Tag Archives: Google Places

How Can Franchises Take Advantage of Everything Google Offers?

Posted on by Jeremy LaDuque

Google is the most popular search engine in the world for a few good reasons. Its simple uncluttered interface, vast number of webpages and great results are among the top reasons.

But that’s not all Google has to offer and we find Franchise businesses using Google more and more to market and advertise, enhance their social media and mobile marketing, analyze their website traffic and even optimize and split test how effective the conversion is on their websites.

So ELEMENTS has decided recommend some of the hottest Google tools we see Franchises using today. ELEMENTS will also be conducting a FREE webinar on this topic on June 21st (click here to sign up >>).

Local Search & Advertising

1) Google Places

One of the largest impacts to the local search arena stems from Google Places, an online local directory of businesses. Most importantly, Google Places is no longer a separate search product anymore. Google now displays Google Place’s search results blended directly into Google’s general or “Everything” search when the search terms indicate that the end user might be looking for a product or service that can be satisfied locally.

Google Places Local Blend

Franchises now must ensure all of their locations are setup properly and optimized in Google Places in order to show up when people perform searches that can be satisfied locally.

2) Google AdWords Location Extensions

AdWords is Google’s PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising platform. Google has added location extensions to their AdWords system which allows the owner of the advertisement to display their advertisements to specified locations. Location extensions help make the consumer aware that the product or service they are looking for can be fulfilled locally.

3) Google Keyword Tool and Google Trends

By using Google’s free Keyword Tool, companies are better able to determine what keywords people are searching for and which keyword term targets would just waste their website’s valuable real estate. To receive top rankings in Google a company must play by their rules, expand their offerings and monetizing the marketability of their products or services. Getting traffic is great, but converting traffic into sales or leads is the true goal of the SEO game.

The Google Trends Tool can help your company determine search traffic trends when comparing multiple sets of keywords. For example, the following search comparing Netflix, Block Buster and Hollywood Video shows the dramatic difference in searches for those three businesses:

Google Trends

Social Media

4) Social Signals Effect Rank

Recently both Bing and Google have admitted that mentions of and links to web pages found in public social media postings can positively effect a website’s search engine rankings. The idea behind this is that social media users will share links to websites that they trust and enjoy so the more users sharing these links through social media the more perceived value these websites have. However, not all social media personas carry the same weight. Search engines look at the “social authority” of the user that shared that link and give more value to links shared by users with more credibility.

5) Google +1

At the time of this publication Google +1 is currently in beta testing mode. The idea behind Google +1 is to use one’s social network (Google contacts) for recommendations on which search results they found the most for their own search queries. So if your friend marked a result as valuable, there is good cause for the Google search engine to think that you might like it as well because you both exist within the same social circle.

Today (June 1st), Google has launched their +1 Button which can be added to any website to encourage friend recommendations in the same way that Facebook users can currently “like” a website page. In a way, Google is leveraging its’ entire user-base as quality control staff. While Google states that under the current system recommendations only come from the user’s social network, we can foresee a time when Google will recommend websites from outside of your social circle based on the number of +1’s a website has received and the perceived social authority of the rankee.

Click here for more information on the +1 Button.

6) Google Places Reviews

Earlier we discussed the importance of Google Places to local search. Perhaps the most important factor in getting a Place’s page to rank well is the number of positive reviews a business has in relation to their local competition. The reviews found on Google Places can be drawn from several places. One such place is the social review website Yelp. Google also has its’ own social review system (formally called Hotpot) which has now been integrated directly into Google Places. Both Yelp & Google Places allow users to track reviews and interact with their friends within their social network. According to Google, they now have millions of users rating places more than a million times per month.

7) Google’s Realtime Social Media Search Results

Alongside their Everything and Places search Google has various other search types. One of these variant searches is Google’s Realtime search. Google’s Realtime search results display “up-to-the-second” updates from various social media outlets including news articles, blog posts and Tweets. The search result page is no longer a static listing, but instead updates when a new post relevant to your search query is detected by Google.

These real-time searches can be beneficial for businesses looking to leverage current trends in their marketing efforts or for franchises looking to react quickly to protect their brand when trouble arises.

