According to the latest publication from comScore, an internet marketing research company that collects data about online user behavior, Yahoo! holds about 14.1% of the total Core Search Market. Yahoo! is currently ranked third, after Google and Bing, in total search queries. In addition to being one of the top three search engine powerhouses, Yahoo!’s extensive content volume are viewed as a valuable resource for other search engines. Therefore, listing your business on Yahoo! Local is still a very important step to improve the overall local search ranking of the business. In this entry, we are going to introduce some of the basic outline of the Yahoo! Local search result page as well as tips on how to improve your business’s ranking on Yahoo! Local.

Key Fact about Yahoo!Local

Unlike Google/Google Maps that merges its local results with its organic SERP, Yahoo!Local remains largely independent from its organic search page. This is because Yahoo!’s organic search is now powered by Bing, while local search is still powered by the Yahoo! algorithm.

SIM Partners did sample searches in the food and hospitality verticals (“Chinese food in Chicago”, “Chinese food, Chicago IL”), and found that the local SERP is identical in both Yahoo!Web and Yahoo!Local. However, under the same search term, the organic SERP from Yahoo!Web mostly displays user-generated review sites such as Yelp and Citysearch that compile recommendations for Chinese food in Chicago.

Moreover, directory-style listings are still very prevalent in Yahoo!Local because the Yahoo!Local ranking system is based on a set of relatively straightforward and rigorous rules. While there are some benefits to this method, it leaves SMB owners with relatively little room for listing optimization and manipulation beyond filling out basic information.

Improving Your Business’s Ranking on Yahoo!Local

Despite the apparent inflexibility of this system, we found that there are a couple of outside factors that could potentially affect how one of SIM Partners’ hotel listings ranked on Yahoo!Local. They are:

• Business name, phone number, website and physical address. These are the core components for any listing
• Category. Maximizing the category choices for the listing is very beneficial for its ranking.
• Distance from the city center. Hotels generally rank higher when they are closer to the city center. While there is nothing one can do to manipulate a hotel’s geographical location, SIM Partners can suggest that SMB owners search for their properties in the actual town in which they are located in order to see potentially better results.
• Reviews. Both Yahoo! user generated reviews and external website reviews can affect rankings. Listings that are ranking well tend to display a large amount of reviews from third party sites such as TripAdvisor and Yelp in addition to reviews from Yahoo! users. Upon further investigation, we found that hotels in smaller towns and suburban areas (such as Chicago suburbs Evanston and Arlington Heights) tend to display a lot of reviews from sites such as yelp.com and TripAdvisor.com, while hotels in within city limits tend to display reviews from booking sites such as priceline.com and expedia.com. Therefore, it might be helpful for hotel owners to encourage and target reviews on different sites depending on the hotel’s location.

We mention Google extensively in this blog because Google is the king in the (local or not) search world. However, when trying to manage a successful and comprehensive local search campaign for you business, don’t forget to include Yahoo! in your portfolio as well. Building a network of good and consistent information beyond Google will only be beneficial for your business in the long term.

For large national brands with an extensive local footprint, the ever-evolving online social/local/mobile (SoLoMo) search landscape is daunting. Often, things change so quickly that keeping one’s balance is impossible. When you are working at scale, any wrong step can trigger ramifications that could span years. Execute a poorly thought through marketing strategy, and you could damage your brand before you ever reach your audience online.

Beyond the obvious challenges faced by big brands – understanding the SoLoMo space, finding time and resources to keep up with what’s “new,” and aligning solutions with internal goals – there are more quiet concerns that often get lost in the glare of shinny new marketing objects. Being ready to take advantage of the right solution is critical, but brands often fail to consider elements that hide below the surface.

Internal requirements for launching a comprehensive SoLoMo initiative are unavoidable if a national player is going to succeed locally. Brands must pay attention to the “little things” while shopping for the next big thing that is going to propel them into the SoLoMo arena.

Speed To Market

The adage “crawl, walk, run” often goes out the window when brands become obsessed with beating competitors to the prize of consumers in the SoLoMo space. Everyone wants to act fast, but are you considering every angle? Failing to do so could come back to bite you.

