In the last two posts of SEO You Should Know: Local Edition, we’ve discussed how you can begin to establish and manage your presence in the increasingly important world of local search. In just a few hours, you can locate, claim, build, and maintain your company’s profiles on Google, Yelp and Bing.

Those are only three of hundreds of online directories, search engines, and review sites that could have your company’s info. If you have the time (and patience), you can find these directories and complete the similar processes of getting your company listed. The more references and links to your site, the better. You could also hire an experienced SEO firm to focus on developing this local presence for you. And with the obligatory pitch out of the way, on to this week’s post.

A problem you will probably come across as you scour the web for these (mostly free) local directories is the issue of duplicate listings. It can happen on the lesser known directories and even on the heavy hitters like Google, Yelp, and Bing. You would think having more references and pages talking about and directing to your site would be a good thing right? It is, but not in this case.

Duplicate listings can occur when the search engine’s bots crawl the web after each query is submitted and they bring back all of the information they find to the searcher.  In the vastness of the internet, there are bound to be some discrepancies. These could occur when a customer cites the wrong address or phone number on a review site. Or maybe your company moved years ago, but some engines still have the old address and number. Possibly your URL or email address have changed. The reason we claim these business listings to remove discrepancies and manage your local profiles is the same reason we remove duplicate listings.

First, we don’t want incorrect information about your business feeding the search engine bots. In the last two posts, we talked about NAP. It is very important from a local standpoint that your NAP is accurate and matching the NAP that could be found at any corner of the internet in regards to your company.

Second, it is important that you leave the competition to your actual competition. You don’t want to be competing with yourself. Some of our clients have had duplicate Yelp or Google profiles with slight variations. Your potential customers won’t put too much thought into uncovering the correct listing or the incorrect one. Your gamble will be hoping they pick the one you’ve spent the time carefully selecting pictures, writing great descriptions, and developing your image. So we want to remove these duplicates to make sure when they click on your business name, they are getting the best first impression.

The tricky part is the actual removal of these listings. Some directories and engines are better than others. As we’ve mentioned before, Google has very little (if anything) in the way of customer service. If you come across multiple listings on Google for the same location, you will have to go through the claiming process again. Once you verify that you are the owner, update the information in the profile and then suspend the listing. (Note: Don’t delete it from your places, just the Google Results…you’ll still want to be able to manage it). Every once in a while, do a Google Places search for your company and make sure no other duplicates pop up. Popular or larger companies have this happen often.

Most of the other directories are easier, but are not uniform. For the most part, it is a matter of tracking down the customer support section of the directory, and sending an email to the support team to help you by manually removing the listing. Other times there will be an FAQ section, and in many cases you can find support there by selecting “Duplicate Listing Error” or something similar and submitting a request to have the duplicates removed. It helps if you know the URL’s of the duplicates, so have those ready or open in separate tabs.

Then it’s just a matter of time and patience. Keep up with your emails sent out to these support teams and check back every so often. There are a ton of directories out there, so your work is never completely done. Justify this with the knowledge that every little bit really does help. And again, if you’d rather leave it to the SEO pros, there’s always that option.

We’ve come to the end of our local advice for now. Stay tuned for the next edition of SEO You Should Know, and we’ll tackle another element of search engine optimization that will help you grow your online presence. As always, if you have any questions, email us at moc.evitcaretnignivlovenull@ofni, call us, or sound off in the comment section.

Last week we started a segment called SEO You Should Know. Sticking with Local Optimization, we’re going to talk about getting your business listed on a major search engine (Bing) and a major review site (Yelp).  In Volume 1, we talked about getting listed, verified, and seen on Google, which is the most popular and used search engine. But let’s not count out Bing (Google’s largest competitor) and Yelp (a review site where Google receives a lot of its reviews and info).

Again, these posts are here to help get you started. If you have questions about local optimization or other SEO marketing strategies, email moc.evitcaretnignivlovenull@ofni.

1. Get Listed on Bing.com

Similar to how you found and claimed your business on Google, you should start by doing a Bing search for your business name and city or town. This should pull up your business as the first result. Bing’s 1^st result page isn’t too far off from Google when it returns your specific result. There will be a sectioned off Map and listing for your business if Bing has the information. If you don’t see the Map section right away, you will need to go to the “More” tab at the top of the search results. Select “Maps” from these options. If you find your business has a listing, click on the title of your business. On your businesses local page, you will see an option to “Change Your Business Listing”. Click on that link, it will prompt you to the next page where you can claim your listing by creating an account. Once your account is set up, you will have access to your local listings page.

