At the SearchMonkey launch event in May, many of us asked for some of the more common apps to be turned on by default. I recommended to all my clients to make sure they had a Yahoo Local listing completely filled out, so that if Yahoo did this their business would stand out in the results.

Well Yahoo was listening to its developers, and has turned on these enhanced results by default.

Yahoo Local Enhanced Results

They’ve included the LinkedIn, Yahoo Local and Yelp enhanced results for all user searches by default. This provides enhanced search results for everyone, and provides a better search experience in my opinion.

I think Yahoo has been doing an excellent job of innovating recently, especially since the attempted Microsoft acquisition. Even though I used to work for Microsoft and have many friends there, I think it is better for Yahoo to remain an independent company. The cultures would never mix and in the event of a Microsoft acquisition many of the interesting projects at Yahoo would go away (like SearchMonkey and BOSS.)

If you are a small business owner and haven’t filled out your Yahoo Local profile yet, make sure to do that soon - it will help you stand out from your competition!

WordPress -vs- WordPress!

WordPress.org

WordPress is open source blogging software, and WordPress.org is where you can go to download it. WordPress.org offers free downloads of WordPress files, themes and plug-ins, and includes step-by-step instructions for installing and configuring WordPress on your own hosting provider.

WordPress.org Pros:

The advantage of this approach is that you can install any of the WordPress templates or plug-ins available, and customize your site so that it doesn’t look like just another me-too blog.

• You have complete control over the look and feel of your site
• You can install any WordPress plug-in to extend the functionality of your site (believe me, this is a very powerful and inexpensive way to add functionality to your website)

WordPress.org Cons:

In order to do use WordPress this way, you’ll need a few things:

• A hosting provider that allows you to have MySQL databases and FTP access. You can find good hosting for about $6.95/month at Bluehost, 1and1 and many other hosting providers. I use both of these providers and they have been great.
• Knowledge of how to use FTP to transfer files, create a MySQL database, and edit configuration files. WordPress.org has a 5-minute install guide, and a quick read through this will tell you if you can do it on your own or not.
• You need to manage your own backups. (However, there are ways to automate this easily.)

If this approach sounds like a lot of work to you hang on - as you’ll see below many of the hosting providers have automated most of this to make it easier for you.

WordPress.com

WordPress.com provides a quick and easy way to get a blog online. You can go sign up and create a WordPress blog immediately, for free. This is a multi-user version of WordPress that hosts thousands of blogs.

WordPress.com Pros:

• Easiest way to get started
• Pick from list of available themes
• Hosting is free (there is a $15/year charge to use your own domain name)

WordPress.com Cons:

The downside is that you cannot upload your own themes and plug-ins, and according to their FAQ you cannot use it to post Adsense ads or affiliate links. They also say that they may occasionally show Google text ads on your site.

• Must choose only from their list of themes available, and you cannot customize them directly
• Cannot install plug-ins to extend the functionality of your site
• Sometimes they show ads on your site

In the past, I’ve bumped into some of those limitations when trying to customize the look and feel of a blog, and when trying to install some of the neat plug-ins available. I think WordPress.com is a great way to start a hobby or special interest blog, but for small businesses it is very important to have control over the look of their website, so it doesn’t look like a generic blog.

The Third Alternative - Hosting Provider Easy Install Scripts

There is another alternative; many hosting providers such as Bluehost, 1and1, offer one-step installations of WordPress, eliminating the need to create the WordPress database and configuration files.

This makes it easier to get going quickly, and still gives you the ability to customize things later on. This is the approach that I recommend for most small business owners. It gives you the best balance between simplicity of installation and customization later on.

Here is an example of a real business using WordPress for their web site, Sunnyvale Chiropractor Remington Chiropractic. You’ll notice that the site doesn’t look like a blog, and there is no easy way to tell it is running on WordPress. It has a very basic design, based on a modified WordPress template. Because it is based on WordPress, the content can be easily updated and changed.

Next in this series, we will list the top WordPress plug-ins for your web site, like the ability to automatically back up your site and email it to you, automatically updgrade WordPress or any plug-ins you have installed, the ability to do polls, include images, and easy SEO for your site, and many more. We’ll also show you how to install these plug-ins on a hosted WordPress site.

This is the first SMX event I’ve attended. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area so it was nice that the event was held at the JW Marriott in San Francisco. The day started off on the right note - I found $12 parking right across the street, which is kind of amazing for downtown SF.

