Currently, Eyeflow  offers Google Local Listing support to several of our clients.  We started doing this over a year ago when we realized how powerful a draw the local section of Google’s Search Engine Response Pages created. For those of you who aren’t sure what I’m talking about when I mention Google Local listings, here is

an example for you. 

Although Google Local listings show up in the search engine response pages above the organic listings, they are organized using a totally different algorithm which means that a site in the Google local results won’t automatically have a place at the top of the organic listings and the number one organic search result won’t necessarily have a listing in the Google Local result. 

Now, Google has taken the Google Local services a step further. They’ve updated Google Maps to include a more expansive view of a business and other locations for Google users. They’ve called it a Google Place Pages. 

What’s on a Google Place Page?

To give an example of what Google includes on the new place pages, I searched for “Pittsburgh Colleges” in Google Maps and picked Carlow College as an example. The following is a screen shot of the Google Place Page:

Google has included a large amount of user generated information on the Place Page. This means that, unlike the old local listings where only businesses were allowed to contribute information, seemingly anyone can contribute information to the Google Local Pages.  Additionally, competitors are able to buy a presence on a specific business’s Google Place Page through Google Adwords. 

What do Google Place Pages Mean for Me?

Google Place Pages may significantly change the way searchers use the web. By offering such a wealth of information about a specific business, Google effectively lowers the impetus of the searcher to actually travel to the official school or corporate website.  This means a number of things:

1. Businesses need to pay attention to what is being written about them or in their name on many different sites because these comments will likely appear on the Place Page.
2. Other authority sites that display your information may be used as sources for Google Place Pages information.
3. There is a whole new way to promote your site and disseminate information about your business

The Hidden Benefits of Google Place Pages

The same things that may seem like disadvantages at first site can actually be entirely  new ways of promoting your business or website.

For instance, you can create loads of user generated content on your own. You can edit your Wikipedia entry, create maps centered around your business, urge satisfied customers to review your site, and take action in many other ways to further control user experience on the Google Place Pages. 

As with most things online, the Place Pages are a double edged sword. They can be an invaluable marketing tool or a gateway to your competitors’ websites, depending on how well you utilize the information they offer.

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• Hi @AshlieWTAE I see your twitter says Pittsburgh is the best city in the world. Help us prove it! Go here for details: http://j.mp/NIn1f #
• Why Your Company Needs Social Media http://j.mp/2ZBkQL Sales Prospecting, Customer Service, Sales Retention – good thoughts #
• http://twitpic.com/ittar – The second meeting with google ceo eric shmidt began #
• http://twitpic.com/itmph – heading to the next event at hienz feild #
• http://twitpic.com/itkqf – google ceo talking with pittsburgh professionals #
• http://twitpic.com/itgui – Pittsburgh chatting with google ceo eric shmidt #
• President of pghtech introducing google ceo eric schmidt #
• http://twitpic.com/itbnu – Breakfast time at pre g20 forum #
• http://twitpic.com/it99v – Eyeflow SEO arived at pre g20 forum with google #
• Google This: 5 Reasons to Switch to Bing http://j.mp/eS7m2 – yeah but does it have the #1 reason… relevant results? #

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Technology in Pittsburgh

Yesterday, the Eyeflow team was privileged to attend the Pittsburgh Technology Council’s breakfast event featuring Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt.

Mr. Schmidt and the Pittsburgh Technology Council’s leader Audrey Russo first participated in a “fireside chat” style conversation while PTC members breakfasted on eggs, bacon, and potatoes. The conversation revolved primarily around Pittsburgh’s vibrant technology industry, the benefits of having technically-oriented universities such as Carnegie Mellon in the city, and – surprisingly enough – the benefits of online gaming and how teenagers are not wasting their time while indulging in this pastime.

A bevy of questions from the audience followed ranging from Google’s stance on investing in renewable energy sources (they’re for it) to which direction Google will take as they move towards diversifying their product offerings (downloads store, possible hosting services etc.)

This chat was followed by a 45 minute break after which point, Mr. Schmidt gave a more formal talk to an audience including members of the international press as well as CMU students, and those who stayed on after the first talk concluded. (Click here for more pictures)

What WASN’T discussed

Mr. Schmidt provided a lot of insightful information about Google’s investment plans, his stance on the web and how technology is affecting politics, health care, and industry. He did, however, fail to speak about that which Google does best: Search.

