Local Visibility System

The Last Local SEO Guy You'll Ever Need

Phil

10 Classy Google+ Local Cover Photos – and How to Make Yours Better

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There’s no reason you can’t have a slick and benefit-oriented cover photo on your Google+ Local page.  You don’t need to be in a “cool” industry, or have a nice building, or be in a scenic location.

The photo is one of the few parts of your page where you can get creative.  You can convey more about what you offer.  You can also create a mood or tell a story.

Why bother?  Because any rankings you have are a waste if your page doesn’t make anyone pick up the phone or click through to your site.

I’ve rounded up 10 examples of nice cover photos.  See what gets your creative juices flowing, or see what ideas you can swipe.

JAJ Lighting & Power (Woodbridge, VA)

Sure, it’s a nice house.  But the timing makes this photo.  If it were daytime the lights wouldn’t be on, and we couldn’t see the “product.”  If it were nighttime the photo would lack color and we couldn’t see how the whole house looks with the lights.

 

Goldberg Jones – Divorce For Men (Portland, OR)

Goldberg Jones know their audience and its pain-points.  By including prominent pictures of the attorneys, the message is, “Hey, we can help a brother out.”  The picture of Portland adds some sleekness, and makes it so the photo isn’t just mugshots.

 

Kennedy Painting (St. Louis, MO)

The photo isn’t just of the outside or inside of a home.  It showcases all the main services.  The labels are a nice touch, even though they’re cut off.

 

Busch Funeral and Crematory Services (Cleveland, OH)

This is a funeral home.  Most “clever” photos would offend someone.  Or bore them.  It would have been so easy not to bother.

Busch did two smart things here: (1) they didn’t take a photo that conveys what they actually do, and (2) they had the smarts to take the photo outside on a nice day.

I give them extra points for capturing a little bit of their sign in the photo – to show it’s their funeral home and not the one down the street.

 

Lang House on Main Street Bed and Breakfast (Burlington, VT)

Most bed-and-breakfast places just have a photo of the bed and its hospital corners.  If you just looked at the photo, you couldn’t tell them apart from a hotel (or no-tell motel).  These guys actually went to the trouble of preparing a nice breakfast for their photo.

 

Azul Photography (Raleigh, NC)

This one’s brilliant.  The blue sunset reflects their branding (azul).  It also doesn’t show the couple in so much detail that a potential client who’s looking at this page would think, “Oh, that doesn’t look like us.”  It’s also not overtly wedding-specific, so it wouldn’t make someone who wants a photographer for another occasion think that Azul only does weddings.  I could go on and on about this one.  It’s resourceful and effective.

 

Bill Fenwick Plumbing Inc. (Jacksonville, FL)

It’s not the plumber or his truck or a dingy photo taken under the sink.  It’s not a dripping faucet – which would highlight the problem.  It’s a running faucet – which is the solution and the plumber’s promise.

 

Ray N. Welter Heating Company (Minneapolis, MN)

This one tells a story.  To start with, the place has been in business a while, and it’s gone through at least one name-change.  But the family name is still in there.  There’s much more story in the photo, which you can extract if you look it for long enough.  Suffice it to say it adds a ton of credibility.

 

CareFirst Animal Hospital at Glenwood (Raleigh, NC)

You’ve got a healthy-looking dog, a happy kid, a friendly-looking veterinarian, and the front sign in the background.  Whoever took this photo is a pro’s pro.

 

US Hearing Aid Center Inc. (St. Augustine, FL)

Hearing aids aren’t much to look at, so this photo doesn’t focus on them.  The focus is on the people in the photo listening to the waves, and presumably talking to each other.  It shows them with dignity.  There’s a lot more going on in this one.  It may be the most resourceful cover photo I’ve seen.

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You just need to think of something simple and easy on the eyes.  Then either spend a little time to do it right, or hire a professional photographer.

It doesn’t need to be stunning.  I know there are splashier photos out there than the 10 classy ones I’ve shown here.  But these are good because, although they look nice, they’re actually doable.

That’s why I tried to focus on the less-sexy types of businesses.  You’ll notice that I didn’t include restaurants, casinos, or nightclubs.  I don’t want you to have an excuse not to do this simple step.  It will help determine what you get out of your local rankings.

