Anyone who knows how complex the local search ecosystem has really become has to cringe when they think about how franchises deal with Google+ Local.

But there is hope.

The key to franchise success lies in understanding Google+ Local on a franchisee level.

3 Steps to Franchise Success in Google+ Local

1) Training is Everything

From an organizational perspective, Google+ Local can be handled in two ways:

• It can be left to franchisees.
• Or be handled by the franchisor.

Either way, everyone wins if all franchisees have a basic understanding of Google+ Local. Especially this – your listing is not exactly yours. It’s Google’s.

This may sound counterintuitive, but Google uses information from many sources to form its listings. Data that a franchisor or franchisees provide Google about their locations is just a source of information for Google. It’s a trusted source, but not the only source. It also means that your franchise locations probably already have listings that Google created.

This is the reason why no amount of franchisor control can save franchisees from issues if they think that only what they provide Google can be a part of their listing. Almost anything a local business does can reflect on their Google+ Local listing.

Google Is Looking For Consistency

You want data (especially name, address and phone number) about franchisee locations to be accurate and consistent everywhere on the Web. It makes Google perceive your locations as legitimate and prominent. This is one of the most important ranking factors in Google local.

Besides that, every brand manager will tell you that you need to be consistent in your messaging.

It Matters What People Say About You

Getting good reviews will not only make people want to do business with you, but also help you rank in local search. Do you have a review strategy in place?

2) Avoid Technical Pitfalls

Running Google+ Local for a large number of locations is not fun. Traps are everywhere.

Phone Tracking

Those of us who love to measure everything will get disappointed. Tracking phone calls may hurt your performance in Google+ Local. For call analytics to really work, we need lots of phone numbers. One for Google organic search, one for paid search and then one for Yahoo and Bing. Before you know it – your data consistency is compromised.

Not Keeping Up With Google’s Guidelines

This can be costly. A few months ago, a number of businesses that serve customers at their location decided to merge Google Places listings with Google+ business pages. Many of them lost their listings only to get them back after they deleted their Google+ page.

Google changes their guidelines. They never notified anyone so it’s your job to keep on top of this.

Using Toll Free Numbers

Google doesn’t hate toll free numbers. They just don’t prefer them so you should use local phone numbers whenever possible.

Using Bad Words

Google has developed filters that prevent using specific words and phrases in a listing. Not all of those are obvious. Mike Blumenthal, an expert on Google Places, talks about it in detail here.

Your Business Is Not Eligible

To be more specific, your business model can make your franchisees ineligible for a listing. For example, the following situations make your business not eligible:

• Your location is not permanent.
• You/your staff don’t interact with the customers in person.

If You Centrally Manage A Substantial Number Of Locations

Your only practical option is to bulk verify everything. Google recommends it if you have more than 10 locations. Read Google’s guide here.

If You Don’t Have A Lot Of Locations And Savvy Franchisees

You might consider training your franchisees to manage their own presence. Knowledgeable, motivated franchisees will do more for their local search visibility than any franchisor could. This is not without risk, however.

3) You Will Need Some Help

There is literally no franchisee in the world that can do everything needed for success in local search inhouse.

• Embrace Data Aggregators: Data aggregators like Acxiom, Localeze and InfoGroup are the key to business data consistency that is so important in local search. These aggregators are primary sources of data for Google. They also feed a lot of business directories. This means you can scale your data distribution. However, it’s neither fast nor free.
• Don’t Be Afraid To Use Tools: You don’t really have a choice. You must track performance. It wouldn’t hurt to track reviews, segment the data, and have an ability to create reports. We recommend you give the allLocal tool a test ride.

Things To Remember

Your performance in Google + Local is important. However, it’s not as important as the performance of the website tied to your local listings.

These are the times of blended local search where everything counts for something and nothing can be overlooked.

Map Photo via Shutterstock

The post 3 Steps To Franchise Success in Google+ Local appeared first on Small Business Trends.

However, you have to go above and beyond it to make the Web a real game changer for your small local business.

There are thousands of different ways to market your business on the Internet. But we know you’re very busy so today, we chose these 10 tips listed below:

1. Google+ Local

Even if your business was founded under a cave and you only started it last year, it is likely that it will have a presence on Google+ Local. Your mission is to make sure that the information on your page is accurate.

To do that, you just need to claim it and make sure that you build a great listing. Google can guide you through the verification process. They will even help you make your listing great.

