How To Implement Local "SEO" In Your Business

A company can have the best business model in the world, but it won’t matter if it doesn’t get discovered. To that end Konstantin Stoyanov launched 411Locals, and Internet marketing company that helps small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs) get discovered online.
Entrepreneurs who are launching startups know that a solid web presence isn’t an option. Many brick-and-mortar business owners who once relied on newspaper advertising and direct mail promotions are awakening to the same realization. If a business can’t be discovered on the web, via multiple channels, then it’s losing its competitive advantage.
By now, almost all entrepreneurs are aware of the importance of search engine optimization (SEO). It’s a means of optimizing a website so that it ranks highly in the SERPs.
However, one often overlooked flavor of SEO is Local SEO, or SEO that’s intended to reach an audience within a relatively small geographical area. It’s especially important to small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs) that don’t cater to a worldwide audience.
I sat down with Stoyanov to discuss with him the challenges that face businesses today and how his company offers solutions.
Q: What inspired you to launch 411 Locals?
Konstantin S: I had a number of businesses before 411 locals and I was a real estate agent as well as an investor. As the online marketing tasks for my own ventures started getting more and more complicated, I found that too much of my time was dedicated to research. I put a team together to help handle some of those action items. That’s when I realized that many other small business owners were facing the same struggles. Specifically, entrepreneurs lack time for research and testing. They also don’t have the expertise on staff to help them get discovered on the web. Finally, they couldn’t find affordable solutions for Internet marketing. The need for help was clear. I decided to use our assets and expertise to assist others.

Q: What’s the key to making a small business a success on the Internet?
Konstantin S: There are three keys to making a business a success on the Internet. First, the company must set clear and realistic long-term goals. That includes detailed planning about how to reach those goals. That’s a strategic initiative that gives a “big picture” view of how the company will reach its target market. Second, there must be adaptability to changes. First, the company must adapt to changes in the Google GOOGL -1.64% ranking algorithm. The algorithm that Google uses to rank pages today will almost certainly not be the same as it is a year from now. Also, businesses need to respond to the efforts of their competitors. If a competitor is ranking higher for a specific keyword all of a sudden, research is needed to determine what’s happening and to respond with the appropriate optimization effort. Finally, there needs to be open communication between the client and the agency.
Q: Why is business differentiation so crucial for success?
Konstantin S: All business in this space must be customized. There is no “one size fits all” solution. It’s all dependent on the vertical, market forces, the size of the target city, and the efforts of competitors to create a visible online presence.
Q: You use the word innovative frequently on your 411 Locals website. In what way is your business innovative? Please try to be specific.
Konstantin S: We have created tools that will monitor and report the keyword positions and of our customers and their competitors. We also provide reports about how those keyword positions have changed over time. We also analyze our own data from all of our customers to determine the most effective practices. Finally, we constantly adopt our SEO techniques and internal processes to provide faster and better result for our clients.
It’s absolutely vital that businesses maintain an easy-to-discover presence on the web in the 21^st century. Otherwise, they’re bound to lose market share to competitors who are catering to a more tech-savvy audience. Thanks to the advent of “webrooming” (people looking for items online before buying them at a store) and “showrooming” (people look for items at a store before buying them online), consumers are trained to shop and search online before making purchases. Businesses that don’t accept that reality will struggle to survive.

What are the benefits of blogging for small business?

Build Community: 

Business blogs provide your small business with a chance to share your expertise and knowledge with a larger audience. An opportunity to connect with a wider audience and build a community is a strong benefit for consultants and knowledge workers

Easy Web Publishing Solution: 

 Blog software is easy to use. Simply write your thoughts, link to resources, and publish to your blog, all at the push of a few buttons. Blog software companies such as TypePad or Blogger.com offer easy blogging tools to get started. Updating the weblog is a faster process than contacting a web designer with changes or doing the coding and uploading yourself.

 Higher Search Engine Rankings: 

 Search engine marketing is hot. The search market has become the Holy Grail of Internet advertising and continues to grow faster than our expectations. We believe search is actually gaining some market share from other types of online marketing.

The cost of generating traffic from search engine marketing is much lower than traditional media. Search engine marketing has the lowest cost-per-lead and the highest return on investment. U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, estimated that the cost per lead was $0.29 for search, $0.50 for e-mail, $1.18 for the yellow pages, $2.00 for banner ads, and $9.94 for direct mail.