Here’s a quick list of considerations every large brand should bring to the table before, during, and after finding the right solution provider to enable their online efforts:

Scalability & Turnkey Readiness

Almost everybody can talk the talk of SoLoMo. But is the solution you are considering truly ready to scale with you? Are they doing it successfully for others right now? Don’t be intimidated by the techy stuff you may not understand. Ask them to show you a bit behind the curtain. A good provider should be more than willing to explain these things, and do it in a manner that does not confuse you. Do they have a content management system in place? Can it be segmented by region, state, or business division? How exactly does the content get from here to there? What is on the product roadmap?

These are potent indicators that speak to the readiness and stability of a solution. Once you “go,” you do not want to find out that there is going to be a delay as your provider gets things ready on the back end.

Internal IT Impact

Wow, this can halt a brand right in its tracks. Your solution provider has got to be well versed in helping define specific internal IT requirements you’ll need to address when launching a SoLoMo campaign. From gathering and publishing content, to delivering reporting metrics, your already busy IT department is going to be involved. You ought to bring them into the conversations early, and make sure your provider anticipates ways to ease resource requirements related to integration.

Nothing happens in a vacuum, so be aware that you probably can’t successfully launch a SoLoMo effort without IT’s help in some way – not to mention Architecture, Sales, Legal, and Support. Do them a favor and find a provider that knows their way around this underlying layer. Together you can keep internal strain to a minimum.

Compliance

You know this is a looming issue, but is your solution provider ready to accommodate this critical element? Make sure you will have the ability to dictate and moderate touchy subjects related to brand messaging and integrity. If you are afraid of what might happen when you set 10,000 local businesses free to talk about your brand and make friends in the social sphere – good! Take some time to talk about how you and your provider might strike a good balance. We often call this providing “perceived control.” But, shhh… don’t let your local business owners see that term.

Proactively thinking about these underlying components should go a long way to putting into perspective the razzle-dazzle excitement of launching the next greatest thing in the whirlwind world of SoLoMo. Look before you leap, and you’ll be running in no time!

In a blog post yesterday, Mike Blumenthal pointed out that Google has reduced the presence of Google Places results, on their SERP, from the fairly standard 7-pack to a 3-pack. The change was first noticed about 2 weeks ago for a select group of keywords, but most viewed this as a one of Google’s standard layout tests. While this may still be a test phase that Google will roll back, it’s important to start understanding what the new SERP real estate means for local marketers.

SIM Partners has already started studying the new landscape. While it’s early to have concrete results from testing, we’re compiling a list of the trends that are showing across a variety of businesses and markets.

• If you exclude PPC real estate, all of our search results have brought up 13 listings. These listings combine Google Places blended results and organic results. If there are 3 Places results, there will be 10 organic. If there are 6 Places there will be 7 organic, and so on. So far the most Places results we’ve seen for any single search are 10.
• The sites that show in the traditional organic real estate of Google’s SERP differ based on small and large markets. In smaller markets, the Page 1 organic listings tend to be directory sites. In large markets, most of the real estate goes to specific business websites.

• Usually in smaller markets, Google shows more Places listings. We’re getting the sense that this has to do with a lack of localized organic optimization for websites in small markets. Since large markets have more competition, these folks have spent more time optimizing their websites for localized searches. Since there are more “applicable” localized business webpages in the large markets, Google is reducing the number of Places listings that appear on the page.

• Google has become more hyperlocal with local search results. Searches such as “Chicago Uptown Restaurants” used to show Chicago restaurants with Uptown in the name (or uptown in reviews). Now, Google zeroes the map in on Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood and shows relevant Places results.
• We’ve started testing the usefulness of the “areas served” section, given Google’s new hyperlocal functionality. While Google still uses “city center” (or perhaps more aptly “neighborhood center”) to determine results for generic queries, we are seeing that Brand + Area Served query now shows the related business’s Places listing, even if they are 50 miles away.

