TVS Internet Marketing, LLC.

Websites, SEO, and PPC for Small Business Websites

Carmen Rane Hudson

What You Need to Know About Google+ Local Review Filters

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Getting great reviews has become an important way to get new business. However, Google+ Local review filters often drop or delete legitimate reviews offered by legitimate customers.

This, of course, is a problem that could harm your business. It harms your rankings and it harms your ability to pull in new customers through your great reputation.

Thus, it’s truly important to understand review filters, how to avoid triggering them, and what your options are when one of your reviews seems to disappear in spite of your best efforts.

Why Do Review Filters Exist?

Review filters exist because some companies try to “beat the system” and gain a competitive advantage by cheating. Often this means posting fake reviews or even blatantly reviewing their own businesses.

Some business owners take it even further. They post fake, nasty reviews on competitor sites.

Innocent Mistakes

You’d think that simply avoiding these spammy extremes would be enough to keep you from running afoul of review filters, but that’s simply not the case. Some business owners make very innocent mistakes that produce reviews that Google still considers to be “spammy.”

Putting a computer in your front lobby and soliciting reviews on-site is one such technique. You may think you’re just helping customers remember what to do, but Google sees your IP on the review and has no way of knowing whether it’s been posted by a customer or an employee. Customers can also feel pressured when you do this.

Hiring a “reputation management” company is another innocent mistake that you might make. Some of these companies resort to questionable tactics that Google picks up on, resulting in lost reviews.

You also want to avoid putting out huge, expensive mailing campaigns to solicit reviews. Google activates its spam filters if you receive an unusual jump in the number of reviews you receive. Your goal should be to gently encourage reviews to come in at a regular, organic, natural pace.

What to Do When Reviews Disappear

Review filters are sometimes far more aggressive than they strictly need to be. They can and do catch good reviews that played by the rules.

Fortunately you’re not 100% helpless when this happens. There are still some things you can do.

Linda Buquet from the Catalyst Local eMarketing Forum offers some great suggestions in this thread. I’ll summarize them here.

First, you have to find the review. It’s actually very easy to do this. Just go to plus.google.com and then run a search for your business. Make sure to click on the blue magnifying glass next to the search bar.

You’ll see everything Google can find about your business. Reviews, even “hidden” reviews, will show up.

You won’t have to guess whether they are reviews or not. It will say: “John Doe left a review X months ago.”

Now you have two options. One is to simply copy and paste the review onto your website. It’s still useful for your testimonials page.

The other is to ask Google to take a second look at the review. They may be willing to reconsider, though there are no guarantees.

Make sure your customers know that you don’t have much control about what Google and other review sites choose to display. Some customers get their feelings hurt if they can’t see their review after posting it, and review filters can sometimes get rid of reviews very quickly.

Try not to become frustrated! Most businesses do face some issues with review filters from time to time. Dealing with it is just a regular part of Local Search marketing.

3 Keyword Mistakes that are Ruining Your Content Marketing

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Choosing the right keywords for your content is as much art as science. After all, you’re engaged in a juggling act: wooing Google while wooing people.

Of course, Google actually wants search customers to get great results for their search terms, so each algorithm adjustment is made with the hopes of pushing content that woos humans right to the top of the pile. That does not mean that Google’s strategy does not continue to rely on using keywords wisely.

I do a lot of content marketing for many different types of small business. Many of them have downright ordered me to make some of the following keyword mistakes! Are you making any of these mistakes in your content marketing?

Mistake #1: Overdoing It

Let’s say you’re a Minneapolis Chiropractor trying to rank for that very term. You might be tempted to think that you’ll rank better if you can say “Minneapolis Chiropractor” over and over again in your content.

When you do this, you end up with copy that reads something like this:

If you’re looking for a Minneapolis Chiropractor who can relieve your pain and suffering then you’ve come to the right place. We are a Minneapolis Chiropractor who can help with conditions like back pain, migraines, and injuries. We are the only Minneapolis Chiropractor who stays open till 8 p.m.

Do you see how clunky and unnatural this is? It does absolutely nothing to build your credibility with customers.

Google, in fact, now watches out for keyword overuse like this, so you won’t do yourself any favors by writing this way. Forget counting keywords for 2% density. One relevant, well-placed keyword that reads naturally and is there because it is supposed to be there will get you much farther than this kind of robotic, ignorant sounding repetition.

You also want to avoid attempting to use every possible variation of the keyword known to man. Putting 100 different, related keywords into a 300 word article makes it very clear to human visitors that you’re more focused on gaming the search engines than you are on talking to them.

