There are plenty of web awards out there, and even some locally here in Lansing. But we at Netvantage wanted to have a bit more fun with it and let the general public vote for their favorite websites. With that in mind, we cooked up the Lansing Web Awards, our idea for a web 2.0 take on local web awards. So while this isn’t the most scientific approach to choosing the best website in the greater Lansing area, we think it’s a great way to get local businesses and the general public thinking about the web and the many great websites established by local businesses.
So if you’re a local business or just a fan of a local business’ website, check out the Lansing Web Awards page and tell your friends, and have your friends tell their friends! The winners will get some fancy hardware, and as much publicity as we can generate for them.
Further, we finally had a chance to use our green screen for something (there is no truth in the rumor that this entire contest was created so I could finally do something with the green screen), so check out this extremely fancy video we put together.
So, if you like this idea, feel free to share it via facebook, retweet it, or write it on a piece of paper and send it via carrier pigeon. The more people that get involved the greater success this will be. Thanks!
Lots of people can debate what the best restaurant in Lansing is, and I don’t want to step into that argument. However, while searching for some ideas for a place to eat the other day I decided to Google “Lansing restaurant” and as a professional SEO I couldn’t help but take notice of the order of the local listings. Not that Google gives away their secret recipe, but I figured it’s worth a look at some of the elements that likely determine the rankings so you local business owners out there can take steps to climb the rankings for whatever it is that you do.
So let’s take a look at the search results:
And the winner is...Clara's!
As of 1am on Tuesday, November 17th, Clara’s comes out on top. But what puts them in front of the Knight Cap? First, let’s look at some purely local business center elements.
Most experts agree and evidence seems to show a correlation between business location and distance from the center of the search geography. In this case, the Knight Cap is actually slightly closer, so in terms of sheer geographic location, the Knight Cap has the edge (albeit a slight one)
Reviews can also be an important element - showing user interest and usage of the local business. Here we see Clara’s is the clear winner among pure restaurants. The Sheraton may have the most reviews, but suffers in terms of relevance (most of the listing details refer to the hotel, not the restaurant).
In terms of the actual listing information, it appears that neither Clara’s or the Knight Cap have taken ownership and verified their listings, so the details have been provided by the public, who seem to have done a slightly better job with Clara’s. Though, to be honest, they both could use some work in terms of completeness.
Clara's has more "restaurant" related information in its listing.
The Knight Cap has very few details when it should be as descriptive as possible.
The new and improved local business center also has details on the number of related websites for the local business, another strong indicator of its importance. On this metric Clara’s wins by a count of 70 to 43.
So from a purely local business center standpoint, Clara’s seems to have a pretty significant advantage in ranking out for the term “Lansing restaurant”. But beyond just the local elements, more traditional SEO elements come in to play as well. So let’s take a look at those factors.
In terms of on page optimization, both sites leave a lot to be desired, but Clara’s does utilize unique page titles and makes sure to fit in the words “Lansing” and “restaurant” within the page title. There’s not much in terms of other on page elements like consistent keyword usage, header tags, alt tags, and meta descriptions. The Knight Cap is in much worse shape, as the title doesn’t even mention the word “restaurant” though it does contain the Lansing address. However, the site’s content is done in Flash, so it’s basically unreadable to a search engine, meaning it has no idea what the page is really about aside from the non-Flash content.
As far as off page issues, Clara’s has a massive advantage. I’m not going to dig into anchor text or the quality of each individual link, but according to Yahoo Site Explorer, Clara’s domain has 1,011 links compared to the Knight Cap’s 60. Google’s PageRank is usually a pretty good indicator in terms of its determination of a site’s importance, and Clara’s home page currently has a 4 compared to the Knight Cap’s 2.
So without a doubt, Clara’s takes it home as Lansing’s best SEO’d restaurant, regardless of your tastes. Without some major work by the other local establishments, this won’t be changing any time in the near future. My official scorecard is as follows:
Netvantage doesn’t market itself as a social media company, but we end up in a LOT of conversations about it, and Twitter in particular. Small businesses are still trying to figure out Twitter, and without knowing a lot of detail about a company or industry it’s hard to just start throwing out universally valuable tactics that someone can use to start gaining value from Twitter. Today I was catching up on Twitter and browsing through some of the folks I follow, I realized that Pubcon was underway (Pubcon is a big Internet marketing conference, for those that don’t know).
I wasn't at Pubcon, but this is what it felt like on Twitter.
