But which factors really matter? Since Google Places is a fairly new phenomenon, and Google keeps changing their algorithm every 6 months or so, figuring it all out is a moving target.

Experts Weigh in on GeoTargeting

In late 2010, SEOMoz.org published results of an SEO expert survey in which they asked about 100 search engine experts at the top of their game to rank various theoretical website factors’ effects on keyword rankings. Each potential factor needed to be ranked (from high to low): Very Strong, Significant, Moderate, Weak, or None.

Some surprising (and not-so-surprising) results emerged from this study, as you’ll see below. The usual caveats about using survey-based opinion should apply here: while the aggregated opinions of experts do make a useful guide, the following should not be taken as Google gospel.

1. Country Code Top-level Domain (ccTLD, e.g. .de, .fr, .uk)

Investing in a ccTLD helps rank websites ahead of domain names with geographically irrelevant TLDs (.com, .org, .net, .info, .biz) for location based searches. (51% Very Strong, 42% Significant)

2. Geo-Targeted Backlinks

Backlinks coming from websites with high geographical relevancy themselves seem to boost geotargeting efforts above and beyond backlinks coming from no geographical relevancy. (29% Very Strong, 49% Significant)

3. Registration in Google Places

Getting a business website listed in Google Places appears to help the associated website rank higher in location-based searches. Make sure the address written on the website matches EXACTLY the address registered in Google Places. (40% Significant, 42% Moderate)

4. Physical Address in On-Page Text

The experts were divided on the issue of putting the physical address of the business into the displayed text of the website, giving an average of “moderate” effect on geographical ranking in Google. (22% Significant, 34% Moderate, 33% Weak)

5. Geographic Location of Host IP Address

The physical location of the server providing hosting of the website, which can be determined from its IP address, may have a significant effect on how strongly Google associates the website with that region. (This is why we set clients up with hosting providers in their own city whenever possible!) (26% very strong, 49% significant)

6. Address associated with domain registration

When a domain name is registered (or updated), the address of the registrant may appear in the domain registry database, available for search engines (or anyone, really, by means of the WHOIS tool) to read and index, which can boost Google’s evaluation of the regional appropriateness of your website for location-based searches. This effect is probably weak. But if you own your domain name and have no reason to hide your business address, you may as well take that advantage, however small. (32% Moderate, 33.3% Weak)

Your GeoTargeting To-Do List

To boil it all down, here’s where you should spend the most time to get the most geographical bang for the buck:

• Get your business on Google Places. No exceptions! Fill the profile with good information and make sure the address is correct.
• Pick a domain name well suited to your region. If you’re in the US, don’t be afraid of .us — it may give you an advantage over .com
• Make sure your website contains the physical address of your business and that it matches exactly the address in Google Places.
• Focus on getting quality backlinks from other websites in your region, preferably ones with high pagerank.
• Update your domain registration to contain the real physical address of your business (as it is listed in Google Places). If you don’t own your domain name, ask your technical contact to do this; it’s a very simple process.
• If you are not already hosted, get set up with a hosting provider in your own state or metropolitan area, if possible. Make sure the servers are actually located in your region; many hosting providers are reselling services on computers physically located in far-off server farms. (If you are already hosted and have no problems with your provider, I don’t recommend investing the time in changing providers.)

Since backlinking is so important and such a broad area of concern, we’ll soon be posting an article (if not several articles) full of ideas on how to acquire good quality backlinks that improve location-based search engine rankings.

This tip for how to increase readership comes from Willy Franzen of Copyblogger.com, who points out that the word “subscribe” carries, for many people, an implication of monetary cost.

Therefore, the one simple trick you can use to increase blog subscriptions by (he claims) 254% is to replace the word “subscribe” with a synonym that doesn’t carry the connotation of requiring payment.

Examples:

• “Get X by E-mail” and “Get X by RSS.”
• “Get updates by e-mail”
• “Sign up for email updates”
• “Stay Up to Date by Email”
• “Get Free RSS Updates”

And a couple of more creative ones:

• “Stalk Lisa’s Hot News!”
• “Don’t miss a thing!”
• “FREE FOREVER”

Do you have another creative replacement for “Subscribe” on your blog? Did you see an increase in readership when you changed this one piece of text on your website? Comment and let me know!

Often you will find that someone has registered the domain name you want but isn’t using it for anything in particular, or has an ad portal set up on it to try and ensnare unwary search engine users. This outcome always feels terrible — how dare they take up an honest domain name with their pointless, spammy drivel!