Mistake #2: Choosing Keywords that Stretch the Use of the English Language

People do not search like they talk.  For example, the Google Keyword Research tool might suggest “real estate lawyer Minneapolis,” but that doesn’t make it proper English. It would either need to be Minneapolis real estate lawyer or real estate lawyer in Minneapolis.

Fortunately, Google is able to recognize prepositions now, too, as well as reasonable changes in the order of words, but there are still old school thinkers who believe that the keyword must be repeated exactly in order for the search engines to recognize it.

The result? Copy that sounds like it was written by someone who doesn’t have a basic command of the language, resulting in a website that does nothing to build credibility or trust.

Mistake #3: Fixating on the Most Competitive Keywords

If your competition has deeper pockets than you do then it’s not a good idea to focus on the same keywords they’re using. Instead, you should focus on trying to rank for slightly less popular keywords.

After all, it’s better to get a lot of less traffic because you’re on page 1 for an unpopular keyword than languishing with no traffic because you’re on page 10 for a very popular one.

It’s also a good idea to vary up your keywords. This should happen organically anyway, since many of these words will come up as you discuss a topic. Varying up your keywords will also vary up the competitiveness of those keywords while making all of your content read more naturally.

The Bottom Line

Keywords are useful tools, but you don’t have to go crazy with them. It’s far more important to write content that keeps your audience coming back for more again and again.

Today’s Action Item:

  • Go through your existing web content. Rewrite any text where your keywords have been used in an unnatural way.

3 Ways to Create Website Content When you Hate to Write

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writing ideasIf you are a business owner who hates to write then you might find it frustrating to create website content. In fact, if you are someone who hates to write you are certainly not alone. Plenty of people feel exactly the same way you do.

Fortunately, there are ways to help lessen the burden. You’re not going to get out of writing completely, but the ideas I’m going to share here should certainly help make the task easier.

Create Video Content Instead

Perhaps you like to work with your hands. Perhaps you could show your customers all sorts of amazing things, but putting these things into written form is too time-consuming.

Video can be an incredibly effective way to market your business too. It even carries an advantage over written content since you can use YouTube and other video-based social media to push this content.

You can then write a short paragraph about what’s in the video on your blog, just two or three sentences with an appropriate keyword tucked somewhere inside. Publish and you’re done.

Don’t worry if you’re not a professional videographer. There’s actually a strange phenomenon that happens with videos.

Oddly the more polished and professional they look the less effective they can be. So if you decide to take this route just be yourself.

Outsource Your Content

Hiring a freelance writer or a ghostwriter doesn’t have to be expensive, and it can free you to actually work on your business instead of on your blog.

There are several different ways to find them. You can do a web search for “writing services,” “freelance writers,” or “ghostwriters.” You can ask other people you do business with if they use anyone.

You can also look for people on job boards like Elance.com, or post a free ad on Craigslist. Just be aware that you’ll get dozens of replies on both venues.

If you decide to take this route, know your budget and know what you want. Be ready to communicate closely with your writer.

Look for someone who is respectful of you and your business, and who pays attention to your deadlines and feedback. Check testimonials to see what kind of reputation the writer has.

Beware of writers who charge too little. They are usually non-native English speakers who will hurt your business more than they will help it.

Purchase Pre-Written Content

It is possible to purchase the rights for pre-written content in just about any industry that you can think of. There are two basic ways to do this.

First, you can purchase PLR, or private label rights content. You’ll generally get a package of articles priced at about $1.00 per page.

These articles are sold to multiple people so DO NOT use the PLR content “as-is.” Remember, there will be other businesses like yours using the same content. This doesn’t bode well for your visitors or you because Google won’t index your content if it is a duplicate.

Some say you can simply rewrite PLR articles by just tweaking the title and maybe the opening paragraph. That simply isn’t enough. You literally have to rewrite the entire article. I recommend using the PLR material as a starting point. The main ideas are there for you but you will want to write an entire new article around those ideas.

PLR varies wildly in quality, so it’s a good idea to be careful what you buy. Fortunately there are people who are already vetting different marketplaces.

You can try Private Label Rights Junkie, for example. This person maintains a list of reputable PLR providers.

You may or may not find content that pertains to your business, but it’s worth a look.

Often, you can use each provider’s mailing list forms to put in special requests that would target your business. The busier the provider is the less often this will work, however.

If you want higher-end plug-and-play content that you don’t have to modify you can go to Constant Content instead. You can buy full rights to an article that’s already been scrutinized by an editing team.

