I get asked this a lot, is it possible to claim an already owner-verified listings into a new account ? It sure is!

Take for example if you are an attorney in Tampa and your N.A.P. is as follows:

Basically you’ll want to either find a duplicate listing like this, simply use Google to search for the company name. If you find a duplicate listing, determine if you have claimed any of them yet. In many cases, many local companies have hired SEOers in the past who have claimed listing under their own account, which create problems for the company or new SEO team.

You will then reverify the new listing with Google, which tends to take precendence over new claimed listings. You may want to merge listings. Here’s a link to Google Places Best Practices which will give you many choices for help.

In any event, here’s a list of instructions on how to proceed, this is directly from Google.

1. Make sure you’ve claimed one of the listings in Google Places. Verify that there’s only one active listing in your account by logging in to your Google Places account.
   1. If there’s more than one listing in your account for the same business, you’ll first need to fix that problem by following the steps in the section below.
   2. If you don’t have a listing for it at all, you should claim your business.
2. For every extra result for your business, go to its Place Page, click the Report A Problem link, and select “Place has another listing”. If you can, include a link to your claimed Place Page in the comments section.
3. Google will review these reports and fix duplicate business listings.

Remember, change as little as possible initially and be sure to keep name, address and phone number the same.

It is best to claim it with an email from your business domain so if there is a dispute in the future, you will be recognized as the authoritative listing holder.

The optimal tactic would be for the business to get the login from their SEO but sometimes that just isn’t possible

Local SEO Introduction

I’m going to cover the three major pillars of local search which are Listings, Citations and Reviews that I have developed over the years from my Chicago SEO company.

Listings

First we’ll look into listings. We are going to take a look at the types and locations of results in the triggers that indicate to a search engine that it is a local search. We’re also going to consider the three major search engines that are currently players in the local game.

Citation and Links

Some people say citations are the new link. If you recall from marketing principles, a website or businesses’ transparency and exposure on the Internet from high authority sources is what will get that business exposed in the search engines. In order to increase the businesses trust, citations from trusted websites are required.

Citations are merely Web references of the company in question. When referencing a company online, there are certain pieces of information that are important to reference such as the company name, it’s address and its unique local phone number.  We call this NAP, N . A . P . for name, address, and phone number

Reviews and Check-Ins

Reviews are a very important part of the local business marketing strategy. In fact, I believe the reviews are likely the single most important factor in marketing a business online. Not for just for ranking, but overall marketing initiatives.

There are so many reasons why reviews play such a significant role in marketing the local business online from possibly influencing the search results to dramatically improving or hurting perspectives conversion to the call to action.

Customer reviews are merely the digital form of word of mouth advertising. It has been said for centuries that the best form of marketing any business could ever potentially receive this free word-of-mouth and by employing certain campaigns internally at your business you can drive system reviews to your company. 

Reviews are becoming a very important part of establishing different factors within the local business results listings and their respective rankings.

 For example, the concept of social review ranking is not being discussed anywhere where implementing systems to measure and monitor and understand how the search engines are deploying review ranking algorithm systems and how the search engines are building social profiles of online reviewers to determine different review patterns.

This is one of those topics that can be very simple and become very complex. Because of the sheer importance of reviews, we have gone to great lengths to understand the system while marketing a business online.

While I believe that the difference between organic search engine optimization and optimizing for the local business results will become closer and closer together, today there are still different strategies.

The biggest difference that will separate the two organic search engine strategies, SEO and Local, is that the process of search engine optimization is still ranking websites and the latter is ranking a business.

1. Local Listings
   

Each of the major search engines have a different philosophy under local ranking, but there is one major common similarity among all three. They started their business ranking websites, now the search engines have the power to rank which businesses the general population chooses to do business with.

With the introduction of integrated results on Google’s main search engine results page showed different types of results from the traditional organic listings and PPC. These integrated results included different rich media such as images and videos, included news and social media tweets.

According the Kelsey Group, 43% of ALL searches included a geo-mod on the mainstream search page. Geo-mod is a geographical modifier that dictates to a search engine where to conduct a geographical search. However, this is likely going to decrease as the search engines become smarter about assuming the location and educating users that they do not require a geo-mod with their search to get local results.

Local On-The-Page Factors

As mentioned when I am talking about on the page factors for local business I am not referencing your website and you should follow all the standard principles taught in white hat search engine optimization for organic results. Because we are talking about local businesses here, you should by default have the address of the business on the appropriate pages of that local businesses website. You might have location pages and you might have contact us pages and your name address and phone number should appear on these pages. We call this our NAP, short for Name, Address and Phone number. More on that later.

So we’re talking about the places page in the local business center of a search engine.

Because the places page is typically created before it is attached to the businesses Google account, a local business must claim that listing as their own and verify that they in fact are the owner of that listing.

In the local on the page factors video I am going to be covering several of the factors that need to be considered when claiming, creating or completing a business listing profile page within one of the search engines listings.

Types and Location of Results

Since location is an extremely important part of the local business, location is a main factor in determining these results and there are many triggers such as a geo-mod or physical GPS location of the searcher to determine the local results. We need to further understand the triggers.

The location of the local business results varies . Since the introduction into mainstream results in 2009 we have seen a tremendous amount of variation on the placement of the local business results for both when a geo-mod is used and when a geo-mod is not used. This has made it a very difficult process to pinpoint and accurately teach exactly what factors are involved in the placement of the local business results.

