Most small business owners understand that they should be listed on major national search engines such as Google and Bing, but how do they know which local directories and vertical sites are important for improving their SEO? If you’re a dentist in Boston looking for local sites, you could look at the listings of other […]
Google and Facebook’s ongoing battle to dominate the Internet can make it difficult to understand some Internet trends. This is further complicated by the fact that Facebook is blocking the Googlebot from crawling its pages. However, Google does have quite a few Facebook pages in its index – a quick search suggests as many as […]
Most small businesses understand that they should be listed on major national search engines such as Google and Bing, but how do they know which local and vertical sites are important for improving their overall SEO performance? For example, if you’re a plumber in Boston looking for local sites to post your business listing on, […]
If a business doesn’t have a storefront, is mobile, or provides a service to a large geographical area, it is logical that the business owner would want to be listed online in multiple cities. Service providers such as locksmiths, lawyers, accountants, and chains often get their business optimized for the many areas they service. As […]
Recently, a friend of mine who works in SEO called to pick my brain about why a particular business wasn’t showing up well online. The business, a Family Dollar Store franchise in Albuquerque, received an 8% customer reach score. When he searched on Google for “dollar store” in Albuquerque, the business did not show up […]
One of the most important factors in one’s ranking on Google is your volume of citations (i.e. mentions of your business name and address, not just links to your site.) The challenge lies not in obtaining hundreds of citations from any site, but by getting the right citations from the right places. That is, the […]
The typical process that an SMB will go through when building an online marketing campaign usually begins with defining their target audience, performing keyword research, analyzing which words bring the most traffic and conversions, and utilizing keyword research tools such as Keyword Discovery. Upon taking these steps, SMB owners will wait to see their results […]
Attaining a much-coveted spot on the Google 7-pack can be tough, especially for competitive keywords and in major cities. Business owners are advised to build an effective website and optimize it as one of the crucial factors in obtaining a better ranking. The common assumption today is that without a website, most businesses will have […]
This is a story about how much can be lost by mis-categorizing your business. We received a complaint from an Oregon art supply store that they were being incorrectly compared to an irrelevant business. The so-called competitor, called Hair’s Where It’s At, was also categorized as an art supply store on AmIVisible. Our initial assumption […]
When you ask small business owners if they want their business ranked high on the Internet, nearly all answer in the affirmative. But how many of them invest in their online visibility? To answer this question, we took a look at businesses in San Diego and calculated their visibility on search engines, directories and yellow […]
Last month, I discussed the prevailing problem of small business owners whose contact details appear inconsistently across multiple local directories and search sites. When a barbershop can’t be found at the address that appears on Google because the owner changed locations and forgot to update his online profile(s), everybody loses – from the business owner to […]
Have you ever thought twice about how to find the correct contact details for a local business – i.e., their name, address, phone number? The answer should be so simple: just Google it. Well, the reality is not that simple. In fact, few questions in the local online search world are as complicated as this […]
In a previous column, we saw that about 20% of Orlando businesses show up on Google Maps’ first search engine results page (SERP) for at least one local keyword, and that 61% showed up in one of the first 50 SERPs. These figures surprised many, as they imply that one in five local businesses is […]
In order to be found online by potential customers, local businesses can take action in a number of ways. In my last post, I presented data on how many Columbus businesses advertise online, publish a website, or update their online listing. When properly implemented, these actions can significantly improve a local business’s online visibility. However, […]
A lot of statistical data and analysis is published about SMB online activity in the top US markets, often leaving out many of the tier two cities. In this post, I will share some data on the online visibility of local businesses in Columbus, Ohio. With a population of some 750K, Columbus and its surrounding […]
Local businesses typically use search marketing to achieve two main objectives: getting customer calls and walk-ins. They do this by publishing their address and phone number in search engines and local directories so that an interested customer can take action one way or another – by walking into a restaurant or calling a plumber for […]
The handful of SEM companies that we work with at Palore make millions of calls to Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) every year. This raises the question of whether the market for SMB online advertising is saturated, and how much room there is for growth. A good (albeit somewhat simplistic) way of answering that question […]
When dealing with someone, the first thing that you want to know, is who that person is. In the SMB world, this boils down to what category a local business belongs to. In the old days of the yellow pages, consumers were used to knowing search the pages for, and media companies were used to […]
Lately I’ve been speaking with SEM experts about what small business owners should do to increase their online visibility. While opinions vary, most experts agree about the importance of ranking high on Google’s various organic search results. Listening to them explain what a local business can hope to achieve, I found that the language was […]
Having worked in the local search space for a while, I am often asked how is it that SMBs are so slow in adopting self-serve systems in their online advertising. And indeed, in the age of Internet advertising, when anyone can purchase keywords on search engines, is there really a need for a middleman anymore? […]