Unique Content

This has been a good rule of thumb since the advent of Google and other major search engines. It is even more so now. The days of looking at what your competitors are doing and emulating it are gone. Your content now has to stand out from the rest in order to be ranked.

Keep The User In Mind

The experience of the user on your website is being monitored. If users are bounced, pages load slowly, or ads are constantly assaulting them, your website will be ranked lower and lower until it is beyond irrelevant.

Socialize

Google has incorporated social media into its results. No ignoring now. Tweet, Link, create a Facebook buzz, whatever you want, just get going. The more often your business is tweeted or the Like button is clicked, the better your site will rank.

Market Yourself

You are your best advocate. You must market your company and services in order to create a brand and a buzz. Panda will recognize your business and place you higher in the rankings if you are mentioned more often across the internet.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to promote your business online without the help of an outside company. Marketing, social media, and branding are not within the scope of a single persons expertise. It may be time to shop around for the right search engine optimization group to improve your sales and web relevance.

The post 4 Ways To Take Advantage of Google Panda appeared first on LocalGiant.

She said: ” We’re also seeing Click-to-Call taking off with more than half a million advertisers using these features.”. Isn’t incredible that over 500,000 companies are advertising directly to a mobile device through Google’s Click-to-Call option. The app does not have a PC equivalent, so this could be an area to explore to increase your company’s exposure to search engines and potential customers.

Some advertisers are creating separate ads for the Click-to-Call program. It seems to be effective. Google’s third quarter of 2010 earnings hinted at a ”billion dollar run-rate” in mobile. Additionally, Product Senior V.P. Jonathan Rosenberg said, on the 4th quarter of 2010 earnings sheet that, ”Click-to-Call ads are generating millions of calls every month”.

With millions of calls generated through the app every month, it seems that creating an ad targeted directly for it would only make sense. Depending on the ROI, Google may have hit another home run.

The post PPCall: The New Way To Advertise? appeared first on LocalGiant.

This really is not an insider tip, the numbers have been available for awhile; however, those numbers confirm a trend started by these numbers: Groupon’s 2010 revenues were $760 million. 2011 numbers should be about $1.2 billion this year, with the entire group deal segment raking in close to $3 billion.

The numbers show that people are buying in vast quantities from these deal sites. They also demonstrate that this is a great emerging market for your business. A savvy marketing director should be steering a strategy that includes one of these group deals sites. If not, it is an opportunity missed and probably regretted by years end.

The post Group Deal Sites: Great Business Exposure appeared first on LocalGiant.

Add in the fact that Google is placing a much greater emphasis on the Places pages as they try to move into review generation (Hotpot*) and social media and the mix puts added emphasis on local search engine data.
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Here are three reasons why local data will rule 2011:

Accurate data equals more quality citations

Citations are the local search engine equivalent of links for Google Places pages. With the recent Google algorithms changes data accuracy must be of great concern to growing businesses.

Data can prevent break lead generation

Nothing is worse than having all of your marketing efforts stumble because of bad contact information being listed on an unmonitored venue. Inaccurate information may prevent sales.

Data leaves a trail

Nothing on the internet ever goes away completely. If you leave your data accuracy to data aggregators, then you are at risk for having your information look jumbled to the search engines. A jumbled mess will rank low and work in opposition to your marketing strategy.

Insuring the accuracy of your business’s online information is essential to success. Hiring a company to manage those services is the best way to protect your online image and reputation.

The post 3 Reasons That Local Data Will Rule 2011 appeared first on LocalGiant.

It’s quite disappointing to know that they have tried to mislead people into believing that testimonials from the “Galaxy Tab Interview Project” were  unscripted. The well polished look and feel of the interview sessions  were obviously carefully crafted marketing techniques.

Samsung seems to have some insecurity about their ability to stay competitive and be a worthy rival of the iPad. Googling the participants of the project will show that they have actually employed actors to rant and rave about their “tab life”. It seems that Samsung is trying too hard to sell an idea that wasn’t originally theirs and attempting to convince people that in fact they are not copycats by producing two versions to meet the needs of the diverse tablet users in the market.

Product performance is ultimately the factor that determines the demand for the gadget. No company should practice gimmickry or “show business” to create your image or reputation. The integrity of the features and the product will ultimately be questioned if the reviews are calculated, contrived, or copied from somewhere else, because this will make them appear to be biased, unreliable and unreal.

The post Samsung Gets Busted for Fake Galaxy Tab Reviews appeared first on LocalGiant.

A headache from a misleading ad?

A company has to pay $250,000 for misleading their customers through fake reviews of their product.

Legacy Learning Systems Inc., owned by Lester Gabriel Smith is the distributor of the Learn and Master Guitar, a home learning guide to play guitar in the form of DVDs and written manuals. The company was charged by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), based on illegal advertisements of their product by hiring “Review Ad” online affiliates. These internet affiliates promote the product on their blog posts, articles and other online advertisements by acting as end consumers. The endorsements made by these affiliates are closely hyperlinked to the company’s website. In return, the affiliates get compensation (cash or free products) on every sale of the product, as the result of their endorsements and referrals. FTC reports that the company benefited around $5 million from these false reviews.

