolutionary? I don’t believe so. Yes, it’s another step along a continuum of increasingly current search results. Do we want search results that are more current? Of course we do, and they’re getting so all the time, but using the words “Real-Time” suggests we’ve reached the end, and we haven’t.

Footnote – Some examples of Real-Time Local Search in action:

Whilst writing this article, I found myself drawn into trying out a few of the ways of searching with both timeliness and localness in mind, this is a mere tip of the iceberg (commenters, please feel free to make further suggestions to try) but this gets you started:

Twitter search Try this – http://search.twitter.com/search?q=pizza+in+soho Local? Yes. Useful or relevant results? Somewhat – certainly the results feel more time-relevant than Google.

Try this – http://search.twitter.com/search?q=pizza+in+london – Not really a good local example, too wide to be considered local, but useful to see what happens.

OneRiot

Here’s what they say “OneRiot crawls the links people share on Twitter, Digg and other social sharing services, then indexes the content on those pages”

I head about these guys via the excellent Leo Laporte show This Week in Tech (TWiT)

Try this – http://www.oneriot.com/search?q=pizza+in+soho Local? Yes. Useful or relevant results? Yes, I think so. For more info on OneRiot see this piece by Matt McGee.

Google Ah, the old fav, the established ‘standard’ for search Try this – http://www.google.com/#q=pizza+in+soho Local? Yes. Useful or relevant? Yes, but no sense of timeliness (so doesn’t really qualify as real-time)

Superpages SP411

I saw this mentioned by Greg Sterling here, it’s interesting but the long set of instructions about how to use it was rather a turn off. Not sure I’d really call this real-time. Sure, you get results in real-time (but don’t you get that from any search engine), but the results don’t seem to have what I’d regard as a real-time dimension. In fact, they appear to be just what I’d get from their directory service, it feels a little contrived and I don’t see why I wouldn’t just use their website on my mobile.  Still, as Greg says in his piece, it’s good “example of Superpages pro-actively taking its data and local search capabilities out to where users are” so hats off to them.

Surchur

I came across this whilst reading Matt McGee here. Try this – http://surchur.com/all/pizza+in+soho A bit thin on results for my query to make a judgement, but interesting in terms of discovery versus search with those ‘hot’ panels on the home page.

Collecta

Try this – http://collecta.com/#q=pizza%20in%20soho Hmm, can’t make up my mind about this one, lots of results like “Yummy pizza in Clerkenwell. Now to Soho for jewellery supplies and general mooching about” but most don’t really help me find any business I can actually use. My jury is out.

First off, it’s important to realize that we live in an imperfect world, and despite what technologists believe you can’t “program out” imperfection no matter how hard you try. Indeed, even trying to do so often just introduces other imperfections. I say this because you must realize that, if you’re in business today, there will be those that are saying bad things about your company, and I don’t believe it’s up to technologists to vet or censor what those people say. Though as you’ll see, I do believe we have a duty of care to be able to deal with problems if they arise. I don’t care how virtuous you think you are, there will be those that misunderstand your motives, have had poor luck with your products or services or, for some other reason outside of your control and despite your best efforts to the contrary, have reasons to speak ill of your business.

Since we learned to talk, we’ve been saying bad things about one another—so what’s so different today, and why all the brouhaha? Well, the problem (or if you prefer, the opportunity) is that today we have the power to make our voice heard far wider than the intimate circles of the local pub or local market square. That means that bad words reach more prospective customers and risk damage to our reputation, and also that we are far more likely to hear those rumblings of discontent. So the problem is magnified in terms of both its reach and our likelihood that we’ll notice it.

But before your blood pressure starts heading off the chart, you should take a breath. You need to credit those that read reviews with the same intelligence with which you credit yourself, and I say this for two reasons. Firstl, one bad review does not destroy your business, so long as there are plenty of people saying good things as well. Second, not all reviews gain equal weight in the eyes of the consumers; it’s pretty easy to see personal or vindictive reviews for what they are. I’ve also noticed a trend for those giving bad reviews to try to hide behind some limited anonymity that the web affords them. When most of us are reading reviews we give more weight to the reviews from identifiable people than those from less open personalities, and reviews that sound like personal grudges really are simply ignored.

