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The Internet has turned into a great local business marketing tool in the past couple of years.  While local businesses have not yet adopted these tools into their marketing strategies, the technologies are moving forward with or without them.  The convergence of Search, Social Media and Mobile Marketing is bringing business information with products and services into the hands of the local consumers. Having had Internet business experience for the past 16 years, I can tell you that this is probably one of the few times where we can put all the local business marketing puzzle pieces together and see what marketing tools we have available over the next 2 – 3 years.  Let’s review each one so we can see how the come together. Local Business Listings In short these are the interactive yellow pages of the Internet. Interactive because as a business owner you can update and manage these listings at search engines, social communities, 411 web sites, GPS/Mapping websites and basic business directories.  They are also interactive because consumers can post their experience they had with your business, products or services.  In order to get started you need to claim, update, monitor and manage these listings at multiple local listing websites.  Don’t have the time resources?  Don’t worry, there are companies that provide local business listing management services. Local Business Listing Marketing vs. Data Services As a business you will want to seek out companies that provide the marketing services.  The companies that provide basic data services only push your information out, but they do not help you protect your listing from being hijacked or for that matter manage your listings for marketing purposes with various types of content like coupons, events, QR codes, consumer reviews, coupons and citations.  The marketing services have a higher cost to them than the data services, because the marketing services are more effective and do more for your business. Consumer Reviews This will be the first time that most local businesses dependent upon the local consumer for their revenue will need to manage their public relations.  Consumer Reviews are not just about other consumers seeing the information, but too many negative reviews will adversely impact your website ranking position in search results.  This is no longer about just consumers posting their frustrations to a website or blog, but directly into your local listing.  As a business you will need to closely monitor these reviews and also begin to engage customers that have positive experiences to post their information as well. Local Listing Coupons and Mobile Coupons The Local business listing gives the business the opportunity of posting their coupons, offers, and discounts.  They are then available for consumers to find through web searches and through their mobile devices.  While this is not available through all local listing websites or available for free, this is in no uncertain terms the demise of the traditional coupons. Events If you promote your business then you will want to use the Events promotion tool within Local Business Listings.  You can include Specials, Events, New Products, general News, pretty much any alert you which to make the local consumers aware of so they can find it through a web search or a mobile search. QR Codes These small square bar codes will allow you to program them for consumer to scan using their mobile devices.  The code will then do whatever is programmed to them.  For example, a coupon, discount, offer, event, website link.  You can also use them on business cards, websites, traditional ads, store window, and much more. Citations This tends to add a level of complication for most businesses.  If you’re familiar with the idea of inbound links, this is very similar only this time is not necessarily just about a link, but your company name, address, city, state, zip, phone and many other aspects that are related to what is known as HCards to include your longitude and latitude of your business address.  Because this is a combination of marketing and technical expertise you may wish to get someone to help you with this item. Hyperlocal Websites that are hyperlocal give a local business the opportunity of highlight targeted advertising and marketing to geography and demographic.  While these websites are not as prominent for this purpose yet, this will change and needs to be planned for in 2011 and beyond. Having had Internet business experience for the past 16 years, I can tell you that that geographic marketing is the direction of our immediate future.  Hopefully I was able to portray to you some of the known components of local business marketing and how this local business marketing tool can be used to reach the local consumers. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Local Business Marketing – The Known

