About Jeremy LaDuque

In co-founding ELEMENTS in 1999, Jeremy created a company with a strong vision — to assist businesses in solving their most critical challenges through forward-thinking implementation of web strategies and business solutions. After graduating with honors from the State University of New York at Brockport, Jeremy was a key member of the client support team for TCI, a Fortune 100 Telecommunications firm (acquired by AT&T). Prior to starting ELEMENTS, he was the Director of Web Services at Best 1 Internet, a fast growing internet service organization.

Jeremy lives in Atascadero, California with his wife, son and daughter and enjoys mountain biking, skiing and the occasional triathlon. He was awarded the Pacific Coast Business Times' "Top 40 Under 40" for his professional excellence and profound commitment to the community. Jeremy is a member of the Technology Advocacy Committee of the SLO Chamber of Commerce, and member of Softec.

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Author Archives: Jeremy LaDuque

Google Discontinues Geo Sitemap Files

Posted on by Jeremy LaDuque

Google has discontinued support for GeoSitemap XML files.  The exact reason behind the move are fairly cloudy and this change was not announced to the public at large.  Instead, thousands of webmasters just happened to notice that their GeoSitemap files suddenly displayed an error status in February & March of this year.  The exact error those webmasters saw was “This tag was not recognized. Please fix it and resubmit.”  The reported error was really vague and misleading and as I mentioned, this change came unannounced.  It was only on March 20th in follow up questions from SMX West on Susan Moskwa’s Google+ page that any of this was explained.

“Google has retired support for the Geo Sitemaps format. You can continue to submit your Geo content to us using the standard Sitemaps format (just listing the URL of the file(s), without <geo>-specific tags)…

We previously supported an extension to the Sitemaps protocol where you could include tags in your XML Sitemaps that contained geo-specific information in addition to the URL of your KML file. We no longer support those geo-specific XML tags in Sitemaps, but you can still submit the URLs of your KML files in a standard Sitemap format.” (http://goo.gl/ovcxf)

The good news is that Google still supports the use of KML files which help validate accurate business contact information which can lead to increased rankings in local search.  Our recommendation is to add your KML file’s location into your general sitemap.xml which you would then submit to Google’s Webmaster Tools.

5 Tips To Better Optimize For Google’s New Rules For “over-optimized” Website

Posted on by Jeremy LaDuque

Google announced it will be releasing a new algorithm change that penalizes websites that are “over-optimized” or “overly SEO’ed.” This news was released by Mat Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, during his panel at SXSW.

Matt was responding to a great question asked by someone in the audience:

“With so many SEO companies showing up claiming to do SEO, a lot of markets are getting saturated with optimized content…What are you doing to prevent, for example, if you’re looking for something, and the first page is just optimized content, and it’s not what you’re actually looking for? Are you pretty much out of luck if you’re not optimizing your site but it has relevant content? If I’m a mom or pop and I’m trying to optimize a site by myself, I’m going to get beat by people paying thousands of dollars.“

Matt’s response was:

“We don’t normally pre-announce changes but there is something we are working in the last few months and hope to release it in the next months or few weeks. We are trying to level the playing field a bit. All those people doing, for lack of a better word, over optimization or overly SEO – versus those making great content and great site. We are trying to make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and we are also looking for those who abuse it, whether they throw too many keywords on a page, or whether they exchange way too many links or go well beyond what you normally expect in a particular area. It is an active area where we have several engineers on my team working on this right now.”

Cutts said the new “over optimization” penalty will be introduced into the search results in the upcoming month or next few weeks.

This news came as no surprise to ElementsLocal. As we monitor the constant Google changes we’ve noticed one thing – that Google is the great equalizer. They continually updates their algorithms in an attempt to normalize results, or as Cutts said  “level the playing field.”

We believe this new change will give websites with great content a better chance at ranking above sites that have content that is just simply optimized. And who better to create great content, as well as create the vehicle to deliver that content locally, than a franchise system!

Franchise systems can really take advantage of this, as well as many other updates happening with Google, by doing two things. First, by putting a system in place that allows Franchisees to contribute great local content that is brand and SEO compliant. Second, by putting a system in place that allows the Franchisor to ‘push down’ or roll down content to all Franchisees with properly applied SEO, avoiding wasted time and energy and avoiding Google’s new penalties.

