Recently Google announced that business owners can now respond to reviews left on Google Places.

From the site at http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/08/respond-to-reviews-for-your-business-on.html

“Starting today, if you’re a verified Google Places business owner, you can publicly respond to reviews written by Google Maps users on the Place Page for your business. Engaging with the people who have shared their thoughts about your business is a great way to get to know your customers and find out more. Both positive and negative feedback can be good for your business and help it grow (even though it’s sometimes hard to hear). By responding, you can build stronger relationships with existing and prospective customers. For example, a thoughtful response acknowledging a problem and offering a solution can often turn a customer who had an initially negative experience into a raving supporter. A simple thank you or a personal message can further reinforce a positive experience. Ultimately, business owner responses give you the opportunity to learn what you do well, what you can do better, and show your customers that you’re listening.

Before writing your first response, we recommend reading our handy tips on how to respond to reviewers. Then take a stab at responding by following these instructions. If you have not yet verified ownership for your business on Google, please visit Google Places to claim your listing.”

This is a great opportunity for business owners to communicate with their reviewers, remember though don’t have heated discussions online, don’t get mad or personal these reviews are going to be around for a very long time and you want to be professional in your replies representing your business.

If you feel that a review is not compliant with the rules then you can flag it for removal and Google will look into the situation and remove the review if necessary.

I advise students that they first need to work on organic search for their website – make sure that their website looks professional and then work on expanding into the social media outlets.  Many of my students worry about Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and how they can manage so many sites and still run a business.  A recent report on Emarketer.com shows that in the B2B industries these mediums might not be as high on the list of sites to manage as making sure your own business website is bringing in organic traffic.

“While many business-to-business (B2B) companies have gotten turned on to the value of social media marketing and find it helpful for tasks like prospecting and lead generation, inbound social marketing for B2Bs may leave much to be desired.

A study by lead generation solutions provider LeadForce1 examined the behavior of visitors to B2B Websites who had been directed to the sites from social media, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Wikipedia. Visitors from the top social sites were generally uninterested in product or contact pages, suggesting they were not in the market for the company’s products or services.”

My feeling is that you should have a presence in all of these sites, I certainly see traffic coming from both Twitter and LinkedIn to the Maia Internet Consulting website and know that they have brought us business, however the most traffic still comes from our organic search results.

Read the full article at Emarketer.com

Recently a letter was send from Domain Registry of America informing a client that their domain name was going to expire, they passed the letter onto me so I could take care of it for them.  This domain was registered through GoDaddy.com and does not expire until October.  The letter asked that a reply and renewal be sent by June 28th.

I just want to warn people that letters like this are a way to have you transfer your domain name to another company.   If you read the small print it will tell you that this is to TRANSFER and renew your domain.  Please don’t fall for these unless you really want to switch your domain registration to another company – the cost for one year renewal with Domain Registry of America is $30.00 your domain renewal through GoDaddy will be around $10.00 for the year.

If you are not sure where your domain is hosted, or are confused by a letter you can go to http://www.whois.net and enter in your domain name.  The results will give you the registrar for the domain along with the renewal date.  You can then make an informed decision as to if you need to renew or change registry companies.

Here is a great blogging tool from Wordtracker.  You can compare words while you are editing your posts, see how many times you have used a keyword and do a little research without having to forget your train of thought.  It is quick an easy to add it to your Firefox browser.

Download it now – it’s completely free.

Here is the recent email sent from Google Analytics

Analytics Intelligence with Custom Alerts
Using an algorithmic driven Intelligence engine, Analytics Intelligence monitors data patterns over daily, weekly and monthly periods. Significant changes in data trends and insights you may not have noticed are surfaced directly in your account. You can also create your own Custom Alerts that monitor your selection of dimensions and metrics that can be sent by email or displayed in the Intelligence reports.

Expanded Goals and New Engagement Goals
You can now track even more conversions by creating up to 20 goals per profile. Measure user engagement and branding success on your site with Time on Site and Pages per Visit goals. Set up your first Engagement goal in minutes.

Expanded Mobile Reporting
Google Analytics has expanded support for mobile websites and tracking for iPhone and Android mobile applications tracking. Adding server side code to your PHP, JSP, PERL, or ASPX mobile websites enables you to track non-Java-Script enabled phones. For mobile application developers, access the SDK and technical implementation details here. You’ll also be able to see breakout data on mobile devices and carriers in the new Mobile reports in the Visitors section.

Unique Visitors Metric
Include the Unique Visitors metric in your Custom Report or Advanced Segments to see how many actual visitors (unique cookies) visit your website. You can select Unique Visitors as a metric against any dimensions in Google Analytics.

Advanced Analysis Features
Dive deeper into your data with Pivoting, Secondary Dimensions, and Advanced Table Filtering. These combined features enable you to perform in-depth, on the fly data analysis within your account.

Share Advanced Segments and Custom Report Templates
Share the URL link for an Advanced Segment or Custom Report with anyone who has an Analytics account. Sharing the link will automatically import the pre-formatted template into the person’s account. Also available now is the ability to share or hide your Advanced Segments and Custom Reports by profile.

Multiple Custom Variables
Custom variables provide the power and flexibility to customize Google Analytics to collect the unique site usage data most important to your business. Define and track visitors according to visitor attributes (member vs. non-member), session attributes (signed in or signed out), and by page-level attributes (viewed Sports section). Use custom variables to classify any number of interactions and behaviors on your site. Start learning more about them now.

