One of the things that is clear from coaching people about how to help local, small businesses with their online marketing is that most people over-complicate what needs to be done.

The fact of the matter is that most small businesses have done next to nothing to give themselves a fighting chance online, so anything you do for them – even if not technically perfect according to the standards of the top SEM’s – will still most likely have great benefit.

What does this mean for the person just getting into the business of helping other businesses succeed online?  TAKE ACTION!  Apply what you are learning each day and you will see results.  Don’t over-complicate things and seek perfection – neither in  your understanding nor in your application of online marketing techniques – it does not exist.

The following is an excellent post from Hanan Lifshitz at Palore, that clearly demonstrates that most small, local businesses have done next to nothing to help themselves online, and that applying some basic concepts on their behalf will yield strong returns.

Mike

Small Businesses With Low Online Visibility Can Easily Improve

May 6, 2010 at 11:36am ET by Hanan Lifshitz

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Of all the local directories out there, Google Local (now Google Places) is still the king of the hill. Not only are they a part of the most widely-used search engine in the world, but they also have the most integration with third party applications.

Thanks to Google’s extensive API, developers for web and mobile applications can leverage the Google Local Search data in their applications. Since the mobile web is the hotbed of local search marketing, Google’s dominance is a big deal…and it’s poised to only get bigger.

For local small business advertisers, what this means is that optimizing your local listing on Google Places is crucial. But as David Mihm points out in his in-depth Local Search Ranking Factors article, since Google uses the data from other directory sites to calculate who shows up on top, it’s not enough to just optimize your Google local listing. You need to make sure you have a presence on various other directory sites, too – and that your listing is consistent across them all.

But there are thousands of online local directories – how do you find which ones you need to focus on to rank highest in Google?

The folks at SEOMoz have a great answer to that question – to find out which sites are working to help people’s Google rankings, they recommend simply doing some local searches yourself. It’s a dead simple tactic to rank higher in Google Local search results – and while it can be tedious work, the benefits gained translate directly into traffic to your local business.

You may not have really noticed it – or at least didn’t recognize it’s impact from a marketing perspective, but some changes rolled out in the last week by Facebook will have a big impact on the local online marketing universe.

Facebook is essentially becoming “the internet” for a lot of users, similar (and yet totally different) from the way AOL was “the internet” for many people for years. One way they are doing this is by extending their “Like” button to content outside of Facebook, allowing you to tag content and easily share your opinion of it with your Facebook Friends within your profile.

Why is this a big deal? Facebook users now have a way to “Like” and share anything, and the information is added to their profile.

Why is this a big deal? Because as a marketer, you are now going to have a ton more information to target your advertising towards, as people’s profiles are going to constantly be being updated with more information about personal preferences, likes, and dislikes.

Let’s see how this one shakes out over the coming months, but I suspect it is going to have a big impact.

Mike

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Today, Google announced a rebranding of one of its key features: the former Local Business Center is now known simply as Google Places.

One out of every 5 searches is location-based, so naturally Google wants to find ways to improve their local search results and make money off of the space, too. For that reason, along with the new name, Google is rolling out a slew of features including local search and map listings, realtime updates, custom QR codes and coupons, and more.

The three features we’re most excited about are:

1. Service areas. A pizza business, for instance, can now only focus on advertising to customers who are in their delivery area.
2. Local business photo shoots. That’s right – Google will now come to your local business and take photos, then add them to your Place Page.
3. Tags. For $25 a month, local businesses can buy “tags” which will turn their businesses up in local searches, including Google Maps.

Obviously, this new update is a huge deal for local online marketing. Local businesses of all sizes stand to benefit from a well-optimized Google Place Page.

One of the most mis-understood and frequently mis-represented concepts in online marketing is how the Google Ad Auction works in terms of pricing and the impact of Quality Score on pricing.

I’ve probably heard 100+ different explanations of this over the last few years, and almost all of them were wrong in some way or another.

How to find good information?  Go straight to the source!  In this video Hal Varian, the Chief Economist at Google, explains how the auction system works in very plain English.

I’d highly recommend that you check out many of the other related videos from Google.

Mike

Up until now, the Google Local Business Center has had some real limitations for the following scenarios:

• Service businesses that work in multiple cities but only have an office in one
• Home-based businesses that don’t want to reveal their home address on their Google Maps listing

The first scenario has been particularly troublesome for us and many of our clients, as our physical office addresses often limited our presence in the Google Local results to  a very limited area, when we actually service and want visibility in a broader selection of markets.