If you run the search term “chiropractor” for example you’d currently get 15 different articles that you could potentially purchase for your site. More articles are added every day.

You can also make article requests there to see if anyone will just write your content. This is a little like posting a request on Elance, except that the writer simply responds with an article instead of a bid. You then decide if you want to buy it or not.

Writing isn’t fun for most people and unfortunately there are no short cuts. If you want your blog to prosper (so you can have more traffic and sales), you’ll need to write. And when you do write, you’ll want it to be quality stuff. Hopefully the three ideas discussed here will make the task easier:)

How Email List Segmentation Helps Your Business

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email marketing segmentationSmall business email marketing is important, but it’s also important to realize that not all of your customers are the same.

That’s why it’s a bad idea to have a “one-size-fits-all” strategy for your subscribers on your email list, or even for your content. Fortunately, even with the easy email content method I discussed in my last post, you don’t have to.

You can use list segmentation to talk to all of the different types of customers that you deal with. This feature comes standard in nearly all email marketing programs.

This makes sure that the customer only gets the content that the customer is most likely to be interested in. That means you don’t annoy your customers by sending them anything that’s irrelevant to them.

Here is what the segmentation feature looks like inside of Aweber, a commonly used email program.

As you can see, it’s a simple drop down menu where you choose different options that describe the customer you’re trying to talk to.

Some Useful Ways to Segment Your List

One good way to segment your list would be to separate your B2B customers from your B2C customers. Many small businesses have both.

You might also need to separate the customers further depending on who you serve.

Roofers, for example, might serve big commercial buildings and homeowners. A homeowner’s roof maintenance tips are going to be very different from the mall owner’s.

While both types of content may be on your blog you’ll want to use the segments to call special attention to the content that’s most important to each type of customer.

That way your homeowners get the email that points them towards your blog post on checking the house’s roof after a storm, while your mall owner sees tips for commercial roofing evaluations.

Imagine what would happen if you tried to send both of those emails to both customers. They would would feel disinterested, left out, and annoyed but one of your messages.

By segmenting, you allow each of your customers to feel valued and specially targeted.

You can also segment your customers by past purchases. For example, customers who routinely go after the lowest price want to hear about specials and deals, whereas customers who consistently purchase the high-price-point items want to hear about quality and longevity.

You should also consider segmenting buyers vs. readers. Some people on your list are customers who you want to convert into repeat customers. Others are readers who have yet to buy.

You might well want to offer things to the former that aren’t offered to the latter. They might well be interested in different offers or promotions that are tailored to them specifically.

Segmentation Results

Segmentation may sound like a pain, but it does deliver real results.

According to the marketing blog Hubspot, segmentation creates better open rates and lower opt-out rates. Hubspot reports that 39% of the business owners who use segmentation enjoy better open rates.

They also report that 28% of these businesses enjoy lower opt-out rates. 24% of all business owners report that their emails do a better job of passing spam filters, too, which means they get seen in the first place (always a concern).

The reason is simple: as mentioned before, segmentation prevents you from annoying your customers with content they simply do not care about. Instead, you can get laser-focused on their needs, which makes you stand out. Most businesses just throw everything at the wall hoping something sticks.

Today’s Action Items:

  • Segment your subscribers and write emails specific to each segment.

The Easy Way to Create Email Content

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email marketing content ideasA couple days ago I posted about the importance of email marketing for small businesses. In this post I’m going to give you some easy ways to create content for your email messages.

With blog posting, guest posting, videos and social media updates, by the time you move on to email marketing it can be overwhelming by the sheer amount of writing that is required to effectively market your business.

Fortunately, there are shortcuts you can use to create your email content – shortcuts that build on what you’re already doing. You don’t necessarily have to go crazy creating an entirely new class of exclusive content for your email list.

In fact, people often prefer it when you keep your email content very short, sweet, and to the point. You can use this to your advantage.

Use a Two Pronged Strategy

Each email can do two things: point readers to one item of existing content while pointing readers to one offer. The whole email should be short enough that the reader hardly has to scroll down.

I like to tell the readers a little bit about why I chose to create a certain blog post or video. For example, if I were to add this blog post to an email marketing message I might write:

Many readers tell me they’re sick of all the content that they have to create so I decided to offer you a little shortcut.

Then I add a link to that content.

If you’re an interior designer who just did a video about choosing a color scheme for your living room, your email message might read:

Color causes my customers more anxiety than any other part of their interior design. But color can be easy. This video explains how!

This takes care of making the email useful and informative for your reader without forcing you to rack your brains for more content then you’re already attempting to create.

