Local SEO is a potent way to drive people to your physical business location. It also helps ensure that your business appears real, legitimate, and authoritative within the Google search results of nearby potential customers.

Consider these 5 things when optimizing your website for Local SEO in 2022:

Local SEO Thing #1: Optimize For Voice Search

No one thinks that customers always and only search for things with their voice (although 41% of users now search using their voice once per day). However, we strongly suspect that the way your customers search for your product or services is closer to the way they speak; people tend to search with natural language (phrases or meaningful sentence fragments) more so than with the keyword-only searches typical in the past.

When someone is out on the town and feeling hungry for pizza, they do not typically Google “Pizza.”

Instead, they will look for ‘Pizza Near Me’ or ‘Best Pizza In [CITY NAME].’

Optimizing your site and content for the way people actually look for things online will help you rank better for these localized searches. It will also futureproof your site for the continual growth of voice assistants.

For more talk on voice search, check out How to Optimize for Voice Search.

Local SEO Thing #2: Be Consistently Consistent

The little details matter when it comes to Local SEO. Presenting your business information consistently—especially the physical address—is crucial because Google assesses your legitimacy through such consistency.

It may sound like nitpicking, but if your business is located at 123 North Christmas Ave, then you should always refer to it as such—and never 123 N. Christmas Ave. Be consistent with your location information because it helps reduce issues with local listings, and it shows the bots you care about your local business data.

Local SEO Thing #3: Actually, this is Hyperlocal SEO

You don’t just live in your city, you live in a neighborhood. So do your customers.

When optimizing your content for hyperlocal SEO, make sure you include the neighborhood you are located in and also the locations your customers may live, work, or shop in. This helps drive local searches including those specific keywords, as the algorithms will understand the local nature of your content and deliver it to local searchers.

If you have a business in Bushwick, Brooklyn, your business is located THERE—not just the more general New York City. Optimizing for all three—Bushwick, Brooklyn, and New York City—will net you the best possible ranking potential.

Thing #4: Own Your Listing

Your Google Business Profile listing is one of the most important tools in driving local traffic online. Make full use of it.

If you haven’t already claimed your listing, do so. If you have, then optimize! Here are five easy to complete areas you can use to improve your Google Business Profile listing.

1. Flesh out your business description to include language that will drive a user to want to engage with your business.
2. Showcase your products directly within your listing.
3. Add photos. Photos help boost engagement on your local listings.
4. Use the Posts functionality of Google Business Profile; it’s like a micro-blog for your local listing page that gives information to users directly within the search results and allows you to promote sales and products to local searchers.
5. When it comes to your Primary Category within GMB make sure you choose wisely. If you are a pizza place, make sure you choose the category Pizza Restaurant and not just Restaurant. This attention to detail is necessary for Google to understand when to show your business over another location.

The more you put care into your business information online, the better it will likely perform in search.

Thing #5: Show Authority

It’s not enough just to rank locally. If potential customers have doubts that you are a reputable business, they are not likely to spend their money on your goods or services. To satisfy the need for credibility, you need a local review strategy.

Encourage your customers to leave 5-star reviews when they are satisfied with your business. Whether this is via a card you hand out to a customer or through a follow-up email, reviews are a major factor in convincing a local customer to make a purchase. They will have a big impact on your local performance.

Once you have reviews, show them off. Use plugins to feature the reviews on your website, and share every good review you get on social media. Respond to the reviews you get from customers on Google and Facebook. It is this attention to detail and care that may sway another customer to your side. And it shows local searchers that you are to be trusted.

When it comes to local SEO, no one of these tactics alone will bring your business success within the search engines; rather, a finely optimized and cultivated combination of the 5 areas above can help drive traffic with higher buyer intent.

At DOM, we’re local SEO wizards and more than ready to get you optimized for local traffic. Feel free to reach out today and let’s put together a plan that works for your SEO needs.

The post How to Do Local SEO in 2024 appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Simply put: it’s not easy to be in charge of kickstarting growth for treatment facilities and rehabilitation centers.

Scammers and third-party lead generators have increased the difficulty for organizations to rank their websites to be found by the 23-million-plus Americans in need of treatment. 

But the biggest Google change challenging SEO efforts for treatment facilities and rehabs isn’t the scammers…

Instead, it’s the government. 

Learn how the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has been impacting your ability to rank at the top of the search results. Then, get a glimpse into 12 of our top ideas to rise above SAMHSA in the search engines so you can get your growth plans off the ground.  

SAMHSA’s Impact on Digital Marketing for Addiction and Mental Health

Back in February 2018, Google rolled out a significant change to how it presents search results in the United States when users look for services and information related to substance abuse and mental health.

That change? The placement of the National Helpline page provided by SAMHSA as one of the top three search results for high volume keywords like:

• “anxiety symptoms” — 77,500 monthly searches*
• “drug addiction” — 22,200 monthly searches*
• “signs of alcoholism” — 18,100 monthly searches*

The rise in the ranking presence of this page was exponential. According to data from SEMrush, its presence in the top 10 of Google results increased by over 1,100% in just the first month.

But that was just the beginning. Today, many of those same searches continue to show the SAMHSA National Helpline, and the number continues to grow.

For instance, as of August 2020, you can now find it listed on the first page of Google for over 89,000 terms. As a result, traffic estimates to the site have also grown by enormous leaps and bounds.

If you are responsible for confidently growing admission applications at a substance abuse or mental health facility, this change has forced you to rethink a few of your tactics. The good news is that rehab facilities like yours can respond and succeed despite this.

Get started with the extensive list we’ve created for you below.

Below, you will find 12 alternative marketing tactics – three using PPC strategies, and 9 using SEO strategies – that you can leverage quickly to compensate for SAMHSA’s ownership over the most clicked-through keyword positions in the search engines.

Our 12 Top Addiction Treatment Marketing Tactics

PPC And Digital Advertising Tactics

1. Go ‘Legit’ to Run Search Ads
2. Advertise On The ‘No. 2 Search Engine’
3. Strategically Stay Top Of Mind On The ‘GDN’

SEO And Content Marketing Tactics

1. Get Listed in SAMHSA’s Locator
2. Create Content For Every SERP Feature
3. Market The Map With Local SEO
4. Explore New Markets With Hyperlocal Pages
5. Review Your Past (Optimize It For The Future)
6. Capitalize On Question-Based Searches
7. Expand Upon Your Program Features
8. Blog For Your Decision-Making Audience
9. Barnacle To Top Content Publishers

1. Go ‘Legit’ and Get Approved to Run Ads In Search Engines

For a long time, Google and Bing accepted search engine advertising from rehab and mental health facilities in the same way they accepted ads from other medical service and healthcare providers. But, as the opioid crisis in the United States continued to escalate, the rules for addiction treatment centers started to change. 

Why? Because scammers started taking advantage of those in need.

To help separate the scammers from the legitimate treatment facilities, Google partnered with LegitScript to setup an independent, third-party verification system. Since then, any in-person treatment facility, crisis hotline, or support group has been required to be LegitScript certified to advertise in Google. You can learn more about the LegitScript certification process from our friends at FHE Health, a healthcare institution that delivers quality, medically integrated personalized treatment for those suffering from behavioral health disorders located in Deerfield Beach, FL.

Why LegitScript Certification For Search Ads Became A Need

In case you missed it, here’s a timeline of how the bans and reinstatements of rehab facility advertising in search engines progressed:

• September 2017: Google began restricting ads from showing for searches related to addiction treatment after it noticed that some facilities running ads did not provide a high enough quality of care to help patients recover.
• January 2018: Google followed suit in the UK as well and eventually Google extended the ban globally.
• April 2018: Google announced its partnership with LegitScript. By July, LegitScript planned to verify about 30 facilities and Google would once again reopen advertising to in-person facilities, crisis hotlines, and support groups.
• February 2019: Bing announced it would also require LegitScript certification for all addiction treatment advertisers and would no longer accept third-party lead generators. 

To be fair, there’s no doubt that running PPC campaigns in substance abuse and mental health niches is a costly marketing strategy. In addition to your monthly PPC marketing budget and associated agency fees, LegitScript requires an application fee per facility and an annual fee for verification.

With that said, search engine advertising is likely to be an ROI-positive endeavor if managed correctly. It’s also the only 100% viable option for getting a top page position for a keyword currently occupied by SAMHSA.

Plus, LegitScript certification keeps a lot of the less ethical facilities and scammers from competing for clicks and driving the costs per click higher.

Similar to becoming a listed facility in the Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator from SAMHSA (more on that below), getting your facility listed will take some time, but the process is pretty simple.

If you are a representative of a facility interested in starting a LegitScript application, you can click here to submit one.

2. Advertise On YouTube, The Internet’s ‘No. 2 Search Engine’ 

If you clicked here, you were expecting this to be all about advertising on Bing, weren’t you? Or maybe one of the search engines that’s popular in international markets, like Baidu or Yandex?

Well, it’s not. Instead, you need to take a moment and think about leveraging the search opportunities provided by advertising on YouTube. A site that generates more searches on its platform than Bing, Yahoo!, AOL, and Ask.com… COMBINED.

Added bonus: it’s also widely considered to be the no. 2 social network, making it a great place to boost your social media marketing.

While it’s not a traditional “search engine” in the way you might normally think about them, there are nearly 3 BILLION searches per month done on the site, according to data compiled by Mushroom Networks. 

That breaks down to over 1,100 searches per second. 

Although it was acquired by Google back in 2006, LegitScript certification is not required at this time to advertise on YouTube. Therefore, it can be a more attractive advertising solution for smaller facilities with cost barriers to traditional search marketing on Google and Bing.

4 YouTube Advertising Tips To Maximize The Performance Of Your Videos

While LegitScript certification isn’t required, you’re still going to need to have a commercial or video ad ready to go for a YouTube promotion. Once you have your creative completed, here are a few ideas on how to get the best performance from a YouTube campaign.

