It seems as though a query for “actors” provides a list of actors that include the day they died. Not a problem if you are doing research on Jimmy Stewart or Paul Newman. But I don’t think Dustin Hoffman would be too happy to hear that Google thinks he’s already dead.

Google Squared has the potential to be a very powerful and useful tool indeed, but they’ve still got a few kinks to work out.

It seems I’m not the only one, either. Recent studies indicate that print yellow pages will be all but defunct in the next 4 years. The myriad of local business information available on the internet and the bevy of options you can use to find that information have made it easier, faster, and more convenient than flipping through that bulky yellow book.

What does this mean to you as a local business owner? Well if you haven’t spent the time to list your business in the local search engines, internet yellow pages, and customer review sites, then your competitors may be leaving you in the dust.

Whether you run a restaurant, auto body shop, pet grooming service, or landscaping company, taking the steps below to position your business in front of local customers will make a big difference to your bottom line.

The Anatomy of a Local Business Listing

Whether your listing is in a local search engine, internet yellow pages site, or customer review site, there are certain elements of your listing that will be similar across the board. Not just limited to your company name, address, and phone number, online local business listings allow you to display a ton of information about your business – for free! I’m always amazed when I see bare bones listings that aren’t taking full advantage, but it happens fairly often. Below is just a sample of the information you are allowed to display on pretty much any local listing:

• Company Name
• Address
• Phone Number
• Fax Number
• URL
• E-Mail Address
• Short Description of Business
• Services, Products, and Brands Offered
• Specialties and Amenities
• Payment Options
• Hours of Operation
• Logo
• Photos
• User Reviews

Wow! And to think that many businesses only list their name, address, and phone number. You might be saying, but my local business listing only has my name, address, and phone number. What do I do? Next I’ll show you the sites you need to visit to enhance your local business listing.

Internet Yellow Pages

The most logical places for many people to start looking for local goods and services are the internet yellow page sites. If you are brand new to updating and optimizing your company’s local listing, this is a great place to start.
Now just like the regular print yellow pages, the internet yellow pages will typically have a basic listing for your company without you having to add it. It’s up to you to make it pop and really work to drive customers from their computer screen to your storefront.

Upon locating your listing you may be surprised to find that it contains information you didn’t provide. This is because customers are allowed to update and add to your listing as well – all the more reason to take action to make sure your information is correct.

In addition to your free listing, many internet yellow pages offer advertising and fee-based enhanced feature options to give your listing that extra boost above your competitors.

Some of the most popular internet yellow pages sites for you to get started on are:

• YellowPages.com
• SuperPages.com
• YellowBook.com
• Local.com

Local Search Engines

It didn’t take long for the major search engines to get in on the local scene. Each of the major players in search has a local version. Google Local quickly became Google Maps, Yahoo has Yahoo Local, and Ask has AskCity.

Each has pretty robust features, but because of my unhealthy obsession with all things Google, and to give you a head start on the most market share, I’ll talk about Google Maps.

Like in the internet yellow pages, your business will likely already have a listing in Google Maps. You can spice up that listing from Google’s Local Business Center. To edit your listing, Google requires that you “claim” your business. They will send a postcard to the mailing address listed with a special pin number that you will use to “claim” your business. Naturally, this will take a few days. Once claimed, however, you can edit your listing to your heart’s content.

Your local business listing on Google allows for all the features listed above. Google also pulls a lot of user reviews from customer review sites which I’ll explain in the next section. Additionally there are a couple of really cool features that Google offers that you simply must take advantage of. The first is coupons. You can create a special offer coupon right along side your listing and update it as often as you want. This is a great way to encourage people to visit your store.

The next feature is one Google has added fairly recently – video. That’s right, you can add a video from YouTube to your Google Maps listing. How cool is that? Think of the possibilities! You could shoot a short commercial, record testimonials from happy customers or even shoot footage of your clean restaurant teeming with enthusiastic diners.

Once you’ve perfected your listing on Google Maps, you can choose to promote it through Google Adwords and target a particular region, city, or even neighborhood. For more information, and to get started go to maps.google.com or google.com/local/add.