Next, you can add a short paragraph about your offer. People expect you to market to them in an email, so this is a no-harm, no-foul sort of scenario.

So the interior designer might write:

If color still baffles you after watching my video you’ll find details about a special color consultation offer I’m running this week at the following link.

Then simply add a link to another page of the website that explains your offer. Easy!

If you really want to make your life easy, do a couple week’s worth of blog posts and schedule them in advance, then set up an auto-responder within your email service provider to correspond to each of the posts.

You can be out serving your customers while your email marketing rolls on working for you!

Throw in Exclusive Offers

You want your email list to feel special, so you will add just a little bit of content nobody else sees. Specifically, your email list should be the sole recipient of coupons or coupon codes that you simply don’t offer anywhere else.

When you do this people can see the clear benefit of continuing to receive your emails. They also get an act-now reason to do business with you.

This creates a selling point for your list too as you can market this very feature. You can tell everyone that signs up that they’re going to get exclusive discounts and select programs that nobody else gets.

You can expand this beyond coupons. For example, you could create a seminar or a workshop for a select group of customers that is only offered to your e-mail list.

People like to feel special. They like to feel like they’re important.

Playing into this need helps you solidify your relationships with these customers. And it’s all about the relationship.

Today’s Action Items:

  • Schedule a few blog posts and emails using this easy content strategy.

Why It’s a Bad Idea to Ignore Email Marketing

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small business email marketingIf your small business hasn’t embraced email marketing then you’re really missing out on some important opportunities. I know this view isn’t universally shared. Every now and then someone likes to write up a blog post that says that email marketing is dead.

They’ll cite statistics that open rates for emails are at an all-time low. They’ll talk about how we all get too much spam and as a result it’s increasingly harder and harder to get your message to stand out. While there may be some truth to what the naysayers say, email marketing is still effective and critical for small business owners and here’s why…

The ROI is Insane

The Direct Marketing Association reports that businesses make an average of $40 for every $1 spent on email marketing. That’s a ROI of 4000%. You just won’t get that kind of ROI from your other marketing efforts.

You also won’t have to spend very much on email marketing. The average email list management program starts at about $20 per month.

These services typically charge you more for a high number of subscribers, but your average small business won’t generally exceed the number of subscribers covered in a typical $20/month plan.

If you do exceed the entry-level threshold of subscribers, which is usually around 500 subscribers, the amount of return you should be getting for that list will more than pay for the slight price increase.

Services include Aweber, MailChimp, Constant Contact, Benchmark email, and many others. Most of them share the same basic features. The differences come in the prices, look, feel, and user-friendliness of the interface.

It’s Easy to Get Started

It’s very easy to get started with email marketing once you pick your service. Everything is point, click, cut, and paste.

You may want to consider an offer or giveaway to entice people to subscribe to your list. Here are a few suggestions:

  • A chiropractor might give away an exclusive discount to first-time subscribers.
  • An interior designer might give away a 20 page ebook with easy home decorating suggestions.
  • A 15% off coupon on your next plumber’s visit.
  • A lawyer could give away a packet of the most commonly used forms and letters for his branch of law.

The email list program will take you through a step-by-step point-and-click process for creating a sign-up form for your website. It will also show you how to attach your offer to the “thank you” page. That is, the customer won’t be able to download the coupon or the forms until they’re all signed up.

You can then simply copy and paste the code for the sign-up form into your website. Use your list provider’s pre-generated templates to create an attractive email newsletter.

You can even automate the process by using the auto-responder feature. You can schedule a month’s worth of emails in a single sitting.

Email Marketing Lets You Nurture Your Leads

Content marketing and social media bring customers, but they don’t necessarily keep them. Email marketing lets you make multiple points of contact with your visitors.

In addition, if you can find a way to do it in a useful, engaging way, people are far more tolerant of marketing via email than they are of marketing via social media. People even expect to see marketing messages via email.

When the customer signs up or takes advantage of your offer they’re basically telling you that they are interested. They’re giving you permission to market to them.

Put another way, content marketing and social media marketing fill up the top of a massive sales funnel. Email marketing represents the middle of that funnel. The buyers are at the bottom.

It often takes 7 points of contact with a customer to get him or her to buy. Email marketing provides you with a reliable way to make that contact.

Email marketing also gives you a reliable way to convert first-time customers to repeat customers by building a relationship. As you know, most of your money will always be in repeat customers!

Today’s Action Items:

  • Choose an e-mail service.
  • Add a sign-up form and sign-up incentive to your website.