Local Search Case Study: Doux Vintage

May 3, 2009 7 Comments

I’ve been deeply intrigued by local search ever since attending SMX West 2009 in San Jose.  Matt Mcgee and Steve Espinosa were both big influences that made me re-evaluate my efforts online to consider the large changes that Google has brought to the table in regards to Local Search. It has become clear to me that any business that has a brick and mortar location has hundreds of online opportunities that are accessible, most are free to utilize, positively impact traffic, and have a good result on site rankings and online visibility. In other words, as a small business owner YOU HAVE TO BE INSANE not to take advantage and learn as much as possible about these opportunities.

My Own Case Study: From Online to Offline

My beautiful Wife Michelle has been twittering, blogging about fashion and running an online vintage store. She recently got moved into an art studio and has been diligently working to convert part of the studio into an exhibition room so she can show her collection off on the first Thursday of every month( as part of the Riverside, Ca Art Walk) and by appointment.  It struck me that she would now have an opportunity to take advantage of many online opportunities now that she was going to have a physical location. I decided to use this opportunity to publicly show what steps a small business should take to make an impact on their local search profile. I just hope that this turns out to be helpful, and instructive!

Surveying the Local Landscape

Riverside Vintage Search Results

I first started doing Google searches for vintage clothes, accessories, stores and shops to find out what the local landscape was in terms of competitors. Fortunately, there are very few stores that are competing for this particular industry. The search engine results page quite often pulled a “onebox” map result, and the rest of the results of the page were actually listings of shops on 3rd party websites. I bookmarked those sites to come back to see if I could add her business as a listing on those ranked pages.

Hello World: Getting Listed

The first step was to get the shop’s physical location identified as a business listing. Google Local was my first move, so that I could be sure that any citations, reviews and links her listing would get would be credited with that value. Even the reviews that are entered into Yahoo get cited in Google Local, so it was really the only choice.

Doux Vintage on Google LocalAfter you enter your basic information into Google Local you have the option of selecting categories. Now in Google Local, when you enter a search that isn’t in a specific category it will suggest a revision to what it beleives is the closest category that matches that query, so they’ve done a pretty thorough job of narrowing down the categories, so be sure that you enter in up to 5 categories that describe your business.

Google Categories: Clothing Collectible Period Vintage, Clothes & Accessories Consignment & Resale,Vintage Clothing Store, Vintage Accessories, Vintage Dresses

A Google Post Card: Greetings from Mountain View, CA!

Google is at least minimally interested in verifying that entries into Google Local are actual verifiable businesses, so they require either the phone number or physical address be verified. Now the phone verification is pretty much immediate, they’ll call you and you punch in a pin code, but you can also have a post card sent to your listed address to verify your business. Downside is that the post card takes some time to verify, but in this case it was necessary since the number used actually is a voicemail box that sends an email transcript.

My What a Nice Profile You Have!

The Google account that you sign up with for your Google Local listing can also yield a secondary online presence that is searchable, on the Google URL, and fairly customizable. Here’s the Google profile for Doux Vintage and my suggestion is that you tie it into a Picasa or Flickr account. If you use Flickr, then seperate out a set that has the specific pictures you’d like to use otherwise you might end up displaying pictures that aren’t exactly related. Be sure to list your contact information, and take advantage of the Bio area to get some good anchor text links in addition to the Links section.

Be sure to check out these resources on Google Local and Google Profiles and Small Business SEO

The Start of a Good Thing

That’s all for now, as I continue to expand on Doux Vintage, I’ll be continuing this as a series of posts, reporting my tactics and results so that you can learn from the example. Hopefully it’s a helpful one!

Filed under Local Search, Search engine advice, Search engine optimization Tagged with , , ,

Get Listed in Local Search

April 3, 2009 4 Comments

I recently had the pleasure of presenting this slideshow presentation to an association of Realtors, and thought that it was content that was worth sharing for small business owners, and people not familiar with Local Search.

Filed under Local Search, Search engine optimization Tagged with , ,

Google Update Expands Context and Snippets

March 24, 2009 2 Comments

Google just released a 2 part update that they have announced through their blog. The first aspect is the addition of related search results to your serp pages and new technology (The Gypsy indicates it’s part of a larger algorithm) for Google to correlate terms, the second is an extension of the Description field in the Google “Snippet”, which should prompt us to review our current SEO practices to make sure it’s still the most rational approach.

