LOCQL. It’s similar to Quora or other Q+A user-generated sites. Right now, it looks like the site could benefit from some more legitmate users but the intent for a location-based Q+A social network is positive.

Questions based around given cities can help users find local eateries, bars, attractions and other things to do while traveling or even if you just want a fresh perspective on your own town.

If you’re thinking the site would be a good platform for marketing your small business, take precautions – like any link-building or blog commenting strategy, it’s best to have a real interest in the subject matter you’re looking at. You should offer a real solution for people’s needs. You’ll want to provide helpful tips and insight rather than just throwing your name into the mix without being respectful of the platform and its users, meaning that you want to build trust and establish credibility as a community member rather than as a name dropper or free advertiser.

Here’s a link to another post that explains how it works. Here’s a link to LOCQL itself.

For a long time now, I’ve been discussing the ways businesses can advertise efficiently on the internet–namely SEO. As a marketer, I can’t help but notice how the mobile channel is exponentially growing, and how slowly the business world is adapting to this. My goal in this post is to help you understand the value of mobile marketing, and how you might capitalize on its growth.

Recently, I saw two Google Account Managers (Anjali Vaidya and Bon Mercado) make a presentation about this topic. Though both were clearly selling Adwords, they presented some very compelling data:

• Mobile search queries grew by 400% from January 2010 to January 2011 (faster than desktop search growth)
• Mobile search volume stays constant hour-to-hour, day-to-day, unlike desktop searches
• 1 in 3 mobile searches are locally-focused
• After looking up a local business on their smartphone, 61% of searchers called the business and 59% went to their website
• Tablet users spend 50% more than PC desktop users
• In the next 18 months, 15-30% of website traffic will come from mobile users

Most businesses are bad at SEO. They are even worse at landing page optimization/conversion. With this in mind, it is not surprising that mobile landing pages are generally glitchy, frustrating and poorly designed (where they exist at all). Fortunately, for Outrank’s local business clients, ranking on the front page means your mobile customers are only a touch of the finger away from calling you.

Another area of mobile advertising that cannot be ignored is the app market. Businesses are investing heavily in games and utility applications that keep the attention of mobile users for long periods of valuable time. Some companies and individuals are banking solely from selling standalone apps that profit from an up-front downloading fee or from advertising. An interesting presentation from The Nielsen Company’s Jonathan Carson, CEO, Telecom, made last month at the AppNation conference highlighted some good data profiling app downloaders:

• 36% of U.S. mobile consumers now have smartphones
• App downloaders with Apple iOS and Android OS smartphones have more applications on their mobile phones than those with other kinds of smartphones, with an average of 48 apps on iPhones and 35 apps on Android phones. (By comparison, app downloaders with Blackberry RIM smartphones only had an average of 15 apps on their phones.)
• They also use their apps more often: 68 percent of app downloaders with iPhones and 60 percent of those with Android phones reported using their mobile apps multiple times a day compared to 45 percent of app downloaders with Blackberry/RIM phones.

The 2011 results from the 15th Annual Webby Awards were revealed this week. There are four major entry types: Websites, Interactive Advertising, Online Film & Video and Mobile & Apps. Each category wins two honors – The Webby Award and The People’s Voice Award.

The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet. Established in 1996 during the Web’s infancy, the Webbys are presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, which includes an Executive 750-member body of leading Web experts, business figures, luminaries, visionaries and creative celebrities, and Associate Members who are former Webby Award Winners and Nominees and other Internet professionals.

The Academy of Digital Art and Sciences is made up of luminaries like

musicians Beck and David Bowie, Internet inventor Vint Cerf, political columnist Arianna Huffington, Real Networks CEO Rob Glaser, “The Simpsons” creator Matt Groening, R/GA Founder and Chairman Robert Greenberg, Virgin Atlantic Chairman and Founder Richard Branson, and The Weinstein Company Co-Founder Harvey Weinstein.

Interesting that Google barely made an appearance, even as far as simply being nominated. Google and YouTube: YouTube Play did win the People’s Voice Award in the Art category, though. It’s no suprise that they didn’t win anything in the Social category – they’ve had a difficult time syncing things up (Hotpot, Places, Reviews) to make for a seamless user experience. Here are some categories they would surely like to win next time around: 

• Best Use of GPS or Location Technology (Foursquare won both The Webby & People’s Voice Award)
• Guides/Ratings/Reviews (Yelp won  both awards as well)

Definitely a favorite of mine as well as around the office: Pandora won the Music category from both the Webby Academy and the People’s Voice.

I thought it would be interesting to look at what categories Google has won in the past compared to what they haven’t won in more recent years. You can visit the Webby Awards website to browse through each year, starting with 1997. It’s amazing to be able to see the changes in technology and trends — and how competition plays such a major role in progress.