From this point, Bing’s relatively new Business Portal allows you to add pictures, target your industry terms, and most importantly; make sure the NAP (name, address, phone) matches what is on your website and the other local profiles you’ll be building. Remember, many of these search engines and directories will have info about your company that they found from crawling the internet. It won’t always be correct, so take the time to claim and revise. The more sources across the web that show the same info, the more these search engines will trust the information they find.

2. Verifying on Bing

Similar to how you had to verify your listing on Google, Bing will ask for a phone call or mailer for verification. The phone call is faster of course, with instant gratification that allows you to publish your updates. The mail option will take a couple of weeks, but as long as all of the information is accurate, shouldn’t be a problem. The main difference between the search engines is that Bing has a support center that will help you if you’re having trouble getting verified.

3. Get Listed on Yelp

In most cases, unless you’re a brand new business, Yelp will have a profile for your company already. Yelp gets its information from customers and reviewers,  and while most who review try to be as descriptive and accurate as possible, nobody really knows your business like you. Since Search Engines will grab information from sites like Yelp, it is important that you claim your profile and complete it as much as possible. Yelp’s site is a little more fun and user friendly.

Search for your business name or industry in your area to find if you have an existing profile. If you do, click on it and claim it. If not, follow the directions to add a business.

Unlike the others, Yelp requires that you verify your business before you edit any information. Yelp will place an automatic call to your company (make sure your automated system is off) and provide you with a pin. Once Yelp offers its sincere “Congratulations!”, you’re good to go. Add photos, bios, special deals for Yelp customers, and of course the accurate NAP. Also, take advantage of the Yelp analytics to help track the benefits of your completed Yelp profile.

That’s all for this week in SEO You Should Know: Local Edition Volume 2. In the third and final volume, we will talk about duplicate listings in the local world. If you have any questions or would like to know more about other internet marketing strategies and how they can help your business, contact the Chicago SEO experts at moc.evitcaretnignivlovenull@ofni or call today.

We want to try and put more of the “Interactive” in our blog. Once a week from here on out, we’re going to host a feature called SEO You Should Know. While we are an SEO Firm with dreams of world domination, there is a lot of basic work you can do yourself to help your business in the SEO world. You won’t see the same results as if you had an SEO firm working on your campaign year round, but a little work can go a long way at the start of your search engine marketing campaign.

We’re going to stress the importance of local optimization for you small businesses with storefronts or headquarters, because it’s never been more important than it is right now. Over the next few weeks, we’ll focus on finding, claiming, and optimizing your local profile on four of the heavy hitters; Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Yelp (not a search engine, but still a profile that must be optimized).

Google is the benchmark, so let’s start with them. Start by typing your business name and town into the Google toolbar. We want to see three things.

1. If your business is already listed in Google Places. Your website should come up first if you’re searching your business name and area (unless you have business name that talks about your industry in the name. ex: company named Chicago Pet Day Care will have competition for the top spot of their business name.) You should also see a section with results that have some more information, maybe some pictures, and a little red teardrop that will indicate a spot on a small Google Map. This is your place page. If you see a result but not a place page, let’s look further.
2. Where is my place page? Even if you have never submitted your business information to Google’s database, it will most likely have information about you. (It may not always be 100% accurate, which is why we’re doing this.) Google crawls the entire web every time it has a search query. It comes back with information it sees connected with your business name; most importantly, your NAP (Name, address, phone number), as well as your industry, reviews about your company, etc. If you aren’t showing up in Google Places at all, and your business has a storefront or centralized location, let’s fix this now. In recent months, Google has placed more and more value on local profiles. Not having an optimized local profile could be costing you valuable search result page real estate, which costs you customers.
3. Adding Your Business to Google. The first step is creating a Google account. This is as quick and easy as setting up an email account. Follow the steps, put in the required information, and you should be good to go. Once your account is set up, you’ll come to this page. Here, you’ll put in the business name and phone number to see once more if there is already a listing for your business.  If your business still isn’t showing up, Google will bring you to a screen to begin filling in your business listing.  After you fill out as much information as possible, including relevant photos and videos if you have them, click the submit button at the bottom of the page. An important tip is to try and leave no fields blank. The more information you can provide your customers and the search engine, the better.
4. Verification In Google’s ever-advancing effort to keep only the best of the best showing up for search results, Google has a verification process to make sure you or an authorized representative are the one’s claiming your account and filling in the right info (instead of a disgruntled customer, former employee, competitor, etc.). There are two ways Google can complete this process, phone or postcard.  Choose whatever works best for you.
5. I found my business on Google, now what? Once you find your place page, you will see on the top “business owner?”. Click on “Business Owner?”, log-in with or create a Google account, and then continue from step 3 above through the filling out and claiming process.

As always, if you have any questions, comment below and we will address your question specifically. In the following weeks, we’ll focus on claiming profiles in other search engines and some quick helpful tips to help you get started with your SEO campaign.