• Use the appropriate format. Here’s a quick list of which type of YouTube ad is best for your campaign, based on your goals.
  • Brand recognition: 6-second bumpers.
  • Clicks: 15-20 second pre-roll ads (bonus: they can’t be skipped).
  • Conversions: 15-20 second pre-roll ads
  • Re-purposing a TV commercial: 30-second In-Stream ads.
• Utilize closed captioning. Provide the best user experience for your viewers with accurate, verbatim transcriptions.
• Target smartly. Find your audience using the options for gender, parental status, interests, or target specific channels they are likely to watch.
• Deploy an end card. You’ve made some great content, now reinforce your brand and inspire the viewer to take their next action by directing your viewers to their next destination – a landing page, your website, or your YouTube channel page.

There are definitely some benefits YouTube can bring to your marketing efforts with a dedicated advertising budget.

In addition, leveraging YouTube can also bring benefits to your traffic and visibility through SEO and referral traffic. Interested in learning how it can help you in these areas? Check out one of these helpful links.

• How We Grew YouTube Traffic 6,800% For This Retailer
• Video Hosting: YouTube or Vimeo?
• 6 YouTube Tips To Improve Your Results

3. Strategically Stay Top Of Mind On Google’s Display Network

According to Google, its far-reaching Display Network reaches 90% of Internet users around the world. 

Websites. Blogs. News sites. Even Google-owned properties like Gmail and YouTube.

All of them have an advertising opportunity available to your facility through the Google Display Network.

Depending on the business goals you have for your campaign, Google can also manage the campaign for you on autopilot. Just set your budget, upload your ads, and off you go!

But just because it sounds easy, however, doesn’t mean it’s that simple. Sure, automated bidding is handy, but it’s only as useful as the strategy you put behind it. Similar to YouTube advertising and LegitScript approved PPC advertising, you’re going to want to pay a lot of attention to your targeting if you want a display campaign that will lead to conversions. 

Oh, and you’re going to want to keep your ads fresh. You ever get tired of seeing the same ads from leading brands over and over? If you answered yes, then you can assume your audiences will too. Don’t bore them to death with your creative.

With the Google Display Network, you can proceed with confidence. Just be aware that patience and persistence are going to be key in this channel if you want it to pay off. 

THIS TREATMENT CENTER
IMPROVED THEIR ADMITS BY 300%
USING DIGITAL ADS. LEARN HOW.

4. Getting Listed in SAMHSA’s Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator

One of my favorite online marketing strategies comes from the adage, “…if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” From some of our research into how Google presents this SERP listing for SAMHSA, the link for the National Helpline will often include a site link to SAMHSA’s Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator right underneath its meta description.

The fact is that Google favors displaying links from SAMHSA over other possible search results prominently, so getting your original content or sales-driven pages to rank above SAMHSA will be extremely difficult — almost near impossible.

However, SAMHSA has an online treatment finder, and rehab facilities can request to be added to that list of treatment providers.

How To Get Listed In The SAMHSA Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator

Getting listed in the SAMHSA services locator is a great SEO tactic for your campaign. For starters, you’re gaining a backlink from a .gov domain — one of the highest-value links you can obtain.

Need a reason beyond that? The site generates an estimated 60,000+ visits per month in the United States from Google searches alone. The high volume and highly specific type of people visiting the site and then being referred to your facility create a great source of well-qualified traffic for your site.

If you represent a newer facility, or your facility is not currently listed in SAMHSA’s locator, getting listed will take some time. Overall, though, the process is pretty simple. Here’s how it works according to the FAQ on the locator’s website:

1. You request the addition of your facility by completing the I-BHS Facility Application Form.
2. The BHSIS Project Office verifies that your facility is eligible by contacting your local representatives or SAMHSA/CBHSQ. As an alternative, you can also contact your state mental health or substance abuse agency to help with verification.
3. You receive a survey in the mail from I-BHS, complete it, and return.
4. About a month passes, and pending final approval, your facility should be good to go. Just know that they typically add new facilities on a monthly basis.

To maintain your listing, you are required to respond annually to either:

• the National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services (N-SSATS), or
• the National Mental Health Services Survey (N-MHSS)

These surveys go out every March, and your facility will be required to provide updated information each year after your facility was added to the list.

5. Create Content For Every SERP Feature

If you have spent time doing searches on Google and Bing for answers to almost any question, or for information on any general topic, then you have probably been served with a featured snippet result in the past.

What’s a featured snippet? According to Google, it’s that special box at the top of the search result before the standard listings. Featured snippets include:

• a quoted block of text from a webpage in paragraph, list, or table format
• a link to the webpage the text was originally quoted from

The content is also frequently read aloud by the Google Assistant if you do a voice search. 

While that is the general description of a featured snippet straight from Google, they are just one of many top-position-snatching Google features. Google search engine results page features (SERP features) can take many different forms and shapes. In fact, according to SEMrush, there are over 20 different SERP features to keep in mind if you are using SEO as a growth strategy for your facility. 

While some of the features SEMrush monitors will not have a direct impact on an addiction treatment or mental health campaign, many of them will.

12 Actionable Ideas You Can Use To Put SERP Features To Work

6 Ideas That Are Completely Within Your Control

• Local Pack: verify your GoogleMyBusiness listing and get citations on as many of the major local directories as possible (more on this in tip no. 6) 
• Site Links: add links to your top resources and services pages in the footer of your website.
• Top Stories: Have your blog added to Google News. 
• Knowledge Panel: if your facility has a Wikipedia page, or if one of your executives is a published author, one of these may be available for you to claim. 
• Reviews: deploy schema markup in your site header files with star ratings and review counts from sources like the National Rehabs Directory, the fix, ChooseHelp, or Rehab.com.
• Twitter: publish your most valuable blog content and resources in your Twitter feed using keyword-rich hashtags at the end of each tweet. 

6 Ideas You Can Influence (But Google Controls)

• Featured Snippets: if you have a page that ranks in the top 5 of a search term with a featured snippet at the top, create a subheading that includes the keyword, then publish content that matches the featured snippet type, using the keyword phrase 2-3 times in your text. 
• People Also Ask and FAQ: answer the questions Google showcases in the People Also Ask box in an FAQ section on a top traffic page. 
• Image Pack and Image: optimize the file size and dimensions of your image files and utilize up to 100 characters of your alt tag for keyword-rich descriptions. 
• Featured Videos, Video Carousel, and Video: embed your YouTube videos on pages of your site that also rank well for terms with video carousels. 
• Instant Answer: provide calculations and short, simple to answer questions on your top-performing webpages. 
• Jobs: deploy schema markup in your site header files for the pages featuring any of your open job listings. Note that this only applies if you are hosting your job openings on your site. Platforms like Glassdoor and Indeed already do this for you.

6. Leverage Local SEO To Rank Where SAMHSA Can’t Be Featured

While SAMHSA will continue to dominate organic search results, they technically only have one physical location in Rockville, Maryland. As far as Google is concerned, SAMHSA can’t be featured in local SEO search results because they are not considered to be a provider of local treatment services. SAMHSA will always be your biggest competitor for traffic in the search engines, but one area Google is leaving open for you to own continues to be local SEO.

On desktop searches, a map listing with three facilities is included with nearly every top searched keyword phrase related to substance abuse and mental health services.

On mobile devices, the map takes over all of the SERP real estate above the fold. At a bare minimum, if you have not taken over ownership of your Google My Business listing, or verified your business with the following top local directories, opportunity is leaving you behind:

• Apple Maps
• Bing Local
• SAMHSA
• Yelp

If you already have your business confirmed on all five of the platforms listed above, you are off to a great start with maximizing your online presence in your local area. But you’ll want to take it further with local SEO as there are still as many as 22 other local directories we deem to have a “high” or “very high” citation value.

Because of the presence of the SAMHSA listing at the top of the search results, the fact that you want to reach your target audience on a local or national level will not matter – you’re going to want to leverage every ounce of opportunity local SEO has to offer. Don’t get left behind — local SEO needs to be a critical part of your drug rehab SEO strategy.

7. Go Hyperlocal

There are a lot of well-established websites in the substance abuse and mental health niche that have leveraged hyperlocal keyword searches very effectively over the years for their own addiction treatment marketing.

In fact, many of the most highly trafficked sites in this niche leverage creating a directory of treatment facilities and drug rehab centers as one of their main marketing tools to drive referrals to advertisers. Sites like SoberNation and Rehabs.com have done this for years and become so successful with this as a marketing strategy that they can now get you to pay them for traffic.

Because of how well sites like this perform in the SERPs, these types of directories can be a good source of both relevant referral traffic as well as qualified admissions leads. It can be tough to justify paying to be listed in a directory, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore these opportunities entirely.

Think of it this way — if you can justify paying to be part of your local chamber of commerce, you could probably justify paying to be listed in a directory that can help grow your admissions. Outside of becoming listed in rehab focused directories, you can also apply a hyperlocal approach to your website. If you know zip codes, names of popular suburban areas, or names of specific cities and towns within a dedicated drive radius of your facility, then you can leverage localized content to rank for some highly targeted long-tail keyword searches.

Want to go into more depth on hyperlocal digital marketing? Here’s a few blog posts worth your click. 

• What is Hyperlocal SEO and Why Should I Be Doing it Right Now?
• How You Can Use Hyperlocal Ad Campaigns

8. Revise Your Past (Then Optimize It For Your Future) In Addiction Treatment Marketing

Historical optimization is the practice of updating old content on your site and improving its SEO value for the present and future. Over the past few years, this tactic has become an incredibly valuable SEO play for facilities with a large archive of content.

To briefly summarize this tactic, find a blog post or article on your site that was published at least six months ago. Prioritize pages on your site that either:

1. Generate a lot of traffic, or
2. Convert into admission inquiries

Then refresh the content, improve the on-page SEO, add an author bio, and re-publish it with a more recent “updated” date.

Search engines reward webpages they can rely on being “there” when the crawl the internet. This tactic presents your facility with the opportunity to avoid writing about the same topics over and over again. Instead, it helps your website establish cornerstone pieces of content that will reliably provide your site with traffic from search engines. 

