In the recently released 2012 Local Search Ranking Factors, including name, address, and phone number (NAP) in a microdata (hCard/Schema.org) format increased in importance by 22 places which is fairly significant relative to other factors.  We already know the importance of having a consistent NAP on your website, Google Places profile, and other local directory listings.  Microdata is another way to present Google with local business data clearly and accurately.

So What is Microdata?

Microdata is basically some additional markup that gets wrapped around NAP data to indicate to Google that the enclosed information is the actual name, address, and phone number for the business.

Here’s an example of NAP without microdata:

<div>
   L'Amourita Pizza
   123 Main St, Albuquerque, NM 11111
   Phone: 206-555-1234
   <a href="http://pizza.example.com">http://pizza.example.com</a>
</div>

And here’s an example of NAP with microdata:

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/LocalBusiness"> 
    <span itemprop="name">L’Amourita Pizza</span>
      <span itemprop="address" itemscope 
         itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress">
      <span itemprop="streetAddress">123 Main St</span>, 
      <span itemprop="Locality">Albuquerque</span>, 
      <span itemprop="Region">NM</span>
      <span itemprop="postalCode">11111</span>
    </span>
    Phone: <span itemprop="telephone">206-555-1234</span>.
    <a href="http://www.example.com" 
      itemprop="url">http://pizza.example.com</a>.
</div>

The main difference are the itemscope, itemtype, and itemprop tags. These additional tags help Google identify the basic NAP details much easier. And, when Google can figure something out more easily, they often give a reward by making that particular listing or website appear more prominently in search.

You can easily create your own microdata using the microDATA Generator. Just enter the local business address and select the “Local Business Schema”, enter the required information, and you’ll be good to go.

Where to Put Microdata on Your Site?

Since your company information prominently on your website and on every page, put the microdata in your header, sidebar, or footer. That’s all you need to do.

Have you had success using microdata to improve local SEO? Let me know in the comments below.

Free Local Marketing Plan Template

Online presence optimization is a key ingredient in your local marketing plan. You want to clearly identify your target customers and how they are searching for your services online.

If you don’t have one already, here is a free template that will help you make sure you have clearly identified and aligned your business objectives and marketing activity.

Download the free Local Marketing Plan template now

Have you seen any difference scheduling your Facebook posts with this new feature?

The annual survey is a useful tool to assess what the experts are seeing in terms of what’s important for ranking well in Google Local Search. The criteria has changed year to year as Google has made adjustments to its algorithms and the display of search results.

Of the two major algorithm updates over the past year (Panda and Penguin), Penguin plays a much larger role in changes in what’s now important for local search.

2012 Local Search Ranking Factors Key Takeaways

After reading through the entire survey results, here are the key takeaways I think are most important to follow when creating and optimizing Google Places profiles and business websites:

1. Include accurate Name, Address, and Phone number data across Google Places profiles, business websites, and local directories to make it as easy as possible for Google to match data across multiple sources.
2. Use an area code for your primary phone number on your Places profile and website that is relevant to your location.
3. Collect reviews directly on your Places profile consistently from happy customers.
4. Educate customers on how to leave valuable reviews that specifically reference your products or services.
5. Reduce frequency of including location-specific keyword phrases in inbound links to your Places profile or website domain.

From what I can see in the survey results, these factors had the most significant movements from where they were last year.

If you’re optimizing your own Google Places profile or doing it for another company, be sure to read the entire survey results so you stay up-to-date with what’s most important to Google for determining local search visibility.

Are there other factors that you’ve seen have more or less of an impact on local search results since last year?

Free Local Marketing Plan Template

Online presence optimization is a key ingredient in your local marketing plan. You want to clearly identify your target customers and how they are searching for your services online.

If you don’t have one already, here is a free template that will help you make sure you have clearly identified and aligned your business objectives and marketing activity.

Download the free Local Marketing Plan template now

For business owners, there were no major changes that affect the creation and management of their business data on Google in the Places dashboard.  However, I think the change does place a greater importance on the Google+ business page and, now, it’s more important than ever for business to create a Google+ business page and plan to post some updates.

A recent article on the Wall Street Journal discusses the features that Google is planning to release in July that are directly targeted to local business owners to help them market and interact more effectively with customers.

Google has been trying to engage local business owners with new capabilities, but has not been able to gain traction mostly because of the complexity of using the tools and the lack of support.  While Google does provide support for direct revenue-generating programs like AdWords Express, for business owners who wanted to create a good Places (now Google+ Local) profile or fix data issues, they were most on their own.