While there’s still more studying and testing that needs to be done, our initial impression is that even though there are generally fewer results for a specific search, Google is showing Places results for more searches. So businesses that have taken a broad approach in their Place Page optimization should continue to see strong level of traffic.

If You Do Not Engage Now, Your Customers May Already Be Choosing Your Competitors.

In case you missed it, there was a big announcement this week about the Google search results and how Google is capitalizing on their own Google+ Product.

Some of you may be thinking, so what? Just another Google change right? Wrong.

Whether you’re a hotel, plumber, insurance agent, or retailer, Google has now forced your hand in mixing business with pleasure. What do I mean? Whether we like it or not, we need to create business profile pages on social networks (like Google+) and make it a pleasurable experience for our audience and customers. If we don’t, we may now be appearing further and further down the Google SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Why? Because Google is now populating social business pages and photos from Google+ in search results, and you need to be there.

Let me show you what I mean. This is an example of a Google search for Music:

I know this seems overwhelming. It is getting harder and harder to keep up with search and social marketing tactics for your brand as the space literally changes daily. For now, keep it simple and don’t feel overwhelmed.

Here are a few quick tips to make sure your customers can find you:

• Create a Google+ account for your business: Keep it simple if you do not have the time or resources to dedicate to it (YET). Tell people about the page and to check it out. Don’t be afraid.
• Use smart text in your description and information about your business on the page: Think about the keywords that customers may put in Google to find you. Include your amenities and things that explain your business and make it stand out. Tell a good story but do not be too complicated or too vague.

  Example: We are a hotel in downtown Chicago, located at 1234 Example Street, across from the Willis Tower. Our hotel offers great amenities like an indoor swimming pool, transportation to Chicago’s coolest spots and restaurants, courteous staff, free Wi-Fi in all rooms, competitive rates, airport shuttle service to all Chicago airports (list them) and pets are welcome.

• Upload a few good images to showcase to your customers: Images are going to continue to become more important within search results. In fact, photos are the easiest way to engage customers on social networks. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words. Since you are limited for time, showcase your business with outstanding photos of your location, employees and products and services. Finally, and this one is important, name your photos with the people who are in them, the name of the product or service and the location. This all plays into the search tactics.

  Example of a bad title: picture-of-pool.jpg
  Example of a good title: Chicago-hotel-pool.jpg

• Use your Google+ page to talk about your business with Posts: Think about the kind of posts that are interesting and make your customers want to read them. This will start to qualify you to appear on the right hand rail of the Google search results. This folks, is all about ENGAGEMENT. The more you engage with your audience or circles, the more exposure to Google and the more that is written in the search world about your business through Google+. Don’t abandon your page and be sure to post frequently (once a day or a few times a week is a great start).

Here are some examples to engage with your circles and audience:

Are you looking for fun things to do in Chicago when you visit? Let our hotel concierge at (X Hotel Name in downtown Chicago) share the best spots to eat and cool places to visit during your stay.

Have you been to Chicago? What is your favorite thing to do in the summer? Our staff at (X Hotel in Chicago) is always looking for ideas and ways to make your stay more fun! We would love to hear what you think!

Finally, make sure your posts have keywords that could help in search results and create buzz. The ultimate goal is to get people to pass on what they read on your page and send to their circles!

Have fun creating your Google+ page and encourage your family, friends, and employees to be a part of your circles and help grow your audience. The first step is setting up your page and taking advantage of what Google is doing instead of being overwhelmed or afraid.

In the past, mass media and traditional print advertising were enough to draw consumers toward a national brand’s local store or service. Today, however, 90 percent of consumers use search engines when researching products or services in their local area (BIA/Kelsey study).

Google appears to have noticed the change in search behavior, and in October, 2010, Google changed its algorithm to display more local businesses in the search results. Google’s local search results are displayed for both geo-targeted search queries such as “Chicago Hotels” and generic search queries such as “Hotels” based on one’s IP address.

Advertisers are taking action and investing more in local online advertising. Borrell Associates forecasts an 18% growth as local online advertising increases from $15.7 billion to $18.5 billion in 2012.

So how can national brands harness the power of local search?

