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How Small Business Owners Can Benefit from Google Plus Authorship

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If you don’t know about Google Plus Authorship yet then you really need to! According to Search Engine Land, Eric Schmidt of Google has released a statement declaring that authorship could become the most important factor for ranking.

Not keywords. Not social signals. Not backlinks. But whether or not Google knows and trusts the author of the content.

Obviously this is something that small business owners have to get on top of.

What is Google Places Authorship?

Have you ever run a search and noticed that someone’s photograph appears next to the search results? That someone is the person that Google has recognized as the content’s author.

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Most people instinctively trust the content more when they see an author photograph next to that content. The results that show up without such a picture just don’t look as credible.

As noted in the Slide Share presentation below (courtesy of Mitul Ghandi), Google Authorship doesn’t just make your content rank better. It makes it more “clickable” too.

Aside from the trust and “clickiness” factor, the author photograph draws the eye. As Plumber SEO stated in a recent webinar, it “makes your listing jump off the page.”

What does this mean? It means your content could show up as the #2 or #3 result and might still get the click over the #1 result (without an author attribution) because the person’s eye is drawn right to it.

Author Rank–Coming Soon?

You may have heard that Google has a feature called Page Rank to determine how active, important, useful or interesting a site is. Well, while it’s not here yet, Google has made it pretty clear that Authors will also be given some kind of rank in the future.

Content written by someone with a high AR will probably rank better than content written by someone with a low AR. And content that Google considers “anonymous” will rank lowest of all.

The people who start building their AR now are the ones that are going to have a high AR when this feature rolls out. As with most things, fortune favors the early adopter.

Okay, So How Do I Make this Happen?

I think the best part about all of this is that it’s super easy to do.

First, you need to set up a Google Profile. Visit http://www.google.com/+/learnmore/profile/.

Next, you need to go to the “Contributor To” section.

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Click edit to add your blog title and link, then hit save.

Now you need to tell Google that the content is yours. You can, if you want, do that the fancy HTML way.

Personally, I’ve never done that, because my brain doesn’t do code. (Travis might, though).

Instead, I like to install one of the many, many WordPress Plugins that will put all of that code in there for me once I give it my profile link.

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Whichever way you choose you’ll want to use the Google Rich Snippet Tool to make sure that all of this is working.

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And that’s it! Produce a steady stream of great content as normal, knowing that your author rank is increasing all the time.

And don’t worry. You can do this even if you’ve hired someone for their blog writing services. As long as the content points to your profile, Google will recognize it as having been written by you.

Are Web Maintenance Services Worth the Money?

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web-maintenance-servicesWeb maintenance services are great for small business owners who miss the “fix it and forget it” nature of old school marketing and advertising methods. Depending upon the service package you get, you could literally have your entire web presence taken care of for less than you’d have spent to purchase less-effective advertising.

Here are three ways that getting this kind of service on your side can help your business.

Save Technical Headaches

Sites which are buggy and slow don’t do much to impress customers or to build relationships. They also get penalized in Google.

When something goes wrong, however, you probably don’t have 20 hours to try to teach yourself how to fix it. And you certainly don’t need that kind of frustration.

Web maintenance services already know what can go wrong with websites and how to solve these kinds of problems. You can sit back knowing your website is busy running smoothly.

Keep Content Fresh

Websites that aren’t updated very often don’t provide visitors with any reasons to return. The longer your website remains static the less professional you look.

When people know there’s always going to be something new they will tend to check in every now and then. That gives you an additional chance to build the relationship or make the sale.

Google also prefers fresh content that is updated on a regular basis and will tend to give that content a boost on the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs).

There are dozens of websites are blogs that put up 5-10 posts before they simply go silent because they ran out of time or ideas. Using web maintenance services means that your website doesn’t have to join them.

Update Your Website with a Phone Call or an E-mail

Updating your site will take you all of 5 minutes when you chose to get the help of a professional webmaster. You can simply describe what you want done and someone else makes that happen.

That means “webmaster” can become one less hat that you have to wear while running your small business.

It’s all a matter of valuing your time. If you place a high value on your time but also want to maintain a great website then these services are definitely worth the money.

Warning: Google Carousel Gives Your Small Business Zero Photo Control

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google-carouselLast week I talked about Google Carousel and how local business owners should respond to it. One of the things I talked about was the need for business owners to add great photographs to their Google+ Business listing and on their websites so that they could take advantage of this very visual format.

Turns out this step may be more important than ever. JSO Digital ran a post noting that a business owner has very little direct control over which picture appears in the Carousel results.

JSO Digital pulled the information from the Google Products FOrum, where an answer to “how do I change my photograph” was met with the response that images are chosen via an algorithm.

In other words, you don’t. You don’t get to decide.

“Many of the photos are crowdsourced from Google, especially Google employees…Most of the remaining businesses listed in the Carousel’s top 10 display “local photos” rather than shots from Google users. Other sources of photos include Zagat and Panarimo.

The lesson seems to be that businesses who take the time to build good photos of their own are more likely to have those photos associated with their listing on the Carousel. When businesses don’t add photos, they are supplied by Google users. The problem for business owners is that the quality of user submissions varies.”

The takeaway? Take good photos now.