I’ve gleaned a few lessons from these cover photos:

Lesson 1.  It doesn’t need to be one photo.  Collages work.  They let you add color and say more.

Lesson 2.  It doesn’t need to be a photo of your product or service.  Maybe it shouldn’t be.  (See my examples of the divorce lawyers, funeral home, and hearing aid supplier.)

Lesson 3.  You can – and probably should – add some branding without letting your sign or logo hog the entire photo.

Lesson 4.  Annotations can help.

Lesson 5.  Consider black-and-white.

Enough about what I think.

Any ideas for a new photo on your page?

Know of any great cover photos?

Can you think of general rules for what makes a nice photo?

Leave a comment!

A Map of the Local Search Turf War: 5 Big Boys vs. Goliath Google

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Lots of companies want to be the place customers turn to when searching for local businesses.  It’s a battle a between Google on one side, and every other search engine and major directory on the other side.

Greg Sterling recently said it’s between Google and Yelp – that they’re like Spain and Portugal back in the day: empires dividing up the world.  Professor Maps said it’s more like the US versus the Taliban.

I’d say the situation is that Yelp has made itself indispensable.  It’s at the center of a gang-up on Google that includes Apple Maps, Bing Places, Yahoo Local, and YellowPages.  They’re only small compared to Google.

These 5 Big Boys exchange reviews, business data, now ads, and presumably money.  They do it to get more local search “mindshare,” and ultimately more ad revenue.

Their relationships to each other and to Google are messy.  They’re easier to draw.  So I thought I’d map out the turf-war over the local map:

(click to enlarge)

It’s a rough sketch.  There are other big players in local search, like the CityGrid network.  But none that’s ganged up on Google – at least that I can think of.

Quick explanation of the arrows:

Yelp feeds reviews to Apple Maps, Bing Places, and Yahoo Local.  So if you have 5 reviews on Yelp, you have 5 reviews on those search engines.

Yelp also feeds business data to Apple Maps.  (I almost forgot this point when drawing the doodle; thanks to Darren Shaw for reminding me.)

YP has just entered into a deal with Yelp in which its ads show up on Yelp, and some of its data on local businesses is fed to Yelp.

Bing and Yahoo share organic results and ads, of course.  But I’m not aware of any union they have in “local.”

Here’s the kicker: Yelp, YP, and to some extent Yahoo depend on Google for survival.  Yelp in particular has organic rankings in Google out the wazoo.  Most people who go to those 3 sites come from Google.

Google can’t just squash these guys.  YP and Yahoo consistently show up highly in the organic results because of the size of their directories, and because they’re old, more or less trusted sites.  And Yelp is a destination.  Rarely can Google not show Yelp.

What does all this mean for your local-visibility strategy?

Practical Lesson 1:  Yelp may not be profitable (even after 10 years), but I can’t see them going away.  They’ve made themselves indispensable with the (relatively) high quality of their reviews.  You don’t have to like Yelp.  But you can’t ignore your presence / reputation there.  Well, you can, but that’s not smart.  They’re the glue holding the other 4 big players together – against Google.

Practical Lesson 2:  Start worrying about your Yelp rankings, if you’re not already

Practical Lesson 3:  Yelp’s advertising deals may become more compelling soon.

Practical Lesson 4:  Don’t totally ignore YP.  Not a good idea to begin with, because it’s an influential site.  I’m not saying you should pay them for ads.  For now, just give your listing(s) a good tune-up.

Practical Lesson 5:  Get serious about Google+ reviews.  As I’ve written, Google has been pushing reviews hard, partly to squeeze out Yelp (so that Yelp isn’t the de facto place to read reviews).  For a while it’s been in Google’s interest to make them more rewarding for you, and that will be even truer as time goes on.

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How has this “gang-up” against Google affected your visibility strategy?

Has it influenced the way you’re trying to “Google-proof” your business – or has it made you focus even harder on Google Places?

What do you think might happen next??

Leave a comment!

P.S.  Thanks to design dude David Deering for another great graphic.

Locus Pocus

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What’s with the name?  It’s a portmanteau of local and hocus pocus.

Just my way of referring to semi-common local SEO practices that I think are superstition.

We talked about “Local SEO Myths” in 2013.  But there’s even more to say.  In that post, I and other local-search geeks focused on myths that lead business owners way off-track.