Below is a checklist of 5 core local search strategies national brands should be providing their brick and mortar locations:

1. Data distribution
2. Google Places & Bing business listing optimization
3. Optimized location webpages & mobile location webpages
4. Ratings & review management
5. Performance Tracking and Reporting

A successful local search marketing strategy should incorporate all five of these tactics. Prior to implementation, you should establish a baseline and define success metrics upon execution.

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This roll-out is surprising for two reasons:

• The companies that rely on bulk verification are often larger brands with a 100+ locations. These same companies usually have robust pay-per-click campaigns and do not need the simplified offering of Adwords Express.
• Google’s traditional approach for local has been to encourage the local business to claim and modify their listing which has led to the expectation that this will continue for new local products, such as Google+.
  And yet, recent roll-outs make me wonder if Google is actually going in a different direction and trying to straddle the line between the need for local content and an SMB’s need to rely on marketing experts. Consider the following Google announcements:

• The rollout of Google’s Adwords Premier SMB Partner Program for PPC management.
• Increasing the limit of administrators for Google+ Business Pages to 50.
• Improved functionality for hyperlocal ad targeting.
• At ILM West, Jeff Aguero, Google’s Head of Local Consumer Marketing, announced that in 2012, Google would be integrating Latitudes with Google+. With Google+ showing up in Places rankings, it should be safe to assume that Google’s local integration will go deeper than the Latitudes and Google+ integration.

All four of these announcements suggest a future direction for Google search – a supported, locally focused product suite with collaborative tools for SMBs who rely on brand or agency marketers.

One step in this process seems to be offering Adwords Express to the bulk verified Google Places accounts. In the short term, many of these bulk verified accounts will opt to use their existing Adwords campaigns. However, in the long term I anticipate that Google will be rolling out a more robust form of Adwords Express, which allows for hyperlocal advertising, cross-platform advertising into Google+, and more robust reporting.

If Google really is on the path to bridging the Places gap between individual locations and brand marketers the next step will have to include more robust reporting so that brand marketers are able to see performance in aggregate. Integration with Google Analytics or a robust API to allow marketers to measure the effectiveness of their advertising dollars in promoting their Places pages will be necessary for Google to achieve mass adoption.

It’s cliche to say that Local search is “the next wave of the future” in search marketing, especially since so much is currently happening in the space, but so far, most of the solutions are disparate or incomplete. Google has a lot of strong local products that when integrated will be extremely compelling but, to be useful to their customers, Google will need to find a way to bridge the gap they’ve created between the local business location and the need for brand or agency management. My sincere hope is that by rolling out Adwords Express to bulk verified accounts, Google is signalling that they are aware of the gap that’s been created and plan to address it going forward.

Google has rolled out a new function to their Maps and Places pages on December 12th, which we’re calling the Attraction Link. The Attraction Link is an anchor text link for a nearby attraction (example “Chicago O’Hare International Airport”) that directs the searcher to the attraction’s Google Places Page. This link appears on Google Maps listings and Place Pages for nearby businesses.

Of the many issues with Google’s approach to cross-linking these businesses with nearby attractions, our biggest concern is that the Attraction Link is more eye-catching and closer to the business name than the businesses’ actual url link. This is surely going to cause some confusion for the average searcher when looking for local businesses.

Currently, Google Places offers three methods of business verification: phone, postcard, and bulk import. Often, the phone and postcard will be lumped into one larger group called “Manual Verification,” because the verification process includes obtaining and inputting a unique PIN for each location that needs to be verified.

In this first entry on Google Places verification, we’ll walk through what to expect from the Phone Verification process and what factors should be considered prior to going this route.

Phone Verification

In order to verify via phone, you’ll need to first set up your business listing in Google Places. Create an account at Google Places and follow the step-by-step process to claim a live listing or create a brand new listing.

Once you have submitted all of your business information, Google will ask you to validate your listing by choosing to verify via phone or postcard. (Note: Bulk verification users have a different process for entering and verifying information).

Phone verification is the fastest and most efficient method of verifying a small number of Google Places listings.