2. Check Business Data Aggregators For Accuracy And Consistency

Google, as well as almost every local search platform and a directory, uses business data from one or more of these data aggregators:

• Localeze
• Acxiom
• InfoGroup

Don’t forget to check for any mistakes as they would be duplicated across the Internet.

3. Merge Your Google+ Business Page With Your Local Page

Unless you are a business that operates within a service area, you should merge your Google+ Business Page with your Local Page.  If you do operate within a certain service area, then you can use the old Google Places Dashboard to manage your listing.

4. Remember That Bing And Yahoo! Have Their Own Local Search Platforms

Bing Local and Yahoo! Local might not be as big as Google’s local search platform, but they can still drive business your way. Check out Lisa Barone’s post about how to verify a Bing listing.

5. Spread The Word On Other Local Directories

You might think that you will not get any business from YellowPages.com or Local.com, but you are probably wrong. There are dozens of sites like these with hundreds of thousands of visitors – some of them, like InsiderPages.com, have millions of visitors per month.

As an added bonus, accurate and consistent presence will strengthen your rankings in Google+ Local.

6. Get Reviewed In As Many Websites As Possible

You can’t openly solicit reviews and you can’t fake them either. What you can do is integrate the “review process” into your daily business operations.

Include a message that asks for public feedback in your email signature. You can also make sure you get reviewed in websites other than Google. This will provide you with additional credibility and a ranking boost in Google+ Local.

7. Seize The Day On Twitter

It’s possible to build a following on Twitter even if you got your business license only a month ago. Your goal on Twitter should be to connect with other local business and people in your local market.

Don’t sell anything to your Twitter followers – help them instead. They will remember you when they need help with something you do or sell. Just make sure you don’t sound like a broken record.

8. Your Business Needs Friends On Facebook

You can start by making an awesome Facebook Business Page. However, don’t stop there.

Offer exclusive discounts and deals on your Facebook Page (be sure to follow the terms and guidelines), and promote them in your everyday business operations. Engage your Facebook community, but don’t suffocate them with dozens of daily updates.

9. Make Friends With Local Journalists

I apologize for misleading you. You can’t implement this tip today. But you can start your journey by commenting on a story that your future journalist friend wrote.

Be insightful. You don’t have to flatter them. Make them think. Add value. Send them a story idea that has nothing to do with your business. Have coffee with them. Write a blog post about something they covered and reference their writing.

Oh yeah – don’t stop doing newsworthy things that journalists care about the most.

10. Join Your Local Chamber of Commerce

I know. This one comes with a price tag. Before you dismiss this tip completely, consider that there are only a few marketing decisions you can make today that have the potential to get you more business, save you money and provide a solid benefit in local search – joining your local Chamber of Commerce would be one of those decisions.

If you implement even just half of these tips, your local business is likely to grow. Remember to take care of your customers and engage with them.

Local Photo via Shutterstock

The post 10 Local Marketing Tips You Can Implement Today appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Consumers today, more than ever, rely on the Internet to find information about local businesses such as yours. As a result of this shift, other marketing avenues are becoming less effective and more expensive than most of us can tolerate. That’s the bad news.

The good news is – even though complex, local Internet marketing is definitely not rocket science and a small shift in how you think about marketing your business on the web and a little work can, in fact, double your business.

The Secret of Local Internet Marketing Success

This may come as a surprise, but the key in making the web work for your small business and not against it is to make the Internet, as a marketing channel, accountable. You wouldn’t run a newspaper ad twice if it didn’t make the phone ring, so why would you settle for a website that hardly pays for its hosting costs?

Treat your website as your most important salesperson and be on a constant quest to improve its performance.

Believe Nothing, Track Everything

I bet that you can’t say, with absolute confidence, how many sales leads or orders you got from your website last year. If that’s the case, you are certainly not alone. Most small business owners are not obsessed about marketing metrics.

You will spend more time, effort and money taking shots in the dark than you can afford if you don’t start measuring everything important for the success of your business.

What do you have to measure? Everything that provides you with insight necessary for growth.

In local Internet marketing, those metrics would be:

• number of conversions (orders, leads, phone calls, etc.)
• number of unique visitors
• conversion rates
• traffic from search
• direct traffic
• visitor loyalty
• traffic from social media sources
• traffic from email newsletters
• traffic from offline campaigns
• traffic generated for online advertising

The metrics you should obsess about are going to depend on your type of business, your current marketing campaigns and your brand.

For example, if your business is a restaurant, a metric called “visitor loyalty” (how often the same people visit your website) is much more important for your business than it is for a contractor business. Contractors would love to get the number of unique visitors up because unique visitors mean new business, not service calls.