I have had many opportunities to chat all things local with my good friend Will Scott, and just the other day we were at it again.  We were talking about some of the most common questions we are always asked by small business owners in regards to local marketing online.  I wanted to take the time and put them down on paper for everyone.  I felt this would be a good venue to get the answers out there.  Here goes my interview with Will Scott of Search Influence . 1. What are the best ways that new to Internet businesses can go about increasing the number (or gaining any at all) citations when it comes to local listings? My number 1 recommendation would be that they make their way over to http://getlisted.org . Get Listed is a really simple tool that checks the major local search engines and tells you if you’re there. If you’re not there you can go submit yourself right from the dashboard. Once you’ve done that, go submit yourself to the major data providers. There’s a shortcut here you can get into those providers data with just 3 sources: UniversalBusinessListing.org (submits to multiple data providers) Localeze.com (submits to multiple data providers and powers many online directories. InfoUSA.com/Landing/UpdateListing.aspx (the only major not represented by the 2 above) One caveat: it’s not immediate. You must submit early in the month and then it may take 45 90 days to see full distribution. In the meantime there’s nothing wrong with hand submitting to some of the biggies like MerchantCircle, Yellowpages.com, Superpages and InsiderPages. Just be advised, your phone will ring with follow-up telemarketing. Politely decline and stick with the free listing. 2. What would you say to those who worry about receiving negative reviews? Negative reviews are bound to happen. Lots of businesses think they can play Ostrich and solve all their problems. The issue is that even if the business owner isn’t active online their customers are. As with many things the best defense is a good offense. If a business owner is proactively working to get positive reviews it’s a great defense when they find themselves with the inevitable negative. And, I think everyone understands that we can’t please all customers. No matter how hard a business owner tries there will always be that one. Just like in real life, you can’t sweat them all and the most valuable tactic is to offer good customer service so you don’t have to worry about reputation management . 3. What would you say to those who are worried their competitiors are giving them bad reviews? Forget about it see above. Seriously though, you can’t defend against it. Just monitor your reviews and other online mentions and if one crops up which looks suspect, address it head on and report it to whichever service is hosting it. It does no good to share your agitation with the site where a review is posted. Keep it factual and professional and they’ll be much more likely to take it down. We have seen Yelp reviews pulled, but it’s not very common. In the case of Yelp, reviews which don’t pass the sniff-test often face the Yelp Review Filter . 4. What are some of the best places/resources someone who has ran a business for years offline, but never online use to get started? Wow, the list is endless but just for a few: GetListed.org already mentioned above. In addition to the service, there’s a blog and links to lots of great resources. OutspokenMedia.com/blog/ Lisa and her cohorts blog almost daily. They take a very user-friendly approach to online marketing. It’s entertaining for pros and approachable for those just getting started. SmallBusinessSEM.com Matt McGee’s blog. Occasionally insidebaseball but filled with great stuff written with the business owner in mind. DuctTapeMarketing.com John Jantsch’s site. Very nitty gritty marketing ideas and execution. SmallBizTrends.com Anita Campbell and a stable of writers tracking, reporting and advising on news and info of interest. SmallBusinessBrief.com Forum from the folks at SearchEngineGuide.com. Search Engine Guide is a little technical for newbies, but there are a lot of helpful people in the forum. In all seriousness I recommend our blog: http://www.searchinfluence.com/blog/ . It’s written by my team for and from the perspective of the small business clients with whom we work. And, though it’s often a little insidebaseball for newbies too, I think your blog  http://dreamsystemsmedia.com/blog/ has a lot to offer as well. Mat, thanks for asking for my opinions. This is an area where I’m pretty passionate. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Top Local Business Listing Questions Answered – Interview with Will

Aside from Twitter  and Social Networking apps, another interesting set of apps available right now on the iPad App Store are search-related. I scoured through the App Store to get the most significant of these search-related iPad apps – and found 8 of them. Here are 8 search-related apps that you might want to check out. Zillow Real Estate

I am a big fan of food. I think about it everyday, and if things go well I even get to have some on a regular basis. So, in order to give my life some variety I like to prepare different dishes on occasion. To do so, I turn to online recipes. You can read reviews, look up anything imaginable, they are free, and the directions are usually easy to follow. That is why when I was deciding how to cover using Wordpress to track Google Local analytics data, I figured a local search recipe would be the best way. Many small businesses are using Wordpress as a CMS for their website, and understanding the traffic that comes from the Local business center is uber important. So, sit back and let your mouth start to water and get ready to track local…. Approximate Bake

Google Maps is a pretty useful tool for conducting local search on business establishments, directions and yes route maps.  It’s been getting wide usage and yet Google seem to have not capitalize on its monetization potential especially from local search advertising. But this perhaps might change soon, as Google has started testing out a new Maps feature that shows hotel prices for selected local hotel listings. The new feature will let you enter the dates of your planned stay in a hotel in your search phrase. Google Maps search engine will then display real prices on selected listings and as you click on  a specific price, you’ll see a list of  advertisers who have provided pricing information for specific hotels. To avoid issue on search results relevance, the pricing information will be labeled “Sponsored.”  Of course you can click through to reserve a room from the advertiser’s site. Hence, a faster, more convenient way of planning your next trip, thanks to Google Maps. Now for those who are concerned that this might affect the ranking of hotels in Google Maps, Google was quick to explain that  this would not be the case. Business listings are still ranked based on their relevance to search terms and other factors. Google is currently testing this feature with selected advertisers only and is visible to selected users as well.  It’s availability to all Google Maps users will be determined by how the testing will push through. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Google Tests Hotel Price Listings on Google