Context is Everything

Google hopes to  enhance the search experience by better understanding user intent. First up, a new technology has been deployed to understand the associations of a given search phrase. Google offered up the example of “principles of physics.” With the new technology, Google now understands that “angular momentum,” “special relativity,” “big bang” and “Quantum Mechanic” are all related terms, and will alter SERP behavior accordingly. This is important to bear in mind as you write your content that you need to focus on a broader range of related keywords, because Google isn’t looking just at how many times a single keyword is appearing, it’s looking contextually. Therefore you need to provide a broader context for your content in order for you to show your relevance to that set of related keywords.

Sorry Guys, but Google Says Longer is Better

When you enter a longer query, with more than three words, regular-length snippets may not give you enough information and context. In these situations, we now increase the number of lines in the snippet to provide more information and show more of the words you typed in the context of the page.

Sounds great right? Well, you need to look at this a little bit harder to see how this could impact your search engine optimization of your website. In the past, the limit of approx 140-160 characters for your description was  pretty standard, because that’s what would actually display on the serp. However, this question comes to mind:

Is the expanded Snippet the Meta description or text from the page to provide “context”?

Now I had previously done some research on how Google uses DMOZ information in their snippet results. So I started with that URL to provide a historical sample so we could compare.

Well here’s a query for [http://www.pathaddad.com]

Short Snippet Of a Google serp resultand here’s a much longer query

[Indianapolis real estate services and homes for sale in Carmel, Noblesville, Fishers, Westfield, Geist, Morse, Zionsville and other Hamilton County areas]

Longer Snippet from Google

From this example we can see that this snippet extension will, for longer query terms, increase the size of viewed characters in the meta description as well as pull in contextual text bits separated by an ellipse. The length can be more double and triple the previous 140 character limit. The good news is that in context it may uncover extra details from a long description, but I would still say that it would be best to provide a 140 character limit meta title and let Google grab extra snippett description from the page to provide content.

The Take Away

It is interesting that Google is taking steps to encourage long tail searches. With the release of the Google suggest, we saw an increase in “Fat Belly” terms…but this change while focused o nthe user experience, shows Google is interested in serving long tail queries more effectively. You need to provide a broader context for your content, and it will lend itself to supporting long tail queries.

Filed under content on google searches, content writing advice, Google, Search engine optimization Tagged with , , ,

Thoughts on Local Search

March 3, 2009 4 Comments

Recently I did a guest blog post about Taking your Local Search to the next level of awesomeness. While researching into the impact of local search on small businesses I had the pleasure of talking to Todd Butcher of Pepperjam, who had some great ideas about local search. I did quote some of his thoughts in that article but thought that the rest of his ideas would be very helpful to businesses interested in local search.

Question: Given that fact that Yellow Pages, Super Pages, Yelp and other “yellow page” type services now include geo tagging, address, and often a map of a business location, would you say that getting these entries could
be helpful in your organic rankings, if you have a geographically
centered Keyword?

Todd: If a business cares at all about local search, they have to go after these entries. Here is why: First, if a searcher is sophisticated enough to actually search with a geotargeted term, the local results are the first thing you see on the SERPS. In addition, for many local listings there are sub categories linking off to sites that google feels provide valuable information about that business.

Quality Local Information

This means that sites which are acting as local aggregators of business information are going to motivated to provide thorough and accurate information to be listed there. This will greatly improve the overall search experience.

Google is Getting Geographic

Second, it seems many people simply search a term like “pizza” or “car dealer”. Search on these terms and Google will ask you to enter a zip code to better refine your search locally. This is just another example of the importance that is being placed on local results.

Also, I think Google is trying to take the emphasis away from other aggregators like Superpages and try to keep it all “in house” so to speak. For that reason, I think it’s important now more than ever for the 100% local business to position themselves to take advantage of these local results.

Advice for Local Business Owners

The bottom line is, if you are a local business, it doesn’t make sense to go after broad keywords. Geotarget. Do everything you can to get listed in these results. Of course, to make sure your site shows up in these results is a whole other SEO discussion.

Filed under Geographically sensitive keywords, Guest Blog, link building, Search engine advice, Search engine optimization Tagged with , ,

Does Barter work with SEO?

February 18, 2009 8 Comments

Recently my beautiful wife, a talented artist, who runs an online vintage store, went into our local Riverside tailor shop, to get her clothes altered. She had spent a good amount of time online trying to find a Riverside, CA Tailor. She finally found a reference to his store 9 or 10 pages deep…at the wrong address. After talking to Miguel Cruz, the owner of Cruz Custom Tailor, he really wanted help getting his site and online presence in order. He still had dial-up through AOL at his business, and really wasn’t tech savvy, but he knew that people were looking for him and had no idea what to do or how. We then came to an agreement that I would help him get his business listed locally online, and he would tailor me a custom suit.

