Category: Random Thoughts

Today I had the honor of presenting a talk on Internet Marketing at the Montana Brewers Association meeting. Special thanks to Blake of Bonfire Branding to the invitation.

What a great group of people. I love how collaborative these businesses are. I get the sense they all want to see the industry as a whole success, and are willing to lend a hand. Local craft Breweries create jobs and bring in tourist dollars to the community.  I really enjoy working with them. 

I was happy to do my part, and hope my presentation helped some folks.

In case you missed it, OR if you were told I’d send you a link if you signed up for my newsletter, you can find my presentation online HERE.

If you have any questions about the content of my presentation, please let me know.

Thanks.

– Andy

One of the areas that is most confusing in my line of work is helping businesses decide how to claim and update all the various directory listings.

Having accurate listings in a multitude of online directories IS important for a variety of reasons.

a. They can be a helpful ranking factor in getting your site higher in the search results, especially for local type searches.

b. Those directories might come up before your own website in a search result, and you want to be sure your businesses is on the results that directory provides.

c. You want to be able to make any changes, and respond to comments or reviews.

d. If you don’t claim your listing, a sneaking competitor might, making life harder on you.

So it’s not a matter if IF you should claim those listings, but HOW.

Here are the best options I have found. There is no one answer that is right for every business. Hopefully, this list will help you decide what you should do.

Ways to Claim listings.

– Manually
– Using a service to help you claim your listings
– Using a premium service that claims them for you and allows you to update them via the service

As with many things, there is a Time/Cost trade-off. Let’s discuss each. 

Option 1: The manual method

 To claim your listings manually, you need to visit each of the directory sites, find your listing, and then go through a process of proving you are the one who should be allowed to control the listings. This usually means filling in a form, and then either getting a phone call from an automated system asking you to enter a PIN, or waiting for a letter with a code you must enter. This proves you really are at the business.  I certainly recommend this for your Google Business listing, but for most of the others, the time it takes to claim your listings is not worth it. 

Option 2: Get a system to help you claim your listings:

The next level up is to use a system that will go out there and automate the claiming of your listings for you. This means entering your business information once, and perhaps passing along the logins of sites you’ve already claimed in the past. The system will then help you claim the rest, and submit your site to the 5 main data aggregators, which are databases that many of the other directories use to get information about your business. My favorite is called Moz.com/local and it runs about $50 per year at the time of this writing.

Option 3: Use a full service system

This is the set it and pretty much forget it option, but it comes at a price.

If you tend to update your business hours frequently, or want to make sure it’s all done right, and quickly, you can work with a company called Yext, who has partnered with most of the important directories. You simply fill out some forms, and Yext will update your directory listings in the matter of a few hours to days.  This CAN be good, and if the price isn’t too shocking, it’s a good way to go. This service runs about $800 / year if you buy it directly from Yext. However, I’m currently a Yext Partner, and can get you a year long subscription for $500.  Note, while super fast, if you stop paying, they unlock your listings that they have been managing, and everything reverts back to the information the directory had on file prior to the Yext override.

Now you may be wondering what your listings currently look like. I actually have a neat little tool for you to use. Now, I’ll warn you, I recommend you use MY tool rather than visit Yext.com directly and check your listings. Going direct will almost guarantee a call from a sales rep, who likely can’t give you as good a price as I can.  My tool uses Yext, but they don’t share with me who is using the tool, nor do they make sales calls after someone has used it.
The special link to my tool is here: http://www.yext.com/partner/andycommonsconsulting/diagnostic.html 

This will give you a good idea of how your business is currently being listed in many top directories.

I hope this gives you some direction on which way to go for managing your online directory listings. If I can be of any assistance, please let me know.

-Andy

What’s with all the facial hair?

If you have been seeing a bunch of scruffy guys, some of whom just aren’t shaving and others who are trying (with varying degrees of success) to grow a moustache, odds are it’s November.

Two men’s cancer awareness campaigns are in full swing this month. Each have a similar goals.

Movember – is a world wide program to raise funds and awareness for men’s health issues. Here are some sobering facts: 1 in 6 will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, and more than 30,000 men will die from prostate cancer this year.

No Shave November – is sponsored by the American Cancer Society. It also aims to raise cancer awareness and funds. Even women are encouraged to “let it grow” (i.e., don’t shave legs). Guys who love their current facial hair and don’t want to shave it off per the rules of Movember can still do “No Shave November”.

You can support me with a donation to my Movember page, or support someone else you know who is participating. We all need a little reward for the itching and, for some of us, the ridicule. 

If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a line at andy@andycommons.com. Thanks.

-Andy 406-962-5683

A recent post by searchengineland.com covered the latest thinking on the often uttered words “SEO is Dead”.
I’ll try to recap and give you my thoughts.

1. No, SEO is not dead. You still need your site set up the right way, and to do the basics like have keyword rich title-tags and well written content on a variety of topics in your nich.

2. Yes, you need to keep adding well written articles (let’s call them blogs) to build your authority.

3. The article points out that “Social Signals” are now part of the mix, but are not the only thing. I would say, being active on social media, posting links to other good articles AND your own, helps establish you as an authority.

4. They mention that Local search is going to be more important. If you don’t already have well optimized listings in the top directories, you are missing out on the traffic they bring, and the value of those listings give you in terms of rankings.
I’m working on a solution for you to get that done in a cost effective way. Stay tuned…

now, if you want to dig deeper, check out the article.
http://searchengineland.com/the-future-of-seo-157803

Oh, and if you want to help my “social signals” please like, share, tweet etc, this post.

Thanks.

-Andy

Each year, I deeply review the Rankings Factors Report put out by David Mihm Web Design.

Well, it’s out again, and if you want to dive deeper into what’s working to help (or hurt) your website rankings, especially if you have a Local target market, check out the Ranking Factors Report.

This week we’re also suffering a lot of confusion in the Online local space with Google’s announcement of something called “Local” when you are in Google Plus. From what I can tell, they are just showing people Google Places type results inside Google Plus. It’s very different than a Google Places “Page” for Business, which can also be marked as “Local” under the category.

If you really want, you might want your business to have a Google Plus “Page”. and you might even want to set it up as a “local” type business…. but this isn’t the same as going to Google.com/places and claiming / editing your business info.

The Google Places listing is even more important now, as Google + is starting to show it.

Finally, I’m hearing rumblings of how Youtube terms of service don’t want businesses to post videos (like Ads) to Youtube… Yet Google Places encourages a business to link up to 5 YouTube videos in the account.  Will we stop seeing Videos in Search results? Will we see the “add a video” feature removed from Google Places?  I think it’s all too early to tell.

As I make any sense of it, I’ll post my thoughts on my here on my blog at www.andycommons.com.

I’m pleased to have given a presentation last night on Internet Marketing to the Missoula Building Industry Association.

For those who want to view it, I’m posting it below.

Internet Marketing Presentation

-Andy

I know the world loves a good infographic, and my man Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land did a great one for the world of SEO.

This chart really nails it. It shows the main factors in helping a website rank in an a simple, clean way.

I share this as a way to promote good thinking when it comes to SEO. Can this stuff be done by business owners? Yes, but as I’ve said before on why hire an SEO, it’s a matter of focusing on what you do best. I’m not scared to let others know what I do. Many will happily hire me to do it for them.

See the table here:

The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors, used with permission