As part of a series on the modern digital landscape, InterBusiness Issues published an article by Marquette Group’s Interactive Directors Gary Richmond and Steve Jurken.  The subject?  How businesses can increase their visibility in terms of “So-Lo-Mo”.  Social Media, Local Search, and Mobile Marketing are three core areas that no business seeking to attract local leads can ignore.

Read what strategies Gary and Steve suggest in Optimizing Your Visibility To So-Lo-Mo Status in the Feburary 2012 issue of InterBusiness Issues.

InterBusiness Issues recently sat down with company president Eric Webb to discuss the modern media landscape, his vision of the company, its products, and its future as a digital agency. See why he’s optimistic about the opportunities available to advertisers seeking to connect to consumers on a local level.

Check it out in the February 2012 issue of InterBusiness Issues!

The latest version of PowerListings now includes the ability to update enhanced content such as photos, videos and other descriptive fields within moments. Sites with this ability are now known as Turbo sites. 

The flexibility to quickly make updates to local listings allows businesses to add current and exciting updates, keeping their profiles fresh and interesting for shoppers.

The network of partner sites has expanded by adding 24 emerging local search portals. These partners bring a robust expansion to the distribution of local listings, particularly focusing on mobile search apps and GPS devices.

For more information on how to get started, or to add the new emerging partners to your existing PowerListings campaign, contact Marquette Group today!

Large brands and their local businesses have a vested interest in making sure every listing ranks in the top 10 for local search results. While each local search portal has a different algorithm for sorting through the hundreds or thousands of business listing results, there is no doubt that properly claiming and setting up each listing is the best first step.

Even though the ranking factors are always changing, there is a generally agreed upon set of best practices to make sure listings are fully optimized. The better you understand and use them, the more likely you are to get business.

Specifically for Google, here are the top 10 factors for listing rank. (source: 2011 Local Search Ranking Factors).

1. Physical Address in City of Search – Having an address that is physically within the search area is far and away the most important factor for local ranking. Unfortunately, this is very difficult to optimize for unless you’re willing to move your place of business. If you are trying to get on the first page of a nearby city or town where you’re not actually located, it often comes down to how many other competitors are already in that area.
2. Manually Owner-Verified Places Page – Manually owner-verifying every business listing is still the most beneficial method to distribute accurate information. However, for many organizations and brands this just isn’t realistic. Google’s bulk verification methods are a great way to improve ranking and improve data integrity for large volumes of listings.
3. Proper Category Associations – Choosing categories that are already established by Google is always advised. Custom categories are available, but they won’t match up with important keywords for products and searches as well. Make sure these categories are chosen to cover your specific business model, but also are broad enough to capture a high volume of searches.
4. Volume of Citations – Citations are simply the number of times a search engine will find your exact name, address and phone number(NAP) across other websites. Make sure to always submit the same information when you’re distributing your NAP, and try to submit as many reputable local search portals as you can.
5. Crawlable Address on Website Matching Place Page – In addition, Google’s ranking algorithm will scan the URL that you provide for each listing. Your listing should be built into your website in a way that is displayed in text format (not an image) so that Google can check for consistency between the two sets of information.
6. Page Rank/Authority of Website – The reputation and general search-friendliness of your website also has an impact on your Places listing. Considering how well your site is built and the authority it has in your industry, they can make sure to keep fly-by-night businesses from appearing too high for popular searches.
7. Quality of Inbound Links to Website – This is another traditional SEO monitoring method that is used for website ranking. Google takes this into consideration to help identify who the most respected and widely known brands are for each industry or category.  Their websites will usually have the highest quality links from blogs and other news outlets pointing back to their website.
8. Crawlable Phone Number Matching Place Page – Along with item number 5, make sure that the exact same phone number appears in text form on the URL that is provided for each listing. This also helps Google confirm accuracy of the information you have provided.
9. Local Area Code on Place Page – Google prefers that you give them a local phone number, instead of a toll-free number. This is an indicator to them that business listings are truly “local”. If you want to list an 800-number as well, you can provide it in the Places account as an alternate number.
10. City State in Places Landing Page Title – Page titles have always played a significant role for search engine optimization, and for local it is no different. Titles ‘tell’ search crawlers what each page is and its purpose, so make sure each location page for your business is named appropriately. An example would be “[Brand] – Dine-in, Carryout, and Delivery Pizza – Serving the Greater Milwaukee, WI Area”

While this list is not exhaustive, it’s a great start for any local listings. Other important factors include setting up social network places pages on popular sites such as Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. And of course, frequent positive reviews can’t hurt.