As an added bonus, historical optimization can help you establish your administrators and clinicians as thought leaders in the addiction and behavioral health industry.

Historical optimization in your addiction treatment marketing is a great way to get long term value out of content you published long ago.

9. Take Advantage of Question-Based Queries In Your Addiction Treatment Marketing

According to research compiled by Jumpshot and analyzed by Moz in March 2017, roughly 8% of Google searches are phrased as questions. With voice search only continuing to rise in popularity, the percentage of question-based searches are sure to grow accordingly.

Do you have an FAQ page on your facility’s website?

When you publish blog content, are you writing titles and subheadings in your posts in the form of a question? Take the time to answer both common and uncommon questions. Try to compile questions you may often get from admission prospects and their families about your treatment approaches, facilities, or warning signs that a loved one needs to know. There are two major benefits to taking this approach with your addiction treatment marketing strategy:

1. You will be building trust and helping inform people who need help but are not ready to call.
2. Your site will benefit from a larger number of entry points from keyword searches, lessening the impact that SAMHSA’s top positioning will take away from search traffic to your facility.

What questions are your admissions team, or your clinical staffers, uniquely qualified to answer? Give them a laptop and have them start writing!

10. Don’t Forget About Your Program Features In Your Addiction Treatment Marketing

Of the over 89,000+ keyword phrases where Google displays the SAMHSA National Helpline link in the top three results, above you will see just a small sample of the monetary worth of some of the terms, sorted by top monthly search volume estimates.* That’s a very small sampling of the data SEMrush has on rankings for the National Helpline page, but with a pretty quick glance, you will notice some trends across the keywords that Google is using to trigger this result.

• Different forms of addiction
• Someone researching reactions to substance abuse (withdrawal, side effects, etc.)
• Someone is looking to find/get help (AA, NA, rehab, etc.)

Now, in contrast to that, you may have noticed that keywords related to general program features were not in the above example. These days, no substance abuse or mental health facility is the same. Dig in to communicate what makes the approach of your recovery centers unique from other facilities.

3 Questions You Should Think About Answering In Your Content Marketing Plan For Your Rehabilitation Center

• Does your program take a mindfulness approach to relapse prevention?
• Do you leverage the outdoors as a therapy method?
• Does your staff have multiple advanced certifications or education credentials?

Whatever makes your facility stand out from the rest of the facilities out there, now is the time to capitalize on it. Make sure your site has dedicated pages related to those treatment programs and features and support those dedicated pages with press releases or blog post content. Optimize the dedicated pages for maximum search visibility by applying on-page SEO best practices and leverage link building strategies from the supporting content to heighten the importance of the dedicated pages to search engines.

With this addiction treatment marketing tactic, every page on your website can be an entry point to put you in touch with those in need of help.

11. Addiction Treatment Marketing Should Cater Content to Your Audience

In response to these developments in Google search results, a lot of digital marketing agencies are going to suggest you try to leverage content marketing strategies only with the intention of generating interest from top-tier publishers. The idea here is that getting coverage in front of a national audience should generate backlinks and a lot of impressions. The concept can also be referred to as viral marketing — because “going viral” is super easy, right?

To us, this feels like an expensive fool’s errand; unless, of course, the idea of a campaign with a large expense and little to no attributable ROI sounds like something your facility wants to try out.

Addiction treatment marketing shouldn’t be about more awareness of your facility. Instead, it should be about connecting with people who love and care for those who need your help.

5 Content Ideas To Help Establish A Better Connection With Those Who Need Your Help

Going with a “10X content” approach that will have an impact on the attention your brand receives and little else, the more sensible approach is to cater your content directly to your audience. Here are several alternatives to making “viral” content that could be better suited to get your facility highly-relevant traffic:

• Answering questions for the family members of potential admits
• Recapping research conducted in the industry that validates your approach to healing
• Sharing video testimonials from alumni who have dramatically improved their lives after release
• Providing helpful guides on niche topics related to attending a treatment facility, such as a legal term glossary
• Reviewing national and international news topics and explaining how they are directly impacting addiction and mental health treatment

For all types of people, it’s tough dealing with substance abuse and mental health. If you seek to be a resource for people by providing useful information at the right time, they will reach out when they need you the most. Don’t rely on occasional brand mentions in big publications with the hopes that people will remember you when the time is right.

12. Barnacle Your Brand To Top Ranking Content Publishers

Barnacle SEO is not a new strategy, but it can be a highly successful approach when situations like this occur. The term was coined by Will Scott of Search Influence about a decade ago and there was a must-watch Whiteboard Friday about it several years ago, too.

The idea behind Barnacle SEO for rehab centers as an addiction treatment marketing tactic is pretty straightforward – leverage the top rankings of other sites for your gain. Ever since April 2018, ranking for the top keywords in the substance abuse and mental health space became exponentially harder due to the update of SAMHSA’s National Helpline. Now, in addition to competing with other facilities and online publishers for top keyword rankings, getting them is almost impossible because of the injection of SAMHSA.

What can you do? Create content specifically on other sites that rank for your targeted keywords. Five of our favorite target domains to leverage for this strategy include:

• Medium
• Pinterest
• Quora
• Wikipedia
• YouTube

The value of links from these domains to help boost your search rankings is debatable. However, the referral traffic opportunity from all of them is great, and the frequency with which content on these sites ranks on the first page of Google results is high. While getting a Wikipedia page about your facility may be difficult, creating a profile and submitting content to all of these platforms should become a high priority online marketing strategy this year.

Closing Thoughts On Addiction Treatment Marketing Strategies

Many people are turning to Google to find answers to their troubles. With locations in Wheeling, WV, and Pittsburgh, PA, the team at DOM is well aware of the US’s opioid crisis. We are also sensitive to the fact that there is no “one size fits all” fix.

We think it’s a good thing that Google is trying to get people help when they need it from a neutral source. This is also not unfamiliar territory for Google. Back in November 2016, they made a similar change to the top of results for searches related to suicide.

But this change over the last two years does force substance abuse and mental health treatment facilities to shift. They can still use search engine marketing strategies to create opportunities for themselves. 

They just need to get more creative in order to provide care to the nearly 23 million Americans in need.

The top 12 ways we suggest facilities shift their addiction treatment marketing strategies are:

1. Become a LegitScript certified advertiser so your facility can run Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising
2. Extend the reach of your commercials and video content with YouTube advertising
3. Strategically tap into the near-limitless advertising opportunities in the Google Display Network 
4. Get listed in the SAMHSA Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator
5. Find keywords you already rank well for and structure your content for Featured Snippets
6. Maximize visibility in local SEO by completing and verifying any available citations
7. Create content on your site dedicated to hyperlocal communities that are in need of your services
8. Keep top-performing pages up to date by adding more text and updating visual content every three to six months 
9. Invest time in creating a comprehensive FAQ or writing blog posts to answer common questions
10. Optimize pages on your site for rankings around the unique features of your programs
11. Create content tailored to the families and individuals struggling with these issues
12. “Barnacle” content published by your facility to top publishing platforms for better exposure

Want to check out more of our actionable ideas from our Pittsburgh marketing firm to grow confidently online in the medical and health industry? Check out some of these blog posts below.

• Google Medic: How to SEO Proof Your Site in the Trust Authority Era
• How Do People Find Answers To Health Related Questions?
• How To Optimize Your Hospital for Local Search
• Healthcare Marketing Research & Survey Results

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Premier Partner before you reach out.

The post 12 Marketing Plans For Your Rehab Center To Kickstart Its Growth (Updated March 2022) appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

That magical time of the year has come around again. Yes, it is time to make your new year’s resolutions.

To help you get started, the talented team at DOM has put together our favorites for digital marketing.

Below, we’ve compiled 14 resolutions from our team of digital marketing professionals to help you improve your campaigns in the coming year.

New Year’s Resolutions 2022: The Digital Marketing Edition

1. Spend Less $

Check Your PPC Campaigns for Broad Keywords Today

From Nikki Powley, Director of Operations

Reviewing an account for broad match keywords is one of the first things I do when completing a Google Ads account audit. They are one of the biggest offenders in the wasted spend category.

There are three keyword match types: exact, phrase, and broad. Straight broad match keywords allow ads to show for your keyword and any variation of the keyword that Google believes could be similar.

For example, you add the keyword “shoes”. Your ad could display for searches of women’s shoes, tennis shoes, or even horseshoes.

If you want to reach a larger audience, but not horse owners, utilize the fourth match type (I know I said three, but stick with me). Modified broad keywords are created by adding a + before words. This requires a user’s search phrase to include a synonym of each word in the modified broad keyword. For example, +womens +shoes allows ads to trigger for variations of women’s shoes like ladies’ shoes, but ads will not show for unrelated terms like kid’s shoes or horseshoes.

Check out 8 more of my cost-saving PPC tips!

2. Save More $

Leverage SEO For Your Top Converting Search Queries In Google Ads

From Jonathan Bentz, Senior Digital Marketing Strategist

If you have been running a Google Ads campaign or any other paid search campaigns, then you can review your list of top search queries in the account and use that information to customize a results-oriented SEO strategy.

Here’s an actionable step by step process:

1. Download your list of top converting search queries from your advertising campaigns
2. Sort the list by the search queries with the highest volume of conversions
3. Improve your keyword rankings in organic search for the top converting queries by optimizing
   • Page title
   • Meta description
   • Content on the page
   • Image alt tagging
4. Search the other pages of your site with an “intext” search operator in Google to uncover keyword rich link opportunities.
   • Here’s a sample search query – site:directom.com intext:”Google Ads”.
     • This search will uncover mentions of your top converting queries inside the body of content across your entire domain.
   • Adding these internal links will improve the relevance of your page for the converting keyword, and reduce the likelihood that Google will consider another page on your site to be a better result.

Historically, studies have indicated a potential lift in clicks of as much as 53% when a brand appears in the top positions of paid and organic search. While those numbers may have changed some with Google’s current layout, the opportunity is still there for the taking to improve your conversions and traffic from organic search in 2020.