It’s tempting to think you can control what’s said, but you really have little hope of doing that in most cases—though there are some exceptions I’ll cover later. The reasons why you can’t directly control what’s said are manifold: people are entitled to say what they think, and any attempts to gag critics will likely backfire on you when they make your attempts to gag them public too. Also, consider that the web is a pretty big place, and to try to police it for all occurrences of bad PR for your business with the view to erasing it or stifling the originators will likely take up more time than you have available.

I mentioned exceptions, and there are some: if you have good reason to believe that what’s being said contravenes legal boundaries, then you may decide to take action. Any reputable website will hear your complaint, should have a policy for dealing with such complaints, and should be able to offer you some route to resolution. Be warned however that most sites of this nature pride themselves on offering freedom of speech, and they’ll be unlikely to remove or edit bad reviews without good cause being shown. Often this will need to take the form of some formal legal proceeding which can be onerous. At Brownbook.net, we publish a policy to cover this sort of occasion, the essence of it is, so you can see how local business directory sites like us think is:

• Your argument is with the reviewer, not with us, we’ll cooperate with you to help you find a remedy
• We don’t edit or delete reviews without just cause being shown in a formally submitted complaint—except at our own discretion if its plainly obvious that the offending review adds no value to our other users
• Upon receipt of a just complaint we contact the reviewer to inform them of the complaint and ask if they’d like to modify their review
• If the reviewer stands by their review it’s the complainant’s prerogative to pursue a legal remedy to request us to release the details of the reviewer so they may take action against the reviewer. We respect the privacy of all our members and we don’t release our members’ details to anyone except in accordance with a formal legal request to do so
• We respect any formal legal decisions reached

There’s a little more to it than that, but that gives you an idea of the stance that web companies are likely to take (if you want to see the whole thing, I’ve added a link at the end of this piece).

All that being said, it’s worth thinking about some good practical advice for managing your reputation on line, especially with respect to reviews, so here are my 7 top tips for doing just that:

1. Use Google alerts to listen for mentions of your company or products, good or bad. You can join the conversation to magnify the good and address the bad.
2. Where you find negativity, first establish a neutral frame of mind, and don’t immediately bite. You can’t deal with the problem in knee-jerk mode.
3. If you can identify the customer, see if you can resolve the issue offline, then ask them to update their review. You’ll find when you satisfy a previously unhappy customer you’ll be creating one of your strongest advocates.
4. If the review is truly unjustified, you may wish to respond publicly to the review to provide some balance to the discussion – but use this tactic with care as it can soon turn into a fight, and nothing is less appealing than two people airing their differences in public. If you do this, I recommend starting with a phrase like “dear x, thanks for your feedback and I am sorry to hear you’re unhappy, let me see if I can help…” and then go on to unemotionally address the issue, but don’t just disagree with their view. Here’s an example of a business using this exact tactic to handle one bad review in their otherwise excellent reviews. It leads me to trust the supplier more when communication is as open as this: Aerial Tec.
5. If the review is nasty, downright personal, or in some way illegal then you might need to take action. Check the policies of the website where the review appears to find out how best to contact and notify them. Don’t just fire off an email—there may be information they need to identify the review in question and their policy will let you know the best (and quickest) way to get any issue resolved.
6. Do nothing. That’s right, you may decide to do nothing—most of us know we don’t get it right all of the time. This can be hard to do, because we feel our pride is hurt and we want to defend it, but sometimes attempts to fight back simply fuel the fire and can turn a small blip into a big problem.
7. Get some good reviews. In my opinion this is the best way to balance the picture and swing it in your favor. Ask your good customers to give you great reviews. A word of warning if you’re thinking of faking it by writing your own—don’t. Such tactics are often obvious or at least are quickly discovered.

So, let’s get back to the questions I posed at the start of this post. Do you really have a reason to fear bad reviews? I say, no, but you need to have a certain mindset and deal with them in a certain way.

Just how significant are bad reviews for the future of our businesses? They’re significant, but not for the reasons we immediately think. They make us aware of and provide us with an opportunity to fix genuine problems and turn opponents into staunch allies. Unjustly negative reviews are often exposed as petty and have little sway with intelligent consumers, and in the case of outright illegal reviews you generally have a remedial process to get them removed.