So you’ve got a web home (your website) and have worked hard on making it SEO friendly. But you still need a boost in the online buzz department. Here’s a few easy, 30-minute or less tips to get you started.

Write a blog post
Websites used to be a home page and a series of jump and landing pages. They were an interconnected loop of relevant information that led to a specific result (usually a sale). Blogging has changed that; since you update it regularly (right?), you are constantly feeding the search engines new keywords giving them reason to rank you higher and give you more buzz.

Post a video on YouTube
Video is probably the quickest way to reach a broad audience, and YouTube is the biggest channel to broadcast it on. Popular videos are two things: engaging and informative. You want to give your viewer valuable information without putting them to sleep.

So play to your strengths. If you’re funny, be funny. If you love sports, slip a few references in there of your favorite team. Don’t shy away from who you are because you want sound a certain way. Authenticity is king on the web; be who you are and people will respond.

Tweet tweet with Twitter
A “real time” results scroll pops up with every Google search. Tweeting is now a two-fold activity; you talk to your follows while also building some up-to-the-second Google buzz. Update Facebook, too. If you can get a buzz going on both sites, the rest of the web is soon to catch on.

Realizing the brand-building potential, savvy business owners are leveraging Twitter to interact with customers. Twitter enables brand-to-customer conversations through comfortable, open forums. In fact, 20% of tweets are about brands, and they come from both consumers and businesses.

Comcast uses Twitter to scan for complaints and engage with customers. The idea was born when someone in the company realized scores of public complaints against Comcast were being vented via Twitter. In response, the cable company built a team of 11 people whose function is simply to scour the site and respond to Comcast-related tweets. Much to many users’ surprise, the Comcast team responds to tweets, identifying themselves as a company representative and asking if they can help. Comcast execs are highly satisfied with the unique dialogue Twitter has enabled, noting that the conversations are dissimilar to the typical phone complaints the company receives. “[Twitter is] a little more personal. More back-and-forth discussions, and it’s less formal. And it gives immediacy to interactions,” says Frank Eliason, Comcast’s director of digital care.

For instance, an angry Comcast customer wrote, “I would suggest you tell the people in charge of the money to do their jobs.” A moment later, she was compelled to tweet again: “P.S. If my credit score is negative, it is your fault for not paying enough attention or not calling off your dogs.” In response, Eliason suggested (to a BusinessWeek writer who was observing his work) to reply and simply thank her for her suggestion, with a period at the end. “I wouldn’t do a smiley face when we’re doing a collections issue,” he says. Although not a quick fix for some deeply rooted business issues, Eliason and his team’s work has made Comcast accessible and trustworthy to customers. When Twitter users think Comcast, they think Eliason. “Right now I have 5,700 followers. They know about my family Web site. It gives a face to Comcast,” he told BusinessWeek.

A number of corporations have followed Comcast’s lead, using Twitter as a means to reach out to consumers and resolve complaints. Travel companies like Virgin America use Twitter regularly to communicate everything from vacation specials to possible flight delays. But Virgin takes its Twitter presence a step further than the competition, communicating much more than just deals and flight status, and asking for open communication from its customers in return. And its more than 20,000 followers deliver, filling Virgin’s Twitterstream with photos of themselves aboard Virgin flights or on vacations made possible by the airline. Virgin also retweets its passengers’ posts. During one flight, a recent medical school tweeted her excitement about her accomplishment and about being aboard Virgin America. Rather than congratulating her, Virgin retweeted and asked someone to buy her a drink on the flight. There was an immediate response and the surprised grad was quickly presented with a drink, compliments of Row 11.

Businesses and organizations have also made use of Tweetups to further their brand. For instance, in April 2009 the National Hockey League (NHL) worked with fans to organize a series of Tweetups that occurred simultaneously around the world. The Tweetup effort brought together 1,200 fans in 23 cities, and reached an estimated 240,000 through Twitter and millions more through press coverage, which included a mention in USA Today. Increased Twitter action on the day of the Tweetups also spurred countless brand impressions. On the opening night of the playoffs, the term “NHL” was mentioned on Twitter more than twice as often as on a normal day. And #NHLtweetup became a trending topic for the day. Now the league has a dedicated social media department and has planned more Tweetups for the 2009-2010 season.
Twitter has emerged as the hottest brand building and customer service tool on the market and, ironically, it was not created for that purpose. But corporate tweeting has spread like wildfire and has been met with praise from consumers, who appreciate the fact that there is a human being at the other end of that Twitterstream – a welcome change in today’s impersonal business world of stiff corporate policies and procedures. Using Twitter is not just for the large corporations. Twitter also gives smaller, local businesses a voice and a solution to some of the complaints of the consumer. Look out next week for some strategies and helpful tools to help you monitor your brand on Twitter and other social media.