Here are 5 tips that will help you adhere to SEO best practice and avoid any potential penalties for having an “over-optimized” website:

  1. Keyword repetition on page
    Websites should repeat their target keyword phrase at most 3 or 4 times on any given page.  Repetition beyond that can draw negative attention to that page.
  2. Internal ‘spammy’ site links
    You should use a normal linking scheme when linking to the other webpages of your website.  If you have a webpage about your company’s history, don’t link to that page using your top keywords if they don’t relate to that webpage.  Link to it using the term “Company History” or “Our Plumbing Company’s History”.
  3. Purchasing exterior links
    Paying external websites to link to your own website is against Google’s terms of use policies and if discovered your site will be penalized or removed completely.  The word on the street is that this upcoming over-optimization algorithm Google is putting into place is much better at determining which links are paid links.
  4. Backlinks from ‘spammy’ websites like link farms
    Web directories like yellow pages websites linking to your website does have value, even though that value will be small.  Some directories have little to no value and only serve the purpose of linking to you if you link to them.  Incoming links from these link farms or directories will send up ‘spammy’ signals to Google’s algorithm, so it’s better to avoid these types of links if possible.
  5. Too many external links pointing to your website using keywords and not website name
    In recent years it has become common practice for link partners such as blogs to ask you what keywords you want in your anchor text pointing back to your website.  Having the keywords in all your inbound links reading “best seo company” appears ‘spammy’.  Instead, the anchor text should include your website name and possibly a keyword, such as “Elements, an SEO company”.  More often than not, letting the linking website create the anchor text will allow for a much more natural looking linking scheme.

Franchise Sales and Marketing Summit

Posted on by Jeremy LaDuque

Franchisee Sales and Marketing Summit was  developed specifically to help franchisees and will be divided into four, one hour-long sessions and take place over four days, from March 26 until March 29.

Each session will cover a different topic, with Paul Segreto facilitating and presenting alongside an expert guest on the subject of focus. Additionally, ElementsLocal’s President and CEO, Jeremy LaDuque will present opening comments 15 minutes prior to each daily session and along with Paul Segreto, will also present a detailed summary of the entire Franchisee Sales and Marketing Summit at the conclusion of the last session.

To register for the summit and for more information on upcoming events sponsored by FranSummit visit the official website for FranSummit :  www.fransummit.com

For more information on upcoming webinars visit http://elementslocal.com/Join/Elements2012WebinarSchedule.php

Google Has New Way to Connect Your Blog Posts to Your Personal Brand

Posted on by Jeremy LaDuque

Google has a new way to connect your blog posts to your personal brand. By going into your blog and making some simple changes you can have each post point to an author page on your blog, which in turn you can link to the author’s Google+ page.

This is a huge opportunity because Google has more trust in articles that are written by unique authenticated authors. The more articles tied to your Google+ account and the more people who recommend your articles through Google+, the more weight your articles will carry when it comes to ranking your articles in Google’s search results.

On your end, here is how to authenticate your authorship on any blog you contribute to:

  • Log into your Google+ account
  • Click on the circle with a head in it at the top to get to your profile page
  • Click on the “Edit Profile” button
  • In the right hand sidebar click on “Contributor To” button
  • Add a custom link to your blog
  • Click “Save”
  • Click “Done editing” at the top of the profile

The following then has to be added to your blog. You may need your tech folks to do this part:

  • Create an author page on your blog if you do not already have one (author.php)
  • At the bottom of each post put in an author tag that will point to that author’s page (<?php the_author_posts_link(); ?></p>)
  • On the author page you will need to link to that author’s Google+ profile page with the following tag in the link (rel=”me”)

That’s it!

Localizing key to Conversion rate Optimization for Franchises

Posted on by Jeremy LaDuque

Here are a few simple ways you can optimize your Franchise websites for lead optimization. Read on to also see our 8 Point Checklist For LOCALIZING your Franchise/Franchisee’s Websites.

Have a Locally Optimized Website

Having a website that is optimized for local exposure gives your local franchises ‘credibility’ with the search engines.  The franchisee will be seen as a local business and can enhance their authority as a local professional and expert and boost website conversion.

Keep Your Website Updated

Having up to date news and content on each Franchisee website, including local ‘Grass  Roots’ news and information, is important to convey ‘freshness’ with search engines.

Put What the Consumer Wants Upfront

Put information about your services and products upfront. Also, make your join pages easy to get to! Front page access is best.  Give them this information upfront; don’t make them dig around your site looking for it. Your website visitors have a need – i.e. the service you provide - and the sooner you demonstrate that you can satisfy that need, the better. Continue reading →

Pinterest drives more traffic than Google+, LinkedIn, MySpace YouTube, and Reddit – Is It Something You Should Consider to Share Your Franchises Brand Image?

Posted on by Jeremy LaDuque

Pinterest is a new(er) social media site that could very well help you get the desired “local” exposure as well as engagement for your franchise.  Read on to see how companies like Lands’ End to Facebook are using Pinterest to their advantage.

Pinterest is a new, innovative and exciting site that allows its users to ‘Pin’ images from anywhere online. It has quickly become a large social community of people who like to view the world through imagery.  Pinterest is built upon SHARING.  Sharing personally built life categories with personally built content.