SMX Local & Mobile Keynote - Yahoo’s Frazier Miller

Greg Sterling and Chris Sherman welcomed everyone and things started off with the keynote by Frazier Miller, GM of Local Search at Yahoo. He proclaimed that Local Search is in a “perfect storm” based on the trends they are seeing at Yahoo. One stat that amazed me was this: 100 million users per month visit Yahoo with “local intent”. This is an amazing number, especially when you consider Google has in the high 60% of the searches on the Internet today. It all adds up to a lot of local searches. He also revealed some of the trends they are seeing for search queries - they are increasing in length (e.g. evolving from “coffee” to “coffee in san francisco” to “coffee in san francisco with dogs ok” - longer more descriptive searches.) He concluded with the opportunity areas he sees emerging in local search. He also used a new (to me) acronym that was kind of catchy - ROBO (research online buy offline) and discussed some stats and trends around that.  It was a very good and insightful keynote.

Ranking Tactics for Local Search Session

The next session that I attended was Ranking Tactics for Local Search. Wow, this was a fire hose of great info. All the panelists had their own unique, super informative presentation - a nice way to do a panel, by the way - and shared their inside tips and tricks. They covered everything from citations in local listings to using video and YouTube to improve rankings to online reviews and backed these up with real world examples. This was an excellent group and session.

Monetizing Local and Mobile - Who is Making Money? Session

In the afternoon, Local and Mobile - Who is Making Money was another information packed session, where the panelists followed the same format. Some more interesting techniques and stats, like what the likely local search ranking factors are, the percentage of searches that use ZIP code, neighborhood terms and city names, some details about how you need to treat mobile searches differently, and a staggering statistic about the differences in cost per lead and cost per customer between organic search, PPC, and print Yellow Pages ($580 per customer in some cases!)

More Coverage of SMX Local & Mobile

Andrew Shotland has more great coverage at LocalSEOGuide.

Also, Michael Jensen’s LiveTwitting tool tracked some nice coverage of the conference too.

And Greg Sterling did a nice summary of the keynote here.

The Wrap Up

During the breaks I met so many extremely professional and fun people, including Michael Jensen, David Mihm, Mike Blumenthal, Greg Sterling, Will Scott, Steve Espinosa, Andrew Shotland, Dan Hobin, and many other local search experts. Most of these folks I’ve only known via blogs and online and it was so great to meet them in person!

My only regret was that I could only attend Thursday. I really wanted to see Mike Blumenthal’s presentation, and also missed Mary Bowling’s presentation which I heard was great. And based on the sessions I did attend I’m sure there were many other great ones that I missed.

I’ve been to probably 30+ conferences while at Microsoft and Interwoven, and presented at many of them. This was one of the best - serious content delivered by experts in their field, and it was small enough that you could really get to know the people there.

Overall, I learned a TON of new practices and techniques that I’ll be able to put to work right away for my customers. I met many very cool people. And I’ll be back next year for more!

The presenters:

Steve Espinosa, eLocal Listing - Steve had some great tips about citations and linking to your Google Local or Yahoo Local listings from your web site, using your business title in the anchor text. Make sure to include your keywords in the title of your business description, but it must be consistent across all listings. They use Google TV to drive traffic…

Video: Interesting study found that if a search results page includes an organic result and a video result, someone is 3.3x more likely to click on your listing. Use video to help your rankings. Create a short video for your business, create a landing page on your website, and link there to your video on YouTube (using correct anchor text.) This will create a citation for your business.

Citations: Web citations have a direct impact on ranking in local listings. Find out where Google pulls business information from in your vertical, and make sure you have business listings there.

Michael Jensen, SoloSEO - Online Reviews. Great presentation here, online reviews help your small business stand out visually in the results. Eyes draw to where the reviews are. But the ratings better be good! Need 5 reviews in Google to before they will show the stars.

Getting reviews is hard. He’s got a lot of good suggestions here. I wrote an article about how to implement a simple process for getting your best customers to review your business here - How to Use Online Reviews to Get New Customers. And Michael has a lot to add here. Try coupons, discounts, upgrades, gifts. Make links easy to follow. Make a review page easy to find on your site. He’s got a very cool service called http://www.leavefeedback.org that I plan to check out. It allows you to create a coupon with a code, and sends them to an online review site for you.

Which review sites? Check out this diagram in his blog post: Sources of Local Business Reviews.

He also suggests - find out what people talk about in reviews for your type of business? Be exceptional in those areas to ensure you get great reviews. And make sure to track your reviews, the traffic and sources from them.

Gib Olander, Localeze - he had a lot of great insights, his primary point was to make sure your business information is consistent across all your listings. It’s up to you to take control of your listings and ensure this. There is no central source of business information, all the listings today are cobbled together from many sources. Great advice about digging deep for your keywords, go deeper than just the categories. Avoid 800#s on your listings, avoid PO boxes.

Will Scott, Search Influence - The basics matter: Keyword Selection, Content, Links (repeat cycle!)

Use domain names to your advantage. You will still want to show up high for organic results, because in many searches the local 10-box does not appear - the search doesn’t always get taken down to the local level. Will provided lots of great real world examples of local search rankings and tips.