Launching a new online learning course as one of your new year’s resolutions? Here’s 20 ideas I’ve curated for how to promote a training program.

3. Lose Weight

Let Go Of Keywords You Love If They Aren’t Getting You Conversions

From Leland Reed, Senior Digital Advertising Strategist

Losing weight can be tough. Letting go of bad habits that are impeding your progress is one of the hardest steps to committing to weight loss. The same can be said about making changes to your PPC account.

You thought for sure that the keyword was going to work, right? You just needed to find the perfect combination of ad text and bidding. As the days and weeks go by, the keyword is getting plenty of impressions but no clicks. You know with a little more TLC, you can make it work.

If this sounds like you, maybe it is time to let go of that keyword and start fresh. Don’t be afraid to get rid of anything in your campaigns that are not working. By cutting out poor performing keywords, you can save money and time which will allow you to try new, exciting things in your account.

Is revitalizing your Google Shopping campaigns one of your marketing new year’s resolutions? Here’s 5 ways for you to do that!

4. Travel More

Take Advantage Of Every Feature In Your Google My Business Listing

From Stephanie Mahnken, Senior Client Success Manager

Throughout the last few years, Google My Business (GMB) has really ramped up the game for local businesses, making it easier than ever for you to get in front of local customers. This is a good thing as roughly 46% of all Google searches are seeking local information! Not to mention that “near me” or “close by” searches have grown by over 900% in the last two years.

And the best part? GMB is free!

Here’s a list of just a few of the new features added to GMB in the last few years:

• Google My Business Shortnames
  • An easy to remember URL that brings users directly to your business profile
    • Makes review solicitation much easier for small business owners
• Online Ordering Now Available for Restaurants
  • Google now owns the transaction
  • Multiple food delivery partners
• Google My Business Product Editor Expands to Most Categories
  • The Product Editor is for small- and medium-sized individual businesses
  • Don’t pass up this opportunity for free Google real estate! Get Creative!
• GMB Welcome Offers
  • A great way to thank new customers for following you on Google!
• Google My Business Messaging Feature: “Request a Quote” 
  • A sure-fire attention grabber in bright blue
  • Appears on mobile and desktop SERPs

• Service Area Business Updates
  • Limit of 20 service areas
    • Can include cities, counties, states, zip codes or metropolitan areas
  • SABs using a service area radius were automatically updated to the closest named areas above
• Google My Business Marketing Kit 
  • • Create images from existing customer reviews
    • Free posters & window clings for brick & mortar businesses

While it can be time-consuming, completing and updating your listing consistently is absolutely worth the effort.

Bonus tip: Google wants to show the best possible results to its users so remember to be thorough, honest, and don’t try to add a target keyword or geographical keyword phrase to your business name if they are not part of how customers would identify you!

Want to generate more visibility locally as part of your marketing new year’s resolutions? Here are 5 more local SEO tips you can learn from the pizza industry giant Papa John’s.

5. Grow Professionally

Look At Core Metrics Less And Focus On Long-Term Growth

From Dana Schumacher, Senior Digital Analyst

When you focus on increasing long-term growth rates, you are looking at the rate of change of core metrics over an extended period of time. Growth does not always mean an increase in total revenues, as that growth in revenue also depends on the size of your industry and the interest of your search queries over time.

Short-term clients should expect to see an increase in linear growth, while long-term clients can expect to see an increase in logarithmic growth.

Need to improve goal tracking on your own website as one of your marketing new year’s resolutions? Here’s a simple step-by-step guide I created for Tracking Buttons Using Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics so you can better monitor your progress this year.

6. Keep Your Resolutions

Tidy Up Your Ads

From Ryan Norman, Digital Advertising Account Manager

Get Ready for the Sunset of ETAs in Summer 2022

Take the leap and embrace Responsive Search Ads because the old standard—Expanded Text Ads—are going away.

Google has announced that you will no longer be able to create or edit Expanded Text Ads within standard search campaigns after June 30, 2022.

Any Expanded Text Ads that you currently have running (or create before the deadline) will continue to serve after June 30, 2022. You will also maintain the ability to pause and resume Expanded Text Ads.

Responsive Search Ads will, therefore, become the primary ad type available to advertisers in search campaigns.

If you don’t have the time, inclination, or people to run your own A/B tests of ad messaging, then RSAs are a boon. You can give Google some headlines and descriptions, and then sit back and relax while the algorithm tries to sort out what’s the best-performing ad copy.

Read our blog to understand why RSAs matter more than ever.

7. Learn Something New

Try Coding!

From Jim Foreman, Senior Content Specialist

The web is still where we do most of our activity on the ol’ internet, and as long as we digital marketers have to make content for it, we’re going to be doing it with our old friend HTML. It might be on version 5 now, but it’s not going anywhere. You’ll be surprised how a little snippet of code can save your day. If that’s not enough to convince you to learn HTML, check out my whole dang blog post about it.

Coding HTML is one of the easiest entry-level coding languages you can learn, and you’ll be able to see the results instantly in your browser. Who knows, it might even make you so excited about coding that you’ll start looking into other languages, like CSS or Javascript.

8. Be Creative

Create Videos To Show Off Your Business Or Brand

From Carl Zappa, Digital Advertising Account Coordinator

It’s never too late to start being creative. Make 2022 the year your business stands out with a short video that shows who you are.

Why don’t you make more than one? Show what you sell and why your product is different from the others!

Then, test TrueView videos as a part of your PPC strategy. With video advertising, you choose the audience that (might be/is) interested in your product and you decide how much you want to pay. You can run different video formats and lengths. Your video will appear on YouTube and throughout the Google Display Network.

Doing more online video advertising as one of your marketing new year’s resolutions? Let us help you settle the great debate between YouTube and Vimeo for your video hosting needs.

9. Enjoy Life To The Fullest

Get The Most Out Of Your PPC Campaigns With Some CRO

From Mike Criswell, Digital Advertising Strategist

This year, ensure that you are getting the most out of your PPC campaigns by doing a bit of conversion rate optimization.

A great start would be to run A/B or multivariate tests on your PPC landing pages. Test your current landing pages against as many variants as you can to ensure that your landing pages are top-notch and getting you as many conversions as possible.

Also, don’t forget that just because you get improvements with one variant does not mean that there is no better option. Always keep testing!

Just getting started with CRO but want to make this one of your marketing new year’s resolutions? Check out my beginner’s guide here.

10. Become More Engaged With Clients

Gain More Best Friends

From Robbie Netz, Senior Client Success Manager

During this past year, I’ve learned it’s more important to develop meaningful relationships with people. I love the friendships we’ve built with clients, but I want to continue to help them grow. Here are some important takeaways I’ve learned:

1. Treat your client as a friend. I love getting to know what everyone does on the weekend, how their pets are, etc. It allows us to connect on a deeper level so everyone looks forward to our calls vs. “ugh, I have to go speak to that agency again.”
2. Brainstorm out-of-the-box ideas together. It’s always fun to chat about ways to meet their goals on campaigns, but even better to discuss new ideas….like TikTok!
3. Work together as if you’re in the same building. Even though we’re sometimes halfway across the globe, it’s great to use tools to work together as a team. Some of the best projects have been when we communicate via Slack or message one another back & forth in Asana.

Is improving the response of your consumers to your brand one of your marketing new year’s resolutions? Click here for a comprehensive list of email marketing strategies.

11. Spread Your Wings

New Year, New Advertising Platform.

From Adriana Parra González, Digital Advertising Account Manager
If you are looking for a new tool to advertise this year, LinkedIn Advertising could be for you.

This platform works well when you are looking for other businesses to buy your service or product from you. It lets you target by job titles, company size, job function, industry, and more.

Do you have content pieces and don’t know what to do with them? What if you use that content in exchange for the lead information?

LinkedIn Advertising is growing over time and it could be a great way to capture the leads for your business in 2021.

12. Keep Your Eyes On the Prize

Conversions Matter Most

From Carla Waters, Digital Marketing Coordinator

While optimizing landing pages or blog posts for keyword targets, I often focus on the keyword by creating a new title, meta description, headers, internal links, adding semantic terms to the copy, adding FAQs throughout, and CTAs. But does this page I’m working on convert? I need to continue to ask myself this question.

This year, I want to focus on the user, their navigation path, and if I have accomplished clear next steps to create a conversion while improving the on-page SEO.

13. Trust Your Instincts, But Confirm With Data

Lose That Gut!

From Jason Ohsie, Strategy and Analysis Department Manager

The days where gut-feeling marketing dominated the competitive landscape have long since passed by the wayside. No matter your niche, if your company is relying solely on the direction of your company’s HiPPO (highest paid person’s opinion) without regard to a strategic, data-driven approach then your company is running at a significant disadvantage versus the top players in your respective industry.

Much like diet and exercise, a commitment to this approach requires discipline in the following ways:

• Commit to properly tracking and measuring your marketing efforts
• Understand what KPIs matter for your business
• Focus on the mission-critical aspects of your marketing efforts that drive the most impact
• Listen to both your existing customers and your biggest haters
• Be open-minded about what the data tells you

A failure to do this often manifests itself in the following ways:

1. A website redesign that looks aesthetically pleasing but has resulted in markedly lower conversion rates.
2. A sudden drop in organic traffic to your website without an understanding of why this change occurred and how much this has impacted sales.
3. Wasting ad spend on PPC campaigns that just won’t convert properly.
4. Stagnant growth or loss of market share despite an investment into marketing.
5. B2B marketing efforts that have resulted in poor lead quality.
6. Top-of-Funnel marketing efforts like blogs and webinars that fail to gain traction or engagement.
7. Poor ROI overall in digital marketing channels.

Sound familiar? A strategic approach to digital marketing that is not rooted in data can result in failure for even experienced marketing professionals. Proper benchmarking and conversion tracking, clearly defining the KPIs that actually matter for your business, rigorous testing, and the proper mentality should provide the framework for your marketing efforts.