Custom Tailored Suit

After hammering down the details of how much the suit was worth and how many hours I would spend, we put it down on paper. 1 month later, he’s now listed and getting business from online referrals, and I have a beautiful custom suit.

A Tropical Paradise for a Website Redesign

I was talking to Heather Rhoades, at SMX West this last week, she is a technical services manager over at The Search Guru.  She was telling me how she recently went out to a long planned vacation in Belize, South America. When she arrived her host started talking about the troubles she was having with her site about it not being user friendly, and completely useless. After talking at length to the owner of the vacation home, they agreed that they could help each other out. By creating a new web site layout and design the owner got a substantial improvement in her business and Heather got a free week long stay at the hotel! I asked Heather if she thought that this was a good or a bad practice. Her thoughts are that this is a continuation of the regular economy, and since you may not be able to afford their goods you need, businesses do need your services. So it’s a natural market exchange.

Barter Smarter

Reaching out into the twitterverse, there was a mixed bag of responses when it came to bartering services.  Sean Carlos was worried that there might be a lack of commitment and follow through on both sides of the table.  I think this is a valid concern, but Oliver Amar, of Compucall Web Marketing makes a fantastic point about the system of bartering.

We have (bartered for services) and if you do just make sure the contract is very specific about what is expected i.e hours, results etc

It would seem that you have to be very upfront about what you want, and what they’ll get in return, even more so I’d say than a cash paying client. When I worked with Miguel Cruz, I provided him with a printed copy log of hours worked and what was gained from that time spent, which went a long way to satisfying both sides of the barter.

A Paying Proposition?

What about your experiences? Have you ever bartered? Did it work out well or did it cause more problems than it was worth?

Filed under Opinion, Random, Search engine optimization Tagged with ,

IM Convo: Will there ALWAYS be a place for SEO

December 9, 2008 2 Comments

I was communicating with a co-worker today, over instant messenger and we got into an interesting conversation about the future of SEO. I thought I’d share it with you and get your feedback as well.

Coworker:
Do you think there will ALWAYS be a place for SEO?

Jeremy Rivera:
I only see SEO becoming a more general field

Coworker:
One day we are all going to wake up, conduct a search on Google and find:

  1. PPC Listings
  2. Two video listings
  3. Two – four static images
  4. Local listings + map
  5. News Results
  6. Book Results
  7. Blog Results
  8. Organic Results

Jeremy Rivera:
most businesses are going to continue looking for additional revenue streams.

Coworker:
So SEO will become a side dish to the main course; whatever that happens to be.

Jeremy Rivera:
Having an even more diversified set of items on the results page only increases the need for an expert who can guide a business to what is and isn’t successful. Just because it’s pictures/video/local doesn’t mean it’s not SEO.

Coworker:

Yes I agree BUT that isn’t SEO per se.

Jeremy Rivera:
You’re narrowing SEO to be JUST organic rankings. I don’t agree with that definition of SEO: Search Engine Optimization covers all aspects of results appearing on the Search engine’s site.

Coworker:
I know I am narrowing it down. I am doing so because now an SEO needs to have graphic design skills or image editing skills, video taking / editing skills and so on. An SEO will need to be an all in one and at that time would that really mean I’m an SEOer?

Jeremy Rivera:
It could just mean a categorization/specialization Content Seo, Video Seo, Image SEO

Coworker:
Nice take on the topic. Would prove interesting.

Jeremy Rivera:
I think that SEO will continue to expand requiring broader skill sets in order to be termed competitive and an expert. At the same time, he who is adept at all things, is a master at none. I think we’ll see a concurrent dissection into niche development at the same time as you see a diversification of skill sets.

What are your thoughts on the evolution of SEO?

Filed under Opinion, Search engine optimization Tagged with , , ,

Content Writing Advice Article #1

May 13, 2008 Leave a comment

Back to basics:

It’s been a while since I went back to the fundamentals on my blog and talked about certain principles of content writing that I find to be fundamental advice for every site builder to follow.

Be Centered:

Kung Fu is about finding your center…I just have very large center- Sammo Hung

Like kung fu, your website is something that should be built over time, with patience and dedication. Find that central theme to keep your site tied together and keep practicing the fundamentals. Use your header tags properly, create proper meta titles and descriptions, and actually use your keywords correctly in context on the page.

