Study Findings and Suggested Tips to Optimizing Your Local Listings:

Finding: 71% of searchers value the information contained in local search results. 60% of these searchers said that local listings with an image get their attention more than standard listings.

Tip: Make your local listing stand out from the crowd. After claiming your listings within Google Places, Yahoo and Bing local listings, you wil want to enhance it with a great looking photo.

Finding: 17% of searchers do not use local geo-modifiers when searching, with this percentage on the rise amoung younger searchers. While on the other hand, older searchers are more inclined to search using local modifiers – roughly 63%.

Tip: When targeting a younger audience, businesses should focus more on generic terms. When targeting older consumers, businesses should focus more on local modifiers within their search related terms.

Finding: 60% of local searchers add a city name to their search query. 42% of searchers choose to add a zip code.

Tip: Optimizing for town name and city name should deliver more traffic than ZIP code, but a well-rounded local SEO campaign should utilize both.

Optimizing your local listings ensures that potential customers find you using search and map functions within search engines. Doing this correctly will support your SEO marketing efforts, as well as increase your visibility and online reputation. For more information, check out Google, Yahoo and Bing Local Listings. If you have questions, or would like to discuss claiming and optimizing your local listings, we would be happy to help. Contact Sage Island today!

Your next step should be to track what “social customers” are saying about you and your company. Monitoring and engaging these conversations will allow you as a business owner to keep your finger on the pulse of the market, and make quick business decisions.

Facebook Insights

Facebook’s analytics tool, also known as Facebook Insights, provides you with important metrics specifically related to your company’s Facebook Fan Page. This tool allows you to view a comprehensive dashboard highlighting top level metrics around the posts and visits to your company’s Fan page. By understanding and analyzing Insight’s metrics, marketers are better prepared to respond to customer feedback and needs.

Within Facebook Insights Dashboard, you will see both User Insights and Interaction Insights. User Insights allow you to view monthly active users, total and new page Likes, Likes from referring sites, user demographics, tabs views and photo views. In addition, Interaction Insights allow you to track daily comment views, mentions within status updates, reviews, wall posts and video posts surrounding your company.

Monitoring the total number of new Fans or Likes is a valuable metric to consider. At what point did you receive the most Likes? How were you engaging these “social customers”? What content were you pushing on your Fan Page? Once you have defined the factors that contributed to this growth you will be able to cater your marketing strategy accordingly. Aside from new Fans or Likes, it is also beneficial to know the average number of comments you typically receive on any given post. Measuring this engagement metric will allow you to increase the number of posts around topics based on your fans interest. These insights gather data comparable to what you would receive from a focus group, but they are totally free.

YouTube Insights

YouTube offers a similar reporting tool known as YouTube Insights. Much like Facebook Insights, this tool allows you monitor your company’s branded YouTube Page. You can check out who is watching your videos, see what referring sites and keywords continue to drive traffic to your branded page and what videos are the most popular. You can also drill down within a specific video to see what portion particularly sparked viewer’s attention and where the interest dropped. These metrics help you understand what content your customers like, enabling you to promote related content and grow your audience.

Twitter Analytics Dashboard

With millions of tweets occurring daily, it seems only natural that you would want to monitor any conversation surrounding your brand on Twitter. While much newer than Facebook and YouTube, Twitter has several applications that allow you to monitor when people mention or follow your company. Last quarter Twitter announced a launch of a new official Twitter analytics dashboard. This dashboard highlights real-time data regarding which tweets are spreading and which Twitter users are influential in your network. The emphasis of Twitter’s analytics is focused on the fact that the data is truly real-time, allowing for branding adjustments and marketing strategy decisions to be made on the fly.

Each of these monitoring tools will provide you with a wealth of knowledge about our company. When deciding which tools are best for your brand, remember to always keep your end goal in mind. Utilizing these tools will help you better understand how people interpret your brand, and allow you to respond quickly to customer’s needs.

1. Cost & Flexibility
AdWords allows you to choose between two different pricing models: Cost-Per-Click (CPC) or Cost-Per-Impression (CPM). This allows you to have an increased level of control with your advertising campaigns. You can also set a maximum daily budget and maximum CPC or CPM bids to completely manage your advertising costs.

2. Targeting & Scheduling Capabilities
Within your Google AdWords account you can specifically target ads to a city, region, state, metro area or any specific location you define for yourself. You can also target any of the provided 38 languages. Ad Scheduling can be extremely important to the performance of your advertising campaigns. With AdWords you can customize which days of the week and hours of the day you would like for your ads to run.

3. Ad Extensions
AdWords provide 4 different ad extensions in Google Search: Location Extension, Phone Extension, Ad Sitelinks and Product Extensions. Ad Extensions expand your standard text ad with additional information such as a product listing or image, address and phone number, click-to-call phone number, or additional links to your site. These extensions help users more easily find out about your business, product or service.

4. Conversion Optimizer
By using your conversion tracking data, AdWords features two ways to get you more conversions at a lower cost. The Conversion Optimizer keyword bidding option optimizes your ad placement in each ad auction for increased likelihood of conversion and avoidance of unprofitable clicks. You can set your maximum cost-per-acquisition (the most you’re willing to pay per conversion) and this feature will automatically choose the optimal CPC for each ad auction. The second feature is the “Optimize for conversions” ad rotation option. This feature shows the ads that are expected to provide more conversions more often.