8) Google’s Algorithmic Changes that Recognize Brands

Social media mentions of a company name will pass along a brand impression for that company. The more mentions of a company’s name Google can find the more likely it is to treat that business as a notable brand. Brands have become an important factor to Google when determining search engine rankings because Google now considers brand name products and services as more trustworthy and therefore ranks brands higher than their non-branded competition.

Franchises can leverage social media to expand their company’s brand impression. Companies should encourage their employees to create personal LinkedIn profiles and link them to their company. Facebook posts & Twitter tweets can now be found in both Google’s Realtime search and its’ Everything search giving more exposure to a company’s brand name than franchises with inactive social media accounts that are not engaging existing or potential customers through those social mediums. Serious and authentic blog commenting with a mention of your company’s brand is just another social media outlet that can garner your brand’s name more exposure.

Aside from social media there are other very useful ways to expose your brand’s name to consumers. Successful offline advertising can have a positive impact on brand recognition. Franchises could even publish an eBook or two about franchising and about their brand which not only will receive mentions from social media and traditional media sources like press releases, but these books can also be found in online libraries like Google Scholar.

Mobile Marketing

9) Google Mobile Location Based Ads

Google AdWords offers location centric mobile advertising to allow local businesses to target leads based on the user’s immediate location. These location based ads offer the interested user an expandable map with turn by directions and a click-to-call phone number. There is some chatter at Google about other new “rich ad units” for mobile coming down the pipe to further leverage the mobile platform, including ads meant specifically for tablet devices.

10) Google Places Offer Mobile Coupons

When customers find a specific local store or service on Google Places through their mobile device, that business can offer digital coupons directly to that device in order to convert that lead into a walk-in customer. Owners of the devices can then show the business their coupon directly on their phone without having to print it out on a piece of paper. One of the best benefits of Google Place’s mobile coupons is that the coupons get distributed for free, unlike many offline paper distribution methods.

Traffic Metrics & Conversion Optimization

11) Google Analytics Traffic & SEO Metrics

Google Analytics is a free traffic reporting tool that allows companies to tunnel deeply into their visitor and website metrics in order to better determine the success of their website. Just some of the valuable visitor and search metrics one can obtain from Google Analytics are the most popular pages on your websites, the keywords that are driving search traffic to your websites, what external websites are sending your website traffic and the level of engagement of your website.

Google Analytics has completely changed how businesses look at their website’s statistics. This free hosted solution makes adding metric tracking to your website a breeze and provides in depth reporting second to none. Along with these valuable benefits, Google Analytics also allows companies to integrate their Google AdWords & Google AdSense campaigns into its reports, to set goals with varying values for conversion tracking and to build custom scheduled statistical reports.

In the franchise space specifically, ELEMENTS has begun using Google Analytics to provide rollup reporting across an entire franchisee network of websites as well as offering franchisees access to their own individual Google Analytics reports.

12) Website Optimizer for Conversion Optimization

The success of a website cannot purely be determined by the number of visitors to a website alone. Most websites have conversion goals like a checkout through their shopping cart or a newsletter sign-up for future targeted marketing. This is where conversion optimization comes into play.

Conversion optimization is the process of altering a page on a website in order to increase the amount achieved goals. Sometimes this can mean changing the call to action text or adding a big green button to the page. Conversion optimization is an art form but with Google’s Website Optimizer almost anyone can learn how to better their conversions on any given page.

In its simplest form, Website Optimizer allows you to create to competing pages and then it splits the traffic between the two pages and determines which page has the best conversion or goal achievement ratio. Website Optimizer also allows a company to alter individual page snippets in order to determine which of these snippets on the page lead to the most conversions.

Looking Forward to Online Marketing in 2011

Posted on by Jeremy LaDuque

2010 was quite a busy year in regards to internet marketing.  We saw local search become the top focus of SEO experts at the beginning of the year and we watched those same experts scramble back to basics when Google blended the local and organic results.   We witnessed social marketing become the bees knees to online marketers only for them to learn that creating a Facebook and a Twitter account was not a panacea for an already weak marketing campaign.  We saw Bing power Yahoo results and the emergence of Google Instant which caused a mild panic when certain naysayers prematurely declared it to be the “death of SEO”.  And those are just the highlights, but as we pause to look back at 2010 it’s prudent to look to the future as well.  So what can we expect from 2011?