Here’s a summary of the features Google is targeting directly to local business owners:

Google+ Local pages – gives business owners a way to market their products and services on Google search results and Google maps.

AdWords Express – simplified version of Google’s flagship AdWords product that lets business owners run pay-per-click ads targeting keywords determined by Google based on the business’ category.

Offers – Groupon clone that allows business owners to run daily deals promoted to Google Offer subscribers.  The split between Google and business owners and payment terms are supposed to be more favorable than those offered by competitors.

TalkBin – Company was acquired by Google last year and lets in-store customers send business owners feedback via text message.

Wallet – Payment mechanism that lets people make purchases in-store using their smartphone.

Punchd – Another company acquisition and smartphone application.  Customers can accumulate loyalty points in-store using their smartphone.

Delivery – Service is still in development, and it’s designed to help stores deliver physical products to customers’ homes and offices quickly.

It’s quite a range of offering designed to further involve local business owners on Google.  With everything from marketing to payments to measuring customer satisfaction to product fulfillment, Google seems to have the entire local customer lifecycle.  It will be interesting to see how these play out from both the business owners’ and customers’ perspectives.

Do you think these Google features will actually help local business owners and customers?

Free Local Marketing Plan Template

Online presence optimization is a key ingredient in your local marketing plan. You want to clearly identify your target customers and how they are searching for your services online.

If you don’t have one already, here is a free template that will help you make sure you have clearly identified and aligned your business objectives and marketing activity.

Download the free Local Marketing Plan template now

What we discovered is that Google has positioned the updates as being more beneficial for users.  Now, this looks like an attempt to encourage users to become more active in Google+ in order to see information about businesses and leave reviews.

For businesses, the immediate changes (besides the presentation of Places information) are far less impactful since the data management still occurs in the Google Places Dashboard.

I think David Mihm’s post Rankings on Google+ Local: Some Observations sums up perfectly what steps business owners need to take to position themselves for the next set of Google+ Local updates (which are undoubtedly coming):

• Keep plowing full-speed ahead with your traditional Local SEO campaigns just as before
• Make sure that you claim both your Plus and Place pages
• Get your Plus page linked persistently from your website (much like your NAP info)
• Get a small amount of Google+ activity going immediately
• Message all existing customers with an @gmail.com address that you’re on Plus & you’d appreciate a follow
• Feather in some additional Google+ activity over time

I highly recommend reading the entire article to get a full understanding of David’s insight.

Here are other posts about the Google+ Local changes that I think are worth reading:

Google + Local: Q’s and some A’s from Mike Blumenthal

Google Places Is Over, Company Makes Google+ The Center Of Gravity For Local Search from Greg Sterling

VIDEO – Google+ Local Insights from Vanessa – Google and Your Business Forum WrapUp from Linda Buquet

Google Places Marries Google+, Gives Birth To New Google+ Local Pages from Matt McGee

What are your thoughts on the recent Google+ Local changes?

Free Local Marketing Plan Template

Online presence optimization is a key ingredient in your local marketing plan. You want to clearly identify your target customers and how they are searching for your services online.

If you don’t have one already, here is a free template that will help you make sure you have clearly identified and aligned your business objectives and marketing activity.

Download the free Local Marketing Plan template now

Regardless of how you’re going to reach your target market, you must have a clear understanding of why they would buy what you’re selling.  Once you’ve figured this out, then the next step is to narrow in on why they would buy from you.

Let’s take a look at the 5 reasons people buy:

1) To take care of bare necessities – many, if not most, purchases fall in this category.  This is your basic food, clothing, shelter, and health that people need in order to survive.  The types of food, clothing, and shelter purchased are often influenced by the next two reasons.

2) For enjoyment - this can be for personal enjoyment or to bring joy to others.  The experience of buying and the feeling one receives after buying play a large role in this reason why people buy.

3) To impress others - social standing and one’s reputation often determine what people buy.  If someone is not buying something for their enjoyment, they are usually buying to impress someone else.

4) To make more money - this is one of the earliest buying behaviors ingrained into people from childhood – “Get a good education so you can get a good job.”  When adults say a “good job”, they actually mean “make a lot of money”.  Numerous books, courses, and institutions exist for the sole (or implied) purpose of helping people make more money.