Print Local Listings Seminar (pdf)

Here is a list of our upcoming CFU classes for 2010 – check with CFU to see that they are still going on and please register ahead of time as we have both a max limit of 10 and min attendance of 2 for the classes to run.

A Crash Course in Local Search
Understand why Local Search is different from General Search.  Figure out where to list your business and come away with lots of other directories to get listed beyond Google.
Saturday mornings from 9 am-12 am
Sat May 15th – Register / More Info
Sat June 26th – Register / More Info
Sat Aug 7th  – Register / More Info
Sat Sept 18th – Register / More Info
Sat Oct 30th
Sat Dec 4th

Google Pay Per Click
Learn how to write good ad copy, get your website in order to help get better results from your Pay Per Click campaigns and how to find your keywords.
Saturday afternoons from 2 pm-5 pm
Sat May 15th – Register / More Info
Sat June 26th – Register / More Info
Sat Aug 7th – Register / More Info
Sat Sept 18th – Register / More Info
Sat Oct 30th
Sat Dec 4th

Twitter
Understand what Twitter is all about, how to participate and how to optimize your Twitter account.  Grow your list quickly with targeted, qualified traffic.
Wednesday evenings from 6 pm-8 pm
Weds May 26th – Register / More Info
Weds July 28th – Register / More Info
Weds Sept 29th - Register / More Info
Weds Nov 24th – Register / More Info

Google Freebies and Must Haves
Google is a treasure trove for small businesses.  Learn how to  use the top five free Google tools and how to create revenue on your website.
Wednesday evenings from 6 pm-8 pm
Weds May 12th – Register / More Info
Weds July 14th – Register / More Info
Weds Sept 8th – Register / More Info
Weds Nov 10th

Online Marketing It’s Easy, Effective & Affordable
Discover some ideas about how you can market yourself more effectively online.  Starting with your own website we discuss how to make sure you are taking advantage of the basics on your own site then move onto Blogging, Social Media and Email marketing.
Wednesday evenings from 6 pm-9 pm
Weds March 3rd
Weds April 7th
Weds June 16th – Register / More Info
Weds Aug 11th – Register / More Info
Weds Oct 13th – Register / More Info
Weds Dec 8th

Blogging
Curious about blogging and if it can work for your business.  In this class we talk about free and paid options, why you might want to blog and how it can be fun as well as give you an advantage in the search engines.
Wednesday evenings from 6 pm-9 pm
Weds March 17th
Weds April 21st
Weds June 30th – Register Today
Weds Aug 25th – Register / More Info
Weds Oct 27th – Register / More Info
Weds Dec 22nd – unavailable for online registration until new class links are posted

If you have any questions about the classes please contact Liz@MaiaInternetConsulting.com – we look forward to seeing you in a class soon!

To register for a class click on a the link to take you to the register page for the class or contact:

Colorado Free University
7653 East 1st Place
Denver, CO 80230
(303) 399-0093

For those that are not really aware of what Local Search is here is a quick look:

• Local Search is any search made with the goal of finding something within a geographic location.  This is known as searching with local intent.
• Local Search is searching for something (what) in some place (where).
• Local Expert, Greg Sterling, defines Local Search as seeking information online with the intention of making a transaction off line.
• Essentially, anything that you would traditionally look for in the print Yellow Pages becomes a Local Search which it is conducted offline.

Local Search in Google shows up in the map when you search for something in an area.

Other search engines have a similar results and need to be submitted individually.  If you are on Google Local Search you will still need to make sure you are on Bing and Yahoo.

The client in the example above, Swim Otters, had claimed her listing on Google Local but was still not showing up in the results for Swim Lessons Westminster, CO.  We worked on her listing to help her come up for various swimming searches in her area and removed duplicate entries for data integrity.  Simply claiming your listing does not mean you will show in the results.  Working with a search professional can make a difference.

Learn about Local Search in an upcoming class I am presenting at Colorado Free University on April 10th, 2009 from 9am – noon.    Cost is $57 for non-members of CFU and $45 for members with a $10 materials fee.

Click on the following link to sign up:  Local Search Class

I get asked a number of times about adding video to a site, many clients want to stream directly on their own site.  This is possible with WordPress and can look really nice and will increase the ‘stickiness’ of your site, keeping people engaged longer.  However, to gain any kind of recognition for your video in the search engines they should be on YouTube.

Search Engines are not able to figure out what the video is about unless you tell them, so they are invisible to the search engines.  Most online video is converted to a flash video file when it is uploaded and the content within the video is unknown.  This affects the ranking of the video.

When you upload to YouTube each video is given it’s own page so it gives you the opportunity to let the search engines know what your video is about.

A recent article from Drew Hubbard on IMedia Connection goes into great detail about optimizing for online video.  Briefly his quick tips for optimization include:

1. Create a Profile Page
2. Include links in profile pages wherever possible
3. Include appropriate keywords in the name of the video and use the word ‘video’ when appropriate.
4. Write a unique, keyword rich description that includes the url, the url should be at the beginning.
5. Provide video transcripts if possible.
6. Take advantage of YouTube’s captions and annotation feature by adding notes, subtitles, descriptions, and links directly over the video.
7. Tag videos with keywords.
8. Encourage participation – using Broadcasting and Sharing.
9. Watermark your videos.
10. Try to get a compelling thumbnail for your video.
11. Take advantage of YouTube Insights.  The analytics feature of YouTube.

Read the full article with much more detailed explanations of these 11 tips along with examples of videos that get it right and the mistakes to avoid.

10 SEO tips for YouTube – iMediaConnection.com
Denver Video Production Company