Misleading online reviews are rampant these days, and the government considers this advertisement tactic similar to false and deceptive advertising. Issued in 2009, the revised FTC’s guides mandate every company to keep their endorsements and testimonials in line with FTC regulation. Under the revised Guides, a customer’s endorsements and testimonials of a product or a service, should be based on his or her own experience, in case the experience is not typical, typical end results should be disclosed. In addition, the revised guides also explain that any connection between the reviewer and the seller, in money or free products- transaction that is not typical- should be disclosed.

Learning Legacy is just one of the several companies that violated the FTC Act. A few years ago, Lifestyle Lift through their product, Turkey Necks, was caught with the same violation and was charged to pay $300, 000.

The post Legacy Learning Systems Pays: Misleading Reviews appeared first on LocalGiant.

Handling customer complaints can be tricky.

At sometime or another, there will be a customer who has a bad experience. Before the internet, they would tell their friends and the business owner may never have heard from them. In today’s world, a critic can go online, post a bad review Yelp or a similar site, or even create a video explaining their grievance in great detail. Here are three tips for responding to an online critic.

Tip 1: Wait at least 24 hours before you respond. Understandably, you will be upset, but responding while you are angry can make things worse. Overreacting can lead to a whole string of communications that only make the reputation of your business worse.

Tip 2: Respond directly to the critic, privately. Plan your response, write a draft, edit it, then post your response on the review site. Always acknowledge the complaint and do not get defensive. Offer information about what has been done to correct the issue and apologize for the less than stellar experience the customer had. Invite them to try your business again. A discount will usually help.

Tip 3: This should only be used in a last ditch effort and only if there is are gross inaccuracies in the negative review. Write a public response to the review. Correct the inaccurate information, only. Do not attack the reviewer or lose your cool while writing. The response will be online forever, be sure to improve your company’s image, not worsen it.

A negative review is an opportunity for you to show your professionalism more than anything else. Consumers are aware that bad experiences happen. There is a very little chance that one bad review will destroy your customer base. Keep your cool and turn this into a positive.

The post 3 Tips For Responding To Online Critics appeared first on LocalGiant.

Nothing quite hurts like a negative review. However, having your business receive one isn’t necessarily the end of the world. In fact, you can even use it to your advantage.

There are of course plenty of websites other than Yelp that allow customers to post feedback and reviews. However, almost all of them allow you, the business owner to reply either publicly or privately to reviews. For this reason, these tips for handling negative reviews apply to all business and review websites.

First of all, try sending a very carefully worded and diplomatic message of regret to the person who posted the negative review, apologizing for his less than stellar experience with your business. This won’t automatically guarantee that the user will retract his or her review, but you can always supplement this with a very polite and friendly public response that sets the facts straight, or can at least show others that you have resolved any shortcomings brought up in the review.

A single negative review isn’t really something you should really worry about. However, a series of bad reviews generally complaining about the same thing might be something of a wakeup call. If the reviews consistently point out similar flaws in your business, then you should look into it and make the necessary improvements.

Don’t take these negative reviews personally, but instead, look at them as ways to improve your business. Don’t start playing the blame game, and always remember to talk to your reviewers and customers in the most open, friendly, and diplomatic way possible.

Here are a few things you should probably know about negative reviews:

• A majority of the reviews on Yelp are pretty positive, with around 85% giving 3 stars or above. This also applies to all review sites across the Internet, with people most likely to share information about an experience or product that they had a good experience with.
• Negative reviews can actually make you look more genuine. These days, a lot of consumers  get suspicious when a business only has good reviews.  In fact, a restaurant with on Yelp that garnered a four-star rating from 20 reviews received three times more page views than a five-star rated restaurant with the same number of reviews.
• Negative reviews are scrutinized as well. In the same way that your potential customers scrutinize your business, they are also very discerning when it comes to the reviews they read. Most of them should be able to tell which reviews are helpful and which ones are just there to annoy.

The post Looking on the Bright Side of Negative Reviews appeared first on LocalGiant.

These numbers were gathered from iPhone users alone. With regards to Yelp for Android-based smartphones, they’ve managed to accrue over 2 million unique hits across all apps in just the past month.

What exactly does this mean to small business owners like you? Well, for one thing, if you have been given access to those free business tool on Yelp, then you will now be receiving weekly updates regarding all the activity your Yelp listing has experienced in the past 7 days. Now, even interactions from mobile devices will be logged, including business page views, number of times directions were generated to your establishment, and of course, the total number of check-ins.

The post Small Businesses Now Get Mobile Activity Tracking for Small Businesses appeared first on LocalGiant.