Clearly, Eric had to speak to his audience which consisted of a rather mixed group of entrepreneurs, tech company VPs and the like, so I can’t fault him for avoiding the nuts and bolts of the Caffeine update or the new page rank distribution algo. However, the subject of search and where Google sees itself in terms of it’s biggest service didn’t come up once.

Was it because, though he spoke extensively about the need for transparency online, Google must by necessity keep its search algorithm highly secret? Was it because the diverse audience would have been bored by such tech speak? Probably. But I was still a bit disappointed by the complete lack of search discussion.

Takeaways

The main points I took away from Eric’s commentary were as follows:

• Pittsburgh is a great place to be right now if you want to start up or are already in the Tech industry
• Search Engine Optimization will still be important for the foreeable future since there will be increasing competition online in all industries
• Google is about to become much, much more than a search engine
• Gaming online is apparently not a giant waste of time.

Eric came across as being a really down to Earth, truthful and sincere person who was genuinely concerned with social ethics and the state of the world and especially developing countries. It was a real treat getting to hear his insights.

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When performing search engine optimization for Real Estate websites, there are a few difficult challenges to face right off the bat:

• Incredible competitiveness of most key phrases containing the term “Real Estate”
• The diverse geo locations often requested by real estate clients
• The number of other real estate companies actively using SEO to boost rankings
• The number of sites using blackhat techniques to achieve rankings

Online Real Estate Competition

Online competition for Real Estate companies and individual agents may not come from expected sources.  A search for the term “Pittsburgh Real Estate” yielded results that included not only well known names like Howard Hannah and Prudential, but also numerous aggregation sites like Zillow and Homes.com.   A search for the term “Real Estate” placed these types of sites above any actual realtor’s websites.  These sites optimize heavily,  rank highly and then sell traffic and leads to realtors.  It is against these sites that private realtors and small real estate companies must compete.

The good news is that most of these companies’ optimization efforts are off-page.  A smaller real estate company can focus entire pages of good content on a location or specific keyword and, by doing so, can create a great resource that search engines will rank higher than other sites featuring sub-par content.

Diverse Locations for Real Estate.

Often times, one company will have offerings in several different locations. Whether they are trying to corner the market in several cities, several states or even several countries, the challenge remains the same: creating a web presence in all of those areas.  Diversifying on this level often means that both on page and off page SEO efforts need to be segmented.  Keyword lists have to be created for every location and link building efforts must be split up to contain those segmented keywords.  The good news is that by using a lot of on-page optimization, even smaller local real estate companies have a good chance of beating out the 800 lb gorillas of their industry in the SERPS.

Actively Optimized Company

Real Estate is one of the industries that has optimized for the search engines the quickest. In many other industries, the bare minimum of on page optimization and link building would be sufficient to beat out both actual industry competitors as well as online competitors.  Real estate and real estate-related websites need full blown SEO campaigns in order to to compete online.

Competitors Using Nefarious Optimization Tactics

As with any ultra-competitive field, there are those who will do almost anything to rank highly for real estate keywords.  They employ shady techniques on their sites that succeed in temporarily gaining them rankings for competitive keywords. These methods that go against best practices only provide results until either Google and the other Search Engines realize what’s going on or a competitor reports them.  Therefore, although you may find yourself temporarily loosing rankings to these types of sites, it is not advisable to duplicate their efforts. In most cases, a domain gets banned for breaking the rules. That means starting everything over again from scratch.

Seo Levels the Playing Field

SEO is an invaluable search engine marketing strategy, especially for local real estate agents and small firms.  The same search for “Pittsburgh Real Estate” that I mentioned positioned the local Northwood Realty first, above Howard Hannah and Prudential Preferred. That is the power of on page and off page SEO for Real Estate.

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It recently occurred to me that the education industry has a rather love/hate relationship with search engine optimization and online marketing in general. Online Colleges such as Devry University and the University of Phoenix have picked up the importance of SEO quickly. However, very few brick and mortar schools seem to recognize the importance of the internet to their marketing campaigns.

Some of the most common reasons that post secondary schools give for not integrating SEO campaigns are that:

• None of their competitors are doing it
• Students will find their way to the school’s website anyway
• They’re already paying for a PPC campaign
• (rarely) They have enough leads already

Dispelling These Misguided SEO Notions

Let’s tackle these reasons one at a time:

None of the College’s Competitors are using SEO in their Campaigns.

This might be true from one point of view.  It may be that no other universities in their area are using SEO. However, online competitors and actual industry competitors can differ greatly.

