I want to reference a post that I made a few years back titled, Putting Numbers into Perspective, in which I look very closely at the value of advertising from a Calgary Realtor perspective. Here is an excerpt making reference to the search volumes for Google and YellowPages.ca at that time:

While some of the skeptical business owners might say, “well, that’s not a lot”, most likely the top performers within the industry would look at those numbers and be very excited about what they represent.

The first thing to consider is this; the search numbers above represent qualified prospects. These are directive searches; somebody is specifically typing in those keywords or searches. I believe that if somebody logs on YellowPages.ca and does a category search for real estate agent in Calgary, they are most likely seeking a professional to provide those services. The same goes for Google, if a prospect types in Calgary realtor, clearly they are looking for a realtor in Calgary.

The point of the entire article is specifically around how top realtors look at numbers very differently to measure return on investment.

Second, I want to reference an article by Tom Tsinas titled “Google vs Yellow Pages” in which he provides some specific details on dissecting traffic numbers and examines very closely YellowPages.ca as part of the media mix. Here is an except from this posting:

Google vs Yellow Pages - This battle is a lot closer than most of you can imagine. I’m constantly hearing about how the Yellow Pages are dying and there’s no value in them. While most may say that I’m biased because of the number of years I spent in the industry, the same cannot be said for Google Analytics.

Google Analytics cannot lie, it has no biases and, thank goodness for the Yellow Pages, paints a much different picture than many so called experts. You just have to know what to look for.

Read the full article for the detailed analysis that Tom did on the numbers from one of his clients. This is a great article that is worth taking a read. I will use a couple of key measurements he spoke of, namely referral traffic, bounce rate and listing the multiple referral list for YellowPages.ca.

So what about the TheBraLady? Below are some stats from The Bra Lady, Custom Bras in Calgary. For disclosure sake, as many of my readers know, she is my mom and yes I do all of her online marketing in Calgary.

Let’s examine what Google Analytics is telling us about her stats. From January 1 to September 30 here is the traffic from different sources along with the bounce rate, the lower the number the better:

Google Organic - 1576 (bounce rate - 27.98%) - NOTE: this includes traffic from Google Search and Google Images as well as Google.com and Google.ca. Further discussion below about the local value of this traffic - which is about 50% of the number listed above.

YellowPages.ca - 495 (bounce rate - 21.02%)

Yahoo - 60 (bounce rate - 33.33%)

Microsoft Live - 56 (bounce rate - 37.50%)

NOTE: With Google Analytics, Google has done a very good job of pre-aggregating all their sources of traffic in the Google bucket, this would include traffic from Google.com and Google.ca and includes traffic from Google Search, Images, etc. My only complaint with Google Analytics, unlike log analysis, is the breakdown of traffic by time of day. In the case of The Bra Lady when I look at the log files, I see a very high percentage of traffic from Google coming after midnight, usually between 1am and 3am. If I correspond this to keywords, what I notice is that late at night, we are getting lots of “junk” traffic, people looking for pictures of women in lingerie, most coming from US or International based IP addresses. If I remove all the easy to identify “junk” traffic, I notice that the good traffic from Google drops by almost 50% in this particular case.

In the YellowPages.ca bucket was sources of traffic from the following sites which are all part of the network and these to be added together to get the true picture of traffic from this source. This is important to note when calculating return on investment to ensure that you have all the data.

YellowPages.ca Business Directory

CalgaryPlus.ca

Canada411.ca Phone Book

MyTelus Business Finder

SuperPages.ca - purchased by Yellow Pages Group in 2005

Sympatico MSN YellowPages.ca

YellowPages.ca Facebook Application

For her specific business, as you can see Google and YellowPages.ca are both very good drivers of traffic to her website. In terms of bounce rate, YellowPages.ca is showing as the strongest. So if we were only interested in the “Big Shiny Numbers” we might stop here, make our conclusions and call it a good day at the office.

The real question is which one is converting into sales? Although at this point I can’t get into specific financial conversion, I can tell you that the order of the top 2 from web traffic is opposite in terms of conversions to sales. This does not come as any surprise to us when we consider at what stage a user in their buying decision. People don’t go to YellowPages.ca to “surf”, they go their to conduct a specific local action, unlike search engines whose user motivation tends to be higher up in the purchase funnel.

Lastly, I would suggest that you take a look at another older post from January 1 of this year called - Word of Mouth Needs Support - A Deeper Look at Web Referral Traffic - in which I examine specific tactics for a small business to dig deeper with their customers to fully understand conversion of traffic so that a business owner can make business decisions not based on hype, but based on fact.

The bottom line decision for any local business is not who drives more traffic to their website, rather who drives more sales conversions.

I have had the pleasure and opportunity of working with Jeff and his company since I started working at Yellow Pages Group as an employee in 2006. He is one of the most intelligent, level headed, and forward thinking experts in the field. I suggest checking out his corporate blog for insights from field.

There was a question in the interview that was asked of Jeff specifically about Social Marketing.

“I have recently become addicted to social bookmarking, esp. StumbleUpon. What words of advice can you give to anyone looking to become a power user in any of the social guises?”