Social Marketing

facebook social marketingAccording to Hitwise in March Facebook surpassed Google as the most popular web destination in the US and as of November Facebook accounted for 1 out of every four page views.  That’s an insane amount of eyes on the Facebook network which means a ton of views on their advertising platform.  Facebook is now pushing out their new email platform with the intent of blending their user’s mail with IM and SMS messages; to borrow a phrase from Tolkien 1 inbox to rule them all.  I remember thinking something very similar when Gmail first launched.

Borrowing from Google’s playbook Facebook is trying to become the solution to everything, to become so useful that we can’t imagine doing without it.  In 2011 I expect Facebook to add more new features and perhaps even take a run at Google with search.  I know that sounds kind of crazy, but Facebook is already dominating in page views so if Facebook can even take a small percentage of Google’s existing searches away from them they would become the undisputed king of the internet hill.

Some PPC (Pay Per Click) pundits already claim better success with their Facebook Ad campaigns than they have had with AdWords, mostly because through Facebook Ads they have a better ability to narrow the target demographics.  Now if Facebook makes the move to search and adds purchase intent alongside that demographic targeting Facebook Ads could easily dominate the PPC landscape.

Mobile Marketing

For years we have been claiming that mobile will be the next big thing, but as the number of smart phones increase exponentially each year we still are not seeing mobile web traffic driving revenue as we have expected.  According to Cisco’s estimates mobile traffic will increase 39-fold by 2014, so the traffic is there or soon will be but the real question is where are the sales?

foursquare mobileMany experts in the mobile market predict that mobile driven revenue will be derived from location based services like Foursquare, Gowalla or Facebook Places, but while the number of competitors in this realm increases (e.g. Google Places, Yelp, Twitter) the usage by mobile users is still quite low.  Pew Research Center found that only 4% of online adults use location based services and it only accounts for 1% of daily internet traffic.

I think in 2011 we will see companies better integrate location based services by driving users to local check-ins with deep discounts & incentives and then somehow integrate these location based services with social media platforms.  While it is useful to know that someone has checked into one of their business locations, it is even more useful if you can track those check-ins alongside their social demographics.  Understanding the age, sex & interests of those customers that are visiting a location, what times they are visiting these locations and how often they are visiting these locations will allow marketers to drive more sales through time-specific incentives advertised specifically to the captured demographic audience.

Now, what company is in the best position to leverage the mix of check-ins and demographics tracking?  Facebook is, because not only are they the largest social network on the planet, but they already have the Facebook Places location-based check-in service in place.  While Facebook Places is not currently very popular – mostly because of growing pains and a rush to market – I predict that in 2011 more users & businesses will begin to use the service.  Based on what I’ve already seen of Facebook’s tactics in other segments I believe that Facebook Places will allow for integration with Foursquare and maybe even Yelp’s new check-in service allowing marketers to track check-ins across the multiple networks and appropriately target the demographic sweet spot through Facebook Ads delivered to these mobile devices.

SEO

google blend resultsJust recently Google’s “everything” search blended together their original organic style of results with their somewhat new Google Places’ results and placed those blends on the very top of their search results.  These results replaced what SEO experts had previously termed the 1-box, the 3-pack & the 7-pack which used to display a group of relevant local results with a map of those locations above the original organic results based on the searchers location.  While I believe the blended format of search results will stay throughout 2011 what I do believe will change is the way those results are laid out.

When Google first launched the blended results there was much talk about the new layout as they pushed the map of the blended results into the right-hand sidebar which forced the sidebar placed AdWords advertisements down below the map.  Not only does the map now dominate the searchers attention rather than our AdWords advertisements, but it also seems out of place in its’ current location.  The blended results are generally bigger than purely organic results which means that with several AdWords listings above the blended results only a few of the blended results will be seen above the fold of the page which means less clicks for everything below the 3rd ranked website (see above image).