An online competitor is anyone who might be optimizing for the same set of keywords. That means that for the University of Pittsburgh, anyone optimizing for “Pittsburgh Universities” or “Pittsburgh Colleges” would be a potential online competitor.

Currently, a Google search for “Pennsylvania Colleges” yields results with 50states.com, Univsource.com, wikipeida.org, collegescolleges.com, and several more directory type sites. There is not an actual college on the first page of Google at all.

These directory sites are also called Lead Gen Sites because they generate traffic for competitive educational search terms and then resell the leads from interested searchers, usually at a premium. So instead of optimizing their own websites to bring students to an environment they can control, schools instead find themselves relying on these lead gen sites for the majority of their web traffic.

Students will find their way to the school’s website anyway

While this may be true, why wait and take a chance that they won’t? The rest of the school’s marketing budget is usually spent on making sure that prospective students will remember their school’s name and branding. So what happens when that student goes online and finds everything but the school’s site? What are the odds that they will actually make it to the school’s site without getting turned off by spammy looking lead gen sites? With a strong, optimized site, colleges and universities wouldn’t have to worry about these questions.

Schools are already paying for PPC campaigns

One of the biggest misconceptions in the industry is that PPC=SEO. Paid advertising is useful in certain areas, such as reaching for fringe keyphrases that are not at the center of one’s business. However, the ads that appear in the sidebar in Google only get a fraction of the attention that the first five organic results get. Additionally, it is now possible (not only legal, but allowed by Google) to bid on a competitor’s brand names. That means that anyone can bid for “University of Pittsburgh” and if they’re paying enough and have a good enough landing page, beat out Pitt for their own name!

Schools Have Enough Leads and Web Traffic Already.

Very rarely do we hear this particular excuse, but occasionally, there are smaller colleges that already have full admissions for the next several years. This does not mean that they should neglect their web presence. A first place or top five position on Google is vital to keeping their brand cohesive and maintaining a good online reputation. If a disgruntled student’s poor review on Yelp comes up first, the school is in a very bad way indeed.

Investing in Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization is one of the most cost effective and successful means of marketing.  For a relatively small investment (when compared to the cost of a PPC campaign or television advertisement) a strong, lasting web presence can be developed online.  The education industry is right up there with real estate and pharmaceuticals when it comes to online interest. Almost every student searching for a college will try online at least once.  By not optimizing their sites, Colleges and Universities are loosing a valuable chance to reach prospective students and maintain their good name online.

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Online reputation is a buzzword that gets bruited about a lot lately. But what exactly is it, and more importantly how can it be managed?

A successful online presence is composed of many different elements.

• Online Presence: When someone types your brand name into Google, what results do they see? What they SHOULD see is your website followed by a few social media profile pages (like your profile on Facebook, Linkedin etc.) and maybe a couple review sites with reviews. What they should NOT see is your website followed by a string of unanswered negative comments across several social media platforms.
• Negative Comments: Unfortunately, not everyone can be pleased all of the time. Naturally, it’s those that are unhappy with the service or product that they’ve recieved that are also the most vocal about their dissapointment. It’s vastly important that a business is aware of the buzz going on about them whether its positive or negative. Answering negative comments can actually be a great way of turning a bad situation into a positive one.
• Competitors using your material: It’s an unfortunate fact that competitors will ruthlessly steal material from your site and use your carefully crafted ad copy or keywords to augment their own online presnece and muddy the branding waters. The good news is that you can jump on them. The bad news is that you may be completely unaware of what they’re doing.
• Blog Reviews and Comments: Blogs are an extremely popular way to promote your product or business, and getting blog reviews is a wonderful way to drive traffic to your site as well as add link juice. However, it’s important to keep an eye on reviews from high traffic blogs in case a malcontent decides to air his or her opinions in there. Finding and confronting these comments is a very important aspect of online reputation management.

Online Reputation Companies

There are many companies who claim to be able to manage your online reputation for you.  However, a truly successful online reputation management campaign can only really be done with significant input from the company who initiates it.  A real expert is usually needed to confront problems on a person to person level. However, monitoring and setting up social media networks in order to influence an online reputation can safely be left up to a third party company.  Things like

• Blog Creation
• Social Media network set up
• Mention Monitoring
• Brand Name Monitoring

are all time consuming tasks that can easily be outsourced to an online reputation management company.  This company can alert the proper person when something goes awry.

Failing to pay attention to what people say bout your business does not mean that those comments won’t exist.  You need to be increasingly active in managing and being aware of your online reputation.

