Getting to the top of Google Places & Staying There

Getting to the top of Google Places (formerly Google Local Business Directory) & Staying There

By: David Wenner, CEO, Local Hits Media LLC

As a kid, I remember how every year a new Yellow Pages book would arrive at our doorstep. Sifting through the first pages of the listings, I was always enamoured as to the number of companies who started their company listing with a string of AAAAAAA’s... At the time I was not old (& wise) enough to understand why companies were forced to use such tactics to get to the first page. These tactics have gone to the wayside with the introduction of online directories, but what has remained is the thirst for many to be at the top or on the first page.

Unlike the Yellow Pages book, the rules to who gets to page one on Google is a more dynamic affair. For example, almost a year ago it was possible to move to the top of Google’s Local Directory for your business categories simply by manipulating the data stored in Google’s Local Directory. Those days are very much over.

Today local search has become very popular as a means to advertise and as a result, Google has changed the playing field and the rules. The changes that Google has made are significant and fundamentally change the way listings are being evaluated and ranked. Below we have summarized the major areas that Google now evaluates when ranking companies in Google Places. Anyone who has an interest in moving to the top and staying there should take note of the following criteria:

1. Google Places Data - The information which is stored in the Google Places back-end is where it all starts but it is now only one element towards your ranking score. If you and your competitors have filled out the listing data in a similar manner, then the contents of the listing will play a very small role in how you will be ranked.
2. Other Local & National Directories - Claiming and enhancing your listings in other directories is important. Google searches other directories such as Yellow Pages, Citysearch, Yelp, InfoUSA and others. The more places that Google will find your company, the higher ranking score you will receive.
3. Reviews are very relevant - We have found that listings with many reviews often outrank listings with few or no reviews. Google has also added reviews from other 3rd party sites such as Yelp, Yellow Pages, Citysearch and others.
4. Your website - Google has put greater emphasis on your website; its structure, content and speed. Google now evaluates your website to determine your relevance to the local area and the categories that you have chosen. If you haven’t updated your website in a while and applied some basic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques, chances are your website is becoming a liability to your rank. In addition the amount of traffic your site gets also plays a role in your ranking. What this means is that you will need to find ways to generate traffic to your site in order that you keep a high ranking.
5. 3rd party links and content - The more sites which link to your website and the more content that is linked to your site, the greater relevance Google places on your site as an authority. Google Places showcases beneath your local listing sites which link to your site or have content which links to your site. If nothing appears in this area then it would be helpful to begin a 3rd Party links strategy.

With this knowledge in hand, it is now obvious that in the new world of Google Places there is much more work involved to move to the top and stay there. With Google’s greater emphasis on reviews, your website and 3rd party links and content, the scope of maintaining a top position in Google Places has expanded greatly. If you value the need to be at the top then you will need to invest greater time, energy and resources to ensure that you continue to stay on top, otherwise you will find yourself where all those old Yellow Pages books found themselves - at the bottom of the heap.

Beware of Yellowbot and other Social Media sites

The other day I was checking out some of the new social media sites that exist on the Internet. The sites are very impressive and come across as the source for finding local businesses and reviews. One of those sites is called Yellowbot. I was searching through the site when I came upon a review from a user named Eric Snow who decided to use Yellowbot to share his experience at a BMW dealership in Manhattan (http://www.yellowbot.com/bmw-of-manhattan-new-york-ny.html) with the rest of the world.

Note that the review was made on May 23, 2009, over a year ago. There is no background to the reviewer nor is there a rebuttal from the customer, in this case the BMW dealership. Hopefully (BMW's sake) the BMW dealership in Manhattan is not getting too much traffic from Yellowbot. To me it seems, that BMW's PR team has fallen asleep at the wheel - sorry for the pun. This is but one example of the pitfalls of Social Media as it stands today.

Social Media is a great tool to communicate to and with your markets, but you need to be aware of the pitfalls and the potential hazards. Firstly, if you're not doing it yet, you need to start monitoring these sites to see what is being written about you and your company. Secondly, you need a plan of action in case a review or comment being presented is false, untrue or simply exaggerated. If you find a particularly harmful, exaggerated or untrue comment, you need to rebut and take action.

Do you not think that there should be minimum standards for social media websites when they wish to present negative comments that have the potential to do damage? Should Yellowbot not have an obligation, once the comment has been posted to first inform the company that a negative review has been posted and see if the company wishes to rebut? There are existing rules that govern what the print media can and cannot print. This should be a good starting point for social media sites and the like.