In 2011, Google will address these issues by changing their results layout.  How do I know this?  Because Google is already experimenting with different result layouts.  One of the experimental layouts drops the AdWords in the main results column from the top of the page to the very bottom of the page.  While this is good news for those with blended results, this is bad news for advertisers as now both AdWords areas are pushed down below the fold.  In another experiment Google has dropped a 1-box display of a local result that includes a map to that location below the blended & organic results.  My feeling on this is that the Google team still sees value in the 1-box – and perhaps even the 3-pack – and they are looking for ways to integrate them back into the results page while still giving precedence to the blended results.

The problem is that Google has too much information to pass out in their search results and too many good ways to deliver it.  So what do I think the results display will look like in the next 12 months?  My guess is that by default blended results will be streamlined and made thinner, the map will disappear from the main search and there will be less advertising at the top of the page.  That being said I also believe that Google will allow searchers to instantly switch between different styles of search result displays with the simple click of the button.  Perhaps there will be three thumbnails of each result style at the top of the page.  Hovering over each will produce a pop-up google previewpreview of the result’s format similar to what the magnifying glasses do to a result in the existing search.  Clicking on the thumbnail will change the results display style without needing to refresh the page.  This is all speculation of course, but it’s a pretty good option that would allow Google to maintain a quick & streamlined results display and yet give users the options to see more information that they have to display within the results like maps and Google Places information without having to leave the results page.

Conclusion

As far as online marketing goes, I expect 2011 to be a very interesting year with a lot of changes – many of which I will fail to predict – very similar to how 2010 played out.  That being said there will still be things online marketing will entail in 2011: best practice SEO, local review harvesting & citation generation, engaging social media campaigns, progressive thinking in regards to mobile campaigns, and good old fashioned hard work.  Some things never change.

Looking for More Local Leads?

Posted on by Brandon

This month we have already taken a look at the new Google Places result format and briefly explained how that can affect your rankings.  Our FREE monthly webinar, “Localized Online Marketing: Winning Over the Locals,” scheduled for Wednesday November 17th will cover what you need to know about how to attract local leads by expanding upon our Google Places article as well as touching upon other local marketing strategies including how to reduce your pay-per-click campaigns and using social media to draw in potential customers.

We hope that you’ll join us but seating is limited so we recommend signing-up ASAP.

ELEMENTS Local Marketing Webinar:

“Localized Online Marketing: Winning Over the Locals”
Wednesday, November 17th @10am PST

Click Here to Sign-Up Now!

Google’s New Places Search Results and How They Will Affect Your Rankings

Posted on by Russ Lubin

As mentioned in my previous post Google’s search results have changed.  In order to better understand how these new search results will affect SEO strategies I think it’s best to take a look at Google’s original intent behind these changes.

As you are probably aware Google has a variety of search types available.  One can search for information through Google Images, Google News, Google Maps and more.  Towards the end of October Google rolled out a new type of search they titled Google Places.  The goal behind Google Places was to provide the searcher with a group of local results relevant to their search phrase that conveniently displays information about the business gathered from various sources like Google’s main search, its’ map search and external websites as well.  Google would then blend the information gathered and produce a results page bearing that information along with a map of all of the competing Places on that results page.  This format allows the user to get various information about local competing businesses right from a single search.

google places searchThe image to the right shows the results of a Google Places search I ran for local BBQ restaurants.  As you can see the results provides us with external links to review sites like Yelp, contact information including telephone numbers and physical address, a map location relative to their competitors and a link to the local business’s official website.  Previously, in order to get all of this information about a single business a person would have to run multiple searches and some on external websites as well to find the corresponding reviews, and that was just for a single business.  Now all of that information is displayed for the top local business and its’ nine top competitors.

google search resultThese new search results would appear to be very useful, so useful in fact that when someone searches in the Google “Everything” search the search engine will attempt to determine whether the surfer could possibly be looking for local results. If Google  determines that searcher is looking for local results it will provide a Google Places summary result at the very top of the search results.  The picture on the left shows the results of a search run in Google’s “Everything” search using the same key phrase that we used in the Google Places search above.  As you can see, Google is still giving us a map with competing locations, contact information, a link to the business’ official website and a link to Google’s own Places page which lists offsite reviews, pictures and customer testimonials.  The link at the top of the results that reads  “Places for bbq near San Luis Obispo, CA” will take the surfer directly to a Google’s Places search result, as will the “More results near San Luis Obispo, CA” below the Places summary.