Now I’d like to talk about what I see as practices that just waste time and effort.  They won’t kill you, but I can’t say they’ll help you.

Probably worth emphasizing now rather than later that this post is my opinion.  It’s based on a big ugly pile of first-hand experience.  But it’s still an opinion.  Let’s argue in the comments.

OK, now that my lawyer’s meticulously worded disclaimer is out of the way…

There are the local-rankings factors I’ve seen move the needle for clients and others, time and time again.  I’m talking about things like accurate categories, consistent citations, many reviews, good title tags, and meaty sites.

Then there are the factors that may matter to your local rankings.  These are steps I usually suggest to clients, because they’re good to do even if they don’t help rankings in the slightest: using Schema markup for your NAP, picking good H2 tags, embedding a Google map on your site, adding lots of photos to your Google listing, etc.

And then there’s the Locus Pocus.

These practices have done little to deserve my wrath.  I’ll spare you my theories about why I don’t think they matter.

My best indictment of them is simply that in 5 years I haven’t seen a whit of evidence that they help your local rankings in Google or anywhere else.

Here’s the stuff I wouldn’t suggest spending any time on:

  • “Geotagging” photos.  Sure, pick relevant names for the files, and try to pick relevant alt tags when appropriate.  But metadata?  Fugettaboutit.
  • Including city names in the “keyword” fields on your various business listings.  If MerchantCircle asks you to stick 10 keywords in a box, put in 10 services you offer (and maybe their synonyms).
  • Getting hundreds of structured citations.  Lots of unstructured citations (e.g. newspaper mentions), great.
  • Giant blocks of text where you mention all the towns you serve.
  • Keyword tags.
  • Making cheapo slideshow videos and uploading them to every video site you can find.
  • Setting a large “Service Area” in your Google Places dashboard.
  • Putting your “target” city in the Google Places address field, for fear that you won’t rank well there if you enter your real city.  If you want any shot at ranking where you want to, you need to help Google understand where you’re really located.
  • Seeking that extra edge by trying to outsmart all the sites where you can list your business. Just five more little keywords in your description, writing just one review for your own business, etc. Thanks to Aaron Weiche for mentioning this point (below).

Maybe these practices aren’t so harmless after all.  Spending your time and energy on them and expecting results just means it’s longer before you’re visible in the local rankings.

Hat tip to Darren for weighing in on several of the points.

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What have you found to be “locus pocus”?  Did you ever have some miraculous experience with any of the practices I mentioned?  Leave a comment!

How to Execute the Perfect Local Reviews Strategy

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Step 1.  Commit – or don’t.

What do you want?  What disaster are you trying to keep away from your reputation?

You’ll need to be patient and have a little fire in your belly – no matter what you’re trying to accomplish or avoid.

And you’ll need to learn from your reviews to make your business better.  Or else your reputation will own you, and not the other way around.

 

Step 2.  Get listed on the big review sites and on at least a few industry-specific sites.

Remove duplicate and incorrect listings along the way.

These sites are the only places you can get online reviews – at least the kind that can really help your local visibility and rankings.  If you don’t have listings on these sites, nothing else matters and you will get zero reviews.  Testimonials – AKA bits of “fan mail” that you post on your site – don’t count.

 

Step 3.  Respond to any negative reviews you find.  (Read this and this.)

Mend bridges with those customers.  Work on the underlying issue(s) they complained about, if humanly possible.

 

Step 4.  Make it easy to leave spontaneous reviews.

Link to a couple of your listings in your email signature.

Put a gentle nudge on your invoices or receipts.

Link to some of your listings from your site – preferably with noticeable “buttons.”

You can make these yourself, or you can use tools like ReviewBiz or Grade.us.

 

Step 5.  Start asking all your new customers – and preferably old and existing customers – for their email addresses.

Find a way to make it worth their while.  This will be important for later.

 

Step 6.  Pick about 5 customers and ask them to review you somewhere.

It could be on Google+, or on an easier site that accepts Facebook usernames.  Whatever you do, don’t push them toward Yelp; you need a different strategy there.

Try to ask them in-person and to provide simple printed instructions, if possible (example).

 

Step 7.  Check back a week or two later to see who posted a review, and follow up.