In order to determine if your listing is being scanned and indexed properly, do some generic searches at the hyper-local level instead of using a city/state name. For example, search for “pizza delivery 61602” instead of “pizza delivery Peoria, IL.”

If you have set your listing up properly and you have optimized for these other factors, then you should rank relatively high at the zip code level. Always start here, because if you can’t rank highly in your own zip code, you will almost always have a difficult time ranking in a wider area with more competition.

Source: http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml

Certainly an impressive statistic, when you consider the massive number of people who have a tendency to put off their shopping (including yours truly). However the story behind the numbers isn’t quite as shocking – you are running out of days to find a gift for the last few people on your list, so you may do one of the following:

• Search on your phone for some ideas over your lunch break
• Find the closest toy store on your way home from work
• Check prices online and see if you can purchase online and pick up in-store

Plus, keep in mind most mobile shoppers aren’t intentionally shopping on their mobile, but rather just naturally using a device that happens to be with them when the mood strikes. According to Google, the growth of mobile searches is dramatic at 400 percent in the last year.

Source: Google, 2011, “Its Going to be a Mobile Holiday”

Not only are overall mobile searches growing, but Google also notes that shopping-specific searches experience a traffic spike during the holiday season.

Source: Google, 2011, “Its Going to be a Mobile Holiday”

Thankfully, mobile advertising has also evolved to a point where brands and their locations can quickly take advantage of the surge in mobile shoppers. Here are some quick tips for making sure you’ll be there when consumers are searching:

• Mobile searches are heavy for branded- and location-based terms, so make sure your website and store locator functions work on a wide variety of mobile devices
• Make sure you’re on the top of search results for your products and services. Because of the small screen of a smartphone, the top listings are critical.  If you’re not above the fold, run a mobile-only pay-per-click search campaign.
• Searchers using a mobile device are often in a car or will be soon, so double check all of your Google Places accounts to make sure they are appearing properly, even in apps
• Use holiday-specific or time-sensitive offer keywords on your blog and in your paid search campaigns

Other key highlights from the Google study:

• 59 percent of smartphone users used their phones for holiday shopping in Q4 2010
• 41 percent of holiday smartphone shoppers made a purchase on their smartphone
• One in five of all shopping queries are now on mobile
• 40 percent of all mobile shopping queries occur in Q4

¹http://googlemobileads.blogspot.com/2011/09/holiday-retail-mobile-insights.html

Matt Aversano - Business Development Manager

PEORIA, IL – Marquette Group has promoted Matt Aversano to Business Development Manager in the Atlanta office.  Aversano will be in charge of promoting Marquette Group’s sales wisdom and strategy to advertisers throughout North America with an emphasis on Local, Social, Mobile, and Search advertising.

Matthew Aversano came to Marquette Group in 2011 with more than seven years of interactive sales, management, and leadership within the industry. He is responsible for initiating and transitioning new accounts by demonstrating the unique value that Marquette Group provides its clients by effectively managing their earned, owned and paid print and digital media.

As a former account manager with TMP Directional Marketing, Matthew was instrumental in developing a training process and sales structure that helped introduce new and emerging products to the agency. He was promoted to director of client services in 2007 and has extensive experience in driving local leads to centralized and decentralized business structures through the use of Search, Mobile, Display and Social Media. 

Matthew earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in marketing with a minor in sales from Kennesaw State University in Georgia.

• Your phone number is placed either in the ad itself or as an ad extension
• A searcher using a mobile device clicks on the phone number. At that point you get charged for the click.
• A box comes up asking the searcher if they would like to call.
• A click has now become a call without the need for the searcher to take additional steps to find your number. 
• You can measure the response by reviewing the number of calls received and the click-thru-rate for the ad.

This program gives you the opportunity to run campaigns that are solely focused on driving calls to your business. To learn more about how Google click-to-call can drive traffic to your business, email us at inquiries@marquettegroup.com.