So what do these new blended or hybrid results mean for Google’s general search results and SEO?  It means quite simply that if your business does not receive one of these top Google Places results on the first page of Google then your website’s results are going to slip below the fold of the page and not be seen by nearly as many searchers.  It means that if you have a brick & mortar business the time when you could just focus your efforts on either organic listings in the general search or local search results has passed and you will now need to focus on both.

7 tips to help your website rank well in the new blended search results:

  1. Claim your places page.  While sites can rank well without this effort, it is rare and far easier to have your listings rise to the top when you have claimed your Places page and added content to that page like photos of the business, hours of operation or even your menu.
  2. Place your contact information in a clear spot on every page of your website; somewhere like the header or footer.
  3. Use micro-formatting on your contact information.  Google has stated that they use hCard formatting on contact information to tie websites & places together in their blends.
  4. If you have multiple locations, build a separate website or page for each location focusing your optimization efforts on service & location.
  5. Encourage recent customers to submit reviews of your service to varyious review sites like Yelp or Trip Advisor.
  6. Place customer testimonials on your website and label them in a micro format to clarify that they are a reviews of your business.
  7. Verify that your correct contact information is in the various online yellow pages websites and if it is not make an effort to correct it.

Google Local Results Are Finally Changing

Posted on by Russ Lubin

google local resultsWe touched upon the upcoming changes to local Google results in our article here, and it looks like those changes are finally taking place.  Currently local results are mostly moved over to the new format as you can see in the image to the right, but there are still some areas that haven’t received the new format roll-out yet.  The major changes are the move of the map to the right sidebar, the merging of the Google Places info with the organic result and the preview text of a user review is no longer seen in the result but instead just the number of reviews.

If you would like to check out the new format but it is still showing the old style results in your area, you can check it out by clicking on this link.

Changes To Google Local Search Results

Posted on by Russ Lubin

Google one packOver this last weekend Google engineers rolled out a new “OneBox” search result format.  A OneBox appears any time a Google search includes enough information about a local business for Google to determine that one business in particular is the result that searcher is looking for.  Prior to this last weekend, the OneBox result was listed at the very top of the Google result screen with a map on the left and a link to the businesses’ website on the right.  See the image to the right:

A OneBox result is a prize listing that most SEO experts shoot for as it highlights one specific listing above all others.  This latest change to the OneBox makes that listing stand out even more as the business website listing for the OneBox now appears above the local map.

one pack newNow you might be wondering why merely changing the location of the resulting map and link to the businesses’ website would make any impact at all.  Well, there are a couple of reasons.  The first is that prior to the change only Google Places information appeared below the business link including the standard fare of the address, the phone number, hours of operation and links to the Google Places reviews should there be any.  Now inside of the OneBox just below the URL to the company’s website Google is displaying the description meta-tag for the company which is normally stuffed with calls to action to entice users to click through.

The other benefit for listings in the new OneBox format is that Google has now redefined the fold of the page.  When a surfer looks at any website, the top half of the screen is what will catch their eye and entice them into action.  Links above the fold will draw far more attention and clicks than anything below the fold where the surfer is required to scroll down to get to the content below.  It is reported that links above the fold receive 80% of the surfer’s clicks.  So by pushing the company’s website link & meta-description above the map, Google has helped push more links below the visible page and arguably created a new visual fold line at the bottom of the graphical map.  In doing so, Google is inferring that there is only one link on the result page that should matter.

7-packOk, but that’s only affecting the OneBox results which are very specific searches, correct?  Indeed, but over the July 4th weekend Google rolled out a test of a re-designed 7-Pack (7 local listings to the left of a map in a general search result) in which the map was moved to the right margin and Google listed the website’s meta description below the URL.  What does this mean?  It means the 7-Pack visually becomes a 3-pack as lower results are forced off of the bottom of the page (image courtesy of: Linda Buquet http://www.catalystemarketing.com/ ).  No one outside of Google knows if this new 7-Pack will become a permanent feature in Google or when it will be put in place.  What we do know is that obtaining high placements in Google’s local search results is becoming more and more critical to a website’s success.