I saw a Tweet from Chris Hooley that had the hashtag of #pubcon, and I hopped on over to Twitter search (or feel free to use another tool like Tweetdeck) and ran a search for #pubcon and let it run. The result? Boatloads of information, summaries of presentations and generally distilled goodness that would have cost me time away from the office that I just can’t afford at the moment. I do this for any industry conference or event, and fortunately our industry is chock full of people who love to Tweet. The truth is, though, that regardless of your industry, there are people sharing information at important events that you can benefit from. So even if Twitter doesn’t act as a direct revenue tool, it can be your ticket to insights from thought leaders in your industry, and THAT can be valuable for small businesses dealing with limited resources. So, if I was in a position of authority at a small business, I would make sure my company was doing the following:
Identifying a handful of the most important individuals and companies (particularly competitors and key players up and down the value chain) and following them
Keeping a calendar of major industry events (trade shows, conferences, training events, etc.) and running searches leading up to the event to identify hashtags of interest
Run searches during and post event and have someone scan through and create a summary document of links to relevant presentations, blog posts and other summaries of key information on industry trends, competitors, etc.
From there your organization can streamline processes and figure out the most actionable way to use this information - whether it’s addressing changes to your own processes, new marketing opportunities or new competitive information. But as more and more people jump on the Twitter bandwagon, it gives the little guy the opportunity to have a virtual ticket to almost anything…so why not open some doors that have long been unavailable?
I do worry, however, that there will be some sort of attempted crackdown at some point - particularly for paid conferences. How long will people want to front big fees and travel costs to sit in on events that they can largely get the clif notes of for free? Sound like Napster/file sharing to anyone else? But the dams have already opened, so trying to stop the waters will be an effort in futility. I think it will start putting the onus on the event coordinators to continually add value to fill seats, but that may well benefit everyone.
I’ve made my bones with Twitter in the past, but truth be told I’ve warmed to it over time and certainly understand it’s value as a marketing and customer relationship management tool. But when I see videos like this, I can’t help but roll my eyes a bit.
There are some clearly fundamental issues with what’s said here. Now, I don’t think there’s anything necessarily malicious, but this definitely provides some false hope for how effective you can be with Twitter, and belittles another truly valuable marketing channel.
Mr. Voss has cultivated a massive following, but doesn’t state how long it’s taken to acquire this following - and a targeted following at that. Additionally, what type of staff manages his Twitter campaign(s)? You don’t just start an account, Tweet and get thousands of visitors to your website.
From an SEO standpoint, his example was pretty sad. There will always be a limited audience for branded keywords, especially for non-essential items (how often do YOU search for an internet show?) . However, ranking out well for targeted high volume terms can equal serious revenue. What type of money making clicks does he expect to get from the keyword search “chrisvoss show” used in the video? Further, just by looking at the dynamic URLs of his blog, it’s no surprise there’s no organic traffic - his site isn’t SEO’d very well.
The bit.ly examples aren’t exactly accurate either. Sure you can generate a lot of clicks through a massive audience…especially when it’s to someone else’s content. Lost in this example is that if you want to sell something, you need to attract them to YOUR site. To have something take off through ReTweets and truly go viral to your benefit, you have to make the content. Oddly enough, when you consistently make good content, if you get your ducks in a row, you can also climb the SERPs and consistently generate highly targeted search traffic.
Again, I don’t think this guy’s terribly off base in that you can really do some great marketing with Twitter, I just think it’s irresponsible to tell people to not worry about search marketing. People won’t always be on Twitter, some people just don’t use it, and others may not find the majority of your Tweets relevant. Search can help these audiences find your site…or you could just ignore them and leave that money on the table. Personally, I like making money.
I’m sure this last could be a whole lot longer, but since I find myself doling out a lot of advice to SEOas and budding SEOs these days and while a lot of times people are on the right track, they tend to overlook little details that can make a big difference. Here’s a short list I find myself saying often -
Don’t waste time getting links from bad pages. Check to see if the page you’re linking to has some value. Is it indexed? Check by doing a Google search - info:siteyouwanttocheck.com and you’ll see if you get a result, and if it’s been cached. Does the page have PageRank? If it passes these tests, that’s a good start. If there are too many outbound links on a page, you’re sharing juice and your links aren’t going to be worth much. You also might want to do a quick search for the page title, or the website’s page title to see if it’s experienced any Google penalties (hint: if you can’t find the pages anywhere in the rankings for their exact titles, it’s probably worth staying away from)
Don’t overdo the anchor text, especially on deep pages. If you own a site that doesn’t get many links, Google will probably notice if you get 50 consecutive links to a seemingly obscure subpage with a very specific anchor text. You’ll also want to get links to a variety of pages. For better or worse, Google wants you to make your links look like they’re occurring naturally…even though they sure know you’re out there building links. See no evil, hear no evil I guess…
Don’t focus on numbers. Quantity might not get you to the top. You can spend a ton of time getting massive amounts of low quality links, or that same amount of time getting a few great links. The latter will often win.
Don’t get reciprocal links from less authoritative domains. If they don’t have any PageRank or links pointing in, why do you want to share a link. If your glass is half full and someone else’s is a quarter full, what’s the point in sharing?
You might want to compare before you share.
Don’t be myopic. Try different tactics. Too many of one type of link stops the creative juices from inspiring you to find new ways to get links. Plus, depending on your tactics, you might also be tipping Google off to your “evil” activities. Don’t put Google in a corner!
Any other mistakes to avoid? Please feel free to email me or add a comment.