Understanding individual needs helps the search engine personalize results. In order to maximize the businesses exposure, a combination of a well-designed website and stable online profiles is required in order to achieve success online.

Local Search Results Triggers

With the introduction of integrated results on Google’s main SERP, Google was showing different types of results from the traditional organic listings and PPC. These integrated results included different rich media such as images and videos, included news and social media tweets.

These methods to fine location include IP address, GPS location, cellular triangulation and user input.

The bottom line is that a geo-mod will almost always trigger the local business results and Google is consistently tweaking their algorithm along with personalized search to make their best attempts at trying to determine if that individual searcher is looking for information that has to do with a local establishment.

I also want to point out that many experts claim attaching a website to your places pages helps your rankings on the local business results. I will challenge that claim for the present with many different scenarios, however I am predicting that this in fact will be a factor in the future, it only makes sense.

Local Search Engines

It all depends on who you are talking to but there is a variety of different local search engines out there. Some people argue that a local yellow page website is a local search engine. A local social network can be considered in the local search umbrella. Let’s clarify.

Essentially, we are dealing with data providers, search engines, review sites, local directories and local social networks. Refer to the document titled Client_Inventoy_Assets.xlsx for a complete list of these sites.

Here is a list of local search engines.

• Google places
• Yahoo Local
• Ask City
• Bing Local
• Local.com
• AOL Local
• Citysearch

Between Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, they hold over 90% of the market and therefore these are the three we are going to be looking at today.

Claiming and Correcting Listings

Unfortunately, not all business owners have come to the realization that they do not have to passively let these interactive web pages exist.  There are those business owners that have caught on quickly if they claim and update their local business listing, they can use this as a local marketing tool. 

In order to make these interactive pages a benefit for a local business, the first step is to claim the listing before you can update the listing with the business marketing material.  there are typically four methods being employed to verify the authenticity of the claimant

• E-Mail
• Postcard in the mail with a Pin code
• Phone call to your business phone number with a pin code
• Manual verification

Depending upon the local listing website, some allow you all of these options while Others begin charging a fee for enhanced listing . Recently we have seen the search engines restricting how easy it is to claim a particular listing. In fact, we are seeing the majority of listings only able to be verified via a phone call or snail mail, such is the case with Google, unless there is an abundance of existing trust for that business.

The claiming process is important because if say a competitor gets access to the local business listing they can detract customers to a different location by phone or by website address. In addition, the damage that can be done might include incorrect information on photos, videos, coupons, and much more.  Because consumers are using the local business listings to locate a business, product or service in their area, by phone or website, the security around local business listings has to be high priority for any local listing website. If you are having problems in this area, links to help are found at http://bit.ly/lmsplaces.

Ranking Methodology

Our ranking methodology is very simple.

Qualified traffic + conversion = sales.

The goal of marketing a business on the Internet is to provide your clearly defined target audience with a high impact, high value interactive experience.

It is nearly impossible for anybody to know all the factors that are involved in ranking. We can only determine these factors are trial and error and testing and of course learning from others. The bottom line is that all the search engines want to see value added to the end-user.

Local on-the-Page Factors for the Website

At first I’m going to talk about the local on the page factors that are relevant for the business website itself. You must not forget about those other organic SEO factors and they must all be properly implemented in addition to some of these am going to discuss right now.

These factors are exclusive to a website for a local business. First let’s take a look at location pages. A local business might have several different locations in a specific geographical area. This geographical area might be regional with several states or just within a specific province or state, country or even within a city or suburb. Here were talking about locations that are only relevant for the audience that the business is trying to attract, a warehouse that is never mentioned in typical marketing material does not apply here.

Location pages should be well-defined location pages and have the appropriate geo-mod keywords in the content. This means writing content that is relevant, informative and entertaining for potential customers for the business website. You can further connect with the audience by creating content that discusses the geographical location and local jargon of the area.

This leads me to Geo content. The entire website should have content that is focused around the geographical location as discussed in the organic search results section this information should appropriately fit in to key information such as the title tag, each one and H2 tags, and the anchor text for internal linking within the website.

The entire theme should have Geo intent. When considering topics such as your community, you can create communal of fact by having a common interest of a certain geographical location. Your web 2.0 properties on the website are going to focus on an audience within your service area.

All of your audience messaging on the website is focused around all of the common interests of the audience or potential customers you are trying to reach. Within that geographical area there are many common interests that can be discussed and provided to your audience to interact with. Think of local events, local organizations or businesses, history or local industry.

All of your images should be properly tagged for location and include the geographical location in the Alton information of the title tag for the image.

Your internal linking structure doesn’t change too much except for the addition of location pages. All of your products and services pages should have links with the appropriate anchor text linking to all of your location pages. All of your location pages should have links going to all of your service pages with the appropriate anchor text and the geo-mod located around or within the links.

A Review can contain a several different properties which you can label in the HTML code using microdata, microformats, or RDFa markups. Google recognizes the following Review properties, derived from the hReview microformat. This is when you get a testimonial from a customer and you want to display it on your webpage. In Google Webmaster tools search for review data to get specific coding requirements.

Profile Listings & Best Practices

If you visit a site, of www.getlisted.org, this has a simple little tool in its collecting all which listings on which search engine is claimed and provide links to go ahead and claim the listings.