Once you select “Verify by Phone”, Google’s automated phone system will place a call to your business number. When the call is answered, an automated voice will provide you with a 5-digit PIN verification, repeat the number a second time, and then the call will end

Enter the 5 digit number in your Google Places account, next to the listing, and your listing will be active, with updated information beginning to show up on the live Google Places listing within the next few hours.

Potential Issues when Verifying by Phone

• Google will only verify by phone if the phone information you input into the account is the same as the number Google has on record. This can be checked by looking at the phone number on the live listing.
• Once verified by phone, Google will not allow you to change the phone number without re-verifying by postcard. For most businesses, this isn’t an issue, but sometimes Google picks up the wrong information. For example, what if the number Google has on file is the direct line for (or “connects to”) Jim in accounting? If you verify through Jim’s number, that is the only number Google will accept, without re-verification. In these instances, it’s easiest to verify by postcard, since you’ll end up needing to anyway.
• If you have an automated phone system, Google will provide the PIN when your system picks up. If possible, briefly disable your system so that you can receive the call. Otherwise, verify via postcard.

Reasons to Choose Phone Verification

• It’s fast and easy, assuming the phone number Google has on record is correct and won’t need to be changed.
• If you’re verifying multiple locations, you have the resources to work with each location to verify their address by phone.

In upcoming entries, I’ll walk through what to expect from phone and bulk verification processes, as well as things to consider when deciding between bulk and manual verification.

If you’d like to keep your product or service as professional & as serious as possible, there are other ways to utilize video campaigns without humor…. just don’t expect to compete with Keyboard Cat. Online video campaigns, if optimized and strategized properly can accomplish a lot in a LOCAL market using optimization, frequency of content uploads, and filling your video with relevant information & search terms.

You do need to be able to answer some key questions. If you don’t have these covered, then you’re probably better off recording your dog dreaming and praying it’s something good enough to make him jump head first into a wall:

• Who is your target audience? Whether its teeny boppers, college students, young families, or senior citizens, do some research and make sure you’re testing different content that may appeal to whichever group makes you the most money.
• What are your messaging guidelines, if any? If you’re in a strict vertical with a lot of legal guidelines, make sure you check those out before you decide on what to promote through video.
• What is your voice? Whether you want to run on the more traditional side with a professional industry-related tone, or you want to push the envelope with a witty, sarcastic character keep one word in mind: Consistency. I know I mentioned A/B testing may be needed, but not with your voice. Nobody is going to frequently watch you or try and get to know you & your brand if you can’t seem to figure out who you are first.
• What are the Hot Keywords for your vertical? Perform some research using tools like Google Adwords to compile a list of search terms to include in the tags of your videos.
• What is your ongoing strategy? From an optimization standpoint, it isn’t that one expensive video will make or break the success of your online campaign; it’s the consistent uploading of new and relevant content. Figuring out how you want to set up your channel with video categories can be helpful, as it will provide you an estimate of how many videos you may need. For example you can have the following categories within your channel: Product & Service Overviews, Franchise Locations, Educational Tutorials, How-To’s, Client Testimonials, Promote a Special Offer, Press Releases, Company History, or a recent renovation-address change. The more organized and easily navigable your YouTube channel is, the more likely subscribers will see it as a reliable source of information.
• What is the intent of your video? Besides the obvious answer for anybody advertising anything (revenue), you need to break down the specific goals of your video. Figure out what type of traffic you want and where you want to drive it. Foot traffic through your door, calls to your phone lines, website visits or lead form submissions, whatever it may be (testing different campaigns and initiatives will also provide insight) having a focused goal will make it easier to efficiently launch your online video campaign.

Whether you’re lucky enough to benefit from a viral video campaign, you’re just getting started, or you have yet to work it into your marketing budget, it’s worth prioritizing along with the rest of your local marketing tactics. Rich Media is a proven way to engage with your local audience. It stands out, is customizable, affordable, has massive reach, and can be shared easily through social media outlets. Just don’t kill yourself trying to get 35 million views. Plain and simple, video is an accessible marketing tool with a grand audience that should be accounted for in every up to date marketing strategy. After all, I am a true “Belieber” in Chrome’s message: “The web is what you make of it”.