The good news is that these spammy portal sites often aren’t making their owners any money, especially after the “Google Slap” of 2008 when most of these sites were penalized in the rankings and no longer attract any search traffic. That means you could probably proposition the site owner for a purchase deal.

The bad news is that site owners can be extortionate as soon as they realize how badly you want that domain name. So it’s best to play down the needs of your specific business, and try and appear as an independent domain speculator or internet marketer who could just as well purchase many other domain names for their next conquest.

Tracking Down the Site Owner

The WHOIS service (by IANA – don’t be fooled by the other search results you get for “WHOIS”, which are just trying to sell you domain names — or worse, use your domain name searches as market research!)

You can use this form right here to query the IANA WHOIS service to see who owns the domain name you want. (Use your browser’s back button to come back after the query.)

You’ll also be able to find out when the domain goes out of registration, so you can make a choice about whether to approach the site owner for a buy or whether to “snap up” the domain when it’s released (out of registration).

“Snapping”

If you can wait a bit, and you can tolerate not knowing whether your desired domain will be reregistered, then you can lie in wait to “snap up” a domain when it goes up for sale — perhaps with the creative use of calendaring to send you an alert at the appropriate time.

Or you can get an account with one of the “domain snapping” services such as snapdomains.com. If the domain name in question could be a hot item, then an automatic service could be a better bet than relying on your ability to fill in forms quickly.

Level Up with a Different TLD

While dot-com domains are typically considered the “gold standard” for internet businesses, remember, there’s more to the internet than dot-com.

If appropriate, you can choose from .us (for the USA), .net (which means very little nowadays), and .org (suitable for nonprofits and communities). Outside of the US, in fact, domain names that include a country code are often considered far more trustworthy; Canadians, for example, seem to prefer .ca as a sort of national pride. Of course it doesn’t hurt that .xx country code TLDs have seen far fewer domain registrations than the over-booked dot-com span.

So before you despair, get clever! Here’s a list of sites that make ingenious use of non-dot-com TLDs:

• write.ly
• mov.ie
• del.icio.us
• domai.nr
• nowskip.to
• ma.tt
• locutusofb.org

Cool Tool: Use Domainr to boost your powers of cleverness; domai.nr suggests non-dot-com domain names for your keywords.

Back to the Drawing Board

If the domain you want isn’t available at the price you need, then perhaps it’s time to brainstorm a different domain name…

• Accurately describes your brick-and-mortar and/or local-area service business.
• Encourages search engines to rank your website highly for the region of the world that your business targets.
• Makes it easy enough for previous customers to find you again from memory.

Unfortunately, picking a name can be a lot more work than it sounds. You need to integrate all of the following:

• keyword research to determine the best niche to target;
• competition research to figure out who’s succeeding at targeting your niche, and why;
• picking a name that reflects the true name of your business so your existing customers can find you;
• incorporating some or all of the keywords you want to target, so that new customers can find you.

Phew! That’s a lot of work just for a silly name. But choosing a domain name could be the most important decision you make for your online marketing.

What’s In a Name?

Now, the domain name — the base portion of your URL — has one of the greatest effects on your search engine rankings. If you want to get a lot of search traffic for “best pizza in san francisco”, then calling your domain name “bestpizzainsanfrancisco.com” might not be a bad idea …but then again, unless your business is named “Best Pizza in SF”, calling your domain name something other than your business name will make it harder for your existing customers to find you.

So the best domain name will be a compromise between keyword ranking concerns and your actual business name.

If your business is named “Denver Auto Repair”, then congratulations, you’ve got the perfect domain name (if the current owner will sell, that is). Most people will find their situation a little more complicated than that.

Let’s look again at the San Francisco Pizza scene. We see that among the top rankers in google Places for “san francisco pizza”, not a one is named “san francisco pizza”. (Perhaps that’s because serving anything called San Francisco pizza would not be a selling point… ahem.)

That tells us two things:

1. There may be a market opportunity for a pizzeria wishing to claim the name “San Francisco Pizza” (again, a dubious distinction, but let’s go with it for the sake of argument) — indeed, at the time of this writing, several relevant domain names such as sanfranciscopizza.com appear to be for sale.
2. Just having “pizza” in the URL and the correct business address on the website (containing “San Francisco”) is good enough to compete with other San Francisco pizzerias for the top spots on Google for the fairly well-trafficked “San Francisco pizza” search phrase.