If you are running local TV or radio ads, you should strongly consider creating a website just for that campaign and making sure you capture every bit of data you can – the number of visits the website got, how many people filled out the contact form, how many phone calls you got, etc.

This kind of information will help you negotiate pricing for your next campaign. It might even help you to convince your local media outlet to consider pay-per-performance advertising.

Learn to test everything that is important and you will quickly learn that not everything that is written out there works for your business.

ROI Is Everything

Beautiful websites, high rankings, lots of Facebook likes and Twitter followers don’t necessarily translate to high ROI.

As a person that owns a small business, you almost certainly have a shortage of either time or money. That’s why you need to set specific, measurable and attainable goals and project returns for every marketing campaign, no matter how small it seems. Track everything and take the feedback from the data you are measuring seriously. Rinse and repeat.

Thinking outside of the box with your feet firmly on the ground while implementing what’s working for your business will produce remarkable results over time.  Guaranteed.

Double Your Money Photo via Shutterstock

The post Double Your Local Business Revenues Using Only The Web appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Some of the differences are:

• The lack of a market leader that dominates the space
• Multiple types of local search platforms
• Different ways searchers use those platforms
• Rules that bend easier
• Rapid market share changes due to distribution partnership changes

These differences can make it very hard for small businesses to decide where to invest their Internet marketing budget, and what to expect from local search in general.  Here are 5 things you need to do to make the best out of local search:

1. Keep Your Online Business Information Accurate And Up-To-Date

This is where your local search efforts must start.  Your business can’t grow if your business information on the web sends potential customers to the wrong addresses. Also, people don’t react very well to out of service phone numbers.

The bad thing about local search is that no one will ever take care of these issues for you, only you can do it. The good thing about this is that it’s not very difficult. That can be accomplished by systematically correcting the business information in more important local search platforms like Google Local, trusted data providers like InfoUSA and any other site people might use to find local business information.

2. Make Your Website The Best It Can Be

Self-evident or not, your website must be performing at its best. Without it, you are always in risk of getting almost nothing from local search. This is important for many reasons, but I will address only two.

A large portion of traffic generated from local search engines like Google Maps, or Internet yellow pages (IYP sites) like SuperPages will end up on your website. There is no use in making a business omnipresent in local search space if its website can’t convert the traffic to customers.

The second reason is simple. Most people still use general search engines like Bing or Google to find information about local businesses. Every visitor that doesn’t click the maps in the universal search engine result pages, but clicks the regular search engine results, has a potential of landing on your business website.

Having an easy-to-navigate, credible and search engine friendly website is crucial.

3. Be Ubiquitous

Local search space is very fragmented. On top of that, people use IYP sites, general search engines and local search engines differently — even expecting different results when searching for information about local businesses.

Being ubiquitous in the local search industry means having a strong presence and being prominent across the many different  search platforms people use to find information about brick-and-mortar businesses.

For a small business owner this means:

• A website that ranks very well for a wide array of local search terms
• High rankings on all major local search engines (Like Google Maps, or Yahoo Local)
• Being prominent on IYP sites that matter

Your industry directories, local business sites and local guides are all places you should place your business information.

This is important for two reasons:

• Any of your profiles can be a source of business, so take advantage of the profiles
• Your business information on the Web helps your local search visibility, as long as it’s consistent

You shouldn’t throw money at every local search engine or site that solicits you just because they claim to be a perfect fit for your business. The rule of thumb here is – if they solicit you, they are not that good.  But certainly take advantage of free profiles, and consider paid upgrade options on the most popular ones.

4) Make Local Profiles Represent Your Company Impressively

Having incomplete profiles, with badly written descriptions, lacking images, videos and other signals that boost your credibility (example: a good rating on your BBB membership) — all such deficiencies speak volumes about your business.  To make the most out of your business profiles, make sure that they:

• are complete
• have no spelling and grammar errors
• speak the language of your customers (avoid industry lingo)
• inspire trust
• accurately describe what you do
• have images that portray your business the right way
• emphasize your unique selling proposition

Keep in mind that optimization of your profiles on third party sites also plays a significant role in how much business local search can generate. Well optimized profiles and listings on high authority sites tend to rank very well.

5.) Get Reviews

Only a small fraction of small business owners had ever done anything to encourage people to review their business.  Why are reviews important?  People use reviews and ratings as one of the most important factors when deciding who to contact and where to purchase something.

The reviews are also important when it comes to your local search rankings.  Reviews are a strong ranking factor in two of the biggest local search engines and that reason alone should be compelling enough to do something if you have a local business, but lack the reviews.