2001 Best Practices: The Webby & People’s Voice Awards

2002 Best Practices: The People’s Voice Award

2003 News: The Webby Award, Webby Technical Achievement: The People’s Voice

2004 Best Practices: The Webby & People’s Voice Awards, Services: The Webby & People’s Voice Awards

2005 Best Navigation/Structure: People’s Voice, Best Practices: The Webby & People’s Voice Awards

2006 Best Practices: The People’s Voice

In 2007 they were nominated for Best Visual Design Function (gapminder.org: The Gapminder World 2006) and in 2010 they were nominated in the Music category for Google Creative Lab: YouTube Symphony Orchestra.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau, made up of companies who control over 80% of online advertising, has released The IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report for 2010. PwC, the world’s second-largest professional services firm, prepared the report.

The report, which is available here, puts Internet advertising revenue for 2010 at $26 Billion, a new record. Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of IAB, had this to say in a recent press release:

“As the latest IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report amply demonstrates, brand advertisers and marketers have adopted the power of digital media as a central element of their campaigns…Consumers have shifted more of their time to digital media – watching television shows and movies online – and advertisers now accept this multifaceted medium as a key component for reaching their targets.”

Any business owners reading this post should pay attention closely to what I’m about to say. A whopping 46% of internet advertising revenue in 2010 came from search advertising. That’s almost $12 Billion dollars. Much (if not most) of the revenue attributed to the “search” channel comes from paid search advertisements, or PPC. With that in mind, take into account that 85% of searchers don’t click on PPC ads. Most of us, myself included, stick to the regular (organic) results that appear when we’re using search engines. Furthermore, optimizing your site to rank prominently in organic search (the art of SEO) is much less costly than buying PPC ads.

So, for pennies on the dollar, your business can use SEO to reach way more customers than your counterparts who are using PPC. If paid search advertisers are making good money as it is, just imagine how much you could grow your business using SEO. As time progresses, the market will only become more competitive, so you might want to consider making a small investment while the iron is hot. As your competitors catch on after you, their sites will be at a disadvantage–older, more established sites that have been SEO optimized (like yours) will tend to rank better.

Structured markup, also known as semantic HTML, is a way of using HTML markup to present more details about the nature of elements present within a website. If this sounds confusing, let me explain plainly how it applies to your business.

Structured markup is an extension of standard HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). HTML contains information about your website that tells a browser (like IE or Firefox) how to show it to a user. It tells a browser what text will look like, where the text will go, what size an image will be, how links will function, etc.

Semantic HTML uses the same language to assign more meaning to the attributes of a website. Using “tags”, a web designer can categorize pieces of content as addresses, recipes, product information, and much, much more. Google uses information from some of these tags when presenting search results to users who are looking for products or businesses. The conversation goes something like this:

Website: Hey Googlebot, this is L’Amourita Pizza. Our address is 123 Main St, Albuquerque, NM. Our phone number is 206-555-1234.

Googlebot: Thanks, website. I’ll make sure that information is stored in my database correctly and shown to searchers.

It is important to note that Google’s official stance is that structured markup will not boost your rankings. However, it will help your CTR (Clickthrough Rate). Those familiar with PPC will understand this metric, which is how often users will click on the link to your site when it appears in their search results. Sites with richer, correctly displayed information will receive more clicks and more business.

I had the pleasure of attending an Austin Internet Marketing Meetup on the subject hosted by Homeaway. I can’t say enough about what a great host Homeaway was, not only for letting us use their attractive space for a free event, but especially for the great beer and appetizers they provided attendees. The speaker was Jay Myers, Lead Web Development Engineer for BestBuy.com, who gave a really great presentation and explained how the semantic web is especially powerful for those who sell products online.

E-Commerce websites can take advantage of Google’s Custom Search technology, which allows website owners to tailor a user’s search experience within their own website. You can create higher-level classifications for product information, including reviews and pricing. An example is shown below:

A lot of talk has been circulating about Google’s recent algorithm changes, which have still not finished rolling out. Many businesses with prominent organic rankings have taken a dive as of late. Some data from sistrix.com showing just some of the fallout can be seen as follows:

According to the source, the “SISTRIX Visibility Index is an index value calculated from traffic on keywords, ranking and click-through rate on specific positions”. This goes to show how quickly your organic rankings can change with the seasons –typically not for the better. As more and more small businesses turn to SEO as a cost-effective, trackable advertising channel, it is important to realize the value of recurring, professional SEO maintenance.

Once a business is ready to experiment with SEO, it can play out in a few different ways. Knowing the value of search engine visibility, the DIY business owner might comb the web for instructions. Contractors, who are pretty resourceful people, are a great example of this. What he/she would find is mostly outdated information from wannabe SEO’s who took up the profession for a week after getting a life-changing “MAKE $5,000 A WEEK WORKING FROM HOME!!!” e-mail. Then there’s the 60-90 day wait in anticipation of results that never come.