If your business does not rank in the top 20 spots on the major search engines, you might as well be in the millionth ranking spot. However, techniques such as search engine optimization (SEO) can increase search engine rankings. The costs of many SEO services are between $5,000 to $10,000 per year.

Business blogging offers an affordable solution for small business. Business bloggers are achieving top search engine rankings because search engines rank based on link popularity and easy to index regular content among other factors. Learning the basic skills of search engine optimization and good content management are keys to better rankings for bloggers.

Lower Costs: 

Blogging is a low-cost alternative to having a web presence. For small business owners without the time to learn web html or the money to hire a designer/developer, blogging offers an inexpensive method to get your company's name out on the Internet.

Better Communications:

The biggest benefit of RSS for your web audience is a better solution for notification than websites themselves or email. As indicated by Bill Gates in a speech at the Microsoft CEO Summit 2004 in Redmond, Washington: if you just put information on a Web site, then people don't know to come visit that Web site, and it's very painful to keep visiting somebody's Web site and it never changes.

 It's very typical that a lot of the Web sites you go to that are personal in nature just eventually go completely stale and you waste time looking at it; And so, getting away from the drawbacks of e-mail -- that it's too imposing -- and yet the drawbacks of the Web site -- that you don't know if there's something new and interesting there ; this [blogs & RSS] is about solving that

Ten ways to boost your business on Twitter and Facebook

It is a truth universally acknowledged that every business needs a Facebook page. The jury is still out on Twitter, but one supposes it can’t do any harm.

How, though, can you make the most of social media? And what should a small business do now that Facebook is giving increasing visibility to, as it calls them, “suggested posts”?

These are, in truth, “suggested” only because a business has chosen to pay for them to be, but either way many firms fear that their own pages are being squeezed out by paid content.

The answer, for many companies, is that paying is the only option. Facebook and Twitter are both, after all, designed to be free for users but not necessarily as free advertising platforms.

For both businesses, the mobile phone is ever more important. These small screens are how most mobile users will encounter Facebook and Twitter, which makes them pivotal tools for a small business.

With the larger amount of information offered by mobile phones, any company can advertise specifically to potential customers in their local area and can also very easily tailor offers to entice specific sorts of people.

On a mobile screen, the power of an advertisement done well is much more palpable. That makes mobile advertising more important than ever, but it also makes quality more important than ever, too. If an advertisement is poorly pitched on a large screen, its failure is more conspicuous on a little one.

Facebook alone accounts for 15pc of all mobile advertising, and is likely to further encroach on Google’s 53pc share, according to figures from eMarketer. This underscores the growing importance of such advertisements, and with that in mind, there are at least 10 tips worth remembering:

1) Be real –

 advertising on social media, whether it is paid or unpaid, is a chance to put a human face to the brand, and an opportunity to engage with customers in just the same way that great service can in a shop.

2) But not too real –

 if you’re running a coffee shop, you’ll only alienate customers by expounding on global politics. But it never does any harm to emphasise that, say, your coffee is fair trade.

3) Follow the right people –

 Britain’s police forces got into trouble for paying too much attention to Kirstie Allsopp and Lady Gaga on Twitter, and not enough to the public. Every business should follow those who are already customers, and those who could be. Which is still unlikely to be Lady Gaga.

4) Engage in the conversation –

 if a fan says you’re great, retweet it. If they say you’re rubbish, ask for more details.
5) But don’t be too public –
 there’s no shame in asking a customer to email you if you want a little more privacy.

6) Think multimedia –

 pictures, audio and even video are all almost effortless thanks to the smartphone. If you operate from a particularly interesting venue, or a customer doesn’t mind you using them as a case study, get cracking.

7) But don’t compromise on quality –

 a rubbish video is just as damaging as a misspelt blog post.

8) Stay current –

 few things are worse than a site that hasn’t been updated in weeks, especially on Facebook or Twitter. These are living, breathing places, not simply shopfronts.

9) Put someone in charge – 

you wouldn’t dream of not taking your cash to the bank regularly, so think of updating Twitter or Facebook as similarly important. It’s a tool for retaining and recruiting customers, after all. And it may be a good chance for a bright young employee who would benefit from “social media experience”.

10) Don’t forget the law –

if you retain a list of customers, you are responsible for keeping their data safe. And no one wants to think you just sold on their details.
All these tips will not put your page with 20 followers at the top of Google’s rankings. But they will mean you can ask your own friends to “like” it or retweet something. That’s the first step to getting the rapid “network effects” whereby thousands more people see your digital “shop” than will ever walk past your actual store. Good luck.