Search Concept Photo via Shutterstock

The post 5 Things You Need To Have To Survive Local Search appeared first on Small Business Trends.

I also saw a number of restaurants that market themselves online better than Seth Godin ever would if he had a restaurant.

This story is about mistakes that small and medium sized businesses make on the web.

1. Failing to Understand the Basics of Internet Marketing

This is perhaps the most dangerous of all mistakes that SMBs make online, because it can come with a hefty price tag.

Internet marketing is a young, unregulated industry with a very small number of legitimate educational opportunities which makes it look like a typical market for lemons, and a breeding ground for scammers.

Although complex, Internet marketing is not rocket science. A little education can go a long way in protection from scam and wrong Internet marketing decisions.

On the other hand, running a small business is stressful enough without learning about search engine optimization, PPC, conversion rate optimization and a number of concepts that take time to sink in.

There is an easier way to cut your chances of being scammed.

Just avoid dealing with Internet marketing businesses:

- That solicit you
- Without any professional affiliations
- With no certifications (except when it comes to SEO)
- That can’t promptly prove their track record
- That guarantee high organic rankings
- That won’t even consider being paid for performance
- With lots of bad reviews
- Can’t provide any references
- That aren’t members of their local business associations such as BBB or their chamber of commerce.

2. Unreasonable Expectations

More than 72% of people in the US are Internet users. For majority of them, Internet is the primary source of information about local businesses.

Granted, those numbers are impressive, but that doesn’t guarantee that even the best, perfectly executed, Internet marketing strategies can make your phone ring of the hook.

Why?

Internet reflects the state of the “brick and mortar” world.

The size of your market might create obstacles
If your market is small (you run a cleaning business that covers only 1-2 towns) online demand for what your business has to offer will reflect that.

If you are selling a luxury product or service in a region that is not very affluent, demand will not be great.

If your business goes through seasonal cycles, there will be periods when you will generate only a fraction of what you normally would in the peak of the season. Holiday season is great for retail businesses, but not for home improvement industry.

Competition might be strong and well established
It is reasonable to say that Internet offers the level playing field. But sometimes corporations and bigger businesses can have a stronger grip on Internet marketing, thus reducing the chances for a smaller or newer business to fulfil their Internet marketing potential as fast as they would like.

You still shouldn’t put your whole marketing budget online
The Internet might be the best marketing tool ever, but it’s not the only one. Every business owner should concentrate on providing remarkable service before anything else. Word of mouth marketing can’t be beaten, and more traditional forms of marketing still offer some value.

3. Having a Subpar Website

Dozens of books have been written about customer service, and most of those emphasized that customers see your employees as the company. As a result, most businesses go through great lengths to keep the level of costumer service they provide as high as possible, empowering employees to make the right choices and make every contact with a business an experience worth sharing.

At the same time, those business owners who wouldn’t hire a person who doesn’t smile often, would accept having a website that looks like it had been made 10 years ago, even though it was finished recently.

This attitude can impact the bottom line negatively because websites represent businesses online the same way employees do when they deal with customers face to face.

Subpar web design and development can cause:

- Credibility issues
- Low conversion rates
- Problems with search engines
- Usability issues

All these problems can cost a business a lot more than a professionally built site.

4. Google Centrality

With 65.7% of US search market share according to the latest comScore analysis, Google looks like an obvious starting point of all Internet marketing efforts for most small businesses.

Concentrating most of your attention on Google is a smart move. But focusing exclusively on Google means giving up on more than 30% of market share.

The number of businesses with this attitude is surprisingly high.

Being Google-centric can be especially damaging for brick and mortar businesses for many reasons – the most important reason being local search.

Unlike other verticals of search, like video for example, local search market is extremely fragmented, with Google controlling “only” 26% of the market according to the latest available data.

SMBs should work to acquire traffic from all the major local search engines, but also from:

- Major Internet Yellow Pages Sites
- Vertical Directories
- Regional Directories
- Local Sites
- Classifieds

5. Misunderstanding social media

Social media related mistakes are typical for SMBs who want to get “on board” with Web 2.0.
They engage in social media without thinking about ROI, while spending valuable resources and time creating profiles that nobody cares about and tweeting what no one reads.

To think of social media as anything else but a set of communication platforms can lead to resource drains.

Every social media platform offers a chance to connect with your customer base and the community of people that could care about your services or products. But no social media platform can create those communities.

Connect with people who already care (your customers) and they will do the rest.

