Randy has been working with me and Thomas on Expand2Web for about a year now. He’s driving a lot of our business development and SEO efforts.

One of the first things he did when we started working together was to take his wife’s business, North Valley Optometry and put it on the map – literally.

When he started, she had no website and zero internet presence. He rolled up both sleeves and used her website as a model while he learned. Now she has a kick-butt WordPress Website, 50+ online reviews and a great footprint on the web. She ranks highly in the Lucky 7-Pack and organic listings for many of her keywords in San Jose, CA – which is a very competitive market. She is also getting new patients every week from the web now.

In this interview I talk with Randy about the things he did for North Valley Optometry. He shares three important tips that any small business owner can follow to improve their local business rankings.

Watch the Video Interview with Randy

You’ll notice that the audio is way quieter for my side of the conversation – I did my best to adjust the tracks and equalize the volume. I know how to fix this for recording the next interview.

Or Listen to the Interview

You can also download the MP3 audio file by clicking the download link below if you’re like me and you listen to interviews on your iPod/iPhone in the car.

“Right Click” here to download the PDF transcript

Please let me know what you think in the comments below!

James Martell is an Internet pioneer who discovered the world of affiliate marketing in 1999. He is a self-taught Internet entrepreneur and a leading expert in affiliate marketing, natural search engine optimization and outsourcing.

I also consider James a friend – he’s gone out of his way to help me with my business. I’ve been a big fan of his Coffee Talk podcast series where he interviews experts in many different fields. So it was very exciting when James asked me to be on his show!

Topic Highlights from the Interview

While we primarily talked about WordPress Websites, here are some highlights of the topics we covered in the podcast:

• My move from Detroit to Silicon Valley
• Affiliate marketing as an additional revenue stream for your small business
• Enterprise Content Management
• WordPress vs Drupal and other content management systems (such as Joomla)
• WordPress websites for small business
• WordPress themes
• WordPress plug-ins
• James’ 15-minute rule
• The SmallBiz WordPress theme for business owners
• WordPress.com vs WordPress.org (self-hosted WordPress)
• Hosting providers for self-hosted WordPress
• Setting up your website in 5 minutes

Coffee Talk Interview Description

Here is how James describes the interview on Coffee Talk:

While WordPress is sometimes seen as the poor man’s version of more “professional” CMSs, Don explains that WordPress:

1. Features excellent SEO mechanics.
2. Easily allows the addition of fresh content regularly (great for driving Google search results.)
3. Creates eye-catching and useful sites in minutes to grab and keep the attention of customers and prospects.
4. Offers a wide variety of plug-ins which enhance the end consumer’s impression of the site, drive traffic, give webmaster essential data they need, and allow users to easily monetize their sites through AdSense and affiliate programs.

As an added bonus, Don shares his favorite plug-ins and explains the features of his own newly created WordPress theme with James and his listeners.

Whether you’re a traditional business owner looking for an easy and cost-effective way to expand onto the web or an online marketer or business owner who wants to build a better site, this edition of Coffee Talk can help you do just that.

Listen to the Complete Interview

You can listen to an audio interview here:

“Right Click” here to download the PDF transcript

I‘m pleased to announce my new podcast series for small business owners and consultants – The Expand2Web Podcast – has been accepted in iTunes and is now online!

This podcast is designed for business owners and the consultants who help them build their small business websites.

Knowledge is power. And each week I’ll be doing interviews with experts in local search, website design, and small business owners to bring their experience and knowledge direct to you.

Podcast Interview Topics

Here are some of the interview topics I have scheduled so far:

• Getting started with your website
• How to rank well in the Google 10-Pack
• How should offline businesses use Twitter and Facebook for their business?
• How to use the IYP (Internet Yellow Pages) directories to your advantage
• How to use video to improve your search rankings and engage your customers
• How to use Yelp to engage with your customers
• How online reviews affect your rankings, and encourage customers to visit
• How to use an email newsletter to stay in touch with your customers
• Small business success stories (offline businesses who are winning online)
• And many, many more…

I’m interviewing local search experts who know the cutting edge tips and tricks for getting great local search results.

I’m also interviewing small business owners who are leveraging social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, and have figured out how to turn their website into a way to attract new customers to their offline business.

Podcast Interview Schedule

I’ll publish a new interview each Friday (10 scheduled so far), so be sure to subscribe and listen in as we dive deep into the world of small business websites and getting great Google search results for your offline business!