Another breed of proprietor might find the DIY approach to be unreliable, and decide to enlist a professional agency. Unfortunately, this guy doesn’t do his homework before selecting an agency–one that might even be getting him great results. Before you know it, this seemingly legit company has gotten Joe Contractor’s site removed from Google altogether with spammy tactics. His business ends up taking a very real hit with no recourse against some kid in a satellite nation who never gave him legit contact info to begin with.

With a low cost, comprehensive reporting, a brick-and-mortar (US based) location and an army of dedicated account managers, you might find Outrank.com to be a good fit. We make small businesses visible on the internet, which tends to get your phone ringing. If you sign up with us and aren’t happy for any reason, there’s no monthly contract. For a free consultation, call (877) 332-4321.

In one of the biggest SEO headlines in recent months, JCPenney was publicly outed as a practicioner of black hat SEO. The company, whose uncanny organic results have been manually downgraded by Google, was allegedly unaware of the sketchy tactics used by SearchDex, a third party SEO vendor acting on their behalf. Before webspam engineer Matt Cutts and the rest of the Google team took action, JCPenney had front page rankings for multitudes of product-specific keywords, like “comforter sets” for months.

How they did it:

SearchDex used a paid links network that compensates website owners for the placement of links on their sites. By optimizing the anchor text (the text that appears in the underlined hyperlink) with a given keyword for a large number of pages, it did not matter that the pages they used had little traffic on their own or were not contextually relevant. In a specific example shown by Search Engine Land, JCPenney’s landing page for “comforter sets” had 700-plus of these junk sites linking to it, which included sites dedicated to Eastern Medicine, car modification and “How to hack Friendster Private Picture” (I was not personally aware Friendster was even still in existence).

If you have any hand in your company’s search marketing efforts, regardless of size, you should learn from this. Yes, the ROI from their dark alley campaign was probably phenomenal. However, was it worth the mess their PR and marketing people have to clean up now? Google has manually demoted their search results to obscurity. For a company that is trying to transition from its “Big Book” catalog to e-commerce, is a few months of SEO glory worth the work it will take to repair the damage from this fallout? Fortunately for JCPenney, sales driven by organic SEO are only a small part of its revenue. But for any legitimate business seeking long-term online marketing success, pure black hat SEO is just not worth it.

Only a month ago, Outrank.com’s client base hit the 8,000 mark. We are happy to announce that, due to record growth, we now manage SEO campaigns for 9,000 small business clients. This accomplishment would not be possible without a highly effective product and our team of dedicated support professionals. The workload is so heavy that we are having to expand our physical office location to accommodate new staff.

As we steadily approach the 5-figure mark, this number is proof that SEO works. From listening to client testimonials on our main web site, you can see that everyday small business owners are consistently pleased by the return they get on a pretty small investment. What’s more, our customers lock in these benefits at low prices without having to enter into a contract. If you own a business, call Outrank.com today to have a conversation with a friendly account manager.

Any SEO expert will advocate the importance of links in determining your placement in any major search engine, as will Outrank.com.

That said, link building is risky and complicated–too much so for an amateur to perform wisely.

All of the following are considered in the valuation of a given link:

• Continuity of subject matter
• Number of additional links to a page
• Presentation/positioning of the link
• Sites linking to the link-providing site
• Perceived authority of the linking site
• Variety of link sources
• Relative timespan/trending of links

This is a small and non-exclusive list. Furthermore, these factors vary in importance and use with one another…and between search engines.

With that said, search engines do a fairly good job of differentiating sites that try to game their algorithms from sites that are associated with relevant, trusted, popular, non-spammy domains. Fortunately, there are a variety of ways to gain legitimate, valuable links to your site, though these tactics require a large investment of resources and expert SEO knowledge:

• Creative content strategies
• Viral sharing
• Evaluating trending topics relative to your industry
• Legitimate directories
• Publicity

On a final note, attempting to use these strategies on your own or with an underqualified SEO company can have disastrous results. In the wrong hands, these efforts can damage your reputation or put you out of business. To talk about building your online presence as a small business, call Outrank at (877) 332-4321.

Outrank.com has come across a couple of new developments in the search industry. More specifically, search giant Google rolled out changes that affect the way we interact with its engine.

Users of Google search have been alerted in results pages of potentially malicious pages for a long time. However, new notifications have been added that reflect advances in the company’s detection capabilities. When a site is deemed questionable, a notice appears below the title, reading “This site may be compromised”. This technology is also intended to inform well-meaning webmasters.

Also, Google’s Translate feature has been fleshed out. For one, “alternative translations” have been added, which allow the user to see the actual intent of a translated phrase. Secondly, virtual keyboards have been introduced, as some world languages are difficult to type on a standard keyboard. Finally, speech technology is now available for three additional languages (improved in seventeen), which allows you to actually hear what a translation sounds like spoken.

Check Outrank.com’s blogs regularly for more Google updates.