The post 5 Mistakes Brick and Mortar SMBs Shouldn’t Make Online appeared first on Small Business Trends.

According to comScore/TMP, Google grew their local search market share from 15% in June 2008 to 26% in June 2009.

What is your share of that traffic and potential leads ?

If you read and apply these 10 tips your Google Maps traffic will have no where to go but up.

1. Business information on the web must be consistent accurate, accurate and up-to-date

Without consistency of your business information across the Web, your Google business listing will never fulfill its potential. Simply put, that is because Google relies on information it finds on the Internet to improve the relevancy of their results. Customer reviews and mentions of your business information on the web play a big role in how Google ranks listings — it is important that Google associates them with your business. Inconsistencies in how your local business is presented online can make this impossible, which in turn can significantly reduce your local search visibility.

Right after you claim and verify your business in Google local business center, make sure that your business info is correct with Google’s trusted data providers like InfoUSA, Acxiom, Localize, or Yellow Pages. Check those first, because they supply data to a very large number of business directories.

Risk factors that can trigger inconsistencies are change of address, phone number or business name.  At the end of the day you want to get rid of all inconsistencies.

2. Claiming and Verifying Your Listing.

It’s clear that most listings in existence have not yet been claimed, which means that you get an upper hand just by claiming and verifying your listing.

Since Google is placing a lot of trust on information they get from the business owner via GLBC ( Google Local Business Center ), don’t forget to be as accurate as possible when filling in your business information.

3. Consolidate your presence on Google Maps

Some local businesses will have more than one Google local listing even though they have only one physical location. This usually happens without the fault of their own and most of the time even without their knowledge as result of the listing creation and verification processes.

At the same time, it’s against Google’s guidelines to have more than one listing if you have one physical location because you are not representing your business as it appears in the offline world. To avoid any problems that might arise from this, you have to consolidate your local listings. Essentially, this is done by claiming all your listings, moving all enhanced content in the listing you wish to keep and then deleting the rest.

4. Categorize like a champ

I can’t emphasize enough how important is proper categorization in Google Maps. It can make a difference between a poor listing and a great one. Google will suggest categories as you type and you will have to use one of those predefined categories to classify your business.

Choose a more general category that accurately describes what your business does as the mandatory one. You can choose more predefined categories if it makes sense for you. But reserve a few fields for custom categories because Google doesn’t always come up with the most specific categories

To make your categorizing more effective try to:

• Keep categorizing consistently across the web.
• When choosing custom categories think about how would a user that wants a specific type of service you offer search for it.
• Be specific when necessary
• Keep categories from overlapping

5. Description

Description field should be used to emphasize what is unique about your business and to inspire trust. All that in less then 200 characters. Having something remarkable about the business in the description is a must. Maybe you have the oldest company in your town, or a patent for something.

6. Pictures and Videos

Images and videos are ideal tools for making listings compelling and bringing their conversion rates up. Google allows 10 images and 5 videos to be added to your listing. Some types of images that would help your listing in many ways are:

• Your Logo
• Brands Carried
• Pictures of your establishment
• Logos of associations you belong to (like the Better Business Bureau)
• Your Video Commercials or Interviews, etc…

7. Details (Hours of operation, payment options, additional details)

• If you offer financing for your service why not say so?
• If you’re open late, you should let people know
• Use additional details fields to be ultra specific about what makes your business unique

8.Coupons

Coupons have always been a great way to promote products and services, however in Google Maps they are possibly the only reliable way to track business generated by your Google listing that couldn’t be tracked otherwise ( by call tracking, or web analytics software).

9. Spread the word

Even Google recommends this one. Your local business information should be found on many:

• IYP sites
• Niche directory sites
• Local Business directories
• Any trusted site possible

Google claims that they rely on mentions of your business information on the web to improve the quality of search results. That means the more mentions of your business on the web Google associates with your listing more certain they are that your business is real, in operation, and important. Google rewards this with greater local search visibility.

10. Get Reviewed

Reviews and Web citations (mentions of your business) are extremely important for similar reasons.
Encourage reviews and make it easy for people to review you. Make it a part of your routine to ask for reviews from happy customers and point them in the right direction.

You can also ask for reviews in your email signature, business cards, on the bills you send out, etc…

* * * * *

About the Author:Vedran Tomic blogs about internet marketing, search engine optimization, and local search in particular at SEO Rabbit.  He is an in-house SEO at Basement Systems.

The post 10 Things You Should Have Done to Make Your Google Business Listing Great appeared first on Small Business Trends.