How can we insure against them? In a world where consumers talk to consumers without barriers of time and distance it’s more important than ever to provide excellent products and services, because anything less will be subject to the supercharged grapevine that is the Internet. Assuming you’re doing all that, you may still annoy some people (the old adage of “you can’t please all of the people all of the time” was never so true)—but as intelligent consumers we know this. Instead of trying to eradicate bad reviews, outweigh them by getting great customers to give you great reviews.

And how can we control what’s said? Forget it—you can’t. You simply have to join the conversation. That entails a certain amount of exposure which can be uncomfortable for some, but the way to winning customers when customers listen to other customers for advice is developing trust. And that requires exposure. Warts and all.

So says my friend and Kelsey Group analyst Michael Boland, and I have to agree when I see searches like “reclaimed fireplaces lewes” yield eight out of the ten first page spots on Google taken by video (at time of writing). What you’re seeing there is a small business practically owning the first page of Google for it’s chosen long-tail keywords, and it’s not difficult to do if you know how.

If you’re hoping to get your videos to rank well in search results, there are three things you’ll need to consider (you might call these the basic elements of video SEO):

• Video production (how, production quality, duration, formats, etc)
• Landing page (where will your video drive traffic?)
• Distribution (getting your video out there, keywords, descriptions, links and SEO)

Video production

The first thing to realize is that most video production companies have only about 30% of the solution that’s needed for any small business. The other 70% you need to do yourself, or get someone to do for you. Why? Well, they think the benefit is all in the production and the finished article, but it isn’t. It’s what you do with video that counts—and that’s to do with the distribution and landing page. So, my advice is this: pay only about 30% of your attention to the video production. The rest comes after that.

You have a wide range of options for getting video produced these days. Here are just a few.

Local video specialists. You’ll find companies like Turnhere, Jivox, Spotmixer and Adfare (to mention just a few of the many!) that specialize in video for local and small businesses and who offer you a turnkey solution for production of a variety of formats and durations. These tend to be well priced and focused on fast turnaround of a well-thought out web-friendly video. You’ll find these guys in the Google organic search results.

Mid to large-tier corporate video production companies. You’ll find these companies are less geared up for the fast turnaround and low-cost option you’re after, plus their historically high-production values make their end product often look too much like “advertising” with less of the sort of personal connection you should be seeking. You’ll find these guys with glossy ads in videography magazines, specialist press, marketing rags and also in PPC Google results.

Small and local videographer, one-man-bands, colleague grads, etc. With advances in technology, making it cheaper and within reach of smaller operations, you’re as likely to get the sort of video you want from a one-man-band as you are from a larger corporate video specialist. You’ll find these guys through word of mouth, in Google organic results, via Twitter, LinkedIn, or services like freelancers.net.

DIY – yes, you can even do it yourself. Grab yourself a camera, or even a camera phone and just talk about your business. That’s all it takes.

For local and small businesses, high-production quality does not bring the customers (in fact high-production quality is as likely to alienate customers!). Traditional videographers will sniff at this, but it’s simple, down to earth production where your prospects can really see you that has the greatest impact. What you should be aiming for is a “good, but not too polished” result. Your video should be authentic, real and down to earth. As soon as it gets too polished you lose that personal connection with people and they’ll see it as just advertising.

There’s a lot of science and research out there that will prescribe the “ideal” length for short form video ads, but there is no exact formula. The rule of thumb is that you need to be somewhere north of 30 seconds to provide sufficient information to motivate a contact action, and somewhere south of 3 minutes so as not to bore everyone to tears. Of course like any rule there are exceptions, but remember this is about getting interest and encouraging a click or contact. You don’t need to tell everything in one video.

There are as many formats as there are companies marketing them, but you can roughly break it down into a few general styles.

Photo montage. This is a set of photos and transitions, which will most often be accompanied by music or a voice over. Generally the cheapest option and not strictly video in the sense of human understanding, although very much video in the sense of technology and search engines. Photos with music is generally easiest, and there are some great online engines for taking photos and stitching them together for you with royalty free music. If you’re thinking about voiceover then you introduce more complications, because you need to write a script, and then you’ll take longer in production because of the additional variables.

Q&A. This format works quite well for many small businesses because you get a chance to do a sort of mini-interview so you can highlight important user selling points about your business. You may have an interviewer asking the questions, or you may have no audible questions at all, or you may use text overlays to ask the questions or reinforce the answers.