So don’t despair that your family-owned business of 5 generations will see its online presence go totally generic. Chances are you can have your quirks and eat them too.

Consider a Geo-Targeted Top-Level Domain Name

An underappreciated point: when you’re a brick-and-mortar business looking for a web presence that ties internet customers directly to your local, “real life” address, you may actually do better with a geotargeted top-level domain name versus the standard .com.

Geo-specific TLDs (top-level domains) include .us, .de, .au, .ca, and so on.

A slight but still significant search engine advantage goes to websites sitting on (for example) .de domain names when the business resides in Germany.

Since most .com businesses relate to the United States, the difference in ranking between .com and .us may be negligible. But as competition grows for Google Places spots, every ounce of geotargeting will eventually matter.

ps. what happens when you want to go international? StateofSearch.com has a good article on how to structure domains to get the best positioning in each region.

One has to wonder at their QRcode’s response rate, and also that rate versus directly typing in their URL. (The flier says there may be hope for those who take the time to read it; how about those who don’t read it and instead head straight for the QRCode? Heh.)

Original photo taken by @raum

The Toast Theory: They’re only going to read the first 12 words of your email. Maybe.

Here’s an excellent missive on The Toast Theory by Charles N. Cox on his blog. Read it. Live it.

People get too much email. Important people get WAY too much email.

You’ve got to nail that sales email, the very first one, or else all future emails are going straight to the spam folder.

Think: What’s going to pop in twelve words?

Just another indication of how important the Mobile Web is becoming, and how important it is to get your business showing up in as many internet “places” as possible!

Also interesting to note, this report says that “18-34 Year Olds Account for Nearly 60 Percent of Check-In Service Users”. The all-important young adult demographic continues to push more and more of their daily lives into their mobile phones.

The fulltext of the press release can be read below.

70 Percent of Mobile Users “Checking-In” from an Android or Apple Phone

Check-In Service Users Demonstrate Strong Propensity for Mobile Media Usage

RESTON, VA, May 12, 2011 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released the results from a study of mobile social networking check-in service users based on data from its comScore MobiLens service. The study found that 16.7 million U.S. mobile subscribers used location-based “check-in” services on their phones in March 2011, representing 7.1 percent of the entire mobile population. 12.7 million check-in users did so on a smartphone, representing 17.6 percent of the smartphone population. The study also found that check-in service users showed a high propensity for mobile media usage, including accessing retail sites and shopping guides, and displayed other characteristics of early adopters, including a stronger likelihood of owning a tablet device and accessing tech news, when compared to the average smartphone user.

“Although still in their relative infancy, location-based mobile check-in services are seeing rather impressive adoption among smartphone users,” said Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile. “The ability to interact with consumers on this micro-local level through special offers, deals and other incentives provides brands with the real-time opportunity to engage consumers through their mobile device.”

18-34 Year Olds Account for Nearly 60 Percent of Check-In Service Users

Check-in service users, defined as those accessing services such as Facebook Places, Foursquare and Gowalla, had heavy skews toward 18-24 year olds (26.0 percent) and 25-34 year olds (32.5 percent) in relation to both the total mobile audience and the overall smartphone audience. They were more likely to be full-time students (23.3 percent) when compared with total mobile (14.6 percent) or overall smartphone users (16.5 percent). Nearly half (46.4 percent) of check-in users were employed full time, slightly less than the percentage of smartphone users who were employed full time (53.3 percent). Both check-in service and smartphone users were more likely to be employed full time than overall mobile users (38.9 percent).
Demographic Profile for Check-In Service Users
3 Month Avg. Ending Mar. 2011
Total U.S. Mobile Subscribers Ages 13+
Source: comScore MobiLens
% of Total Mobile Users % of Smartphone Users % of Check-In Service Users
Total Audience: 13+ yrs old [Age] 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%
Male 48.0% 53.9% 49.2%
Female 52.0% 46.1% 50.8%
Age: 13-17 7.1% 6.0% 8.3%
Age: 18-24 12.5% 17.5% 26.0%
Age: 25-34 17.6% 27.3% 32.5%
Age: 35-44 16.8% 21.8% 18.7%
Age: 45-54 17.8% 15.0% 9.7%
Age: 55-64 14.1% 7.8% 3.0%
Age: 65+ 14.0% 4.7% 1.7%
Employed full time 38.9% 53.3% 46.6%
Employed part time 10.5% 9.0% 10.2%
Not employed but not retired 15.1% 12.5% 13.5%
Full-time student 14.6% 16.5% 23.3%
Retired or Other 20.9% 8.8% 6.3%

