ARCSI ‘Local Search’ Presentation for Cleaning Companies
First of all - A BIG ‘Thank You’ to ARCSI for a super conference and the opportunity to present!
Second - A BIG ‘Thank You’ to all the participants who attended Thunder’s ‘Local Search’ presentation!
Last Wednesday (September 10, 2008), I had a great time presenting to a dynamic group of cleaning company owners and executives from around the country at ARCSI national conference in Las Vegas. Below is the link to the ‘local search’ presentation which covered key points including (i) what is local search, (ii) why it matters to regional companies, (iii) step-by-step guide to ranking on the search engine ‘map results’ and (iv) ongoing tactics. Before me was the dynamic duo of Alison Ganz and Cheryl Freiburg of Hawkeye Search Marketing. You can view their pay-per-click presentation online. Please free to leave any comments or contact me directly with questions. Thanks again for a great afternoon! Best regards, Max
Download as a PowerPoint File:
Thunder - ARCSI Local Search Presentation
Google ’10 Pack Map’ Got You Down? or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Local Search
Google continues to force more and more search categories to local search results. I realize ‘forcing’ may seem a bit strong, but Google’s recent addition of the ‘Looking for local results’ prompt has the net effect of pushing geographic searches to the top of the results page vis a vis the ‘10 Pack Map’ and A thru J listings. While this is groundbreaking for local companies trying to get to the top of Page 1 on Google, it poses an interesting challenge for companies that rely on national search results. Read more
Is Traffic from Organic Search better than PPC Traffic?
Although not new news, I still encounter folks who question if traffic from organic search or ppc is more valuable. In general, I find that people believe that traffic from organic search results is higher quality than traffic from ppc. In fact I’ve even heard folks says things like "studies show people trust organic search results 70% more than ppc ads". I have yet to read any empirical studies that prove this, but overall I wouldn’t find it surprising if close to true. Read more
Yes! Google does think your tags and diggs matter!
We all know that Google ranks inbound links as a powerful "vote" for a website. We also accept, generally speaking, that the more quality inbound links a site has, then the higher its page rank, keyword rankings and resulting traffic. With the rise of social media, we are also learning that Google values the diggs, tags or votes a site receives on social media sites. Aside from just the inbound links, traffic spikes and "netizen" awareness that social media sites can generate, they also have a direct impact on Google rankings. Read more
Nofollow tags, Google Local Search and Geo Sitemaps - eVisibility Rocks!
220 of San Diego’s (and from around the county) finest marketing specialists, ppc’ers, seo’ers, trackers, you name, it gathered today downtown at the Omni for an info- and networking packed day. It was my first Interactive Marketing Day event and there was some very helpful information provided by the various presenters. Following are some top line findings.
Advanced SEO Techniques - eVisibility
Once again, the dynamic due of Miguel Salcido (aka ‘searchjunkie ‘ on twitter) and Steven Peron (aka ‘imnotadoctor ‘ on twitter) impressed with empirical studies that demonstrated some key findings in regard to the use of nofollow tags, Google local search and Google geo sitemaps. Miguel and Steven promised to post their findings on the eVisibility blog, following are some highlights:
Optimizing Keywords to Target Customers
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To do this means going to the log files, looking at the keyword search results for how people find a site, and then looking at the terms themselves to determine how many people found the site from searches that include the site’s name (or brand name) and how many found it using industry terms (those that describe the product or service).
Good SEO will result in the number of visitors from industry-related searches growing larger and larger. Read more
Drive New Leads Using SEO
Although familiar by now, Enquino’s 2007 search engine user survey claims that the top 4 organic listings on a search engine results page (SERP) capture 54.9% of clicks for a search term, while the number one organic result captures 26.4%. In contrast, the top pay-per-click ad captures 8.7% of clicks while the number two ad captures only 3.4%.
Those are impressive numbers indeed, and further confirmation of why organic search engine results matter. But a frequent misgiving of search engine optimization (SEO) and SERP’s is that it’s hard to target customers - that SEO casts a wide net capturing all searchers including general prospects (who are a waste of SEO efforts and a potential drain to a company’s sales process).
However, SEO CAN be implemented to attract more targeted and qualified prospects. Read more
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