Documentary style. I’d describe this as a more free-form style which may take in several parts of your business. If you’re a car dealer you may include some scenes of your showroom, as well as your service bays, and maybe you have a few different people presenting, like you, your sales manager and your service technician.

Stock or custom? This is not really a format, but a question of whether you’ll be using stock images and video, or your own “real” images and video. Personally I’d always go for real images and video of your business, anything less just feels a little fake and transparent.

Crafting your landing pages

So, you’ve made your video, but what are you going to do with it now?

Well, before you read ahead to “distribution” you need to decide where you want to direct people who view your video. What I mean here is, because the web allows people to click and link to another website, where do you want the people that see your video to click to. I’ll call it a landing page, as a generic term to mean your website, blog, Twitter page, business page in your choice of directory, or wherever.

Ideally you’ll decide on one page that you’ll always drive people to. This gives you the benefit of concentrating your SEO efforts plus, assuming you have some analytics on that page (e.g. Google Analytics) you’ll see what sort of traffic your video is driving.

A key point to realize is that the moment your prospective customer is viewing your video he’s entering your sales funnel, and it’s your job to lead him through it to the other end, one step at a time. Someone once said to me that a CV or resumé doesn’t get you the job, it gets you the interview. It’s the interview that gets you the job. And the same principle applies here. The purpose of your video is to engage the viewer sufficiently to get them to click through to your landing page, and the purpose of the landing page is to give them sufficiently more to encourage them to pick up the telephone, send you an email, or maybe even drive to your store or office. Remember this and you’ll see that what you present on your landing page is as important as your video content. I’ll talk more about click-throughs in the next section on distribution.

Distribution

This really is the “what” in “what will you do with it,” and this is crucial to your whole strategy—you could make the best video and have the greatest landing page, but miss this step, or do it half-heartedly, and you’ll miss out big time.

What’s your aim? Simple: To get your video found when prospects search for your keywords on any of the leading search engines. So, getting your video onto YouTube is not necessarily about getting it found by people searching on YouTube. The same holds true for MetaCafe, Revver—everywhere you can get your video distributed including local directories, forums and blogs. I’ve written about this previously—see Breadcumbs and Business Directories.

When you’re doing this sort of distribution you’ll find that the sites you distribute to variously allow you to accompany your video content with attributes like: Author, title, short description, long description, URL, category, keywords or tags, etc. They don’t all include all the attributes, so you have to be a bit bespoke in your approach. Generally however my rules for optimizing your video content are these:

Keywords (keyphrases), or tags. Use something like Google’s Keyword Tool to experiment with different key phrases. What you’re looking for is not the most popular key phrases, but long tail key phrases. It’s about quality not quantity. I’ve written about this previously here so I won’t re-cover old ground here.

Title. Come up with a keyphrase-rich title that’s less than 75 characters long. Why 75? Because that’s about the lowest common denominator across most of your potential target sites, and it tends to be readable on most page layouts as well as the browser title bar. Some of your target sites will incorporate your title into their page meta tags, and a shorter title will work better for you so long as it is keyphrase-rich. Remember to make it human-readable too. A simple list of key-phrases and keywords looks like spam, and you won’t get people clicking to watch your videos, so they won’t even enter your funnel.

Description. As with your title, make this keyphrase-rich and human readable, except now you’ve got around 200 characters. It’s crucial here to make your landing page URL the very first thing in your description—e.g.: “http://www.mylandingpage.com – [keyphrase-rich long description].” This is because most of the sites you submit your video to will truncate your description, and you want that URL to be seen. Furthermore many of the sites will automatically convert that URL into a link. And we like links, don’t we? Since not all sites will do this with links, and even if they do not everyone will click, I always recommend including contact details and a call to action in your video, giving viewers a straight-forward way to call, email, or visit your website.

URL. For sites that allow you to associate a URL to your video use the landing page URL.

Short description. This is distinct from the description described above. Work back from your long description to make shorter versions as needed on a site by site basis.

Author. Use your landing page URL.

Profile. most video upload sites require you to have registered and have a profile. Use the same rules above to give prominence to your keyphrases and landing page URL in profile descriptions.