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When visiting Google today you may notice a slight change. The search box and buttons is much bigger than it normally is. Is this Google trying to appeal to senior citizens?


Read the rest of this entry »

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Consumers no longer go to the Yellow Pages in order to find services that we need or businesses they want to find.  If you’re searching for something, you’ll likely Google it, or go online and use some other search engine to find what you want.  That means that businesses absolutely must invest in online marketing, to make sure they reach potential customers before their competitors do.

This is not to say that traditional marketing has fallen by the wayside.  Newspaper ads, billboards, radio spots and TV Commercials still reach millions and millions of people every day.  These types of advertising should definitely not be overlooked.  However, the new advertising possibilities available online need to be incorporated into traditional marketing campaigns.

Branding Across Advertising Methods

The overall goal is to make sure that all the impressions your company makes on potential customers are branded seamlessly so there is no question in the user’s mind that they have reached the right website through keywords that were mentioned in the newspaper ad they read or the TV commercial they saw.  Integrating all of these various advertising methods is a difficult task, but an ultimately rewarding one in terms of ROI.

Using a Website as a Conversion Machine

Your website should be carefully crafted to enhance the look and feel of your other marketing materials. It should use the same color scheme, slogan, catch phrases, and imagery in the logo and any other visuals that exist on the site.  By seamlessly incorporating your website into your overall branding scheme, you’ll guarantee that users who make it to your site know why they came there and that they’re in the right place to find what they are looking for.

A Corporate website is the perfect central location for all other marketing efforts to focus.  It’s much easier to get a potential customer to go online and look of your corporate website than pick up the phone and cold call your company.  Say, for instance, that your billboard for flooring installation successfully caught someone’s eye, but (as so often happens with billboards) they forget the name of the company.  They go home and with flooring still on their mind, they search for flooring companies in their city. If your website is not in the top results, the bill board impression was wasted.  Previously, there was no chance to recoup a wasted impression from outdoor advertising. Now you can capitalize on it with your website.

Advertising Online

Your optimized website can be utilized not only as a source of sales and leads, but also as an incredible information source for what your customers are looking for when they find you. By using a good analytics program, you can see what words they used when searching for you, how relevant your products were to the words they found you with and all kinds of other excellent demographic information to help you as you structure other elements of your advertising campaign.

All too often  the extreme usefulness of a website is completely overwhelmed by traditional marketing considerations when the two should really be working in tandem to provide your business with a fantastic presence both online and offline.

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Online Real Estate Competition

If you are a realtor, a landlord or a real estate management company or investment company, you’re well aware of how incredibly hard it is to get your site ranking up there with all of the real estate lead generation websites and directories.  Many webmasters in the real estate industry find themselves resorting to pay per click campaigns and affiliate programs in order to drum up web traffic to their site.  This is a very costly and very inefficient way to got about online marketing.  Eliminating the middle man by bringing in traffic to your own site where you can interact personally with prospective clients, leads or tenants or investors can be of incalculable value.

Why is Search Engine Optimization Necessary?

Real estate is one of the most heavily searched for terms on the internet.  There are literally millions of results for that word, and literally hundreds of thousands of searches for it every day.  The small business owner has virtually no chance of competing with the 800 lb. gorillas in the industry without professional help.  On the other hand, a well optimized site can be the great equalizer in the competitive online environment for real estate. 

Many websites that get served up for real estate searches, especially geo located ones (i.e. Pittsburgh Real Estate or Pennsylvania Real Estate) are simply directories with very little specialized information on them.  You can easily compete with these types of sites, especially for local searches, simply by having a well optimized, Search Engine friendly website with lots of good, interesting content on it and a good link profile.

SEO vs. Pay Per Click for the Real Estate Industry

Paying for leads, or clicks, or paying per visit in any other way is more or less like renting a house instead of buying it. Buying traffic like this makes an expense out of a potential investment.  SEO generates longer lasting, more permanent and useful results.  It also costs a lot less in the long run.  Additionally, as soon as you stop paying on your PPC campaigns you loose all the traffic immediately.  This is an inefficient and costly way to drive traffic to your site. 

Developing a Real Estate Web Presence Online

Whether you’re trying to attract investors or potential tenants, the internet is by far the best, most cost effective way to do both.  More and more people are searching online instead of buying news papers.  Even those newspapers have online versions to attract online traffic. If you don’t have a stable web presence and at least a landing page on the internet, you’re missing out on thousands of potential visitors.  Search Engine Optimization and good Search Engine friendly web design can help you create that presence. 

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