It is important that your profile is completed 100% or as close to it as possible. When filling out information for any of the fields, your information should be unique and very focused on the customer. Your description should use the entire available space to properly describe the business is in your unique competitive advantage. Remember, always talk about benefits and not features. Remember that search engines read content and tie it to your keywords. Keywords are typically words or phrases that are driven by consumer market demand and in turn, by using the greatest number of searched keywords and placing that in your description, you are merely providing great content to the end-user where a majority of users would use those keywords.

There is the debate on addresses, whether they should be shown or not. One thing that we have found to be true is that non-physical locations, such as a PO box or UPS store box, is a challenging listing to rank. Google doesn’t want to rank asset-less companies. Google wants to rank locals and you must have a physical address to properly compete.

In addition to this we suggest this is the time to establish your NAP. This is your name, address, phone number and you should always appear in the exact same format regardless of the online property.

Just like the discussion of photos, videos are merely a different medium to just to view content in the search engines are favoring listings that utilize videos. This is a great opportunity to upload testimonial videos or a walk-through video.

The categories section is one of those sections. Make sure that you use all five of your categories and that you have claimed your category with Google’s suggested results first, and any remaining claims to input a custom category which is your number one or top keywords.

Testimonials and reviews are something as you should know are very important.

There are couple of points that I want to remind you of on your places page that are very important to have filled out properly. If it is filled out properly you will vastly increase your chances of getting ranked.

A new section found in Google places that was recently announced as service areas and since its introduction on 4/20/2010, the service area feature does not seem to be working in less there are relevant off the page factors that are present. It is highly suggested to not over estimate your service area and provide Google with accurate data.

Your description section is a section for you to maximize your content. Remember the Google is a huge fan of content and this is an area that all of your services should be covered along with all of your locations and if possible surrounding suburbs.

1. Citations and Links
   

Now that we are reminded that marketing a business on the Internet follows traditional marketing principles, we know from organic search engine optimization that links are very important for ranking and now I am telling you that citations from highly relevant sources are also important. So I guess the question becomes what is the difference between a citation and a link. Let’s take a look.

Citations are merely Web references of the company in question. When referencing a company online, there are certain pieces of information that are important to reference such as the company name, it’s address and its unique local phone number.  We learned this was a N .A .P. for name, address, and phone number.

On occasion, search engines and these data providers collect information from public sources and while it’s not as important to ensure that these public sources are accurate, is worthy noting that when dealing with these other sources that you provide them with identical NAP information. For example, when a business requires a business phone number from the local telephone provider, typically they automatically receive insert into their Yellow Pages and upsell ad space. The information provided to the telephone provider should be exactly the same as you would in your Google places account. This is a source of information for Google that they trust.

Local Citation Sources

Data Providers

Following is a list of data providers that search engines pull information from, because as we’ve discussed Google Places is merely data aggregator.  While there are other data providers evidence has clearly indicated that these are the top data providers that Google pulls is information from in these following seven data providers you should check and ensure that the formatting of your NAP is identical from provider to provider.

Major Search Engines

• Google Places
• Yahoo Local
• Bing Local
• Facebook Places
  

Major Data Providers

• YellowPages.com
• UniversalBusinessListing
• Acxiom
• infoUSA
• localize
• superpages.com
• Yelp
• InsiderPages

Secondary Data Providers & Portals

• Best of the Web Local
• Amazon.com
• Hotfrog
• OpenList
• Dexknows
• Merchant Circle
• InsiderPages
• Discoverourtown.com
• Angies’ List
• Judy’s Book
• Local.com
• Geo Directories
• Theme Directories
• AOL Local Search
• GetFave.com
• Addresses.com
• GenieKnows.com
• Edmunds.com
• LocalMatters
• UrbanSpoon.com

Public Sources

On occasion, search engines and these data providers collect information from public sources and while it’s not as important to ensure that these public sources are accurate, it’s worth noting that when dealing with these other sources that you provide them with identical NAP information. 

These other sources may include company annual reports, SEC information, federal state and city governments, various business magazines, newspapers and local publications, and Postal Service information.

Citations Acquisition Strategies

Local search engines

Local blogs

Locally-focused directories

Theme Based Sites

Theme Related Citations

Blogs and Directories

Social Media

Local PR

Joint Ventures

Completive Analysis

Local Directories, Publications, Networking Groups

Non-Conventional Citation Ideas

• Start Hosting Parties and Events
• Get a Redbox or ATM at your business
• Free Wi-Fi
• Sponsor local events like festivals or charity events
• Check in deals with Foursquare, Google+, Groupon or Facebook
• Install a weather monitoring station
• Add a cellular antenna to your property.
• Install a Webcam.

1. Local Reviews & Check-Ins
   

Considering reviews, we’re going to be looking at the benefits of reviews, quantity versus quality, establishing profile Authority and social and review ranking, review filters, review creation, review acquisition strategies and patterns, Rich snippets, review coding and finally an overview of review sites their impact industry perception.

What is a Review?

A review is a personal evaluation of a movie, publication, game, music , book; a piece of hardware like a car, home appliance, or computer; or an event, such as a live music concert, a play, and finally we’re here to talk about reviews for businesses, such as Restaurants, dry cleaners, apartment management companies, mechanics, doctors, day spas, limousine services, law firms, and other brick and mortar businesses who lose and gain customers daily based on their past and current customers’ opinions.