Tracking

I briefly mentioned tracking before, and it’s important that you know how effective your work is to determine if you should do more of the same or something different. Ideally you’ll make your landing page a unique page that’s only referenced from your video distribution—that way you know that any traffic comes directly as a result of the video work you’ve done. Alternatively, if you’re sending traffic to an existing page, use your analytics package to track your referrers, although this is more difficult as you’ll have to wade through more data to reach the same conclusions.

By way of a roundup I have a warning note and a note of encouragement.

Warning: It’s too easy to get carried away with science and reports. They’ll make you think it’s tougher than it is, and before you know it you’ll be boggled into inaction. In days when TV was the only form of video advertising, it cost big bucks, and therefore marketers needed a ton of research and information to justify their decision to embark, indeed to protect themselves if it all went wrong.

Encouragement: These days it costs so little, that you can probably produce and distribute the whole thing at lower cost than doing all the justification research. And if you’re a small or local business forget trying to justify a project with research—you’ll end up doing nothing.

My advice then: Video advertising can be effective for local businesses, and if you’re a decision maker you can pretty quickly produce and distribute your own video advertising to test the actual results. You don’t need to rely on second hand research. You’ve heard of fail fast? Here you can put it into practice. Try it, test the results and then modify your plan accordingly. I’ll leave the last word to my Kelsey friend Michael Boland when he talks about the opportunity for getting your video ads found in universal search: “there is some prime real estate for the picking,” so go get some for your business.

At this point, two things might happen:

1. You discover you “own” the first page of Google results and you feel satisfied that you’re now on the map, or
2. Your business is nowhere to be seen, and you lapse into a state of abject depression

OK, so it’s not quite as binary as that, but you get my point.  What we’re all hoping for is to see our business name up there in lights, right?

Let’s assume for a minute that you did find your business on that sometimes-elusive first page of Google search results. Before you break open the celebratory drink, let’s just think about this a little more.  What you’ve demonstrated is that people who already know your business name can find you.  But what about all those prospective customers out there who don’t yet know your business?

At this point you have to, as my mother would say, “use yer loaf;” it’s time to start to think about what keywords and key phrases those unknowing customers are likely to use to find your business. So, start now, make a list.  There are some key things you should consider when doing this. Here are my few golden rules for building out your keyword list:

Don’t use jargon unless its understood by consumers too.  Every industry has its own technical jargon that’s used internally by practitioners within the industry, but before slipping into those familiar words, consider first if they have crossed over into general consumer use.

Think local. Depending upon who you listen to, somewhere between 20% and 40% of all searches have a local component—a place name, or some other inferred geographic qualifier.  So, what’s your catchment area, what are the towns, villages, locations, urban areas, landmarks, counties, states, and even countries that you’re looking to serve?  Add those to your list too.

Products and brands. Clearly if you stock particular products and brands, or a particularly specialized type of product then these should be strong contenders for keywords and phrases.  One experience we had with Brownbook.net, which is my business, was a double glazing and patio supplier that won an order for over £7,500 when a customer found them through Google using the phrase “bifold doors” (this is a particularly specialized type of patio door that folds right back to expose your back yard).  Clearly, had they not included that key phrase, and instead stuck with generics like “patio doors” they would not have won the business (somewhat ironically, it transpired that that extra tag was added to their Brownbook listing by a regular employee—not a marketeer—that came across their listing).

Consider using modifiers. This is something new we’ve been experimenting with at Brownbook.net—advising our business customers to try adding modifiers, and early results look promising. The idea is to include keywords that tap into users’ behavior when searching—for example “cheap xyz”.  The word “cheap” is what I’ll call the modifier; it modifies your actual keyword (in this case the keyword being “xyz”).  Think about it, if you sell lifejackets, do you think people search for “high quality lifejackets”?  Of course they don’t, they search for “cheap lifejackets”, “lifejackets sale“, “best price on lifejackets” etc.  You get my point.  When I talk to brand owners they often have a problem with this until they realize the potential SEO benefits. Most brand owners don’t want to say their stuff is “cheap.” Rather, they prefer “good value”, but who the hell searches for “good value” anything?  So, brand owners might need to put the ego and “brand thinking” aside for this one.

Jump on a news bandwagon. Can you tie your product or service to a current news story or trend?  The most obvious example for me of recent years was the buzz that surrounded the iPhone.  All of a sudden a whole host of companies were proclaiming support for the iPhone, and justifiably associating their products or services with that hot brand.  The intention, of course, to attract people sensitized to that new trend. 