14. Make Sure You’re Looking Your Best

Short Animations Are Excellent Attention-Grabbing Tools

From Matt Merlino, Graphic Designer

If we’ve learned anything throughout the course of the ongoing pandemic it’s that it is perfectly acceptable to sit around and do nothing in our free time. While there’s not necessarily anything wrong with staying still, we should at least try to get up and move after that streaming service continues to prod if we are “still watching.” The same can be said for your next set of creative pieces!

When creating your next set of ads, consider testing some animated HTML5 assets against some of those static ads. A subtle bit of motion is a great attention-grabbing technique to drive more clicks.

Just make sure not to go too crazy or all of that sudden movement could be painful. You’ll want to keep basic design principles in mind to refrain from cluttering your ads and hurting your conversion rates.

• Refrain from Hard-to-Read Fonts
• Construct a Strong CTA that Directly Relates to Your Imagery
• Keep Brand Colors Prominent and Consistent
• Use White (Blank) Space to Your Advantage

It may seem daunting, but you can do it! Push the text in, make the button pulse, or have some fun with the imagery. Whatever you choose to do, add that extra movement to captivate your viewers and take your next campaign to new heights.

Now Go Get Started!

This list doesn’t only include tactics you can use as a New Year’s resolution, almost all of them can be implemented today and included in your digital marketing strategy at any time of the year! You can also check out the rest of our blog for more tips and tricks. To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Premier Partner before you reach out.

From the entire DOM team, Happy New Year and best wishes for a successful 2022!

The post New Year’s Resolutions: Digital Marketing Edition (Updated For 2022) appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Dear Google Places,
This isn’t working out. You’re unpredictable, inflexible, and sneaky, but lately, I find myself spending more time with you than ever. I can’t stand that you’re such an important fixture in my life, but to be honest, I’d be lost without you. I wish that you would stop going behind my back and giving me false information, but what can I do? You’ve made it impossible for me to break things off, and we both know I’d be forced to come back to you eventually. So I’ll remain optimistic and keep waiting, GP, because in time, I know you’ll change.

Sincerely,
Kristen

Will Google Places Ever Shape Up?

Personally, I’ve never been the type to stick out a bad relationship, so it pains me that Google’s issues remain unresolved. In theory, Google Places should provide accurate information to make it easier for people to call, click, or visit a specific location. Since owners or reps are able to verify the business listing and make edits, users should be able to find the most correct, up-to-date information.

Unfortunately, Google doesn’t seem to care that many owners or reps actually take the time to find, verify, and edit their listings. Many of our clients have gone to great lengths to maintain their local listings, but then their information gets changed without warning. We often give the bad news: anyone can change listings, including Google, customers, and even competitors. This can result in listings that are completely, utterly wrong.

Example of how Google Places often fails:

Pretend you’re Bob, the owner of Bob’s Pizza Shop. This morning, you discovered that someone changed your shop’s name on Google Places to Frank’s Taco Stand. It wasn’t totally irrational…Frank’s went out of business 2 years ago, but you bought the building. It’s okay though because you’ve claimed your listing.

So you log into your Places dashboard to change the name back to Bob’s Pizza Shop, but from your end the name is still correct. You can resubmit, but there’s no telling if that will matter. Cross your fingers and wait for a few days.

If that still doesn’t work, you might have to Report a Problem. Even if that does the trick, this won’t be the only time this happens. While you could ignore your listing, you may end up losing business.

There’s no denying that local search and Google Places have become much more important in recent months, but they also have a long way to go in terms of reliability and dependability. One step Google could take is to verify any 3rd party changes with the claimed listing’s owner. Or at least send “hey, we’re changing this” notifications so the setup doesn’t seem so secretive. After all, communication is key for any successful relationship.

We’ll keep you updated on future improvements, but are there any features you’d like to see for Google Places or local listing sites in general? Alternately, how about other bad blog post titles based on popular Journey songs?

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Partner before you reach out.

The post Don’t Stop Believin’ (That Google Places Has Potential) appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

What is Astroturfing?

If you’re not familiar, astroturfing is when you write fake reviews for a company – either positive reviews for your own, or negative ones for a competitor.  The term came about because you’re faking a grass roots effort.  It can expand to beyond just review sites, such as with this old, but classic example of Wal-marting Across America.

* And it’s  not just because when I was single I made an astroturf table that proudly centerpieced in our bachelor pad.  As you can guess, this table did not make the trip with me upon moving in with my wife.  While I accept that it was tacky and that many people – particularly of the female persuasion who have “taste” – did not like it,  man, I still miss that thing.

How do Review Sites Detect Astroturfing?

So, we can all agree astroturfing is bad, right?  I mean, save for its use on home furnishings.  If the reviews aren’t real – and lots of times you can spot fake ones immediately – you lose faith in the reviews for that business on that review site.  Happen too often and users will stop trusting and using those sites altogether.

Review sites like Google Places, Yelp, Cars.com, and TripAdvisor all have different systems, but one of the big ways they automatically guard against astroturfing is by checking the ip address the reviewer is using to connect to the internet while leaving the review.

Virtually all of them have their own proprietary formula to detect other patterns of regularity as well.  They don’t give this out to anyone.  About the worst thing that could happen is that the spammers know exactly how to beat the system, so you don’t want to give them the blueprint for doing so.

And once you get detected – falsely or not – you’ll typically get punished.  If you’re lucky, you’ll get notified.

How TripAdvisor Notifies Businesses of Astroturfing Violations

If you run afoul of TripAdvisor, here’s an email you might get from contentintegrity@tripadvisor.com:

Subject: Official Notification from TripAdvisor

To Whom It May Concern at [redacted],

TripAdvisor serves as an important source of travel information, which users rely on to be the unbiased opinions of travelers. The reliability of our content is integral to our business, and we take attempts to undermine it very seriously. This letter has been sent due to patterns of activity on your listing which raise our concern. In light of this anomaly in review activity, we are encouraging you to familiarize yourself with our content integrity policies, which can be found here: http://www.tripadvisor.com/help/what_is_considered_fraud

Please note that your property has not been penalized for the activity which prompted this letter, and that our intent is simply to raise your overall awareness about TripAdvisor’s guidelines and policies.In the event that you discover that anyone in your organization— including owners, staff, and third-party vendors (marketing companies, web developers, etc.) — are participating in any of these activities, please see that they discontinue these actions immediately.

If an attempt is made to subvert our system, TripAdvisor may take one or more of the following actions on your property listing:

• Drop it by several pages in the TripAdvisor popularity index
• Post a large red penalty notice, explaining that the reviews are suspicious
• Exclude it from TripAdvisor’s Travelers Choice awards, Top 10 lists, press releases, etc.

We understand that you may have a few questions after receiving this notice, such as:

“I don’t understand why I received this letter. We haven’t submitted reviews for our own property or others.”

We suggest familiarizing yourself with our review moderation and fraud detection policies. Then, speak with your staff, as well as third-party vendors (webmaster, marketing companies, etc.) and remind them of these policies. Subversive activity on TripAdvisor can result in long-lasting penalties for your business.

“What action should I take to rectify this situation?”

TripAdvisor’s privacy policy prohibits us from sharing the details of our findings, so we will not be able to furnish you with any information regarding the nature of the violation we’ve detected. However, if you or a member of your staff has violated our guidelines, please feel to contact us by replying to this email.

For information on how to solicit reviews, manage and promote your listing, please visit your Owners’ Center: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Owners

For more information on review moderation and fraud detection, please visit our Help Center:http://www.tripadvisor.com/help/postingandediting#c0

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

The TripAdvisor Support Team, Content Integrity

They then go on to repeat the same message in Italian and German, or at least did in this one email to a US-based former client.

It’s pretty awesome that they notify you of the potential violations and allow you a direct forum to respond, particularly if you found out that you were doing something wrong.  Hey – it happens.  A lot of times employees or other stakeholders will see an issue with some negative reviews and take matters into their own hands – not knowing they are likely to cause more harm than good.

And while the potential penalties are harsh, they let you know what they can be and that they might happen to you…unlike certain search engines we won’t mention.

The post TripAdvisor Astroturfing Hand Slapping appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

It’s a great concept, really. In case you didn’t know, you have 10 “Best Ever” medals to award to your most beloved places, from your favorite coffee shop to your cable company. You may be able to go around handing out 5 star reviews to hundreds of businesses, but not so with medals. However, if you find a new place you love even more than the last, don’t worry—you can remove and reassign your medals. If your business receives—and keeps—a “Best Ever” medal, consider it an achievement.

If you’ve made it a point to follow all of Google’s frequent product updates, you might already be using medal ratings, or you at least know where to find them. Most of you who are familiar with Google Places probably recognize the reviews section. When you visit a business’s Google Places listing, you can leave a review if you’re signed into your Google account and have created a Google Places profile for leaving ratings. You can leave star ratings from 1-5 and you can also include longer reviews if you feel like it.

But you can’t leave a “Best Ever” review from the main listing page (or on your iPhone app). You also can’t leave “Best Ever” reviews by clicking on Google Places in your list of products, because it takes you here:

Because you are trying to leave ratings, not create your own business listing, the best way to access the Google Places dashboard where you can leave “Best Ever” reviews is by going directly to http://www.google.com/places/.  I mean, I could go into using the now technically defunct Google Hotpot, but to keep it simple, just take my advice and memorize the Google Places URL. Or bookmark it.

You should see this screen after going to the main Places URL. Click on the blue “Start rating” button on the left.

After you hit the blue button, you should see this screen. Once you’re here, you can finally start awarding those coveted “Best Ever” medals.

So, the next time you’re getting ready to leave yet another 5 star review for a place that you feel actually deserves a little bit more, remember the medals. And businesses, take note…it’s not quite as easy for someone to leave a “Best Ever” rating, and to make the top 10, services and products should be great, not just good.

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Partner Agency before you reach out.

