Google Local has a different algorithm to the main Google search engine and requires different optimisation methods. The main ranking factors for Google Local include elements such as citations and customer reviews as well as the usual link factors and the expected address and geographical factors.

There has been a lot of talk recently about using tracking numbers for businesses and the concerns are quite valid. If you have 2 phone numbers listed in different places then it’s the same as having 2 domain names showing the same website but a lot harder to fix. Some companies have a geographical number, an 0845 number and several tracking numbers all listed in various places which makes it very hard for Google to accurately measure citations.
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We’ve been doing a lot of work with Google Local recently and have come across a lot of challenges. In the next few weeks we’re going to be covering some of the issues on the blog.

Google allows businesses to add new listings or claim existing listings via the web interface but for businesses with thousands of locations that’s not really possible. Luckily Google offers a bulk upload feature which allows you to upload a spreadsheet of all your locations nice and easily.

The main issue with bulk uploads is that in the past there was no way of verifying the data so it was treated with the same trust as data which Google had scraped from one of the large online business directories and often didn’t show up in the listings. In August Google announced a new feature which allowed people to fill in a form to verify their data based on a declaration and AdWords login.
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It’s fair to say that we are now surfing the crest of the first great Twitter wave. Slight tweaks to the interface (the recent introduction of lists) don’t disguise the fact that growth in US user numbers has stalled.

Multi-million dollar deals with Google and Bing, as well as translations (Spanish has just launched), will give the service a shot in the arm but its long-term future is somewhat of a mystery.

Twitter’s development so far has been fueled by users – and developers harnessing its API – not by the company itself. It is these continuing changes in the way it is used that will shape the service’s future and ensure its long-term success. But what are those changes and how will they impact?

Seesmic founder Loic La Meur gazed into his crystal ball this week and gave us some ideas:-

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Google has this week been granted a patent for adjusting search rankings based on click data for related queries.

The patent, entitled Rank-adjusted content items, talks about the same types of query refinements we discussed earlier this month in the satisfaction rates post and in previous brand update analysis.
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PR industry bible PR Week caught up with the debate about Sidewiki this week.

While it isn’t the best idea Google has come up with (the company needs to balance user experience with its business relationships) and is a serious headache for pharmaceutical companies, it isn’t all that bad and some reactions have been over the top.

Sidewiki is a toolbar plug-in that users will have to download to see wiki content on pages. The question remains as to how many will actually bother installing it.
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Google announced a new service yesterday called Social Search which shows search results from sites owned by the searchers online friends. Currently an opt-in service but widely expected to go live over the next few months it cements the need for brands to have a Twitter account, Facebook page & a decent blog.

Data on a persons social circle is pulled from their contacts in Gmail, the people they follow on Twitter, the blogs they read on Google Reader. Google has a help centre article explaining more about how it works.
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Everyone loves a good viral video and when successfully executed they can deliver a real boost for your brand – spreading a message or just getting you mentioned and noticed. But can you replicate viral success time and again?

The question came to mind when I heard that one of my favourite virals of recent times was getting a sequel.

J’aime la Tour

 
Commissioned by visitBlackpool to promote tourism, this clip gives a humorous take on the Lancashire town, comparing it to Paris with a cinematic nod to French cinema thrown in.

This video is undoubtedly very clever, but by viral conventions isn’t particularly humorous, is a little slow paced and doesn’t really wow.

Despite that it still attracted 60,000 viewers on YouTube because what really made it stand out when uploaded earlier this year was its ability to jump vertically between different media channels. It had crossover appeal which was capitalised on by an effective PR campaign.

While people sharing your video on facebook, twitter, or even through good old fashioned emails is great, it is never likely to have real penetration unless it migrates to other channels.

Mainstream media remains the biggest game in town and successful PR  increased viewers and the video’s spread. National TV coverage included BBC News and Sky News, with newspaper coverage including the Daily Mail and a host of regional newspapers and websites.

This was in effect a great PR campaign based around a solid, but not spectacular video.

Repeat success?

A lot what we do online is about the ‘new’. People want  a succession of exciting, fun and interesting experiences (as trendwatching.com pointed out, describing it as ‘nowism’).

The media is no different and is constantly looking for fresh content and stories – especially in the 24-hour news cycle we now inhabit.

In that environment can we expect virality to strike twice? It does sometimes as Blendtec’s Will it Blend? series and VW’s recent Fun Theory videos have shown -  but they are the rare exception.

If you can get one of your viral masterpieces off the ground you should consider it a success – thousands have failed in the same quest, lacking the resources to mount a PR campaign that would help it jump between channels and gain mainstream penetration.

In essence though viral videos are an opportunity to look creatively at your brand or products. While they might not lead to overnight YouTube stardom they can give you a fresh perspective on marketing . People like fun, engaging content –whether it is a video, news story, tweet, picture, or podcast.

So will the second video share the same success at J’aime la tour? I’ll let you be the judge of that…

Love, from Blackpool

Most people are in broad agreement that the brand update is about maximising satisfaction rates and making sure as many of your visitors find what they were looking for at your site rather than having to go to Google and search again.

However some people are looking at satisfaction rates and thinking about bounce rates but they are a totally different thing.

First of all lets look at how Google defines bounce rate:

Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert. You can minimize bounce rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy.

To view the bounce rates for your website, go to the Bounce Rate report under Visitors > Visitor Trending > Bounce Rate.

My definition of satisfaction rate:

Satisfaction rate is the percentage of people who find the information or products they were searching for at your website without having to return to Google and perform any further searches.

So while on the surface it’s easy to think that the brand update is just about minimising bounce rate and maximising conversion rates we can see that bounce rate is quite a flawed metric when looking at satisfaction rates. Take Wikipedia for example, they probably have a huge bounce rate because every page gives pretty much the answer to every question somebody might have about the topic they were searching for. The visitor searches for a topic and arrives at a page giving a huge amount of information about that topic – they have no reason to click onto another page or to revisit Google and search again.
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This new dilemma was highlighted to me yesterday as I tried to update my LinkedIn social profile to include my involvement with MajesticSEO. LinkedIn’s privacy statement is robust and reassuring, but they have a new beta section asking me to add details about my company. The ”number of employees” section was a compulsory field. Now I am not especially precious about this data, but I serve many masters. My legally binding contract with MajesticSEO includes a confidentiality clause, naturally. Even if it didn’t, I think that I should make it just a LITTLE difficult for prying eyes to build up inside knowledge about businesses where I am not the controlling interest. What if you work for TESCO. How many employees even KNOW how many people work there?
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