Customer Review Websites

Customer review sites are arguably the most important of the 3 areas of local search because the content is user-generated. And like I mentioned above, other local search engines will pull customer reviews from these websites to display on your listing, so it’s important to be aware of what people are saying.
This is a great way to do a little PR for your business by encouraging your happy customers to post positive reviews of your company and its services. You can also benefit from monitoring any unfavorable reviews to see where you can improve your business.

Popular customer review sites include:

• Yelp.com
• InsiderPages.com
• CitySearch.com
• JudysBook.com

There are even specialized customer review sites like AngiesList.com for home improvement and MenuPages.com for restaurants.

A Quick Word About Mobile Search

Mobile search is usually mentioned in tandem with local search. After all, people are more frequently on the road when they are looking for food, gas, lodging, or the nearest pet store. The good news is that if you do the work on all the sites mentioned in this article, you will be more than covered in the mobile search arena. Most if not all of the local search engines and internet yellow pages have special mobile versions that are readable on mobile phones and other handhelds including the ever popular iPhone.

I hope this crash course in local search marketing was helpful. By getting started on the tips I mentioned, you should definitely start seeing a big improvement in your business whether you run a one person dog walking service or a local pizza franchise. And when delivery of the phone book finally comes to a grinding halt, your business won’t miss a beat.

There are many different kinds of websites you can get links from. There are links from big trusted sites and directories like Yahoo and DMOZ, links from relevant vertical search engines, links from respected industry organizations, links from forums and blogs, and so on. And as many different kinds of sites there are, there are almost as many tactics you can use to get the links from these sites that the search engines love. Today I’ll talk about how you can use social media for building links.

Now, many will say that the first problem with this strategy is that many social media sites “nofollow” their links now, so you can’t take advantage of that powerful link juice. That may be true, but when you are successfully promoting your content through social media, you are encouraging other site owners to link to your content. And those websites may not have a “nofollow” policy on their links. Now that’s link building!

The first rule for having your website’s pages do well on social media sites is to create interesting content. Aside from that, there are ways you can present your content as well as some unwritten codes of conduct that can help your submitted pages be seen and voted for on social media sites.

• Create a List – some would say this tactic is clichéd or overused by now, but it still really seems to work, especially if you have a great list. Top ten lists seem to do really well, particularly on Digg. As I write this, there is a story on the first page of Digg with the headline, “The Top 10 Places to Take a Techie on a Date”. So if you can rework a page of your content or one of your articles into a top ten list, give it a shot.
• How-To’s – Like lists, how-to guides also do extremely well. If you’re in the business of teaching people how things are done, you’re one step ahead of the game.
• Controversial Topics – People love controversy, but use this tactic wisely. You don’t want to misrepresent yourself or your site, just to create a buzz.
• Catchy Headlines – Like in every other form of marketing, your headline is key. Craft it carefully to attract the most attention.

Now, as with any society, there are norms in social media. There is a reason it is also known as social networking. When you create an account on a social media or social networking website, you are literally signing up to be part of a network or community. Kind of like a condo association, the early adopters and hardcore users of social media sites take their community very seriously. And they like it best when you play along. If there’s anything this society hates, it’s overt marketing. If they suspect you are participating in their network purely to promote your site, they will report your submissions as spam and can even have the site disable your account. Here are some tips to help you appear more like a real person and less like a loathsome marketer.

• Upload an Avatar – An avatar is that little picture that’s associated with your account. It’s your pixilated little ambassador that represents you and all the actions you perform on your account. An account profile without an avatar is a pretty good indicator of a marketer.
• Don’t Submit Content Solely from Your Website – This would seem like a no-brainer but it is often forgotten. If the only pages you submit to a social media site are from your website, chances are, you’re a marketer.
• Add Friends – Friends will usually vote for the content you submit. The more friends you have, the more votes for your content. The more votes you have the better your chances of getting content on the first page. But remember to reciprocate. Nobody likes a taker.
• Be a Real Person – A surefire way to look like a real person and not a marketer is to actually be a real person. Social media sites are fun! That’s why they’re so successful. Let yourself go and truly participate in the community. Make friends. Comment on posts. Discover new websites. When you do submit something from your own site, it will simply be another genuine contribution of great content. Afterall, marketers are people too, right? At least, I’m pretty sure we are.