There are 1000s of local business review sites and directories, but as a business owner, you should first pay attention to the truly important ones already showing up in Google, Yahoo!, and Bing for your keywords. You can list your business on the sites I’m going to talk about later where past and current customers can review for free, although some have paid versions in order to “expand your page” like MerchantCircle and CitySearch, it’s not always necessary because they will take reviews all day (more content for them).

Review Benefits

There are many reasons that benefit a local business in terms of reviews. While considering online marketing principles, reviews accomplish three things. Ranking, conversion, and service area. There are many misconceptions about how reviews influence ranking, many don’t consider the importance of conversion and finally reviews solve a very common problem among many types of businesses.

Directly from one of Google’s own pages when discussing complex code for micro data formatting to convey ratings they have the following text “This section describes how you can mark up your rating information to use images (for example, an image of four stars) to convey ranking information. ”

This is yet the only public information from Google that explicitly says reviews influence rank, but this is enough proof for me.

Getting customer reviews is an important step in improving your rankings in the Google Local Business Results. Ask for a review anytime someone compliments your services. Implementing a customer review policy in your company could dramatically improve your rankings.

Ranking

There are several factors that can be measured for particular review by a search engine. For example, quantity of reviews, quality of reviews, review acquisition, location or review, review acquisition patterns among sources, data of sources and of course source politics. We are going to be taking a look at all of these factors and what influence they might have on your ranking.

Conversion

When a prospect lands on a particular places page, we already know that reviews are a high influence towards the consumer’s perception of the business. We’re going to be considering why only a small number reviews are shown and discussed the social review ranking within these places profiles and how each of these reviews influences the consumers conversion towards a call to action on that business.

We’re going to be considering which review sites have high influence within Google places and how to influence the activity in a positive manner for each of those sites. By driving a high quality review system into a local business insurers that properties like Google places only shows reviews that provide the highest conversion to a call to action. While some businesses are focusing on Internet marketing efforts of driving traffic, few go to the length of improving their conversion ratio and therefore there is a massive opportunity to drive a call to action for your clients. Make sure you make this an important part of your strategy for your clients to ensure a high quality service provided to them and to help keep your clients for long-term.

Service Area

Most service-based businesses face a significant problem when marketing themselves on the Internet. For a variety of reasons, different businesses in different geographical areas clearly different service areas. Service area is defined by the area in which the business will provide its services or the geographical reach in which customers will travel in order to do business with that company.

Reviews are a very important part of establishing trust towards establishing your service area in the eyes of online websites like Google places. Let’s face it, a business’ service area essentially is where their customers reside. Whether it’s a business that travels to a consumer’s home or business or the company that tracks clientele to its storefront, its service area defined by a web of its customers. We know the search engines know exactly location of where these reviews are being left based on GPS, IP address information, cellular triangulation or user input. When users leave reviews that are trusted more than less authoritative reviewers, those particular reviews provide further trust to a search engines on establishing a web of your reviews.

Local Search Review Profiles

Reviewers, Trust and Authority

A reviewer can either be a guest or a registered user, typically on a review site. We already know that reviews can be left on any website, but trust is assigned to that particular website and review. We are going to be taking a look at a list of sites that we know of high trusted authorities within the major search engines. Within these sites is a community of registered users. When a registered user leaves a review, that user could have a review that offers tremendous value or could be a bogus review from a competitor. Both the search engine and the review sites and an algorithm are in place to rank reviews

Review Profile Usage Patters

The usage patterns of a particular user within a review site can potentially have many factors that are measured. For example, a reviewer might consistently have reviews that are three stars or less, but we know published by yelp that 85% of all reviews across their site and the web of three stars or more. Therefore the user that consistently has lower score reviews, will be assigned less trust for their reviews because they do not follow the norm of the general population.

Establish Profile Authority & Social Review Ranking

Establishing profile Authority can be a little bit of a challenge because you are attempting to influence the customers of your client. You need to work with your client to ensure that they are doing everything they can to help influence acquisitions in a positive manner and in turn focusing on those profiles that have high authority.

Drive Education to Build Profile Authority

Testimonials and Check-Ins

Testimonials, reviews and check ins are channels of communication from the customer to the business. In essence, this is exactly what business is, communication from a business to a customer and vice versa.

You have a lot of choices on how to market your clients online, but I assure you if you focus your efforts on the one item that is most important to every single business then you will get success for your client. In other words, focus on the customer. Pretty simple, huh?

Social Check-Ins

Many social networking services, such as Foursquare, Facebook, Yelp and Gowalla allow users to “check in” to a physical place and share their location with their friends.

Users can check in to a specific location by text messaging or by using a mobile app on a smartphone–the application will use the phone’s GPS to find the current location.

Check-in and Location Based Marketing

Check-ins, badges, Mayors, stamps on passports, rewards, and other new concepts from the past are popping up everywhere on the Internet as the latest trend in location based services are applied to marketing purposes. It’s a blast from the past, isn’t it? This is just a loyalty program. No different than my coffee punch card, but on steroids. Now I get the 8^th cup for free, and all my friends know about it. What about flying? I check-in at the counter. If I give them my information, I get rewards with ‘air miles’ now when I check in. I do something, exchange some value and then get rewarded if we exchange information. Same model here folks, maybe this will tell us something about how these check-ins might work for a business.

Volume and Velocity

But let’s slow down for a moment, there is a big difference between some of the old check-ins the new ones. We know that checking out at a supermarket or checking-in in an airplane typically means an exchange in value. They paid someone. Take Foursquare check-ins….the rewards, on the other hand, are offered to individuals that just showed up. I’m not quite sure yet on this. Rewarding someone for showing up makes little sense. Arguably the reward gets them in the door, and they need to be in the door to buy.