The best thing about Pinterest is the ability to get personal with others. For a business that could be showing and demonstrating their products and services to customers in a whole new way. This is a great platform to establish franchisees local presence through the personal ‘boards’ in Pinterest.

One of the biggest advantages to Pinterest is the demographic that has made the site so popular. The site caters to a female audience (reportedly nearing 70 percent), most of whom are under the age of 45. This much sought after demographic can play a key part in the purchasing decisions of the average American household and your bottom line.

How can your franchise brand use an image sharing website?

Whether you sell something that’s exciting, seemingly uninteresting or especially offer a unique service that’s hard to understand Pinterest will make it exciting and simple to understand through imagery. W a bit of creativity and research you’re bound to find a way to use the new platform.  Especially if you use Pinterest to invite your customers into your personal franchise business or local franchise life.

Here are some creative ways to establish your brand locally with Pinterest

Hold a Contest

One creative way to utilize Pinterest is to hold a contest. Lands’ End recently held a contest they coined: “Pin It to Win It”. Participants were encouraged to browse the Lands’ End site, create pins of items they liked and the most creative and stylish entries won prizes. This kind of contest can engage your audience and also gets them to your site, browsing your products and linking to them!

A hair and beauty franchise could give a demonstration on quick hair styles or hold a contest as such while a food and beverage franchise could hold a local photo at the location contest. Again, creativity and making the contest unique with a local twist would be advantageous.

Conduct Market Research

Have plans to revamp services or products in 2012?  Why not test out new products or even your upcoming ad campaign on Pinterest?

Other brands have started using Pinterest as a platform to conduct market research or test product launches. In a recent Mashable post, one creative suggestion was to use Pinterest as sort of a social online focus group to see first-hand reactions, on a platform not as inundated as Facebook.

Feature Customers

One way to appeal to this demographic is to play to their vanity. Feature customers on your Pins, especially if you have a clothing boutique or store. “Customer A paired these shoes, belt and top to create this stylish winter cocktail party look!”. Showcase customer purchases that exemplify their style or pin photos of products that go well together and that customer X recommends.

Present Concepts in a New Way

Pinterest allows you to add contributors to your boards. Have a few team members put together a storyboard on Pinterest to present to a customer. Or co-Pin with a customer to create a board full of ideas for their next event or shopping spree.

If the product or idea is presented in a clean, simple and creative way using Pinterest it can stand a chance of being better received. Not only that, it allows you to creatively engage with customers and prospects can see too!

Put a Face to Your Franchise Brand

Personalizing and localizing your brand can be a hard thing to do with plain ol’ web copy. Use Pinterest to showcase your brand uniquely, what makes you different, what your brand stands for and use it as an opportunity to highlight your employees too. Putting a face to your brand is key to localizing your brand and easily done with Pinterest.

Promote Your Franchise Image Content

A franchise brand could start a board on  infographics.  Feature all of your image content in one place for easy access.

Infographics, product photos and your own photography can be featured. Do your research and see how other brands are using Pinterest to share their image content.

Pinterest can help a customer see the full picture of their needs before they even know they need it. Pin photos of activities in the area and how they relate to your franchise, landscape photos, photos of the local business and of course the staff. The possibilities really can be endless.

These are just a few of the creative ways your franchise brand can use Pinterest to spark interest and engage with customers. And to wet your palate for Pinterest even more, check out the announcement from Facebook – 60 new and exciting apps were unveiled including a Pinterest app.

A picture is worth a thousand words, in Pinterest’s case, an image could be the local exposure your franchise brand is needing to establish that local location to generate more leads.

Here is a great article on Pinterest’s popularity and it’s ability to drive traffic:  http://mashable.com/2012/02/01/pinterest-traffic-study/

Brought to you by ElementsLocal – the leader in branding your franchise locally.

Google’s answer to the Facebook ‘Like” box: Google + Badges

Posted on by Jeremy LaDuque

Google+ Badges for brand pages, is a widget that lets Franchise brands promote their presence on Google’s social network.  Google+ Badges are similar in form and function to Facebook‘s Like Box social plugin.

The easily embeddable widget lets users either +1 a webpage or add that page to their Google+ circles. The widget also displays the faces of other users who have +1ed the webpage. It doesn’t have Facebook’s ability to display your friends’ faces first  though.

The launch of Google+ Badges coincides with Monday’s launch of Google+ Brand Pages, finally giving businesses the ability to create a presence on Google’s growing social network.

The Google+ Badge has a few other tricks. The Google+ badge also contains a snippet of code that connects your website to your Google+ page. And In addition to helping Google better index your Google+ page, this snippet will help you show more personal recommendations around the web by linking your +1’s on sites, your Google+ page, search and display ads.