Using social media to build links to your website can be a great way to boost your search engine rankings. It’s a lot of work, but it can also be a lot of fun. Follow these tips and you’ll be well on your way to driving useful traffic to your website.

And while these are all very crucial elements to building targeted traffic to your website through the search engines, they are in fact building blocks of a larger SEO structure. They all rely on each other to support the SEO foundation. If any one of these building blocks is missing, the structure will collapse, and you could miss out on profitable search engine traffic. But if you truly understand the relationship of these building blocks, you will have a rock solid foundation with which to execute all the tips and tricks you learn, and will see your search engine traffic and profits soar!

When doing research for this article, I was looking for some ideas for the simplest and most direct way to explain the different building blocks of SEO and how they relate to each other. I found one so brilliant I wish I could take credit for it. But I have to tip my hat to the folks at SEOmoz for inventing this diagram.

All of the techniques and building blocks that you’ve read or heard about fit into one of the above components or cornerstones of SEO. Every building block of SEO can be categorized as a technical component, a content component or a trust component. Now that you’re wondering what fits where, let’s dive on in!

Technical SEO Component

The technical SEO components are typically what scare people the most, especially if they are new to SEO. But you don’t have to have a detailed understanding of how these technical components work to know what they are. And if you know what they are, then you can reasonably talk to your web designer about them. Executing the wrong technical components on your website could result in the search engine spiders being unable to access the content on your site. They include, but are not limited to:

• Websites built entirely in Flash
• Including important text in images
• Use of iFrames
• Use of session ID’s

The above technical no-no’s should be prevented to allow the search engines to access your content. This is the first crucial component to address. Kind of like giving the search engines the keys to your house. Of course, once you’ve let them in, you need to give them a guided tour. This is where the content component comes in to play.

Content SEO Component

The content component of SEO is the one that is discussed the most. Typically this is in terms of keyword research and writing keyword relevant articles. It is very important for business owners to understand the language their potential customers use when searching for their products. If you are optimizing a product page for “key fobs” and everyone searches for “key chains”…well you see the disconnect.

But content issues don’t end with keyword research and article writing. Information architecture is an often neglected part of the content component. Information architecture basically breaks down to navigation and linking structure of your website. Now that you’ve given your search engine friends the keys to your house, how hard are you making it for them to find the bathroom?

In terms of information architecture, the easier you make it for your readers and customers to find your content, the better it will be for the search engines. This includes using things like:

• Flat site architecture – The fewest number of clicks from the home page to important content.
• Breadcrumb links
• Anchor text links within articles
• Universal link menus

By using the same language as your customers, and holding their hands as you guide them through your site, you will automatically be doing the same for the search engines.

So now that you’ve given the search engines the keys to your house and arranged the furniture to make a path to a door clearly marked, “bathroom”, you need to make sure they aren’t afraid to come inside.

Trust SEO Component

The third and final component to building a rock solid SEO foundation is trust. Simply defined, this boils down to links. Building a strong network of inbound links from relevant, trusted sources tells the search engines that your site is also a trusted source for your particular niche or market. When the search engines trust your site, they will be more likely to serve it up in the top of their results pages.

When you break down SEO into these 3 main components, it’s much easier to see how they relate to each other, and how success can only be achieved when all 3 are present. If your search engine friends trust you, but can’t get in the front door your site won’t rank. If they can get in front door, but stumble over the coffee table to get to the only bathroom upstairs that you’ve labeled, “kitchen”, your site won’t rank. Only if they trust you enough to use your keys to breeze through the living room to the bathroom will your site rank. This is your foundation to generating tons of targeted search engine traffic and sales for your website.

If you’ve already launched a PPC campaign, or if you’re just getting started with one, there are several strategies you can implement to boost your campaign’s performance, and get the most out of a large or small budget.