Exploit the long-tail. The most obvious keywords and phrases are often those that are most fiercely competitive, and though search volume for those terms is high (which seems like a good thing) there’s so much content that gets returned in a search that your brand gets lost (which is bad).  So, consider long-tail keywords and phrases that have less traffic but are also less competitive.  The question to ask is this: So what if the search term is only getting 1,000 searches a month, if you can be prominent in all those 1,000 is that enough?  You may find you need only to capture a small percentage of that lot to be successful.  Think ‘big fish in small pond’.

Use common misspellings. Perhaps an obvious one; and one that’s already had a lot written about it.  Need I explian (sic) more?

Keep your keyword list current. With all the above, regular attention is important, but especially with product and brand names, and bandwagon strategies. You just got a new product range in? Update your keywords. You spot a new trend that you can associate with?  Update your keywords.  This isn’t always as easy as it sounds, and though its easy to be blogging with current keywords, entries you may have created in local directories may be harder to change quickly, if at all. 

This is by no means an exhaustive list, and I’d certainly encourage all you smart people out there to add your own suggestions via the comments.  Now, lets assume now you’ve compiled your master list.  So how can you use it?

A few breadcrumbs go a long way

I’m going to focus on one concept called breadcrumbing (no, nothing to do with the idea of a breadcrumb trail) on your webpages.  In this case what I’m referring to is dropping little ‘crumbs’ about your business all over the web, to allow prospective customers to find their way back to your web presence, and thence to actually contact you. 

Many years ago, when websites among small businesses were still uncommon, a lot of attention was spent by businesses on their websites; their showcase or home on the web.  These days, with so many websites out there the focus has shifted, to encompass not just your website, but all the places in which you can create high value links back to your website, drawing in attention from many places.

This technique does two things for you in relation to search engines:

First, getting plenty of high value links to your web site has always been desirable for getting your website up the rankings.

Second, and of increasing importance for young and agile small businesses, the object is to dominate the search results by populating them with other sites as well as your own that are all referring people back to your own.

Using local and business directories for breadcrumbing

A large chunk of my career was spent in big directory companies, but recent years have lead me towards the more distributed publishing model of social media and user generated content.   I speak with many small and large business owners all over the world, and one common thread emerges: those that are web-savvy are using these sites to list their businesses to execute a breadcrumbing strategy.

Of course they want their own website to appear in the search results, but those whose strategy has matured sufficiently also realize the value of getting several bites at the cherry by having third party sites where they’re listed too.  Its actually not about getting found in these sites themselves, but about piggy-backing on their good SEO to get found in the primary search engines.  So this becomes a slightly more indirect but additional route to customer acquisition:

User behavior on the web started out something a little like this: Open web browser –> type URL to visit business’s website –> customer acquisition.

Then it became: Open web browser –> query a search engine –> click to business’s website –> customer acquisition.

Today, the process goes more like this: Open web browser –> query search engine –> click to a site where a business is featured –> read something interesting enough to engage the user –> click to business’s website –> customer acquisition.

Hidden in this process is an obvious, but often overlooked, point: the distinction between the behavior of search engines and the behavior of people. Getting in the results (with your own site, and with referring sites) is only the start; getting people to click on one of those links and be motivated enough to actually get in touch with you is the key.

Conclusions and advice

What we’re really seeking with this process is almost omnipresence, to be everywhere we possibly can.

The advice then, considering my area of experience, is to use local search sites, vertical directories, and general business directories to list your business in as many places as possible, with relevant keywords and key phrases, and with links back to your own site if you have one (if you don’t, choose one of these directories as your main presence, and direct all other breadcrumbs to that site). You also must be prepared to invest the small amount of time required to keep these fresh and current.

This is not something that needs big budgets and large marketing teams.  It can be done on a shoestring, if you pick your places carefully.  It doesn’t necessary require paid listings; a lot can be done with free listings.  Consider that the ‘traditional’ directory companies are built on a sales model that required expensive sales forces and the corresponding high overheads, and their prices will reflect this.  Consider, also, that it’s often not the traditional directories that have the best chance of getting you into the search results pages—many of them still think that they are the point of entry for consumers, when most of us know its Google—so a strategy that embraces several of the alternatives at lower cost may be more effective.