3 in 4 Users “Checking In” from a Smartphone Device

Of the 16.7 million people using check-in services on their mobile devices, 12.7 million (76.3 percent) did so via a smartphone device. Android accounted for the largest share of check-in service users with 36.6 percent checking-in from an Android device, while 33.7 percent of users checked in from an iPhone, with Apple having the highest representation relative to its percentage of the total smartphone market (Index of 132). RIM accounted for 22 percent of check-in service users, while Microsoft, Palm and Symbian each accounted for less than 5 percent.
Check-In Service Users by Smartphone Platform
3 Month Avg. Ending Mar. 2011
Total U.S. Mobile Subscribers Ages 13+
Source: comScore MobiLens
% of Smartphone Users % of Check-In Service Users Index
Total Smartphone Audience: 13+ yrs old 100.0% 100.0% 100
Android 34.7% 36.6% 105
RIM 27.1% 22.0% 81
Apple 25.5% 33.7% 132
Microsoft 7.5% 4.3% 57
Palm 2.8% 2.0% 72
Symbian 2.3% 1.2% 51

Index = % of Check-In Service Users /% of Smartphone Users x 100;
Index of 100 indicates average representation

Mobile Check-In Service Users Display Strong Propensity for Mobile Media Usage

When compared with an average smartphone owner, social networking check-in users were more likely to access mobile media across a majority of content categories. More than 95 percent of check-in service users used their mobile browser or applications. Nearly 62 percent accessed news. Check-in user behavior was also consistent with that of traditional early adopters, with 40.3 percent of users accessing tech news and 28.2 percent owning a media tablet, both significantly higher than average.

Check-in service users also showed a high propensity for accessing retail-related destinations on their mobile devices. Nearly one-third of users accessed online retail sites on their mobiles, while one-fourth accessed shopping guides. Check-in service users were also more likely to be exposed to mobile advertising, with nearly 40 percent recalling seeing a web or app ad during the month, compared to just 27.5 percent of smartphone users.
Smartphone Check-In Service Users by Access of Select Mobile Categories
3 Month Avg. Ending Mar. 2011
Total U.S. Mobile Subscribers Ages 13+
Source: comScore MobiLens
% of Smartphone Users % of Check-In Service Users Index
Total Audience: 13+ yrs old 100.0% 100.0% 100
Used application 85.0% 97.5% 115
Used browser 82.3% 96.3% 117
Accessed news 47.2% 61.9% 131
Accessed restaurant information 27.6% 45.9% 166
Accessed tech news 27.1% 40.3% 149
Recall seeing web/app ads 27.5% 38.7% 141
Accessed online retail 17.9% 32.6% 182
Media tablet user 19.6% 28.2% 144
Accessed shopping guides 14.3% 25.0% 176
Accessed travel service 11.8% 22.0% 186

Index = % of Check-In Service Users /% of Smartphone Users x 100;
Index of 100 indicates average representation

http://localseo.org/reach-the-7-box-quickly-by-analyzing-competition

1. Get your business listing up to “100% complete”.

Fill out the whole form. Put up at least two photos and a video if you can swing it.

You’ll know you’re done when the little bar on the side of your business’s Places dashboard is filled up and says “100%”.

2. Build Your Google Reputation With Citations

Google uses mentions of your business around the web to build your ranking and reputation on Google Places. Or as LocalSEO put it,

For local business listings, then new king is citations. Each time the Google bots find a mention of your business by name, address and phone number, your business gets a point.

In other words, it’s good to be talked about! When a local shopper comes into your market, for example, and casually mentions her food blog, ask her what she’s been blogging about. Get a dialog going, find out what’s important to her audience — you may find out a few useful things about your customer base in the process. Customers who feel they have a personal connection to local businesses are far more likely to keep them in their thoughts.

Who knows — if you start doing something remarkable in your business, like providing innovative free recipes for interesting seasonal produce, perhaps you can inspire a few blog posts or interviews from local writers.

3. Page Rank Still Applies: Get Backlinks!

One under-appreciated fact is that Google Places pages can be treated just like regular web pages! That means the standard tricks of Page Rank do apply here: quality back-links will help build rank in Google Places. Try to get links from other websites, preferably coming from sites that have similar content to the focus of your business, and even link to your Google Places page from your own business’s website.

