One bit of Google gossip that has largely flown under the radar thus far, should the rumors turn out to be true about Google working on a third party commenting system, could have a large impact on organic rankings….

Read more in our recent publication in Search Engine Watch, by Adam Dorfman

Posted by Adam Dorfman at SEO Implications of Google & Third Party Commenting System. Visit SIM Partners for more great information!

Check out our recent publication in Chief Marketer!  Our President and Founder, Jon Schepke, shares insight into Google+ and pilots for national brands with multiple locations.

http://chiefmarketer.com/web-marketing/brands-test-google-local-marketing-pilots

Posted by Tara Thomas at SIM Partners President talks Google+ in Chief Marketer. Visit SIM Partners for more great information!

Pinterest is the fastest U.S. standalone site in history to reach 10 million unique monthly users; the once rapid growth rate is beginning to slow. According to CNBC , from mid-January to mid-February 2012, the growth rate was an impressive 85%. Only one month later, growth has substantially decreased to 18%. What is the anchor on their momentum?

I’m not one to rain on the parade that is Pinterest; I’m actually quite the “Pinner” myself! But I’ve found that when wanting to use the visual social network for other things outside of retail, planning an imaginary wedding, or “re-pinning” recipes I’ll never have time to cook, Pinterest proves to be somewhat lacking. Tasks like keyword search, tracking engagement levels, and organizing boards can be quite frustrating.

Like any other high demand startup, Pinterest is working through various complaints, legal allegations and of course updating interfaces & policies. The most recent version of policies was released on April 6th, 2012 which include updates such as a Pinterest API, private pages, Pinterest no longer being able to sell user content, banning any content that promotes self-harm or abuse and simpler processes to report copyright or trademark infringement via the Copyright Complaint Form. I applaud them for trying but there is always room for improvement. Below I’ve listed the top complaints of Pinterest to date.

1) COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT: In February 2012, a bit of code was released that can be added to any website that wishes to avoid their pictures being “pinned”. Pinterest also complies with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act’s takedown procedures, but that may not be enough. Unlike other sites like Flickr, Tumblr, YouTube & Facebook, Pinterest solely depends on user’s posting content that doesn’t belong to them. If all intriguing and pin-worthy images are eventually protected with code, Pinterest may end up being not so “Pinteresting”.

2) HUMAN ERROR: “I think I’ll surf some tasty recipes for tonight. MmMmMm, Chicken casserole, brownies baked in coffee mugs, Golden Retriever…. wait, what?” It’s somewhat of a disruptive user experience when you are relying on pin-happy users to categorize their images correctly let alone link properly for an effective outcome. Nothing is more frustrating than clicking on a pin to learn more, only to get redirected to an obvious image capture. Now I’m royally frustrated because I have no idea where to purchase that blouse I so desperately needed!

3) GLITCHY: How is it that I only have 74 followers but when I click through to one of my boards I have a reported 154 followers. How can I tell if I already pinned something? The really cute BCBG dress I pinned disappeared! I really want to re-pin that info-graph I saw on the general feed when I’m not logged in, yet it doesn’t redirect me to my account or login page when I hit “re-pin”…

4) RECENT PROFILE UPDATE: On March 16th, 2012 Pinterest decided to update the User Profile for a ‘More Visual You’. Oops. The long stream of negative feedback must’ve been hard for Pinterest to swallow. Comments like “makes my stomach hurt”, “bad taste”, “unattractive”, and “let me guess, engineers designed the new pinboard page?” were used. I still enjoy the original layout but to Pinterest’s defense, on April 5th they released the ability to choose your board image. It’s a start!

Privacy settings, targeted demographics, and the narrow market predominately focused on retailers continue to be hot topics for Pinterest. But at the end of the day, will these issues prevent me from spending a couple hours surfing through hilarious “meme’s” tonight? Probably not.

What are your likes and dislikes of Pinterest?

Posted by Karin Kovitvongsa at Targeting Pinterest Pains. Visit SIM Partners for more great information!

While we’ve previously seen sitelinks for the blended Google Places listings, this is the first time we’ve seen it for the new “streamlined” Places format that recently rolled out.

So far we have only observed the Places mini-sitelinks appearing for a handful of businesses located in small markets.

Is anyone else running across interesting examples of this?

UPDATE: Mike Blumenthal sent us a link to one of his posts from mid-February that show these same links appearing for “Criminal Defense Lawyer Orlando.”  Thanks Mike!