Thank any customers who did.  Reconnect with the ones who didn’t.  Ask if there’s any way you can help them in general, and mention again that you’d really appreciate a review.

 

Step 8.  Set up whatever system you want to use for contacting customers by email

Consider using a tool like GetFiveStars.  It makes it easy to follow up with customers by email (remember step #5?), and it lets you track your reviews.

Or you can use an email service like Aweber or MailChimp.

Email a handful of your customers to ask if they’ll review you.  These can be people you already asked in-person and are just reminding, or they can be another batch of customers you’re asking for the first time.

Don’t ask all your customers at once: You don’t want to wear out your welcome while you’re just trying to figure out what timing and language seems to work best, and how email should fit in.

 

Step 9.  Apply whatever you learned from the previous batch of reviewers.  Not only in terms of how to make your requests easier to say “yes” to, but also in terms of what they might have said in their reviews.  What were their gripes, and what can you do about them?

(By the way, if it seems like you’ve done this step before, you’re right.  And you’ll do it again and again.  If you don’t learn from your reviews, they’re just dots on the screen.)

 

Step 10.  Respond  to any reviews you can.  Tell the less-happy people what you’ve done to improve (see Step 9).  Say thanks to the happier customers, where appropriate.

 

Step 11.  Continue asking small groups of customers – like 2-10 – every week for reviews.

It doesn’t need to be the exact-same number every week.  But don’t ask zero customers one month and then 40 the next month.  Be somewhat consistent.

Ask everyone twice: ideally you ask in-person first, and then by email.  Don’t be a pest.  Just give a friendly reminder.  Space these out by 5-10 days.

 

Step 12.  Experiment.  Try something different every few “batches.”

Ask customers to go to different sites – not the same one each time.  (Make new instructions for new sites if needed.)  Try sending printed follow-ups by snail-mail.   If you usually ask customers on Tuesdays and Thursdays, try asking on a Friday.  Mix it up.  See what seems to work.

 

Step 13.  Keep repeating steps 9-12 to infinity.  Tweak your processes as much as you feel you need to, but never stop asking, refining, and acting.

Enjoy the great reviews and happy customers.

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What steps have you done in your review strategy so far?

How do they compare to the one I suggest?

Any questions or advice for me?  Leave a comment!

How to Troubleshoot: Good Organic Rankings, No Google Places Rankings

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Do you rank page-one in the organic results, but seem locked out of the Google Places (AKA Google+ Local) results?

If this situation looks something like yours…

…then you might have what I call “detached” local rankings.

In other words, you’ve got an organic ranking right above or right below the “7-pack,” and you’re wondering why you don’t also have a ranking in the 7-pack.

It used to very difficult to have both – long story – but now you usually can have the same page rank both organically and in Google Places.  (Emphasis on “usually”: something may be busted, or it may not even be possible in your case.)

It’s a common problem.  Business owners ask me about it all the time.

Here are what I’ve found to be the most-common explanations for why you may have good organic rankings but no Places / + Local / “7-pack” rankings:

Explanation 1:  Your business is too far from the city where you want the Places rankings.  There may be nothing you can do about this except to apply the best-practices I’m always harping on.

Explanation 2:  You show up in the Places results for other queries – just not the one you typed in.  This one’s complex: Why you’re showing up in Places for some queries but not others depends on factors like point #1, whether you include the city name in your search term, where you’re physically sitting when you’re searching, and how many local competitors you have.

Explanation 3:  Your Google listing has been penalized.  Make sure you’re kosher.

Explanation 4:  It’s too soon.  If you just created your Google Places page, just wait a couple weeks.

Explanation 5:  Your Google listing may have the wrong categories.

Explanation 6:  You may not be presenting your NAP info correctly on your site.

Explanation 7:  Your site may have no NAP info at all.

Explanation 8:  The “URL” or “website” field in your citations may be empty on some of your listings, or it may contain wrong or inconsistent URLs.

Explanation 9:  Your business may have no citations – or too few.

Explanation 10:  Duplicate Google Places listings.  Often these are caused by having messy citations.  (Hat tip to Linda for bringing up this point in her comment, below.  Also, check out this forum thread.)

Do you have any experience with “detached” rankings?  What worked for you?  Or do you have them now, and you’re stumped?  Leave a comment!