How should a small business get started online? What is the best way to rank for searches in your local area? How could you be using Facebook to get more customers to your business?
My guest in this interview, Will Scott, answers these questions and shares some great tips as well. Will is President of SearchInfluence, a New Orleans based Internet Marketing Agency with over 20 people and tons of clients.
He’s also a frequent presenter at the major Search Marketing conferences like SMX, SES, PubCon and many others.
In the interview Will gives some great advice for businesses starting out on the web – how to best get started with your Google Places page, how to build good citations, and some tricks for defining your categories.
He also goes on to share a great tip about Facebook advertising – and how small businesses can use it to get results. Not many small businesses are taking advantage of this yet, and we both agreed it is a great time to get involved.
I certainly enjoyed this interview, and I hope you will too. Thanks Will!
Watch the Video Interview with Will
Here is a link to the SearchInfluence Blog that I mentioned in the interview. Will’s team is producing tons of great content, so it’s a great blog to follow.
Also, we talked about defining categories for your Google Places Page in the interview. Mike Blumenthal has a nice tool that helps you determine which categories best match your business, products and services here – Google LBC Category Preview Tool.
Or Listen to the Audio
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!
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:55 — 27.4MB)
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Now that Google is paying attention to a searcher’s location, local search is where every business needs to be.
I loved this interview, I really got a lot out of it, thank you both for taking the time to share. The tips on the local listings are so important and I really like the idea of uber targeting markets using Facebook. I can see the logic of suggesting that clients with a super limited budget start with a tricked out Facebook page, but I don’t know if I would actually run with that idea. I read somewhere last week using Facebook as your presence on the web is like listing a hotel room as your address, I sort of agree with that. By the time you pay someone who understands FBML to kit out your page you could have your own Small Biz themed site. Saying that though, I am definitely going to implement many of your ideas, lots of gold in this discussion, thank you!
Thanks Eileen!
I agree – a small business can get a good website and domain name on a decent budget, and I always advocate making your website the “hub” of your online presence. I think the Facebook Page should be considered an additional way to reach customers.
Very interesting. I think this is the best interview so far, lots of content.
I’ve yet to get into facebook advertising. Got any good examples of local companies who are doing the facebook pages thing pretty well? Thanks for the helpful advice!
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