Google also revealed that the badge is a requirement for inclusion in Google Direct Connect, a feature that makes it possible for users to find a Google+ Page from Google Search. Users type in the “+” operator, followed by the name of a brand participating in Direct Connect. The search result will lead users directly to the company’s Google+ brand page.

The widget was a necessary component for Google+, given the success of its Facebook counterpart. While it doesn’t have the same benefits  Facebook enjoys with Open Graph, the Google+ Badge gets the job done. Google still has a long, uphill battle to convince both brands and users that its social network is an ideal place to do business.

Stay tuned as ElementsLocal keeps track of the impact Google+ has on your Franchise Online Marketing.

Franchise Online Marketing Outlook for 2012: Creating an Adaptive Marketing Platform

Posted on by Jeremy LaDuque

Reflecting back is more than just remembering where you wanted to be. It’s an eye opener about how dramatically the sands shifted under your feet in 2011 and a clear sign 2012 will be no different.

For Franchise Marketers Google introduced significant changes to the way it displays and delivers search results. Many franchise marketers had to quickly react to the importance of social media, blogging and directories. Our own vision of being a complete solution for franchise online marketing was expanded to include new best of breed partners in directory submission and social media. Our dashboard reflects the integrated nature of how pay-per-click, organic search and directories (such as Google Places) inter-relate and converge.

This being said, what does 2012 hold in store for Franchise online marketing? Seeing future trends is exactly what we need to do in order to anticipate change and be at the top of our game.

It’s not just about how to show up, attract and sell to consumers today, but next month, next year and years to come.  Lets transcend ideas like “social network” and “search engine” and focus  on consumers and technologies. Will we be using a search engine like Google in 5 years? Will we be using desktop computers in 5 years? What will future social networks look like? Answers to those questions are answers to the future of marketing and customer engagement.

Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and plenty of other large companies are innovating at amazing speed to gain control of our attention. Some are doing it through devices, some through content, others through infrastructure.

So, what is message we got from 2011? Change… we must take a critical look at what it will take to adapt to change.  Rather than jumping from one place to the next in your franchise online marketing plan, consider developing an adaptive model that allows for rapid assimilation of new technologies and trends.

Creating an adaptive model assumes that you will have to adopt new technologies or new methodologies. Is your company an early adopter? Have you taken on the risk of adopting a technology platform before everyone else? Or have you given up first mover advantage because you felt it was going to be too expensive or time consuming. Continue reading →

Franchise Online Marketing: The Pros and Cons of Using Call Tracking Numbers

Posted on by Jeremy LaDuque

The use of call tracking numbers in your Franchise Online Marketing ads is very useful because it is a great way to track incoming ad generated leads for your franchisees.  Search Engines like Google aim to provide the most useful and accurate information for users, so a local phone number is always preferred.  That being said, if you are using a call tracking phone numbers in your advertising you may be run up against a few challenges.

There are three fundamental reasons why call tracking numbers can cause issues with Google Places, and other directories, and and even organic search rankings.

  1. Google may not recognize the call tracking number as your local number and think you’re spamming.
  2. You may confuse Google because many local business directories use the phone number as a key identifier for individual businesses. A phone number is often an easy ID to use for indexing businesses because they are generally prone to less variation in how they’re presented in databases or on webpages. A second phone number associated with a location may ‘devalue’ that location or produce a duplicate location.
  3. If the business ever changes call tracking solution providers or stops using the tracking numbers, the phone numbers they’ve been using will stop working, yet will be published throughout the Internet

We suggest using a locally recognized phone number and when you are able to, purchase the use of that phone number for your exclusivity for use in the call tracking. That way that phone number will remain consistant when changing providers or stop using the tracking numbers. There are also new ways to place call tracking technology on your existing phone numbers.

We also suggest that as part of your inside sales procedures for franchisees, asking callers directly where they found you  You may or may not be able to collect that data from your franchisees, but at the very least encourage the collection of the data.  Have the employees who answer the phone write down responses for you to see later. This remains an excellent and free way of polling to see how effective different channels are performing.  Optimize leads by asking for referrals as well.

The data and feedback for our advertising campaigns is imperative, but you also need to follow good SEO practice to drive business locally.

ElementsLocal has worked with many Franchises on call tracking and has integrated the service directly into our platform..  Take an online tour today: elementslocal.com.

Elements capitalizes on its opportunity – Tribute from the Tribune

Posted on by Jeremy LaDuque

ElementsLocal thanks our clients for our continued success.

We are real people here at ElementsLocal.  We think about your business and how to improve your business.  Our passion is promoting your business through online marketing. Your business is appreciated.

Read theFull Story – San Luis Obispo Tribune