Posted by Steve King at Google Places Testing New Mini-Sitelinks. Visit SIM Partners for more great information!

With the South by Southwest music, film, and interactive conference in full swing, we’ve come to expect a wave of new “killer apps” especially for mobile (think of Twitter in 2007 or Foursquare in 2009) vying for attention. This year is no different with several mobile apps soft launching for their SXSW debut. What is different is the playing field for hyper-location-based apps, the next generation of geo-social check-in tools.

Typically when we think of geo-social apps the big ones come to mind: Foursquare, Facebook, Yelp, etc. Through these apps and many others (I really had a soft spot for Gowalla and continue to use SCVNGR), a user is able to “check in” at a place (restaurant, attraction, event, etc.) based on their GPS location. If you’re one of the 100 million users in the United States with a smartphone then you probably know all about check-in apps. Either you’re using them or you’re [really] annoyed by them. Regardless, with Foursquare estimated at 22 million users and Facebook now the third largest country behind India with a population of 845 million, these location-based check-in apps aren’t going away any time soon even despite stagnant growth in the last quarter.

Now a new wave of location-based apps has arrived to cheers of being the “next big thing” by the tech community while instilling fear in others (Pete Cashmore has declared them the “scariest tech trend of 2012”). These would be the ambient social networking apps, i.e. apps that detect other users in one’s vicinity. Those following the January launch of Highlight are likely aware of this next level of geo-social app development. Last year there was Sonar followed by Ban.jo and Glancee. Then Kismet arrived. But it seems with Highlight under the spotlight at SXSW that ambient social networking has finally turned a corner.

The concept is simple.

Simply put these are geo-social mobile apps that help the user to learn more about the people around them. At least that’s how Highlight phrases it. Basically the user will be alerted to anyone within 50 yards that also has the app installed. At that point the user can learn more about that person and, ahem, “highlight” the person if there is more than a passing interest. Freaky or creepy? Possibly both.

Meghan Kelly at VentureBeat provides a good summary of the latest Highlight features updated for SXSW. But even she noted that in its earliest incarnation it was “somewhat creepy.” Yet the tech journalists have latched onto this concept with open arms. Robert Scoble has a fairly lengthy breakdown over at Scobleizer.com on why this category will succeed with Highlight coming out as the heralded winner. And I agree; this next level of location-based check-in is incredibly sexy. As is the idea of ambient social networking (ah, the marketing possibilities!). What I do question is the mass adoption, a critical mass to make it more than just a media darling and take it to the heights of a Foursquare and beyond.

Already the users have spoken.

Take a cursory glance at the available reviews and you’ll see the word “creepy” pop up more than a few times. On Highlight, “the lack of privacy and use of [Facebook] info makes this really creepy.” Or Ban.jo, “very deceptive and spammy.” Glancee gets pegged more often like this, “the app reminds me of dating sites.” And possibly the biggest common complaint? Not enough users are using these apps. Outside of the tech circles, your Silicon Valleys and whatnot, this may be a bigger hurdle than the privacy problem. If people aren’t finding activity within the app there will be little incentive to continue using it.

I do believe that ambient social networking is a natural evolution of the geo-social mobile app and can succeed under the right conditions. Many users already consider these apps to be “fun and addictive” and matched with the right people, I can go along with that. Privacy will always be an issue in addition to the creep quotient. Can these apps overcome that to garner the much-needed early adopters and eventually slide into the mainstream?

That’s yet to be decided but right now these mobile apps are on deck at SXSW 2012 to make the biggest splash yet. And if one thing’s for certain, they have carved another notch in the hyper-local landscape; like it or not, ambient social networking has arrived.

Posted by Jay Hawkinson at Highlighting the Next Wave of Geo-Social Mobile Apps at SXSW. Visit SIM Partners for more great information!

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.

Posted by Yale Sun at Understanding Yahoo! Local to Improve Your Business Listings. Visit SIM Partners for more great information!

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!

Posted by Noah Weiner at Preparing Your Brand For SoLoMo Success. Visit SIM Partners for more great information!

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.

Posted by Steve King at Observations on Google’s New SERP. Visit SIM Partners for more great information!

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.

Posted by Tara Thomas at If You’re A Business, It’s Now Time To Start To Care About Google+. Visit SIM Partners for more great information!

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.

Download PDF version

Posted by Tammy Rechtin at National Brand Checklist For Local Search Marketing. Visit SIM Partners for more great information!