Google seems to have resolved these issues with recent enhancements to the Google Maps features in the Local Business Center.

Businesses now have the option to select service areas outside of where their office is physically located, and also have the option of not showing their address at all, providing the privacy that many home-based businesses were looking for.

Matt McGee provides more details in his post titled Google Maps Finally Welcome to Home-Based and Service-Based Businesses.

This is an important change for anyone offering local SEM services to small businesses, as it makes it easier to provide more value to a wider audience of businesses.  We’ve often struggled with customers being frustrated that their local listings were only getting visibility in the market where their office is located, even if their services are offered primarily in other markets.  Google must have heard enough complaints, as they have rolled out what seems to be a simple and effective solution.

Mike

We’ve been telling every small business we talk to in the last six months that they should be claiming and optimizing their local listings in the major search engines; this strategy includes getting reviews of your business.

The impact of reviews on local search marketing results – I think people intuitively understand that having reviews of your business is better than not having reviews, but how does it impact your local search results, and what specific strategies should you use?

The following post does a fantastic job of looking into the impact of reviews on your local search results; it’s the best explanation I’ve seen so far:

An Extremely Nifty Guide to Reviews and Local Search

Once you’ve read that one and your convinced that you need a strategy for getting more reviews, check out this great post on Online Reputation Management Strategies – The “Rate Us” Page and Local Reviews.

Mike

I found this tool recently; it’s a great way to quickly check on the status of your – or a prospect or client’s – local listings in the major search databases:

GetListed.org

Here is a look at Everon’s results for our listing in Broomfield, CO:

It’s got some great features, like being able to save your listings to a dashboard for easy future reference, and a handy list of “To do’s” that are automatically generated to help determine next steps to get the most from your listing.

The service is free. It was put together by local internet marketing expertsDavid Mihm and Patrick Sexton – nice job and thank you, guys!

Mike

According to a recent study by digital marketing company Network Solutions and the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, small business are adopting social media at a rapid pace.

The study reported that social media usage amongst businesses of fewer than 100 employees increased to 24%, up from 12% a year earlier.

I see a lot more activity in the small business space myself, with more companies using social tools and site for local online marketing, and even using Facebook as a replacement for having a stand-alone website.

As Kipp mentioned in a previous post, companies like Foursquare are rolling out new tools that are sure to accelerate this trend.

Mike

It’s funny – behind all of the amazing technology and automation that makes internet marketing possible in the first place, the reality of good online marketing is that it requires a lot of manual effort.  In order to be as productive as possible, it’s important that local online marketingpractitioners find tools that will help them cut down on the time required to build and maintain effective campaigns.

Building nice looking and effective ads can be a time-consuming pain in the neck, so any process or tool you can use to get them built out more quickly is worth taking a look at.

A new tool called PlaceLocal that automatically creates local ads was brought to my attention today. I haven’t tried it yet, but it seems to have some real potential, and gives me some interesting ideas. Check out the article I read at Springwise.com (you are reading Springwise, aren’t  you!?).

Click here to go directly to the PlaceLocal website.

Mike

When you’re in the business of search engine optimization – be it local search, pay-per-click advertising, or optimizing sites – it helps to understand what you’re shooting for.

But how can you do that? Google, Bing and Yahoo! all keep their search algorithms under wraps, so it’s tough to know exactly what sites will rise to the top. (Otherwise, people would be madly-rushing to game the system, which would demolish the value of the search engines for their users.)

Google in particular is known for its secrecy regarding the way its search engine returns relevant results. But sometimes we get a glimpse of the way things work ‘under the hood.’

In a recent Wired Magazine article, Steven Levy discusses some of the in’s and out’s of Google’s algorithm, as well as its infrastructure and development process. While it won’t give you any concrete info on how to get your listings to the top, it’s a fascinating article (albeit a long one) that any person concerned with search would do well to read.

After reading it, you’ll definitely look at search differently.

- Kipp

**UPDATE – In an ironic twist since this article was published, Mike Siwek (referenced in the article) has lost his #1 ranking in Google. Wordstream reports on the situation in How Wired Jacked Mike Siwek’s #1 Google Ranking.