The real value of Check-ins should reward more than just physical presence. But shouldn’t the real question be is how you get the customer to the door from the beginning.

Local Search Reviews, Rich Snippets and Ratings

Sometimes I have to do something in this business that isn’t so much fun. HTML is one of those. Coding in fact is it. Like accounting, I wish I never have to deal with it but you do.

Rich Snippets are a fancy way of saying “I want a review to be on my website and I want Google to count it as a review”.

Rich Snippets for Local Search

With structured markup, such as Microdata or RDF, you can label each piece of text to make it clear that it represents a certain type of data like a business name, an address, or a review rating. This is done by adding HTML tags that help computers understand the data. These tags don’t affect the appearance of your pages, but Google and any other services that look at the HTML can use the tags for a more precise understanding of the items referenced on the page.

Review Ratings

Most ratings systems use a 5-point scale

By default, Google assumes that your site uses a 5-point scale, where 5 is the best possible rating and 1 is the worst.

Many reviews sites show ratings on a different scale-for example a rating that ranges from 1-10 points or from 0-100%.

Response

If you’re unhappy with a buyer’s comments, search engines encourage you to contact the buyer directly to resolve any disputes or issues that may have led to a low rating. This is discussed under the topic “Online Reputation Management’.

Crawling & Coding

As mentioned, with structured markup you can label each piece of text to make it clear that it represents a certain type of data. This is done by adding HTML tags that help computers understand the data.

Review Properties

Google recognizes the following Review properties, derived from the hReview microformat. In general, you can use the same property name for microdata, microformats, and RDFa; where the microdata/RDFa and microformats property names differ.

Add the following code to the markup that links their name to their professional profile.

<a href=http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/franco-raso/6/423/13b>Ronco</a> so it

looks like this now.

<div>

<div itemscope itemtype=”http://data-vocabulary.org/Review”>

<span itemprop=”itemreviewed”>NAPAREX</span>

Reviewed by <span itemprop=”reviewer”><a href=http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/franco-raso/6/423/13b>Ronco</a> </span> on

<time itemprop=”dtreviewed” datetime=”2009-01-06″>Jan 6</time>.

<span itemprop=”summary”>We Recommend Naparex!</span>

<span itemprop=”description”>I work for an international telecommunictons company and NAPAREX has proven time and time again to make sure all of our shipping needs are taken care of. In the face paced industry that we in, it is imperative that our shipments get to their destination on time and NAAPREX has always stuck to their delivery dates.</span>

Rating: <span itemprop=”rating”>5</span>

</div>

</div>

Once you link to their profile, if the customer is willing, this is the BIG kahuna for trust. Ask them to spread the word of their testimonial on their social media profiles. This closes the link and will assign significant trust to the review directly on the website and will show high in the SERPs.

Local Review Acquisition Strategies

Sometimes you just to do something in life that isn’t that much work but has a major impact. This is my review acquisition strategy.

Testimonials and reviews are very important for a variety of different reasons. This is a system that is intended to be implemented into any small business to continually encourage reviews. Motivational systems can also be added to the system to further motivate employees and partners that help encourage reviews. I have no problem giving hundred dollar bonus on a monthly basis to employees who get the most reviews, even for our customers.

I have developed a review acquisition strategy that you can drop into your client’s business to help acquire several reviews from reviewers that have high authority.

This is a document that our agency gives to every one of our search marketing customers. Our goal is to give them the education that they need and the management tools in order to continually encourage reviews on their business. They should not solicit reviews ever, but recognize when a customer says something nice about their business that they encourage the customer to make the effort to digitize their complements and leave a review online.

This education is accomplished with this document. In a document provides education on an

• overview of reviews
• what are reviews
• the value of receiving reviews in the online marketing game
• different review sites
• implications to the search engines
• good versus bad reviews and finally
• customer e-mail template for encouraging customer reviews.

Local Review Sites

A review site is a website where reviews can be posted about businesses, products, or services. In some cases, even people. These days, these websites are using Web 2.0 techniques to gather reviews from customers. Sometimes they may employ professional writers to author reviews on the topic of concern for the site.

Review Filters

As we have been talking about all of the review sites have review filters. Here’s some information about those filters.

Reviews that reflect perfectly legitimate experiences are sometimes filtered out by the review filter’s algorithmic processes. Don’t worry about this. To solve this, have the reviewer leave additional, unbias reviews for other local businesses. Within a few weeks, that reviewers profile filter should be lifted.

Local Reviews Website List

This should not be confused as the data provider list to acquire citations. The list is very similar, but these reviews sites are listed in order of review preference. Please be aware as these companies grow and change, some might be better, others might get worse. Use this list priority with a grain of salt and do your due diligence to uncover other sites.

• Google        
• Yelp        
• City Search
• Yahoo Local    
• InsiderPages    
• Angie’s List
• Judy’s Book    
• Superpages
• Merchant Circle
• Insider Pages

NOTE: This is a shortened version of the full, step-by-step Local Search Guide for Local Business owners that can be purchased HERE. For a complete step-by-step video course on this for Local Internet Marketers, with management documents and guides, click HERE.

I’ve found I’ve been coming across a whole variety of emails from people asking a whole variety of questions, yet the answer can be summed up in similar ways. I thought I’d share a recent response. I feel it applies to at least 80% of people struggling trying to make money in the Local Internet Marketing space.