4. Get Reviewed!

Even bad reviews are useful to get your business more Google juice, but obviously it’s best to keep these to a minimum. Remember that an unhappy customer is far more likely to post a review than a happy customer, so you need to be proactive about encouraging reviews after positive transactions to keep your happy/unhappy ratio in the black.

Reviews in Google Places can be collected from many different review-based websites, so your customers do not have to go through the often painful process of submitting an actual Google Review (and it’s not clear whether reviews posted on Google have any more clout than a review collected from, say, Yelp).

Encourage your customers to leave reviews in a niche-appropriate location depending on your business. Doctors and dentists may want to send folks to DoctorOogle.com, while salons and restaurants should look to Yelp and CitySearch.

Lastly, don’t put all of your social media “eggs” in one basket, as SmallBizTrends.com points out. Google can be a Fickle lover. Let your customers post reviews where they prefer, but if you see too many building up from one source, try to encourage a little diversity.

5. Re-evaluate Your Keywords

The steps above really should do the trick, but often you’re in a highly competitive market and it may be too difficult to rank highly for the keywords and phrases you initially chose in your Google Places categories and specialties. There may be less-searched-for but still quite promising keywords in your business’s niche market that you could take advantage of.

By the same token, maybe no one is actually searching for the phrases you chose! It does no good to optimize for the wrong keywords.

Either way, a keyword reevaluation must be done to figure out the reason you aren’t ranking as highly as you ought to be.

Most Local SEO Services includes careful keyword research to determine the best keyword choices for your needs. If you’re having trouble with your quest to get your business to the top of Google Places — or if you simply have far too little time! — please use our Contact Page to ask for a free initial consultation.

Quick Response codes (QR codes for short) look like that icon to the left. They enable a mobile-phone-equipped viewer to take a picture of the code and find themselves in the midst of an action of the code-generator’s choosing:

• opens a URL in a browser (any website, including Facebook pages)
• brings up a phone number which the user may choose to instantly dial
• sends an SMS containing pre-specified text to the specified phone number or shortcode
• pops up a message in a phone’s alert window (such as a coupon or special deal)

Entrepreneur dot com’s marketing columnist Star Hall recently posted the following “Five Ways You Can Get Started With QR Code Marketing”:

Step 1: Decide where you want to offer the code for scanning. Will you put it on a poster on your storefront, a direct mail piece, a for-sale sign, or your products? You can also include it on invitations and business cards. Make it easy for prospects to access and visible from all angles.

Step 2: Determine what your message is. Where do you want to send those receiving the code? Or what do you want to give them? Think about what action you want them to take once they land on the website or receive the information. Do you want their email address? Or do you just want them to like a fan page or engage by answering a question? You can also offer specials or discounts. Put the code on a product and send readers to an online site to place an order.

Step 3: Create your code: There are hundreds of sites that now offer QR code creation services. Some charge; most don’t. The ones that charge are usually pushing marketing services to accompany the QR code creation — something to consider but not necessary. If you do opt for help with marketing your QR code, ask the vendor to cite some case history successes as well as challenges. It is important to know what worked and what did not. Always learn from other peoples’ QR mistakes.

Here is a sampling of QR sites:
qr.net
createandtrack.com
qurify.com/
http://createqrcode.appspot.com/

Step 4: Brand and market your QR code. Be creative but remember you want consumers to not only receive the information quickly but also to take action right away. You can draw in prospects with an offer to visit a storefront or a website. Free stuff is always good. Discounts work, too. You could even incorporate the QR code into an entertaining game. A treasure hunt might be fun.

Step 5: Track your progress. You need to take the time to measure the outcome of your QR code campaign. When you create your code, make sure that analytics or tracking will be available, whether it’s measuring the number of scans or another activity by the hour or day. Some forms of tracking allow you to see what type of device people used for their scan as well. If you are using a URL for your QR code, you can make it one specific for this campaign and then track it with Google Analytics.

With the myriad mediums QR Codes could be integrated, they are a great way not just to engender creative communication channels with your customers, but also to put real numbers on your marketing efforts. Billboards, for example, are nearly impossible to judge the effectiveness of. Adding a QR code to a medium such as a flyer or even this innovative Calvin Klein ad (at right) could potentially give your business some perspective on how likely a given advertisement is to generate action on the part of the consumer.

Getting QRious how quick response codes could benefit your business?  Most Local SEO offers QR Code marketing after a free consultation. Get creative!

According to 2010 August 28 figures from Hitwise (Top Search Engines by Volume).

Top Search Engines for 2010