Keyword Selection

Starting with the basics of keyword selection, there are several tools available, both free and paid to help you choose keywords for your campaigns. Paid tools include WordTracker and Keyword Discovery, while Google offers a great free keyword research tool. To use these tools you simply enter a keyword or phrase that you’d like to target, and they provide you with a list of related terms and the volume of searches that each receives in a 30-90 day timeframe.

Depending on your goals and your budget, you want to choose a combination of high volume terms and lower volume, but more targeted long-tail terms. For instance, if you are in the health food industry, your high volume keyword may be “health food” and a more targeted long-tail keyword could be “natural health food store”.

Refine and target even further by including negative keywords. If you run a health food store, but don’t deliver, you could add “delivery” as a negative keyword, ensuring that your ad won’t show up for searches that include that term. By spending a little more time on research and keyword selection you can vastly improve volume of sales as well as control your budget.

Refining Your Ad Copy

Now that you’ve spent that extra time targeting the right customer, be sure to capture their attention with compelling ad copy. Study your competitor’s ads. What do they have in common? What can you do to stand out amongst them?

To increase your clicks be sure to include your targeted keyword in your ad. A quick and easy way to do this with Google AdWords is to use their Dynamic Keyword Insertion tool, but many have had success writing custom ads for each keyword. Try using quirky or funny language, experiment with punctuation, and most importantly include a call to action. The key is to always be testing!

Location Targeting

Most PPC campaign platforms offer a variety of location targeting options, with Google AdWords being the most robust. Depending on what kind of business you’re running and in what part of the world, the ability to laser-focus your campaign can make a big difference in its performance. Consider targeting by Region, Country, State, Zip Code, or even a radius around particular streets, which could be particularly helpful if you run a pizza delivery business, flower shop, or even a courier service.

Several factors may come into play when deciding where to target your ads in your PPC campaign including your country’s business laws, potential language barriers, and your willingness to ship internationally. If none of these factors apply, you may choose to target worldwide. The important thing is to think carefully and make sure you can successfully do business in the locations you target.

Seasonal or Holiday Campaigns

If you have a tight budget, turning your campaigns on and off based on seasons or holidays could be a great strategy for maximizing your ROI. If you run an online sporting goods store, you may want to split your campaigns by summer and winter sports and then turn your campaigns on in the weeks leading up to those seasons. Turn your ads for bathing suits and water skis on in April and turn them off in August when you turn on your snowboard ads.

If you run a tiny print shop and sell custom greeting cards online, you could create targeted campaigns around Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and Christmas and only turn your campaigns on for those big holidays. Again, the key is testing. Find out which holiday gets you the most bang for your buck.

Dayparting

A close cousin to the seasonal campaign, dayparting is a fancy term for showing your ads during certain times of day. Dayparting can play a pivotal role in making sure your ads are showing during peak business hours and making the best use of your budget. Again, this could be particularly useful if you are running a delivery service – pizza, flowers, or otherwise.

It can also be helpful when used in conjunction with analytics data. If you notice that your target customer is consistently searching for your keywords during the hours of 8AM and Noon, you may want to schedule your ads to run only during that time. A little tweak to your campaign using dayparting may just make a big difference in sales.

Placement Targeting

Once called Site-Targeting, Placement Targeting is specific to Google AdWords. Creating a Placement Targeted campaign will allow you run ads on Google’s Content Network, but on a smaller scale. Placement Targeting allows you to choose which sites – or even which sections of a site – you want your ads to show on.

Placement Targeting is particularly useful if you are launching a new product that people aren’t searching for yet, or if you are in an industry that doesn’t receive a lot of search traffic. Perhaps you know what kinds of sites your audience visits. If they are in Google’s Content Network, you are able to target those sites, without having to waste impressions on other sites in the network.

Placement Targeting is also a great way for testing out advertising on a site that has a rate card beyond your current budget.

Whether you are just thinking about starting your first PPC campaign, or have been managing one for a while, the above tips can really help increase clicks and sales while maximizing your allotted budget. Remember to keep the nature of your business in mind and keep testing to determine which PPC strategy is best for your business.