Don’t just take onephotograph. Take as many photographs as you can get on your Google+ Business listing and add as many as you can to your website without being obnoxious about it. (Make liberal use of your blog for this purpose, since photographs make for great blog content).

You won’t totally reduce your chances of having some crappy user-generated photo show up on your Carousel results, of course, but at least you’ll get the odds in your favor.

Carousel is unlikely to go away. Local University ran a recent heat map click study. As you might expect, Carousel dominated the clicks, taking 48% of them.

In my opinion this means that Google is going to expand Carousel sooner rather than later, so you can’t rest on your laurels even if you’re not a restaurant or a hotel. You’ve got a window of opportunity here to help Google make the right decision about which photographs you should be including.

5 of the Best Local SEO Blogs on the Internet

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best-local-seo-blogsHere on the TVS Internet Marketing Blog we do our best to provide you with a lot of great information about helping local small businesses get more visibility and sales online. However, there are six other really great local SEO blogs that I wanted to take a moment to share with you–a nice round-up to wrap up the month of June.

Here they are, in no particular order.

Phil Rozek’s Local Visibility System. If you’re looking for tons of in-depth information about local search this blog is a must-read. His posts are simply a lot of fun, and they’re chock full of great information.

Mike Blumenthal’s Understanding Google Places and Local Search. This is no-nonsense local SEO information that’s laser-focused Google Places. This is a great place for the latest information and updates.

Catalyst Local e-Marketing pulls some of the best search topics from Linda Buquet’s Local Search Forum. This forum covers new developments in local SEO, local SEO troubleshooting, best practices, and more. If you’re a small business owner who wants to understand local SEO like a SEO consultant then you’ll find everything you need right here.

Nyagoslav Zhekov’s NGS Marketing Blog offers local search information that’s very clear and easy for any business owner to understand. His blog is unique because it offers an international perspective on local SEO.

Mike Ramsey’s Nifty Marketing Blog is another great choice. His blog is a lot of fun to read for the cool Comicgraphics, but there are also several really cool “field test” style posts that makes for some very insightful content.

Do you know of a must-follow local search blog that I missed? Drop a comment to share your link!

Yelp Business Listings Just Got More Useful for Small Business Owners

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yelp-business-listingsIf you’ve spent much time following this blog at all you’ll already know I’m not a fan of paid directory listings. However, Yelp Business Listings has rolled out a recent new feature that actually may be worthwhile.

It’s called the Yelp “Call to Action” feature. Here’s what the Yelp blog has to say about it.

“Consumers come to Yelp ready to make a spending decision and they rely on Yelp’s wealth of valuable content to find a local business to fit their needs. Today we’re introducing a new feature for business owners, designed to further close the loop between discovering a business on Yelp and making a purchase at that business. Yelp’s new Call to Action feature allows business owners to promote a desired transaction of their choosing directly on their Yelp business listing.”

So you can get people to click through to your website with the idea that they’re going to schedule an appointment, make a reservation, or schedule a reservation right then and there. That’s pretty powerful stuff.

However, you’ll need to do a lot more than become a Yelp advertiser to take advantage of this feature. Since the click goes right back to your website you need to keep a few things in mind.

  • Your website will need to be capable of completing the transaction in the first place.
  • You may want to create a specific landing page so users don’t get lost before they find their way to the action you want them to take.
  • Your overall website look and feel will need to be both professional and appealing to avoid losing customers once they get to you.
  • Your Yelp listing will need to be claimed and optimized so people can find it in the first place.
  • You’ll need a strategy for gathering positive reviews so that people trust your listing enough to take the desired action.

In other words, using Yelp’s Call to Action feature needs to be part of an overall internet marketing and local SEO strategy. It’s not something that’s going to stand on its own.

What Some Funny Plumbers Taught Me About Viral Video Marketing

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I’m not really a hugely funny person by nature, so I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about viral video marketing. I’ve long been aware that to go viral, a video usually has to be funny, entertaining, or controversial.

And usually, some good, solid videos are really all you can aspire to as a small business owner. If those videos are even a little useful, they’ll typically serve you very well.

Frankly, I also assumed that there was nothing too hilarious about the day-to-day world of most businesses.

Last week, however, Plumber SEO made me rethink that stance when they shared this video on Twitter.

This video definitely deserves the viral attention it is getting. Here’s what it’s doing right.

It has found its humor in a recognizable industry stereotype, something that’s familiar to everyone. This makes the video incredibly accessible.

This made me realize that there are a lot of those stereotypes floating around. What could a dentist do with the “painful trip to the dentist” stereotype for example?

But the humor isn’t really even the genius behind this video. It’s a great marketing tool because of one other very smart thing that these plumbers did.

They clearly communicated what sets their company apart throughout the entire video.

  • They are pulled together and respectable.
  • They’ll give you the “red carpet treatment” by placing a red doormat on your front stoop to catch mud.
  • They put on booties so they don’t track stuff into your house.
  • They’ve all had background checks and are trustworthy, so you can feel safe letting them into your house.

I’m pretty sure I’d call them if I were in their service area. By the way, they also made sure to strengthen their local position with their YouTube video title: “Pull ’em Up” Rap Video – San Diego Plumbers of Anderson Plumbing, Heating and Air.

So what about your business? Could you put together something that could go just as viral and communicate your USP just as well? And if not, can you think of something interesting and useful to do instead? It’s certainly something to think about!