Dear Robert B,

You share a similar story to many people I’m coming across. In fact, I could go on for a while why your story is so familiar.

The fact is providing marketing services to old school, established brick and mortars is a very different game then say SEO or affiliate marketing. Many people feel the skills they have are 100% transferable. The challenge is the convergence of old school marketing principals meeting new age methods of driving traffic on this Internet.

While many skills are transferable, the local marketers mindset is different. You’re dealing with companies that have unique audiences, real customers who already have relationships and now have social authority online. Local marketing is essentially principals pulled from all the ‘big’ things, like organic and paid traffic, online reputation management, social media marketing, mobile marketing, customer relationship management, offline sales and as well as business operations.

You seem to recognize and are focusing on the relationship management. At the end of the day, I want to build a business that has long term, sustainable value. Something that runs on its own and turns a profit, something that I can sell. I need customers to pay me month after month with little effort once the systems are in place, in all my businesses. It comes down to relationships. Find the long term relationships, the rest you figure out as you go.

I wish you the best and I hope you give us a shot on our program. You might find we’re what you are looking for.

-Scott Gallagher

Hey there!

I thought I’d try something new today….give you access to today’s faculty call.  This is only for LMS paying members, on our monthly program for $47 per month.  This is a weekly faculty call.  Today we had some great interaction with many students.  We discussed very detailed content dristribution systems and project management software.  I also share many of my opinions about where Google is going, how Microsoft should be watching some things and simply why most SEOers just suck.  Why our SEO industry sucks and why I don’t like SEO!!  It was a great call.  Right click it to download the MP3.

For the fun of it, I thought I’d give access to my very first faculty call almost two years ago!

Faculty Call November 20th, 2009

Right Click to download to your computer

Advanced Lead, Prospect and Client Acquisition Strategies for a Local Internet Marketing Agency

In other words, this will recorded webinar will help you SELL SEO SERVICES.

This Webinar provided by Scott Gallagher from Local Marketing Source, LLC will include strategies acquired over 20 years to win new business from local companies. Initially developed in 2006, Scott will teach his SEO Sales Trail, a systematic solution selling approach earning the right to do business with local companies, including questioning techniques, closing techniques and after sale service strategies. The webinar will cover strategies in lead acquisition, prospect meetings including pain creation using SEO reports such as the Rank and Link Popularity reports and finally closing techniques such as effective proposal creation and closing questions.

While unemployment rates are still staggeringly high, in some states it’s well over 12% , the people of the world are starting to look towards different solutions. Entrepreneurs from all across the globe are popping up. All walks of life, all ages, people are finding new ways to increase their revenue and secure their future.  SEO Pro, a division of StomperNet, is helping to battle this raging epidemic by giving individuals the opportunity to get the latest and most advanced training in developing their own business.

SEO Pro welcomes highly certified trainer Scott Gallagher to their latest workshop in San Francisco, Ca. Since 2006 StomperNet has been considered the worldwide leader in Search Engine Optimization and is currently the world’s largest online business community. Scott along with other certified trainers Lee Collins, Joel McDonald, Nicole Munoz and Richard Weiler, are offering training to those who are serious in learning strategies on how to optimize their own business or develop and attract their own SEO consulting clients.

This SEO Pro training combines an offline 2 day workshop on September 23-34 in San Francisco  with ongoing online education. Scott and the other certified trainers will be teaching how to get more targeted prospects, how to enjoy more repeat business and how to greatly enhance your brand visibility. That is only in the first half of day one. The opportunities for SEO consulting are limitless. By attending this certified SEO Pro training you will learn how to bank $25k-$100k on each client.  For more information on how you can attend this nationally acclaimed training visit seopro.stompernet.com or call 888-325-7845

Note: This post is the introduction letter upon entering by education portal. This is posted to gain feedback and provide some insight into my background, in my less formal voice on a Sunday morning chilling at home. This is for my friends and students. If you’d like to learn more about this course, please just register to the right by clicking the video and I’ll send you some awesome stuff, enough free stuff to get your company off the ground and frankly I hope you like it and join us at Local Marketing Source.

Hi, Scott Gallagher here! Welcome to my second version of my Local Agency Coaching Program. This course is a very extensive growing platform to learn Internet Marketing for a local business. There are a few things you need to know before you dive in, so I’ve prepared a couple of videos to welcome you to the program and familiarize yourself with navigating through this course. There are over a hundred videos, some an hour long, hundreds of thousands of words in the form of transcripts, dozens upon dozens of documents, templates, worksheets, contractor training videos to download. Don’t get lost, learn the navigation mindset first so you care prepare yourself for this amazing journey we’re about to embark on!

Repetition Creates Expertise

Below you’ll find an overview video. You need to watch this before you watch any of the course videos. It’s a very simple video covering the course structure and the mindset I had when approaching the creation. I simply cover the mindmap of the course, you can download the mind map files below. Please be aware that I slightly changed the placement of some content in the course that is reflected different in this video, although, the video’s intent is to convey navigation. After creating the first product, I learned from students and discovered what previous knowledge I had that could be applied to my new product, I created a foundation of the components of this business. You’ll find marketing education found in a college setting, which is the foundation to Internet marketing. You have certain principals that I live by and how I apply those principals to this type of business. You’ll find three core sections of any business:

1. Setting Up your Company
2. Growing your Business
3. Managing your Business

You’ll quickly discover that methods and strategies to grow your company are some of the services you end up selling. You are paid to grow companies. For example, in the section Growing your Agency, will find the step by step execution to apply to your clients for getting them found in Google Places, these will be the same practices you’d apply to your company. However, the offline sales section of Growing your Agency surely has little value to your clients.