He also had a bunch of great suggestions on where to get links in his presentation (e.g. Yahoo directory, DMOZ, Best of The Web, and many smaller ones.)

That rundown was kind of terse; there was a ton of great information I hope this captures some of the highlights for you!!

David Mihm - David wrote the excellent Local Search Ranking Factors report, and reviewed the top 6 factors in his presentation.

1. Claim your local business listings in Google and Yahoo.
2. Your local business listing address should be in the city of the search
3. Proper categorization of your business listing
4. Product/Services keywords should be in the title of your listing
5. Proximity of your address to the city centroid
6. Validation with third party data providers

This is a great report - click the link above for that report, some blog posts about it and his presentation.

Dan Hobin - G5 Search Marketing, they have a platform that helps track leads, conversions and calls. He showed me a demo of it, very nice reporting and visual charting. They do PPC and SEO and they also help track print Yellow Pages… he showed an example of a campaign where the cost for print yellow pages is $193 per lead, and $580 per customer!! This is vs $13 and $46 for AdWords and $5 and $18 SEO. WOW - no wonder many businesses are relying less and less on print yellow pages!

Ian White - Urban Mapping, Inc. shared some very interesting stats they’ve gleaned from all their geographic data and searches:

• .05% of search queries use the ZIP code
• 2% of search queries use neighborhood terms
• 5% of search queries use city name
• 40% of search queries are inherently local!

I know the top 3 do not add up to 40%, but presumably there are other indicators of “local intent” in a search query. The actual 40% number is debatable.

Bryson Meunier - Resolution Media. Bryson is talking about mobile, and the importance of having a strategy vs just jumping in. He showed an Android mobile app “Call a Cab” and a Weather Channel app for Android. He pointed out that Google Analytics does not track mobile visitors.  http://brysonmeunier.com has some links to analytics providers that do.

Mobile users search differently than desktop users. Google suggest has a mobile version that is different than their normal suggestions.

Think of mobile as the beginning of something huge, its a marathon not a sprint. Build links, they can be even more important. You can track mobile links in Google Webmaster Tools.  Another tips, join Mobile SEO Google Group.

I just finished listening to Frazier Miller - GM of Yahoo Local give the keynote for the event. Here is a brief summary of some of the things that stood out for me:

• 100 Million users per month visit Yahoo and search with “local intent.”
• Local and Mobile is an “explosive growth” area, he is calling it a perfect storm with three primary market drivers: 1) User’s desire to bridge their online and offline worlds, 2) Advertiser’s incessant drive for ROI, 3) Mobilization of the masses.
• According to ComScore, local search has grown 76% year-over-year over the past 12 months, accelerating from 23% growth in prior years.
• Local searches per “searcher” has typically been 7-8 per month, and has accelerated to 11-12 per month over the past year.
• Ecommerce online shopping was $150B last year, offline was 10x that. But an estimated $500B of offline spend was influenced by online research last year. 89% of shoppers research online before buying. Interestingly, as I mentioned in my post The Essence of Great Customer Service, 52% of people who shop online do research at Amazon.com.

Trends he sees (and local opportunity areas):

• Better navigation of government services
• Ability to plan and suggest local events
• Local shopping and product search

Also, I’m trying to use Michael Jensen’s super cool LiveTwitting app to both cover the event and see what others are saying about it. Also, follow me on Twitter for more updates - I hope to see you online or at the show!

“I’ve got to get my webmaster to do that, but it’s going to cost me…”

“Nooooo, I just hosed my website!”

If you talk to enough small business owners, or friends that want to have a website but don’t spend evenings and weekends tinkering around on the web, you’ll hear frustrations like this a lot.

And that’s from the ones who have figured out how to get a website up and running in the first place. There are many who are still trying to figure out where to start. But wait, there is hope!

WordPress to the Rescue

WordPress is one of the most popular blogging tools available. But what many people don’t know is that it is a powerful Content Management System (CMS) that can be used for more than just blogging. With WordPress you can build a blog, a website, or both. This is the first article in a series where we’ll explore why WordPress is a good choice for small business websites, and how to install, configure and use it for your small business.

Web Content Management Systems

A content management system is a tool that helps you manage the creation and updates to web pages on your web site. In 1998 I was one of the early members of a Silicon Valley start-up called Interwoven. Interwoven provided Web Content Management solutions for large enterprises like Ford Motor, FedEx, Cisco and eventually thousands of others large and small companies. I learned a lot about web content management by meeting with hundreds of companies - ranging from the Fortune 100 to smaller companies -  and digging into their web site architectures. The web was exploding at that time, and there was a tremendous demand for managing the ever expanding amount and types of content. During that period, our software sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

WordPress as a CMS

Fast forward to today, and now we have WordPress - an amazingly powerful content management system that is FREE. And it has a lot of power under the hood for a small or medium business looking for an easy way to manage their web site.