5. The Google Network
Google is split into 2 networks; the Search Network, which includes Google and other search sites and the Display Network, which includes Gmail, YouTube and sites like the New York Times. The Search Network uses keywords to target text ads on search results pages. The Display Network reaches prospects at different points of the buying cycle through contextual targeting. Here you can run text/rich media ads, image or video ads depending on the site. Display ads serve as an effective media choice for both branding and direct response goals.

If you have any questions about Google AdWords, or if you think PPC advertising could be the marketing choice for you, please contact Sage Island to begin your marketing success.

With that said, it is important that your business take advantage of the opportunity to be listed within Google Places, Yahoo Local and Bing Local Listings. Your local customers already search Google, Yahoo and Bing for the products and services that you offer. By creating local business listings within these three platforms, you can be confident that your business will be easily found online. These platforms will also complement your current search engine optimization strategies.

While each local listing platform is different, they all provide unique features that will allow you to add photos and videos, custom service categories, brands that you sell and coupon options that make your business stand out among your competitors.

More and more people are searching online for local businesses, so it is important that your company have a presence.

If you are looking for innovative ideas or have any questions, feel free to contact us today. At Sage Island, our goal is to help your business grow.

]]> http://www.sageisland.com/blog/2010/08/28/norco-management-lauches/feed/ 0 http://www.sageisland.com/blog/2010/06/16/seo-is-a-craft-not-a-science/ http://www.sageisland.com/blog/2010/06/16/seo-is-a-craft-not-a-science/#comments Wed, 16 Jun 2010 11:12:42 +0000 Mike http://www.sageisland.com/blog/?p=940 Recently there has been a backlash in the SEO industry against what is deemed to be a non-scientific approach when it comes to SEO testing or collecting statistical data. Some people argue that you have to treat SEO as part of computer science and be very strict about it. Following this logic you are basically forbidden to do any SEO testing yourself unless you have some actual scientists doing the research.

While I am not sure why some people attempt to push in this direction I can only say it won’t work. SEO is a craft not a science. First off there are far too many variables to determine in SEO to be able to treat it scientifically. Also, if anything, SEO would have to be a social science as most things in SEO depend on human behavior. People writing algorithms, people linking, people creating content.

Read more at http://seo2.0.onreact.com/seo-is-a-craft-not-a-science

ECOMMERCE STRATEGIES FOR MULTI-CHANNEL SUCCESS
In this seminar you will learn everything from the state of retailing online to driving web traffic, search engine marketing and POS integration. The digital channel is retail’s new growth engine and you must master this domain in order to be a successful retailer. Learn ten things that you can do to improve your ecommerce website.

If you’ve started on the wrong foot, there’s still time. Good keyword research is an evolution. The world of search is constantly changing, and your keywords should, too. The terms that people are using today may not be the most successful six months from now.

Whether you’re putting together your first keyword list or adapting your current list, here are some tips to get you started.

Don’t use the same keyword list for your SEO and PPC campaigns.

SEO and PPC are complete different, and they require different keyword lists. In fact, most of the keywords you use for SEO probably won’t even end up on your PPC list. PPC keyword lists are highly targeted — you’re looking for keywords that will target a very specific audience to ensure you’re not spending money on clicks from tire-kickers. For SEO, your keywords should be relevant, but much broader to reach a larger search audience.

Never build a keyword list based on assumptions.

No matter how well you know your target audience, the truth is that as a business owner you think differently than your consumers. Many marketers and business owners create keyword lists based on their knowledge of the business instead of search volume. They’re surprised to discover that consumers are searching for a completely different list of terms. Your technical knowledge may be preventing you from finding the laymen’s terms for which your customers are searching. While a good knowledge of the terminology in your business is a great place to start your research, you need metrics to back you up. Use a keyword research program like Keyword Discovery or WordTracker, Google AdWords’ Keyword Tool to ensure that the keywords are the right ones.

Break long keyword phrases into pieces.

For SEO, try breaking your keyword phrases into smaller pieces to maximize your reach. For example, while “new houses for sale” may have a decent search volume, you might have better results with something like “new home listings,” because it works as a stand-alone keyword phrase, two separate shorter phrases (new home and home listings), and home has a higher search volume than houses. Create power phrases by ensuring that each and every word in your keyword phrase packs a punch.

Choose your keywords wisely.

Once you’ve built a long list of potential keywords, it’s decision time. For PPC, you can test a long list of keywords to find the most successful. For SEO, you need to be a little more selective. The most successful optimizations use a very short list of keywords — no more than 3 for each page. Don’t just choose the keywords with the highest search volume. Look deeper to create longer keyword phrases that will garner search volume without being too competitive. Find a balance between search volume, competition, and relevance.

Constantly update your keywords based on analytics, conversions, and traffic.

Good keyword research can create a pretty powerful initial list, but you’re not finished. You need to make constant adjustments. With PPC, the changes will most likely be daily, especially in the beginning. Watch your click-through rates and conversions to ensure that your keywords are driving relevant traffic without costing too much, and keep an eye on your analytics to find negative keywords.

SEO is a long-term process, so you’ll want to give your site some time to collect data before making changes. Monitor your analytics constantly to determine which keywords are driving the most traffic to your site. If you’re not getting the results you wanted after a month or two, it may be time to make some changes, shift your focus, or find new keywords.