We’re Always Looking to Get Better

While this product is now on the market, there is surely room to build. For example, in the Setting Up your Agency module, we could expand on the accounting education, finance, general business to name a few. Depending on student demand, we’ll find ways to deliver superior education in areas to your company that we can expand our education. Perhaps we have the expertise in-house to create the education or we bring in faculty for those topics.

I can’t be the expert at everything, and I don’t claim to be the expert in every topic this course delivers. I have experienced everything I teach. I have endured several trials and tribulations towards learning this business, and I simply share my experience along with my book smarts on these topics. So it’s natural there are opportunities to expand on this education platform as we continue to grow and learn from others.

I consider myself an expert in two areas. This is because of my extensive education in these areas along with many years of continued success. This would be SMB B2B Sales and Organic Local Business Internet Marketing.

My Business to Business Sales Story

Small and Medium Business to Business Sales is something that I have almost 20 years’ experience in. Quite simply, I was good at it right off the bat in retail at Radio Shack, when my friends were flipping burgers. I quickly noticed that a business customer purchased much more than a single consumer. Immediately after graduating University with a Bachelor of Commerce, I moved to Toronto to find a job in business to business sales in the technology sector. After killing it on Bay Street in Toronto for a major telecom carrier, the equivalent of Wall Street in Canada, I set out to build my own company. You may not want to go to the detail I do in my sales process, but I assure you, I just didn’t stumble onto a 58% closing rate for customers who have an annual value of $10k or more. You can eventually get there and keep this skill for all of your next lives, just understand that you should expand your education beyond my recorded product. Participate in the forum. Ask questions on the calls. I have a tremendous amount of knowledge to offer in closing businesses, how you consume this opportunity is up to you. Consider other sources of education. Once I worked for a major corporation that took several hundred of their sales reps, who had a minimum of a $45k BASE SALARY off the sales floor for 30 days….to keep them in a class room to learn solution selling. I was trained by the best, it was all given to me on shareholder’s money. I ended up being the only employee who received 100% on the written and practical exam, it was role play. It was that moment that I realized if I applied what I learned, then one day I could be one of those senior executives putting together such an event making a quarter million a year. They all had successful stories of being the top sales reps, and swore that I applied exactly what they are saying, whether I believed it or not, that I could be like them. Guess what, they were right. It worked. Although I no longer aspire to be in the corporate world, I kept winning sales awards. Remember, every business sells something. Sharpen your sales skills, this is a topic that you need to study for the life of your entrepreneurial spirit. You were not born with this skill.

My Google Maps and Google Places Story

In 2005 I moved to the United States and opened my marketing company. I had a lot of contact in the delivery industry, as I sold operational software solutions to them for several years. Some solutions were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. These were local businesses. My education and passion was marketing, with a specialty in ecommerce. This marriage became Local Internet Marketing. I quickly recognized what Google was doing with the introduction of Google Maps in 2005. It was there and Google Organic that these companies needed to be found. I studied Google Organic with everyone else, but had to figure out Google Maps on my own. Nobody cared and nobody talked about it, Google was quietly working on their vision. Frankly, I’m surprised it took until 2009 to launch Places, but I think that’s because no one was talking about it so it gave them time to capture market share, while I mastered the algorithm. It turns out it’s about business relationships. Everything I believed in what I felt in 2005 what it should be based on, my experience of sales relationships, is it what it’s become…just later than I thought. I guess since I’ve been a geek on the Internet since 1994, I say it’s about f*&#ing time. My years of sales experience, marketing education and two decades of success are the blood and sweat into figuring out Google Local. Today on your first day, things are different with more players pitted against Google, heck this is Business to Business sales on the Internet, where the REAL money is, not retail consumers that the Internet calls ecommerce. You get it? We’re way ahead of the curve still. This is just like business to business sales. Thirty years ago the process of solution selling was unheard of, but it’s this original sales process that changed how businesses sell to each other today. Local companies selling themselves using the Internet will evolve a lot in the next five to ten years, but for now let’s learn from what works, and that’s really only from learning from those that demonstrate success. Google has major market share so let’s play that game for now and thus far, I have thousands of terms ranking in Google Places for over a hundred sites with dozens of existing clients. I use my other companies and clients to push the limits to know what works and what doesn’t. They know they get success from me so they stay and let me do this. I assure you, if this is a business you want to make out of this course, rather than just creating your own job, then this is an area that you need to make a commitment to have continued education for the coming years as this evolves.

Many Types of Students

Finally I have recognized that many of my students are established entrepreneurs, some already in the field of Internet Marketing. Some are just looking to learn tidbits that might be employed in their current million dollar agency. Others are looking to expand their product offering. Many have half a dozen clients and want many more. Some need systems, many want templates. This course is not sequential and I try to cater to all the types of students I’ve acquired from my first product.

There are almost three dozen downloadable documents throughout the course, including proposals, worksheets, scripts and client reports. Inevitably this grows as I expand my education, implement and test, then deliver to my students. Giving your sales team the SEO Sales Trail alone could improve your bottom line tenfold by tweaking your sales process to be in the top 20%, if your current sales team is a part of the 80% of producers. I’ve seen that ratio in every company I’ve worked in during the last almost 20 years, and that’s about 6 companies doing B2B sales.