The post Google Places Best Ever Ratings: Do They Matter? appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

JS: One of the things I thought was interesting is that you have a partnership with Bazaarvoice, is that correct?

Nick: Yes.

JS: Have they had to scrub much so far in terms of profanity or some of those other things or have they not really had to remove many reviews so far?

Nick: The amount of reviews that they are scrubbing hasn’t changed much since we’ve launched. I looked today and I think we’re at about 14% that are being kicked back. I’m actually pretty happy with that because it shows that yes, we are finding things that we don’t want and are rejecting them but it’s not been overwhelmingly so.

JS: I would imagine, I’m trying to put myself in your shoes, are you kind of learning as you go along with seeing the kickbacks and changing your stance on things and modifying what you want to see and what you don’t want to see or are you like, ‘here are our guidelines and here’s what we’re sticking with?’

Nick: We’ve definitely been tweaking some things and I think one of the big things we’ve seen, and Bazaarvoice has been great – they do a lot of fantastic moderation, but one of the things that we’ve seen is that the dealer business is so different from a lot of other industries that we have found that we have to tweak some things over time, but more along the lines of really understanding that here is the type of experience that would lead me, as a car buyer, to leave a review.

So, I think one of the best examples that I’ve seen is that on most review sites, when you’re reviewing a product – a physical product – you don’t want to include that I got something that would indicate that I got X number of dollars off the deal because you’re reviewing the store or the deal. And what we’ve been seeing is we get a pretty substantial number of reviews that call out specific things like that. It’s one of those gray areas that we’re taking a look and trying to figure out what makes the most sense in our world because for the most part I say that we probably all know someone who has gone to a dealership and got a fantastic deal and they immediately came back and said, ‘oh my gosh, you should shop at this store because they gave me $400 off’ or whatever it was. We want to make sure that we encourage people to leave those types of reviews while also not setting a certain expectation that it’s always going to be done this exact way for every person who comes into that store.

JS: Ruins their leverage to be able to do those types of things. Do you have a breakdown of what percentage have been kicked out for being spam, you know some evil person in my industry automated that’s trying to build links vs completely flaming vs….

Nick: I don’t have anything that I can quote off the top of my head but I do know that I’ve looked pretty closely and I really haven’t seen very much spam at this point mostly it’s about specific content rather than the same review being posted over and over again by the same person …that type of stuff.

JS: Do you have stuff in place to kick stuff out for dealers trying to game the system, not for negative reviews, but trying to get people to leave good, fake astroturf?

Nick: Absolutely. It’s the first thing that brought up when we talk to site users or the dealers. And it goes both ways. It’s this fear that:

1. How do you make sure that a dealer is not leaving a lot of negative reviews, followed by ‘How do I make sure that the dealer down the road isn’t coming in each morning and telling his salespeople that they’re going to leave five glowing reviews today just to build up our volume.’ So there are a couple different things that we do and you’ll see this when you look at the screen shot [see below], we do ask whenever someone leaves a review, the last question that we ask is a check a box to certify that they’re not employed by a dealership. I realize that’s not going to catch everyone, but we do want to make sure that right off the bat that we are asking the question to make sure that people understand that if you are a dealer, leaving a review, we are going to pay very, very close attention to it and you really shouldn’t be using it for that.

JS: Because you have a little bit of a hammer that you could bring down on someone for doing that.

Nick: Exactly. It gives us the ability to come back and say, ‘you know what, you certify that you weren’t a dealership, but your IP address indicates that you are so we’re going to do something with this.’

The other thing that we do is we require that each and every review goes through a validation process by the person who wrote it before we even look at it. The example that I use, is that if I’m at work and I’m bored and I am going to go write 20 bogus reviews, I’m going to get 20 different emails, and I have to open up each and every one and validate it and say yes, indeed I did write this and I did mean to send it. So, as a first step if we get 20 reviews, we do take a look at where the reviews are coming from so we do have some threshold there that will kick-off something that says, ‘you know what this is a little suspicious or we just don’t want this at all.’

JS: I can understand why you might not want to disclose any of this information, but can you talk about anything that you have in place to guard against astroturfing or false-flaming or anything like that?

Nick: What I can talk about is pretty standard from what I’ve heard in the industry is to pay very, very close attention to the IP address of any dealership. I know some folks who go to the trouble of specifically collecting the IP address of every dealership and for other folks who just pay attention to once a response is written, capture the IP address and then sort-of flag that for any reviews that come later on. So, we do similar stuff there because we do want to make sure we are paying very, very close attention to. Once we feel like something is coming from a dealership, we don’t other different types of content coming from someone who may have a biased viewpoint there.

JS: Have you had any feedback…one of the things that … and almost everyone deals with this because anyone who has reviews, like you said, some kind of IP check…something along those lines, but one of those throwing the baby out with the bathwater type of issues, at least from my perspective, is that it’s really convenient if a dealer can just leave up a computer and have the new car buyer talk about their experience, right there in the moment.

Nick: It’s one of the hardest things in the world and it comes up so often and it’s such a great idea, you know ‘I’m in the store, I’m buying a car, I’m sitting there waiting for the financing to go through (or whatever it is)’, and they say, ‘why don’t you go ahead and leave a review for me while you’re here.’ We would love to be able to do it, it’s just that the number one concern, from both site users and dealers was that we’re filtering out those false-positives. We’ve suggested some things and I had one dealer come up to me at NADA this year and he actually suggested that he was going to create an entirely separate network at his store to have a separate IP address just so people could still leave reviews, but they would always be replying on different machines. I thought that was interesting.

JS: But, would he be recycling the IP address?

Nick: No, so he was actually talking about setting up an entirely different network with a different IP address that he would be paying extra money to support; just to be able to capture those on site.

JS: But, you would still see that there would be multiple, multiple, multiple entries from the same IP address.

Nick: You would, and that’s the type of thing that would have to be worked out with the concept of ‘how can I really verify that they have this kiosk in the store.’ And that’s something that I called out to him and I think that’s it’s something that we could probably do if we have someone going to that extent to keep things pure, but initially it would flag something on our side and probably other places to say that the volume coming in from one location is abnormally high. That’s where you would look at voice, you look at dates they came in, you look at scores…things like that.

JS: Makes sense. This is one of the most fascinating areas so I really appreciate you giving some thoughts on that. We have kind of talked about the dealers’ fears….How do you compare yourselves to a Yelp or Google Places or something like that?

Nick: And I kind of make a distinction between those two because Google is such a aggregator of all of the content that’s out there; usually the question that I’ll get is comparing us to Dealer Rater is the big one that comes up. Usually what I tell folks is that our goal was not to set ourselves up as a competitor to any of those sites. Typically when I talk to a dealer I tell them ‘the more places you have positive reviews out there, the better off you’re going to be.’ Because then, wherever people go, because we know people love Yelp, so all the more reason to have positive reviews there. The more places you have reviews, the more likely you are to catch all those various users across sites and see ‘yes, I’m going to have a positive experience at this store.’

I think this is one of the things that I strongly believe you want the content across as many places as possible and that’s when you start playing into Google, as they aggregate from every where, so once they see that there are enough reviews out there, all of a sudden on your Places page, you have a great amount of content, coming all across the Internet. All the more reason for who sees you on Google, says ‘you know what, I am ready to work with this store.’

Going further, I actually do suggest to folks who say ‘why should I be driving volume to Cars.com, rather than Yelp or Google or to Dealer Rater or wherever.’ I tell them, ‘you know, if you’re driving volume to three places just make us the fourth one.’ Again, it’s a win because they have more content out there. But I am not in any way trying to tell them that they should drive traffic to Cars.com because we have found that when people find the sites they like that’s the site they want to leave review content on. And that’s not a bad thing, whatsoever.

Really though, what we look at is, the story I always tell is one of our affiliate sales managers here told me back in December that she was shopping for a car, and she obviously went to Cars.com, she found the exact type of car she wanted. She then narrowed it down, she found the specific vehicle she wanted and she found the dealership where she thought she wanted to shop at, and then she left our site to go do additional research about that dealership. So, I just look at it as the more ways you can integrate that fantastic review content, where people are already digesting other information, the better off you’re going to be. And that’s really the whole reason we started getting into this. I say that the more places there are reviews out there, the better it is for everyone …. It’s just a huge win.

JS: Along those lines, do you have any agreements or discussions with Google Places, with Yahoo! Local, with bing Local, any of those places to use your material?

Nick: We have. I think what you’ll find with most of those places is that they all have their secret sauce and their own way of doing things, but typically the understanding is that you have to build up a certain amount of volume to be viewed as a credible source on this type of content, so we know that once we hit that it will be a lot easier to be aggregated, but our goal is certainly that once we have the volume we will make whatever site tweaks that we need to in order to be included in the aggregation.

JS: So, you definitely want to be included in the aggregation.

Nick: Absolutely. If it gets the content out there, it adds to the SEO value, so we definitely want that out there.

JS: Is there anything else you’d like to add as we wrap up the end of this?

Nick: The more places that content is our there, the better. We are certainly trying to encourage our dealers to view this as it’s an opportunity to really take control of what’s being said about you out there, so we’ve gone to the lengths of trying to provide them with various materials they can use in-store to drive volume. And again, I typically say, ‘if you’re already doing something, if you have banners for a different location, that’s fine. Just add us to the mix, one way or another. But you are driving the volume.’

I really look at it from a dealer perspective and one of the stories I heard from one of the dealers is that they’re viewing reputation management and reviews as a lead generator. So, what they do is look at it and track the number of phone calls they get, specifically from reviews, and they pay attention to the facts of how much more money can they make based on the fact that they have this great reputation that’s out there in the field. So, I’m just trying to convince people and say that this is a really good thing, assuming you really take advantage of it and you really start playing up your positive reputation, the better off it’s going to be for you.

JS: It’s interesting and we deal a lot of times with the opposite of it, where it’s not the wanting to get more leads (of course, they always want to), but when they look at online reviews and reputation management, at least in the beginning, it’s a question of ‘how can they stop any loss or perceived loss’ that is out there because they don’t have enough reviews or if there are some negative reviews out there. So, it’s really interesting to hear the flip-side of that, as well.