What do you want to hear about?

p.s. I’d love to hear your suggestions on topics as well – just let me know what you’d like to learn about in the comments below and I’ll try to get it scheduled.

Yelp is “focused on the reviewing experience” and started off by fostering a community of highly engaged users who write reviews about restaurants, dentists, and other types of local establishments. They tap into the “vocal minority” to provide content for the rest of us.

Business owners can benefit from these reviews – if they gain a number of good reviews on Yelp many times their Yelp profile can rank highly in the Google search results. restaurants, hotels and retail stores, for example, tend to get a lot of Yelp reviews.

For example, one of my favorite little cafes, Rose Donuts is one of those places with a lot of charm, great deals and super friendly staff. If you look at their Yelp profile they have over 100 reviews with an average rating of 4.5/5.

Rose Donuts Yelp Profile

But What About Negative Reviews?

But for some businesses who don’t get a lot of reviews on Yelp, a negative review can really stand out and impact their business. In other cases, good reviews from their customers have disappeared from their Yelp profiles without explanation.

This has left many business owners I’ve talked to feel powerless because they feel their business has been mis-represented and there is nothing they can do about it.

It turns out that Yelp has some mechanisms for small business owners to “engage in the conversation” with the Yelp community.

Yelp Business Outreach

Recently I had a chance to talk with Luther Lowe, Business Outreach Manager at Yelp. Luther contacted me via Twitter after reading an article I wrote on LocalSearchNews.net about the problems some frustrated businesses were experiencing. (See The Trouble with Yelp.)

During our conversation he told me a lot of interesting things that would be super valuable for small business owners, giving them a way to address many of their concerns if they only knew about them and how to use them.

So I asked Luther to do an audio interview for the Expand2Web Podcast Series. He agreed, and in the interview he provided some great insights and tips for small business owners.

Luther joined Yelp in February 2008 as an Account Executive and currently serves as the Business Outreach Manager. In this role, he works to educate the business community about best practices for engaging with the Yelp community.

Tips for Small Business Owners

In the interview Luther shares some valuable tips for small business owners, such as:

• The importance of claiming your free Yelp profile (and how to claim it)
• How to handle negative reviews
• How to send private and public messages to your Yelp reviewers
• How to engage in the conversation going on about your business at Yelp

Business owners can claim their Yelp profile on the Yelp for Business Owners page.

Listen to the Complete Interview

You can listen to an audio interview here:

“Right Click” here to download the PDF transcript

How one small business owner used WordPress and Thesis to outrank big advertisers in her local area

Melanie, the owner of the KeyLargo Fitness and Tanning club in Columbia, MO already had a website, but it was not bringing her any new customers. It was simply acting as an online brochure. She was having trouble updating her website, and it was quickly getting outdated.

To make matters worse, many of her competitors were spending big dollars on TV, radio and print advertising campaigns. What could she do to get the word out about her business without spending an arm and a leg?

A Solution Emerges

She started talking with a friend from her church, Diana, who is a web designer based in Columbia, MO. Diana filled her in on some of the ways she could use her website as a powerful tool to promote her business. Diana explained to her that with the right kind of website, an email newsletter, and some local search optimization she could get results quickly.

They agreed to redesign her website, and Diana brought me in. Together we built a new website for Melanie based on WordPress. WordPress is an ideal platform for building small business websites for a number of reasons (easy to publish content, inherent SEO benefits, and a lot more…)

And because Melanie had some specific design requirements in mind, we chose to customize her site with the Thesis WordPress Theme since it is almost infinitely customizable.

The Results…

The new KeyLargoFitness website started paying off almost immediately.

Before:

• Almost no referrals from the web
• Not in the top 50 search results for local area
• Could not update the website herself
• Broken newsletter signup form

After:

• Ranks #2 for primary keywords (health club columbia mo) in Google 10-Pack, #1 in natural search results!
• 261 local subscribers to her email newsletter (and counting…)
• Easy to update her website without knowing HTML
• Steady stream of new customer inquiries from Google and Yahoo searches

Melanie is very pleased with the results. In her own words:

I just can’t be more pleased with the look and the user-friendliness and the
feedback that we’ve gotten from the new site!

Listen to the Complete Interview

You can listen to an audio interview where Don interviews both Diana and Melanie about the project here:

“Right Click” here to download the PDF transcript