Ladies and gentlemen, students and now friends, I’d like to truly welcome you to my program. I have a message, education and experience to share and I’d love know how else I can be of service to you. Please use me to advance your own objectives for your business, participate in our community and take action today.

Cheers to better future to everyone,

-Scott Gallagher

In the world of Internet Marketing, everyone now has a voice.  In the past I’ve demonstrated to my students that a small voice on the Internet gets great rewards for the squeaky wheel.  Last week I got a phone call from United Airlines who was responding to Communications is Essential for Online Business post two weeks ago.  All I asked for was to be heard, they delivered and then over delivered by offering my a free $250 flight voucher.  They listened and responded.  Unfortunately, I doubt they would have responded like that if I didn’t have some influence online.

Yesterday I had McDonalds for breakfast with my 5 year old.  Before putting my tray in the garbage, I noticed my wallet and thought “don’t throw that away”.  Then I got distracted and tossed my wallet with about $140 cash and 3 credit cards.

An hour later I call and speak with the Supervisor Dorrie Rarsdell.  I explain my situation that I tossed my wallet.  Her first response was basically “I can’t help you, it’s my lunch time, we’re busy.  You can come sift through the dumpster”.

Well, imagine my thought of five garbage bags of their garbage in their parking lot of some unknown customer sifting through it.  I had no idea how to go about this and so I responded in a calm, stern likely over-the-top ‘you’re making a mistake’ response.  I thought, how could Dorris make this decision?  She is compensated and rewarded based on business performance.  I’d be taking away from her companies metrics to evaluate her performance to help a customer.  The model is broken and I don’t blame her for her initial reaction.

“Dorrie, I understand you’re running a for profit business, an arm of a major corporation.  I realize you’re in business for a profit, from the customer.  So if I understand you correctly, as your customer I give you my money in your restaurant, accidently throw a major piece of my life in your garbage, you throw it in your dumpster and now you’re not willing to help me because of potential profits from a busy lunch.  You can’t afford an $8/hr employee for half an hour in lieu of profits.  You surely don’t have the customer in mind who helped build this business.  You don’t know who I am, or what I do.  My name is Scott Gallagher.  Look on Google.  I’m in the business of Internet Marketing.  This is a marketer’s dream story, and I’m confident this is one of those story’s the media will love.  I have a funny feeling our paths are going to cross again”

I never heard from Dorrie until I called her two hours later.  About 90 minutes after that phone call, I jumped in my vehicle to drive to the bank to get some cash and cancel my cards and noticed a missed phone call.

I called it.

“Fire, Ambulance, Police”

JACKPOT!  The police department had my wallet.

Dorrie changed her management decision.  For whatever her reasons, fear, justice, humanity, whatever, she changed her decision and sent Hose Garsas to dig through their dumpster.  This poor kid plans a job flipping burgers and he’s sifting through trash in 95 degree heat with 75% humidity!!!

Well Dorrie you managed to turn yourself into a hero.  You made a decision while putting down your own ego, your own companies metrics to help another person.  You saved me hours upon hours of aggravation.  I can’t Thank You enough for helping me yesterday.

And for McDonalds, I hope you do something to reward Dorri and Hose.  I’m doing my own thing, every single was still there and the wallet didn’t smell like McDonalds!  It’s employees like this that has build your company, and we all know, you have some pretty darn shitty employees.

If you want to give Dorrie or Hose a thumbs up, they work at the McDonalds on Route 62 in Algonquin, Illinois and their phone number is(847) 658-8262.

Local Internet Marketing means a lot, to a lot of people.  I wrote this mantra, of who I am and how  I view this challenge for local businesses.

We understand people.  We learn what people want.  We communicate messages to them.  We study what their peers want, so we can uncover the right product to deliver.  We don’t treat them the same, we want to understand everyone.  We formulate a plan, and change it when it’s not working.  We find a hungry audience behind computers.  We know what works for who, and when to turn it up, or off.  We manage our perceived reputation, we watch it like a hawk.  We are real people in a real world.  We shake hands and are live teachers in front of a live audience.  We have a passion for the small guy.  We want to collectively help the fundamentals of the entire business engine in our country, the small business.  We are marketers.  We run the marketing department.  We are Local Internet Marketers.

I’m sharing this from a friend, Lee Collins, who pointed out this new click bank scam for Haley Milano.

If it’s too good to be true, you know the rest.  Funny isn’t it, that ALL of my competition for Local Marketing Source don’t own their own agency.  I’ve got my agency, few hundred clients, it serves my companies.  But why do these guys want to ‘teach’ you how to run a marketing company and tell you about how easy it is and never have done it?  Bottom line people, those people do Internet Marketing launches because they make money.  Like the people behind this Haley Milano scam. They work well.  Some people I know have made over $9,000,000 in a launch.  Like Andy Jenkins of Video Boss.  He’s legit.  This example here is VERY extreme, but this Clickbank launch could bring in $100k no problem.  My point is that an Internet Marketing launch is done by both ethically moral people, and trolls.  For all I know Hayley Milano is an actress, or that’s not her real name.  I just know this product is a scam and it’s really hurting our industry and must stop.  So, this post is just a little bit of SEO fun, firing some link juice to my buddy Lee’s blog.