~Source: Search Engine Journal www.searchenginejournal.com August 2011

It’s the Season for Budgeting and since most businesses have been spending the last month or so figuring out their 2012 marketing allocations, I’m confident one topic has repeatedly been up for debate: Online Video Campaigns. With YouTube boasting a whopping 490 million viewers every month, it is a landscape that advertisers can no longer ignore. More often than not the same concerns continue to surface: “How do I track my ROI with a video?” “Is this a legitimate lead generation tool?” “ Can you guarantee a certain amount of views?” “I’m not sure we have the time or resources to do something like this”…

There’s no doubt in my mind that people need to budget for online video campaigns. All questions are justifiable (helpful hints included), but the first and probably most important rule of a video campaign is to gauge your expectations (and no, unfortunately we can’t guarantee a certain amount of video views). Advertisers seem to understand the power of Rich Media (use of video, images, audio, text, engaging & interactive content). Yet most SMB’s who can’t afford a dedicated creative team are intimidated by the task of making video work for their business type. To further complicate the issue, the ones who have pulled the trigger and are ramping up video marketing efforts, at times, have unrealistic expectations of acquiring viral status, only to be disappointed with results and swearing off online video for good. Regardless of which bucket you find yourself in, there are solutions for you. It simply takes defining your goals and strategizing towards them.

Let’s first address this ‘Viral’ topic. When people think ‘Viral Video’, familiar characters like the Old Spice Guy or Kenny Powers for K Swiss probably come to mind. More or less, you probably could’ve spotted the most successful Viral Characters out at a Halloween party.

It’s unrealistic to compare your campaigns to some of the most successful branding video’s ever made. And besides, videos that go viral usually contain content that is funny; so funny that you ‘LOL’ or ‘OMG’ and proceed to share it with your friends on Facebook; hence the ‘Viral Status’.

How does all this relate to the repair shop down the street or the local corner bakery? The truth is, there really is no specific product or service that video campaigns do or do not work for. You simply have to figure out who your target audience is and what will appeal to them. Some A/B testing may be involved, so don’t get down in the dumps if the first video you load doesn’t get the traction you had hoped for. Besides, the more varying content uploaded to your channel, the better!

If you’re concerned that your business doesn’t have the attractive nature other products & services may have think about it a little harder. Successful viral video campaigns are usually everyday products & services that alone, aren’t all that intriguing. Using Rich Media to put a different face to it is key. Instead of a body wash that has the word ‘OLD’ in it, you think of Isaiah Mustafa on a horse holding two tickets to that thing you love. Instead of tennis shoes that are known to fall beneath brands like Adidas & Nike, you think of the new CEO, Kenny Powers, driving around in a golf cart with bullhorns. Be creative and you can probably gain a bigger following than you think.

Take an ordinary guy just trying to sell his car…. Recently featured on Mashable.com and submitted by Clark Olson Media for a car review contest, this home video made me want to buy an old Corolla from a stranger rather than a slick sports car taking fast turns down a winding road in the middle of nowhere. This home video supports the idea that to accomplish your goals, having an unlimited budget isn’t necessarily a pre-requisite; more importantly you need a sense of humor and some old-fashioned imagination.

Can only large brands with deep pockets afford large-scale tactics like the campaigns mentioned above? For the scale (Old Spice & K-Swiss have created hundreds of variations featuring their characters), use of C-grade celebrities, and HD quality…Yes, you may need a slightly larger budget than some. But being creative with your brand doesn’t cost a thing! You’d be surprised at how affordable online video campaigns are. For the Ma & Pa shop around the corner, you have options within reason. Where T.V. Commercials can cost upwards of $6K, online video campaigns with optimization & distribution packages are only a small fraction of that. You’ll also notice most viral videos aren’t much longer than 1 or 2 minutes. BBC News reported the average Internet user doesn’t stay on a website longer than one minute. Why pay for video content nobody is viewing?

Be sure to learn more important tips on utilizing video campaigns for your brand in part two, publishing later in November.