Public Relations & Social Media - The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

By: David Wenner, CEO Local Hits Media LLC, Home of Localtestimonials.com

Everyone is ranting about the need to jump onto the Social Media bandwagon. There is much to be said for the new trend. Social Media is a quick and efficient way to get the word out on almost any topic. One of the driving forces behind this trend is the impact that Social Media can have on your organization's image on the Internet combined with the impact Search Engines have on determining your relevance and ranking. The more positive content that is written about your business or organization, the higher you will appear on search engine result pages (serp). The need to be very relevant all the time has made some companies enlist the help of writers and bloggers for the specific purposes of creating fresh, entertaining and insightful content. We have found that over time, this strategy seems to work. But as in any new technology, along with the good we usually find the bad & the ugly.

The "Bad" part of social media is that anybody can write anything about anyone and there are no gatekeepers. There are so many vehicles available on the internet today to contribute, whether it be via blogging or simply by making a comment on a blog or news story. Imagine for a moment that someone has written a small negative comment somewhere out there about your business. Even before you can react, thousands and possibly millions of people will have seen the damaging content. This scenario is not far fetched. It happens more often than you think or would like to imagine. The question is what can you do about it?

Before I get to what you can do about "the Bad", I would like to explore the "Ugly" part of Social Media. Search Engine's are constantly searching the web for new content. The search engine's do not discern between positive and negative or good and bad. Everything get's indexed. Not only do they get indexed but they are stored within the search engines for perpetuity. In our "Bad" scenario, someone has written a negative comment about your business. The result is that thousands of people can now view this negative comment, but what's worse is that the negativity is stored forever; waiting for the next time someone wants to learn more about your company.

Many people ask me, what can we do about it. The answer is that you need to take a pro-active approach to managing your image on the internet. It starts with tracking your name or your company's name or your company's brands so that you are in the know of what people are writing about you and your company. This can be done by setting up alerts in Google. Another approach is to have people write positive blogs and stories about your company and its services or products. If the negative comments are really hurting your business then you can take legal steps to have the offensive material removed from the source and Google.

In summary, Social Media brings many new opportunities to businesses. However you must be aware of the dark side of Social Media so that you can protect your most valuable asset, your reputation.

First Blog for LocalTestimonials.com

We recently launched our new service called localtestimonials.com. The service allows organizations to capture testimonials via the Internet and or the phone and have them posted on their site and ours. I invite all those of you who are interested in this topic to visit our site and give us your feedback.

We came to develop this service after having spoken with many of our customers at Local Hits Media LLC and through some aggravating online experiences (more of that later). Local Hits Media LLC was established to assist organizations with their web and SEO work. We quickly realized that a very important criteria for maintaining high rankings on the search engines was to continuously create and "tweek" online content. Some company's even hire bloggers to write and comment, specifically to generate new fresh content which would further improve their search rankings.

At the same time that we were learning the in's and out's of SEO we found ourselves facing a person who made it his life's wish to defame our company. Without us knowing he joined a discussion board and posted a comment that made us look bad. The comment was baseless and untrue but that didn't bother the poster, the company that hosted the discussion or it's parent companies. It seems that in the new world order of social media anyone can write anything about anybody in the name of openness.

In the old days someone would write an article (on a piece of paper) and even if he wrote baseless negative comments, the life span of the article was short. Today with the advent of search engines, all those negative, baseless comments remain online, forever. I've since learnt that there are ways to remove these comments, but for the average small business, these ways are not financially viable. In my next blog I plan to go into more depth about the good, the bad and the ugly behind search engines.

For these reasons, we decided do develop a service which would highlight the positive sides of a business and give organizations a tool to fight negative, defaming comments without having to "break the bank".

We first tested the service on ourselves and then we began selling it to our customers. Beyond the capture and display of the testimonial we go a number of steps further. We host the testimonial on our site, linking back to the company's site. This provides the company with important backlinks. Every testimonial is displayed on it's own web page and we "tweek" the page to maximize the SEO benefit. The result is that when someone searches for our customers via the search engines, alongside the link to their website they will find links to testimonials about the business. The number of links or testimonials is a function of how many testimonials the company can produce.

To make it even easier for the company to manage their testimonials we offer a very low cost service in which we call our customers' customers and record their testimonials.

In this way we are providing our customers with the value of SEO and continuous positive content. We hope that many companies will see the incredible value of this service and take advantage of our company's offerings.

I would be very interested in hearing other people's experiences in this area. Send me an email with your comments.