The upcoming change is giving landing pages a higher quality score if the content is relevant to the keyword and the ad. The better your quality score the higher you can rank on searches and the lower your cost-per-click will likely be.

So what does that mean for your Google ads? It means that your ad needs to have a specific landing page with information that matches the searcher’s expectation you set in your ad. Using your homepage as a landing page will not work to your advantage as Google doesn’t see how it matches your ad. This will negatively affect your quality score, which means your ad can cost you more. Google wants searchers to find exactly what they are looking for by serving them relevant information through optimized landing pages. In order to maximize your advertising dollars, you need to make sure that your landing page is fulfilling the promise in your ad.

To learn how Marquette Group can help you create optimized landing pages, email us at inquiries@marquettegroup.com.

Jerry Cheadle

PEORIA, IL – Marquette Group has named Jerry Cheadle as its Executive Vice President of Sales and has promoted Chris Malone to Vice President of Sales Strategy. Cheadle will be in charge of guiding Marquette Group’s sales leadership in providing marketing wisdom and strategy to advertisers throughout North America. His focus is on client relationships and results in all media Marquette Group represents, including interactive, Yellow Pages and direct mail. Cheadle’s rich professional background includes over 30 years of advertising, sales and management for major corporations such as AT&T Advertising and Publishing.

“We are excited to have Jerry as part of Marquette Group as he has successfully instilled enthusiasm and drive to achieve exceptional results by creating a high performance organization focused on teamwork, effective goal setting and discipline,” stated Eric Webb, President of Marquette Group.

Cheadle began his career at Berry Co. in 1977 and continued to hold many sales and management positions early in his career. In 1991, he served as Regional Vice President- North and South Carolina for BellSouth Advertising and Publishing and two years later returned to Berry as Vice President of Sales, where he developed a new sales organization for the region that exceeded sales objectives and gained new business. In 1996, he was promoted to Vice President-Independents, where he was responsible for $500 million in advertising revenue for 38 states. He assumed strategic planning responsibilities to include marketing plans for products and markets. In 1999, Cheadle accepted the position of Vice President-Sales for BellSouth Advertising and Publishing. In 2005, he was promoted to Executive Vice President-Sales for BAPCO, responsible for $2.1 billion in print and electronic advertising until 2007 when he was named Senior Vice President-Sales East for AT&T Advertising and Publishing.

Chris Malone will be focusing on critical sales and account management activities across the entire company that include key strategic leadership to facilitate organic growth through sales expansion of Marquette Group’s digital suite of services and partnerships with publishers and vendors. Malone is widely recognized within the industry for developing innovative client-centric advertising strategies that produce measurable improvements in consumer response and ROI for national clients. He began his career at Marquette Group as Field Marketing Manager in 2004, before leading the sales team as Director, Sales and Account Management. Prior to joining Marquette Group, Malone served six years with Royal Publishing in various positions including Advertising Sales Manager and Division Sales Trainer.

About Marquette Group
Marquette Group is a privately owned directional marketing agency that connects qualified, local customers to national brands by designing integrated media strategies. With offices in Peoria, Illinois,  Atlanta, Georgia, St. Louis, Missouri, Toronto and Montreal, Marquette Group is North America’s largest Certified Marketing Representative. Some of Marquette Group’s notable clients include Pizza Hut, U-Haul, Enterprise Car Rental, CVS, FedEx, Edward Jones and H&R Block.

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Here is an example:

You will see that each sitelink now has full-size links with URL and a snippet of text. As you search for other brands, you will notice that the number of sitelinks varies. Google set this up so that a maximum of 12 sitelinks appear.

These new sitelinks may increase the traffic to your site from brand name searches on Google, which means your entire website needs to have relevant content and deliver a positive user experience. Here are some things to consider:

• Your home page may not be the only point of entry to your site. Look at all these pages and optimize them based on your target audience and goals.
• Sitelinks give users a good highlight of your website’s content and this can be an opportunity to display areas of your site that users may not know about.
• Think about search engine optimization when it comes to these inside pages of your site. They may play a bigger role than you think.

Want to read more?

http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2011/08/evolution-of-sitelinks-expanded-and.html

http://searchengineland.com/official-google-sitelinks-expands-to-12-pack-89555

http://www.wordtracker.com/academy/new-sitelinks

http://www.hochmanconsultants.com/articles/sitelinks.shtml