5) To find love - it’s human nature to want some form of companionship whether it’s only for sexual gratification or it’s for finding one’s soulmate.  For single people, a gap in the love department needs to be filled through dating, online dating, porn, visits to strip clubs, and for some, spending an evening with a “professional”.

Let’s take it further and recognize that these 5 reasons why people buy are actually problems that they’re trying to overcome, and when they encounter your product or service, it’s core message needs to align to help solve one of these 5 problems.

Image by tarale

Do you think there are other reasons why people buy?  Let me know in the comments below.

Free Inbound Marketing Plan Template

Online presence optimization is a key ingredient in your inbound marketing plan.  You want to clearly identify your target customers and how they are searching for your services online. If you don’t have one already, here is a free template that will help you make sure you have clearly identified and aligned your business objectives and marketing activity. Download the free Inbound Marketing Plan template now

Details from Search Engine Land about each update are here:

January 2012 - Panda 3.2 Update

February 2012- Panda 3.3 Update 

March 2012 - Panda 3.4 Update

April 2012 - Panda 3.5 Update

April 2012 - Penguin Update

Many sites have had their traffic decrease significantly in the past two months while others have not had seen any impact or have seen an increase in traffic.

When you look at what each of these updates reward and penalize, it’s the types of behavior one would expect to see or not see on a website.

Panda has been all about relevant, quality content and site speed and filtering out sites that contain thin content or overwhelming concentration of ad space.  Penguin is all about improving the filter to detect nefarious SEO tactics like keyword stuffing, link schemes, cloaking, and duplicate content.

So what does this mean for you when optimizing your website (or a client’s website)?

Optimize for the Long Haul

Remember, SEO, one tactic used in inbound marketing, is a marathon and not a sprint.  If your business needs a quick injection of visibility, then consider some form of online advertising.  Make sure the economics truly make sense when you look at cost per click and target audience volume and that you can sustain the campaign long enough to be effective.

The people behind the Google algorithms are just people.  They sit and decide what qualifies as the most relevant search results, then they go implement their decisions in code.  With today’s technologies, the decisions the engineers make to determine what qualifies as relevant search results can be more closely replicated by computer algorithms and that’s how the Google algorithm improves.

With a long-term mindset, keep adding relevant content to your website and attracting healthy inbound links, and you won’t have to worry about future changes to the Google algorithm.

Image by Collin Harvey

Have your sites been affecting by the recent Google updates, and what are you doing about it?

Free Inbound Marketing Plan Template

Online presence optimization is a key ingredient in your inbound marketing plan.  You want to clearly identify your target customers and how they are searching for your services online. If you don’t have one already, here is a free template that will help you make sure you have clearly identified and aligned your business objectives and marketing activity. Download the free Inbound Marketing Plan template now

Here are 3 essential ingredients you need to have email help grow your business.

A List

The foundation of successful email marketing is the list and to grow a list, you need a plan.  You can use your inbound marketing plan as the basis where you have already identified your ideal clients and compelling offers.

These compelling offers are the magnets that are going to convert your website visitors to leads to help you acquire email addresses from potential buyers and grow your list.

An Editorial Calendar

Before building your list, think about what useful content you want to send to your list members to help establish yourself or your company as an authority in your field and to build a relationship.  Remember, as a marketer, it’s still your job to get your leads to know, like, and trust you.  An email list is not an open invitation to send out offers and promote your products, but rather an opportunity to educate and inform.

Here are examples of the types of content your editorial calendar should map that you send to your list:

• Links to your new blog postings
• Links to relevant articles
• Relevant client anecdotes
• Invitations to webinars
• Updates about upcoming events

A Product Pipeline

As you email your leads and help them transition to prospects, you need to make sure you have something for them to buy from you.  These “products” can range anywhere from a call with a account executive to a training course to a physical product to a full-on service engagement.  They’re the next level of “opt-in” for your list members.

It depends on your business, but most buyers are not going to make high ticket purchases right off your email list.  They’ll need to purchase something low risk first (i.e. low cost, high value items) to see if what you’re offering is what is going to solve their problem.

Put these three components into action, and you will be able to establish a mutual relationship with your list that can help both you and your list members grow.

Image by Esther Gibbons

Have you been able to successfully use email to grow your business?

Free Inbound Marketing Plan Template

Online presence optimization is a key ingredient in your inbound marketing plan.  You want to clearly identify your target customers and how they are searching for your services online. If you don’t have one already, here is a free template that will help you make sure you have clearly identified and aligned your business objectives and marketing activity. Download the free Inbound Marketing Plan template now