Nick: What we really have tried to talk to folks about, and we really have heard this over and over again, as we did our own market research…consumers kept telling us ‘you know, one negative review really isn’t the worst thing in the world and in a lot of cases it’s actually a positive. As when consumers see a lot of reviews that are all five stars as compared to similar scores that are 4.7, 4.8; that 4.7 has a lot more credibility because site users and digesters of information get the fact that every experience is not perfect and sooner or later, someone is going to have a bad day and it’s going to come off ‘not-perfect’.

So, when you do have some of those real-life experiences it’s actually a good thing. I also do try to convince people, when I do talk to them, that when you do get that person who did have a poor experience, it’s a great, great opportunity to leave the response indicating that they want to take personal responsibility for what happened, that it’s an aberration, that’s it’s not typically how you do business and you want to make sure that it goes right. Because all of a sudden, you’ve driven home to the people who come later on, that that’s not how you do business and that you really do care about each individual consumer.

So, yeah, we get it a lot, the first question of ‘what happens when I get a negative review,’ but we really do try to get people to understand that one negative review isn’t the worst thing in the world, and second there are all kind of ways for you to drive volume of positive reviews and the sooner that a dealer starts taking advantage of that and the sooner they start making it part of their process, the better off they’re going to be.

JS: My old boss used to say ‘You have two chances to meet someone….The first time you meet them and the first time you screw up.’ So along those lines, I’m a dealer and someone has just left a negative review. What mechanisms are in place to respond? Do I get to respond privately or only publicly, or am I able to respond to them at all? What are my recourses there?

Nick: This was one of the things that we debated most hotly before the launch; and so what we settled on was that anytime a review is posted the dealership always gets an opportunity to respond to it whether it’s positive or critical. And after they respond we close out the conversation. That was based on a large part on some of the feedback we heard from dealers that don’t do a lot in this space today. They were a little nervous about how much more process we’re going to build into this. So we didn’t want to get into the process of building a whole back and forth public exchange. I also think, anecdotely, I saw a decent amount of situations where that public back and forth just didn’t turn out terribly well. I think it’s just far easier, when you’re having that continued conversation, that you’re just going to regret one way or another.

The one thing that we’re keeping a very close eye on is the concept of allowing a private response before something gets posted. And originally, the way we landed is that we shied away from that because we really wanted the focus to be about your online reputation, less about a way to resolve customer service disputes. I think there’s a great amount of value in that and to be fair it’s kind of the norm in the industry right now. What we were really looking at is that we really have a substantial number of dealerships that don’t do this today and were very, very loud about the fact that they don’t want this proceeds to be complicated so we wanted it to be as simple as possible. That being said, we’re keeping a very, very close eye on the type of feedback that we get because we really need to make sure that if this is something we need to do, that we’re paying attention to it.

JS: Do you have any sort of automated notification system for the dealers if someone leaves a review or is it on them to check it themselves and monitor it daily?

Nick: We have a backend tool for dealers that we call My Dealer Center. And anytime a review is posted on Cars.com, meaning anytime it’s been through validation, moderation and it’s been approved, once it’s posted, the dealer automatically gets an email that says ‘You got a review posted on Cars.com. Please login by clicking this link and write a response to it’. We do make sure that we notify them, whether it’s a positive review or a critical one, we do notify them that it’s there and we do try to encourage them to reply to every single review not just to the ones that may be a review on a experience that was less than ideal.

JS: To me, I see a lot of fear from business owners about that….that it’s just going to be out there and they’re not going to know about it.

Nick: We definitely wanted to avoid that. I think it’s just one of those things that we saw as we got into this that there are places that have been aggregating for a long time and dealers just didn’t know what was there. So, we wanted to make sure that we are doing everything we can to warn them right off the bat.

I’d just like to publicly thank Nick and Cars.com for all their time and transparency regarding their dealer rating and review process.  If you’re shopping for a car, check them out.  Or if you’re a dealer, make sure you sign up for the My Dealer Center and start accepting reviews now!

The post Interview with Cars.com on Dealer Ratings: Part 2 appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Nick was extremely gracious with his time.  There’s so much good stuff that we’re breaking it up into two parts.  The second half of the interview will be posted Friday.

JS: Before we get started, is there anything in particular you want to say in particular about the review program?

Nick: The stance we continue to take and the whole reason that I’ll say we got into this is that we heard loud and clear from both our site users and dealers that there was just a crazy amount of demand in the marketplace for this type of content. The last six months that I’ve been talked to everyone under the sun about this, every month or two there’s a new stat coming out where the bar just keeps getting raised higher and higher where consumers are just aching to consume this content generated from other consumers. So the way we looked at it as if we started to collect this type of information and get it on our site and get the consumer the type of information they need, but it also helps our dealers by present their story right then and there. We looked at it as a win for our consumers, our dealers, and cars.com.

JS: I just can’t believe how many changes there have been with the review process in general over the last 6-8 months. It’s just been insane.

Nick: It has blown up. It is the hot button at this point. Everyone is talking about how can I start using reviews to start generating sales, how can I manage my reputation online, more and more we’re just hearing it everywhere. We’re just happy to do what we can to advance the conversation.

JS: Right now, your dealer review process is still in the opt-in phase for dealers, correct?

Nick: Correct. We’re opt in until mid- to late-summer. And then at that point, we’ll enable the functionality for every single dealer on cars.com.

JS: So you don’t have a set date yet for the hard move over?

Nick: We do have an internal one, trying to avoid really talking about it publicly until I am completely set that there isn’t not going to be any last minute change. I feel pretty good about it but more just because we are talking about it being beta, we just want to make sure that something else just doesn’t pop up. I feel very very confident that it’ll be over the summer.

JS: Ok, so mid to late, but you all have your own target date?

Nick: Yes, I feel pretty good about, it’s more that dates have tendency to change but don’t want to talk publicly then we decide we need to play with the functionality and then it gets pushed back a little bit. But for the moment we’re still paying close attention to the feedback we’ve been getting.

JS: How many dealers have signed up so far? [Editor’s note: this interview was actually conducted April 29, 2011, so adjust dealer opt-ins accordingly.]

Nick: We actually have… over 6700 yesterday.  Let me get an up to the minute count for you….

JS: While you’re waiting on that, have you noticed any distinguishing characteristics for the dealers that are signing up….large, small, certain pockets from the country, anything able to grasp from that so far?

Nick: Originally some region localization, and we’re still definitely seeing that.  What surprised me is the adoption in our smaller markets, so you typically expect to see in large, metro markets more opportunities, more sales folks localized, but we’ve seen some really, really good adoption in some of the areas you would see as more rural. It’s hard to say that there’s a specific type of dealer because it’s been really been pretty consistent. Most folks saying yes, we’re interested.

JS: Do you see something where one or two dealers will opt in then competitors in the surrounding area are seeing that and moving towards it as well?

Nick: I’m expecting we’ll start to see it as the review volume continues to grow, so one of the things we have talked to people about is this is a great time to get in initially and start building the volume. I think the bigger draw is not necessarily people having the ‘Review-Me’ functionality on Cars.com; the bigger draw is when I’m a dealership and I have those five gold stars next to my name, then it’s a little extra incentive for the guy down the road to say, ‘You know what, I want to be a part of this too.’

Just so I don’t forget to give it to you, we are just shy of 7,000 dealers now. We’re seeing about 100 a day.

JS: How many dealers are there total across the US?

Nick: In our side of things ballpark of about 17,000

JS: I can see why they would want it, but it just seems like it’s moving really quickly with them voluntarily knowing about it and voluntarily opting-in.

Nick: I think one of the big things that really surprised me was that I came into this with the same expectations as a lot of folks though ‘Oh my gosh, this is going to be a really scary thing and are our dealers going to be excited about it?’ We did some really interesting focus groups with both site users and dealers back in 2010 and I remember my second day into the project and I was just floored by the amount of positive feedback that dealers were putting out there. And it was really along the lines of them saying, ‘one way or another I do something with reputation today.’

And, so all of them were talking about their CSI scores, most of them would bring up something about the Better Business Bureau … one of the insane things that really surprised me because you just don’t think about it is even the smaller, independent dealers were very quick to say that they have probably sold a car online at some auction site at some point or another, and on all those sites you leave feedback for someone. So most of them were already doing it in some form or another and pretty much all of them said whether they were doing it today, they realized that this was the landscape and it’s going to happen sooner or later. So, I think the dealer reaction overall was surprising at the beginning, but now it’s everywhere so more and more folks are getting involved in it.

JS: Has the feedback changed or what kind of feedback are you getting now from the dealers after they have opted-in?

Nick: It hasn’t changed too much. I mean, dealers are pretty good about offering us some suggestions, and some tweaks, but nothing that has been hugely surprising just yet. The big thing I’ve been seeing, thus far, is that there’s a feeling out there among some that reputation management is a combination of both a resolution of customer service issues and also this idea that I’m going to build up my brand and my reputation in various places. So, that’s one area we’ve seen is a lot of requests and or suggestions, but overall we’re still just seeing dealers are opting-in, they’re starting to get on board, they’re starting to do more to drive volume and it really hasn’t changed too much from when we first launched to where we are today.

JS: Thank you. That’s really interesting. We’re seeing that with our clients we do reputation management with where it’s a little bit of, ‘Oh, shoot, we have to look at some our own internal policies and how we’re handling things in addition to how are we cleaning up outward facing as well.’

Nick: And that’s something that I’ve heard from a pretty substantial number of folks; this idea of ‘you know, I like the idea, but before we opt-in, give us some time to really nail down our process.’ Which I think is a fantastic thing. Whenever that comes up, I tell the dealer to ‘take your time, figure this out.’ It makes perfect sense.

I would rather you come in ready to go, feeling like you have your process nailed down then you feel like you have to figure it out overtime. So, we’ve seen a decent amount of that and I love the fact that more and more dealers are realizing that reputation management is a very important part of their daily process and they’re going to figure out a way to make that work.