WordPress was designed as a platform for blogging, but you don’t have to use it as a blogging tool. With a few tweaks it can be used to run your website, with or without a “blog.” The fact that WordPress was designed as a blogging platform gives it some compelling advantages. It is optimized for easily publishing and changing content. And getting good search engine rankings requires fresh, unique content. You need a system that does not get in your way when you want to update your website with a new article or newsletter.

So why is WordPress a good choice?

Top Five Reasons to Use WordPress for Your Small Business Website

1. SEO - WordPress provides good search engine optimization (SEO) right out of the box. There are a few tweaks you need to make, but there are many seo benefits that WordPress provides for free. In fact Google’s own Matt Cutts says WordPress is “made to do SEO well” in this video: Matt Cutts gives tips to small business owners.
2. Content - it is easy to update content on your website without knowing HTML.  Do you hate the idea of having to learn to use a complex HTML editor tool like Dreamweaver? Do you have to “ask” your webmaster every time you want to make a small change to your website? Well no longer - once WordPress is set up for you, you can easily create new pages or edit existing pages using a simple rich text editor.
3. Extensions - There is a thriving ecosystem of developers creating themes and plug-ins - imagine free design themes, or the ability to extend your website with polls, contact forms, ratings or hundreds of other cool features without having to hire a web developer.
4. Support - If you do have problems, or want to add very custom features, it is easy to find support and developers who can help you. There are literally thousands of WordPress developers out there. And there are so many people writing about WordPress that help is only a Google search away!
5. One-click-installation - Quick installs are provided by many hosting providers, including Bluehost, 1and1 and GoDaddy.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing tips and tricks we’ve learned by using WordPress for a bunch of small business websites.

Upcoming articles in this series

Here are some of the topics we’ll cover in the coming weeks:

• The difference between Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org
• Hosting providers that make it easy to install WordPress
• How to install WordPress yourself
• Pages vs Posts in WordPress
• Top five WordPress plug-ins
• Avoiding the duplicate content problem

Do you run a chiropractic office? Take a look at our new WordPress templates for Chiropractors - build your search optimized chiropractic website in minutes!

Are you using WordPress for your Website, or stuck with something that isn’t working for you? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

User Map in Google Local Profile

If you click on this link it will take you to the user created Google Map.

User Created Google Map

This is a great reason to go and create a map in Google Maps for your business. You can add a little flair by customizing the place marker icon, adding photos and your phone number. I’m still determining if this helps your ranking in Google Local, but in general more complete profiles tend to do better.

I’d love to hear of your experiences with this - has creating a custom map in Google Maps helped you in the local search rankings?

Well, here is another reason to optimize your website for local search results - check this out - the new Google Mobile App for the iPhone allows you to search Google Local!

Google iPhone App Screenshot

As you’ve probably heard by now, the new iPhones have GPS in them, and the older iPhones can determine your location based on cell tower triangulation…

The Google Mobile iPhone has a drop-down next to the search box, and if you touch it you can select Local search results.

Local search selector

Then, when you start typing in any search term, results for local businesses will be returned based on your location!

Local search results

What this means is that millions of iPhone users are going to start using their iPhones to find local businesses wherever there are.

With several million iPhones in circulation - make sure you capture this opportunity for your small business. Here are some tips and tricks for getting your business listed in Google Local and getting the best results.

Google Local search results

And when Google releases their own OS for mobile phones (dubbed Android) this kind of local searching on mobile devices will become ubiquitous quickly. So the time to get in is now!

Tip: By the way, if you have an iPhone and want to take a screen shot of what is showing on your screen at any time, hold the Home and Sleep/Wake button at the same time - your screen will fade to white briefly and the screen shot will show up in your photos on your phone.

Google Reveals Secret Keyword Volume Data!

Google has just “cracked open the vault” and opened up an awesome way to accelerate this process - The Google Keyword Tool is now revealing their “secret” search volume number for any keyword or keyword phrase! This means you can find out how many searches occur in a given month for a keyword phrase, and related phrases!

This is HUGE!!

Say you are a plumber in Birmingham, Michigan and you are trying figure out what keywords you should optimize for. You type the phrase birmingham plumber into the keyword tool and find out that 170 people typed that phrase into Google in June. But you also learn that 1,300 people typed in plumbing birmingham. Good to know when you are deciding which keywords to optimize for. And another 390 typed in plumbers birmingham in June.

This is a trivial example but it illustrates the point - many times little changes in the keyword phrases can mean a huge difference in traffic. And now Google gives you the data to tell what people are actually searching for! You can do some amazing keyword phrase research now for free with this tool. These numbers have not been available anywhere until now!

So take your keyword phrases now and enter them into this tool. Find out what people are really searching for and improve your keyword phrases on your website. Let me know what you find!