Filed under Content, content writing advice, Search engine optimization Tagged with ,

6 Reasons why Live Blogging doesn’t Ruin SEO Conferences

May 9, 2008 7 Comments

I checked on my twtter this morning to find that Rae Hoffman and Lisa Barone were going at it tooth and nail over the concept of “Live Blogging” and it’s impact on conference attendance and value. If you aren’t clear, live bloggin is done by conference attendees who have their laptops going and are transcribing and interpretting the panel into a blog post. They also link up mentioned resources the speakers throw out.

Sugar Rae came out in full force against Live blogging conferences for several reasons.

I don’t think live bloggers should be allowed – why pay for a conf if you can get me transcribed for free? It also hurts quality of information – earlier days, speakers gave away more goods because it was shared with less people they give away less now, because you’re blogging it to the world… – Rae Hoffman

On the other hand, Lisa Barone wonders what the fuss is about, it’s just extended coverage.

What’s the difference between liveblogging and what WebProNews does? Press has always been allowed into shows – Lisa Barone

Having been to SES New York, I beleive that anyone worth their SEO salt will attend conferences regardless of live blogging because of the following reasons:

  1. The face to face time and opportunity to participate in the Q&A portion of the conference
  2. Live blogging is not totally accurate, as it is from one perspective and they may interpret something differently
  3. Live bloggers don’t cover all panels
  4. Live bloggers add the links to the resources and people mentioned by the speaker- As an attendee, my notes were sparse in comparison
  5. I posted a blog article based off a SES panel a few days later…so since Bloggers post articles after hearing conferences, so should all bloggers be banned from conferences too?
  6. You’re at the conference to speak to the public, if you didn’t want that info to go out into the world, then why would you go speak in the first place?

“You add value to the freeloaders at home – NOT paying conference attendees or speakers – Rae Hoffman

As a “freeloader” and as a conference attendee, I say Freedom of the press! The better the flow of information from cnferences to a broader audience, the more interested they are in getting into those conferences!

What do you say, free loaders? Should live blogging be banned or should the information flow?

Filed under Search engine optimization, SES New York Tagged with , , ,

Matt Cutts Verifies Importance of Content Writing and Meta Tags

March 9, 2008 1 Comment

From the lips of Matt Cutt himself in an interview with Wired Magazine, answering a question about what a start up web business should do right out of the gate.

“[MattCutts]: First, I would create great content. That’s a fantastic way to get a head start.”

Hail to the king baby! Content is back! SO make sure you are providing quality unique content out there kiddies! It is he most important part of your site, it’s the reason they are there in the first place ;)

“Then you need to promote it — that can be done free using webmaster tools.”

The webmaster tools suite within Google are the perfect ammunition to target your audience.

“Third, tweak snippets. [Snippets are brief descriptions of web pages that appear in certain search results.] Changing meta description tags can increase your traffic.”

The Meta Content of your site is crucial to your success because it is you “advertisement” in the search engines. Through the Adwords program, you can place your add at the top of a keyword, and depending on the popularity of that keyword you can easily burn through 800-8,000 a DAY in advertising costs! There is a whole art form to subtly changing one word or two in the tiny Pay Per click advertisements. When you “organically” rank for a keyword you get 3 to 4 times more text space to advertise! You are getting some very costly advertising space so put some thought into what you say in you “ad”!

Fourth, tweak your text. Look at existing search logs to see how people find you now. It’s the easiest way to increase your conversions. “

Once you have put your content out here, look at your statistics. Make small adjustments to your text and content. If you use Google Analytics, you can actually setup several tests to determine if one version of your page is more successful than another. Remember that nothing is perfect, and small improvements and tinkering can have a positive impact on your rankings.

Thanks for the tips Matt Cutts!

Filed under Search engine optimization Tagged with , , ,

Making Content Count – Blog Vs. Website

February 16, 2008 1 Comment

I wanted to get a discussion going about this topic, because I think it could be really important for site owners. Blogs are a great way to get lots of fresh content out on a daily basis through an easy medium. However, the more time you spend blogging, the less content writing you do for your website. Editing your site pages definitely takes more consideration, as you have to consider layout, presentation, and call to action on every page you add (or at least you should be!)

So the question is, blog or write for your site?

- Side question, if you do have your blog as PART of your site, like blog.soandso.com, does the weight of the content added there get valued towards your overall value? I believe it may, but I think it’s a good question to put out there.

Filed under Content, content writing advice, Search engine optimization

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