JS: Well said. What kind of visit adoption have you seen so far?

Nick: Visitor adoption has been pretty much how we expected. The interesting thing, the dilemma, we’ve faced from a user experience perspective is that we feel really good about the fact that we’re likely going to cross 7,000 dealers opted in today or Monday, but on the flip side it’s still not a majority of our dealerships. The difficulty then is; how do you present it to a user who wants to find a specific dealership that may or may not already be opted-in, and if they are opted-in they may or may not have the review volume just yet.

What we have seen though, when we launched we were getting a certain number of reviews a day, and I just looked this morning and saw that the average number of reviews coming in has more than doubled. We’re seeing that adoption pick-up pretty quickly, but it’s still one of those things that we’re trying to make sure we’re presenting the best user experience possible so we’re not saying ‘come read reviews’ and then they can’t read those reviews. We’re keeping close eyes on it and it’s going in the direction we want it to, but it’s one of those things that I expect we will be able to talk a little bit more intelligently about it once we have every single dealer live on the site.

JS: So, if the dealer is opted-in and the consumer is looking at one of their cars, is it going to be right on that page where they can leave the review?

Editor’s note: here are some links for cars.com review samples that Nick sent over after the interview:

• Dealer Locator Search showing Ratings
• Dealer Specific Page showing Ratings & Reviews
• Dealer Specific Page for Rating & Reviewing
• Vehicle Specific Page with Reviews

Nick: There are two main places where the content kind-of lives today. Right now when you come to Cars.com, in essence there are different ways that you can search but it boils down to I can choose to search for a specific dealership or I can choose to search for a specific car. Anywhere that you’re searching for a specific dealership, where we’re presenting dealership information, we have a column right there in our dealer locator functionality that shows the current rating. And then underneath it is the link to click here and read all the reviews and next to it is click here to write a review. We’re trying to separate those pages out just so our dealers can take advantage that and funnel people to the appropriate page.

The other place that you’ll see similar functionality is on each individual vehicle page. Again, the idea being we want to present their score right there in the context of the vehicle so it gives the user all the confidence in the world to say, yes I do want to work with this dealership. We don’t necessarily want to force all that content into that page though because we want to keep the focus on the vehicle information. Very, very similar, they can click on the link there that takes them to the dealer specific review page where they can read all the reviews and right at the top of that page is a big purple button that lets them write a review if that’s why they’re on that page.

JS: I’m looking at this, and I don’t know if I just missed it before or you just put it up recently, but that review a dealer link on the homepage, has the green beta tag on it; I’m just curious if you have looked at the analytics and if you know like are people going through there to rate dealers or are they more likely to do that after they have looked at a car. Do you have any stats on that?

Nick: Off the top of my head, my impression is that they are going through the link on the homepage, although we are getting a lot of traffic on the dealer specific pages. One of the stances that we’ve taken is that we want to do everything to empower our dealers to drive the volume as best as possible, so each dealer has a specific URL to their store where they can send out emails or do whatever they want with it. They can tell people ‘if you want to leave a review for me click here and go directly to this page.’ We are getting a substantial amount of traffic that bypasses the homepage and goes directly to there.

What we’ve seen though, in terms of the vehicle page compared to the homepage is the people who write reviews are not necessarily looking for a car right now or they’re not drilling down and find a specific vehicle, and then realizing that I’ve shopped at this dealership and I want to leave a response. More so, they are coming in, they’re reading reviews and lots of times the folks that read reviews then actually want to write reviews as well.

We’ll add a link to Part 2 here when the rest of the interview gets posted.  The second half of the interview goes into great detail about astroturfing; review scrubbing; how they view themselves in the greater review landscape compared to places like Yelp, Google Places, and Dealer Rater; and how dealers can respond to criticism.

The post Interview with Cars.com on New Dealer Review System: Part 1 appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Audrey – at least it’s her email address – on the Google Places Team has started sending out surveys to businesses who have Places Pages verified.  Maybe we should add a direct contact with the big G as another benefit of verifying Google Places Pages.  It’s pretty insightful into what Google’s thinking in their long-term plans for local, so here it is in its entirety along with some select comments.  Pretty fascinating.

Note: I’m adding numbers to questions and the formatting is goofing a little, but you’ll get the gist.  I’m feeling too lazy to do screenshots.

Google Places Pages Survey

You must be at least 18 years old to participate in Google user research.

We will only use your personal information for the purpose of Google user research and will not share it with anyone else. For details on how Google treats your personal information, please read our Privacy Policy.

1. 1. Which best describes your role(s) in the business(es) you have listed on Google Places (formerly known as the the Local Business Center)?

Select all that apply.

JS – Find it ironic that Google misspells search engine optimizer here.

1. 1. Which best describes the business you have a listing for on Google Places?

Select all that apply.

1. 1. Approximately how many locations does your business have?

1. 1. How many employees does your business have?

1. 1. Do you currently use Google AdWords?

1. 1. What do you know about Google Tags?

1. 1. Have you ever seen information about your business, online, that was incorrect?

1. 1. Of the following features, please choose up to three that you would find useful in managing your business information online.

Please select up to three items.

JS – Alright, this is where it gets interesting. Look at the list here. Not the first one so much as that’s a way to set up future revenue streams (you’ll see more on this in a bit). But then look at the next several. This indicates a partnership with other sites. Are these sites that Google would own by creating or, more likely, purchasing? Or they would form partnerships with? Then look at the sixth one. Google Alerts on steroids: automatic notifications. Would this just be on the partnered sites, or is it wherever it happens? This could be awesome or awful news for online / social media monitoring tools. If I’m Andy Beal, for example, I’m beefing up trackur with as many new features as I can think of NOW. Ultimately, the purpose of all these is to make Google the central hub for businesses in this ever-increasing online turf war among the major players.

1. 1. Please indicate which of the following online review and rating, social networking, or phonebook listing sites you use to promote your business:

JS – Well played, G. Getting the goods on competitors, partners, and potential partners all in one space. I’m not sure if I’d be more worried to be listed under the “Review and Rating Site” section or to not be listed there.

1. 1. Please indicate which of the following online review and rating, social networking, or phonebook listing sites you pay to advertise your business on:

1. 1. How frequently have you tried to update or correct your business’ information on any of those sites in the past year?

Please tell us more about how you update your business’ information online.

1. 1. Why did you update your business’ information?

Please check all that apply.

1. 1. Where did you update that information?

Please check all that apply.

Please review the features of package A below, and let us know your level of interest.

Package A: $25 per year.

* Have my basic business information distributed and updated across a range of sites.
* An advertisement that appears along with your business’ basic information, on other sites.

JS – And here’s the monetization. Doesn’t seem like much, but it’s only $25. Easy sell. Maybe one they could even do through their regular methods and not need to provide much customer service for. Would be a ton of headaches, though. If they don’t do any customer service, Google’s own reputation will start taking even more of a hit than it has recently as they get tons of cranky people who don’t net them much money moaning and needing a lot of hand holding.

1. 1. Would this package be useful to your business?

1. 1. How would you feel about actually buying the package for $25 a year?

1. 1. If you had the option to add one feature to that package for an additional $25/year, which of the following would you pick?

JS – Here’s the good stuff. “anything about my business online”? For an additional $25 per year. Who doesn’t sign up for that? There’s still a market for making sense of the data, which is good news for our friends at NetBase – but that’s going to put a mighty scare through a lot of different companies out there. I wouldn’t think it would cause any stirs here, but perhaps in Europe where Google’s facing more serious antitrust challenges? Probably not because it wouldn’t be major companies, but I wouldn’t think it would make their attorneys’ lives easier.

Please review the features of package B below, and let us know your level of interest.

Package B: $50 per year.

* Have my basic business information distributed and updated across a range of sites.
* An advertisement that appears along with your business’ basic information, where it appears on other sites.
* Get notifications when people post anything about my business online, such as photos, reviews, or discussions.

JS – This is really the same thing as above, bundling Package A with the most useful add-on for the same price.

1. 1. Would this package be useful to your business?

1. 1. How would you feel about actually buying the package for $50 a year?

1. 1. If you had the option to add one feature to that package for an additional $25/year, which of the following would you pick?

Thank you very much for helping us improve Google products!

1. 1. May Google contact you regarding your feedback, or for future user research opportunities?

You must be at least 18 years old to participate in Google user research.
We will only use your personal information for purposes of Google user research and will not share it with anyone else.
For details on how Google treats your personal information, please read our Privacy Policy.

So What Do You Think?

If you’re an SEO – how do you think this will affect you?  If you’re not, are these products you’d be interested in?  Would love to hear your thoughts!

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Premier Partner before you reach out.

The post What’s Next for Google Places? Reputation Management And… appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Facts

• $500 billion in e-commerce purchases last year
• Number of internet users is approaching 2 billion
• 36 hours of information is uploaded to YouTube every minute
• More than half of offline purchase now derive from online research

Predictions

• MOBILE IS THE FUTURE
• Smartphones and other mobile devices will become ones, personal concierge
• YouTube will continue to grow and be used across all platforms
• Storage will be unlimited and cheap
• Everyone will have access

How will you take advantage of these changes?

To increase the volume and quality of search traffic, there are some steps you can take right now.  We suggest the following:

• Claim Google Places listings for all physical business locations
• Evaluate location-based social networks such as Foursquare to see if they make sense for your business
• Connect with in-market consumers researching trusted sites such as viewpoints (Reis’ suggestion) or NetBase (our suggestion; full disclosure: a client)

In Google AdWords

• Link location ad extensions to appropriate Google Places accounts
• If inbound calls are desired, use phone ad extensions; they are click-to-call
• Deliver ads to all or select mobile devices (you may want to separate these out into separate campaigns)
• If advertising on the content network, try video display ads; they are far more engaging
• Add more abbreviated keywords to better target mobile search users

The post Mobile Search is the Future. Are You Ready? appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.