http://www.getfoundfirst.com Get Found First : Get Found Blog http://www.getfoundfirst.com/blog/2009/10/30/taking-advantage-of-googles-local-business-listings/ More than half of Get Found First's clients are Local Business Owners.  They need to be optimized incredibly well for local search and we help them out! We always stay abreast of what is new and exciting, and what may be disruptive to the success of our clients online presence.Please read Kevin Lee's article and know that Get Found First can help you when and if Google decides to add more sponsored links to search results: For local searches in particular, paid listings are more relevant than organic ones. After all, marketers only want to pay for relevant clicks, and there's never been a foolproof way for Google or the other search engines to identify the optimal local results for a specific query. Google has launched a new flat fee Local Listings product in San Diego and San Francisco that, when it rolls out nationally (and eventually internationally), will have a profound impact on local search results. The SERPs (define) will become almost fully dominated by non-organic listings even on a high-resolution browser. A 1024 x 768 SERP for a local result has up to 75 percent of the browser screen covered with advertising. However, not just any advertising is displayed. The ads are highly relevant; it's a situation that I can see evolving to the point where a fourth ad starts showing up on non-local ads. Time will tell. Some might see Google's move to monetize page inventory at the expense of organic clicks as ruthless: it's crowding the SERPS with paid listings to improve monetization. However, Google has managed to simultaneously improve relevance and generate more revenue per thousand searches. If you have a local presence and serve people who potentially have a preference to shop locally rather than online, you should consider these ads as part of your paid search strategy. I don't own a business in San Diego or San Francisco, and most of my clients are still deciding whether to run a test, so I reached out to Dave Beltramini, director of paid advertising for G5 Search Marketing. He's running a couple of clients in the new local platform. Some of G5's clients have a very strong retail presence in San Francisco or San Diego, including Self Storage and Senior Housing. They even have more than one client in the same industry, which gave them a unique opportunity to experiment. As you can see from this screenshot, below, if an advertiser has a lot of local presence, their local listings ads can be quite compelling.click to enlarge According to the tests run by G5:"The click-through rate for the storage vertical is running at about one third to one fourth of our pay per click campaign's CTR. They are running at one sixth of our locally-targeted PPC campaigns. For Senior Housing -- the click-through rate is on par with our average PPC campaign. The biggest hurdle is pricing. Based on per-location costs, Senior Housing is a good price per click but the Self Storage vertical remains challenging in a cost-benefit sense." There is clearly some potential in this flat fee ad product, but success may be driven by consumer behavior, costs, and one's industry vertical. Some of the challenges include:When your business name doesn't include keywords, your ad is less noticeable. Figuring out if your ad is working (in other words, profitable) may take some time given the size of your targeted region. As Google takes in more local advertisers, will your rotation and visibility drop, reducing the profitability of ads? Determining if a blockade strategy is appropriate if you have many retail locations or whether selective use of the paid local ads is better. It's too early to know the answers to some of these questions, plus we don't know how Google will treat major retail players that have many locations within a region. Will blockades be accepted or will Google reduce the cost and rotation rates of additional ads? Local Listings ads in Google are not keyword-based, at least not directly. Google maps keywords to categories, much like the local yellow pages. Advertisers can select from one or more categories and, as expected, the more categories, the higher the cost. Measuring profitability and response in Local Listings will require a bit of a change in mindset from what you might currently be doing. The local listings, because they display a telephone number, will be using "free call-tracking, announcing each forwarded customer call. 'This caller brought to you by Google'." While this may seem great, for some cities, such as New York City, it's doubtful that Google has the 212 area code available, and like it or not, a company's telephone exchange communicates the age of companies in New York. A 646 or 917 area code is considered sub-par compared to 212. I hope Google implements an optional toll-free service at a slight additional cost per call or cost per minute. This should stimulate additional calls, perhaps even more than a regional number (even though these days nearly everyone is on unlimited local and sometimes national calling plans at a residential level, and business people may not care about toll-free). I look forward to testing this for multichannel clients and my wife's local business. ".... Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:08:00 CDT http://www.getfoundfirst.com/blog/2009/10/30/there-are-a-lot-of-dumb-people-using-google-and-your-website/ Just yesterday I spoke with a man that can't figure out how come he isn't seeing more sales from his website.  As soon as I read this article from Marketing Pilgrim, I thought of him because his website just isn't that easy to use. Enjoy this great read brought to you by Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim:"Google is always testing and tweaking its search interface. More recently, the search engine has tested a minimalist homepage design.Well, apparently that homepage might be a little too simple for the search-challenged, as the latest version adds the rather obvious “Press Enter to Search” text.I know that I’m not representative of the average search user, but I’m shocked that the average user might not know to simply click “enter” in the absence of any “search” button.Let this be a reminder to all web site owners. If the most popular–and easiest to use–web site in the world has to point out the obvious, you shouldn’t take for granted that your visitors will know how to use your site. ".... Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:13:00 CDT http://www.getfoundfirst.com/blog/2009/10/22/what-is-the-value-of-a-new-dental-patient/ As Get Found First continues to grow, we are looking at offering to customers that qualify, a cost-per-lead pricing model where our clients only pay us when we help them get a new patient. One of the worries that we have is that a lot of our potential clients won't have a clue what a new patient is worth to them. Here is a great article about the value of a new dental patient, written by Jim Du Molin."Three out of four dentists haven't calculated the average new patient value at their practice, this survey found.Overall, dentists estimate the value of a new patient in the first nine months to be about $1,000. But some dentists had calculated it to be as little as $500, while for others it was up to $3,000.   Interestingly, those dentists who actually knew their average new patient value reported a higher value than the dentists who were just estimating – $1,200 versus $900, respectively.So there would seem to be a correlation between tracking patient value and having high value new patients.In a recent comment on this blog, one dentist complained:Increasing the number of dentists… will lead to unethical behavior on the part of docs trying to make a living because insurance companies are now dictating fees and therefore treatment. Dentists in metropolitan areas are having to resort to all sorts of marketing tactics to get patients instead of concentrating on quality care. I see dental consultants touting things like, 'How much is each new patient worth to your bottom line?' If we were all busy why would we care? I never see, 'How to deliver the highest quality most conservative treatment to your patients.'This sentiment was repeated by another dentist who asked, "Who cares?" (That dentist, by the way, estimates the average value of new dental patient at his practice to be $500.)To me, that question answers itself. "Who cares?" Hey, maybe the guy whose new patients are only worth half as much as other dentists average – maybe he should care!The fact is, any dental consultant worth their salt will ask about your new patient value. I know some dentists are nostalgic for the sort of old-fashioned dentistry where word-of-mouth was all the dental marketing a doctor needed — or was legally permitted.But the future keeps right on rolling. Dentists aren't just medical practitioners; they're also business people. If you don't keep track of your bottom line, you don't get to practice dentistry.".... Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:15:00 CDT