To that Jeff answered:

Jeff: Don’t lose perspective, and always track results against objectives. Social media can become all consuming, but the actual traffic is very difficult to convert. Its very easy to have spent a great deal of time and effort, with no real returns. So, begin by setting objectives (Benefits to Engaging in Social Media Marketing). Its not for every business … its merely a tool in our toolkit. So make sure the effort can satisfy specific goals.

3) Network … participate in these communities. Vote, comment, submit … in that order. Establish friendships in various social media, and migrate them to other platforms. Be loyal to your friends … follow their submissions religiously. Tip … use RSS to follow their submissions pages, and check every few hours. THIS WILL TAKE TIME … and continue to take time! If you really want to be a power social media user … its takes a lot of time and effort.

Could not have answered that question any better.

Jeff answered many more questions from Paul - so make sure that you check out the entire interview.

We are happy to announce a new feature that will allow you to easily reach additional qualified customers who are searching
Google from their mobile phones.

The Google AdWords Team

If you fit the current criteria that you may already be taking advantage of this medium. Considering the growth of mobile and the mobile applications it is probably a good time to consider ensuring that your business can be viewed on a mobile phone. Not sure where to start - two suggestions; 1) find a design company that specializes in WAP, WML, and XHTML MP or 2) if you want to consider the process yourself, I suggest that you start by reading, Creating Web Content for Mobile Phone Browsers.

Here are some highlights from an article in January of this year titled - Putting 2.7 billion in context: Mobile phone users - which explores how large this industry has already become. The point to these stats, if you are a local business, is that your customers are either using or will be using mobile as a means to learn and connect with your business. Ensure that you are ready to take advantage of this opportunity.

* Worldwide there are about 800 million registered automobiles
* Today there are 1.3 billion fixed landline phones in the world
* Today there are about 1.5 billion TV sets in use in the world . (TV is often shared, especially in Asia where families are also large. So you might easily have 6 or even 10 watching the same TV show. The reach of TV is much beyond the 1.5 billion sets in use.)
* Today 1.4 Billion people carry at least one credit card.
* In most countries it is illegal for under 18 year olds to have credit cards
* There are about 850 million PCs
* In total over 750 million people access internet content via a mobile phone today
* About the total PC population or about 850 million people, access the web via a computer.
* During 2007 the first cross-over from PC to Mobile phones will happen, with more users accessing via phone than PC.
* The total shipped PDA population is about 85 million, most which are replacements.
* Thre are 85 Million iPod in use
* DVD recorders/ PVR shipments are under 100 million.
* Camcorders, are under 100 million total shipped (many as replacements).
* Gaming consoles have shipped near 200 million units, out of which 150 million are second generation (PS2/Xbox) or newer.
* The (stand-alone) digital camera has achieved shipments of near 300 million.
* There are 2.7 billion Mobile phones shipped (technically 2.7 billion in January, not December). They sold 950 million phones last year and the total worldwide mobile subscriber base grew from 2.1 billion to 2.7 billion.
* Phones are replaced every 18 months (and this is still shrinking)
* USA has reached 75% penetration for mobile phones
* The Western European average per capita penetration for mobile phones is already 110%
* Italy, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Israel have penetration rates at about 140%
* China adds 6 million phones every month, India adds 7 million phones every month.
* Finland, Norway, Denmark and Portugal - each countries with 120% or more penetration rates - Mobilephones are less than 6 million units total.
* SMS Messaging Is Biggest Data App On Planet
* On the internet there are about 1.5 billion e-mail boxes, maintained by about 800 million people.
* 1.8 billion people are doing SMS texting.
* Last year over 42% of Americans were active in SMS already
* E-mail is opened in 24 hours and replied to in 48 hours.
* SMS is read within 15 minutes on average and responded within 60 minutes.
* 65% of e-mail is spam, less than 10% of SMS is spam.
* In South Korea five separate credit card services are available on the three mobile networks
* In South Korea almost 100% of credit card based point-of-purchase sites accept payment via mobile phone credit (and charge) cards
* Two years from launch almost 10% of South Korean phone users watch digital broadcast TV on their phones
* The Pop Idol formats have earned a windfall of over 700 million dollars out of text messaging votes
* In 2005 already half of all phones sold were cameraphones so cameraphones outsell digital cameras by more than 4 to 1 .
* There are 3.2 Billion to 3.8 Billion radio users.
* 73% of the population now uses the mobile phone as their portable clock.
* 2.7 Billion phones in active use. There is a subscription for 40% of the planet’s population.
* The mobile telecoms industry earned 725 Billion dollars last year.
* Global music industry earns 16% of its revenues from mobile phones (mostly ringing tones);
* Videogaming earns 14% of its global revenues from mobile.
* Mobile telecom growth in dollar terms, from 2005 to 2006, was 105 billion dollars.

For example, creating links to your supplies and having them link back to you as a reseller would be considered a very good strategy. Having links from other websites, blogs, etc. to your news articles or specific products can also be beneficial. In some cases, it is very worth purchasing links on sites such as directories as well.

Anyway, for starters I would read Jim Westergren’s Link Building Guide - this is probably one of the best on the web and is a good starting point for any business.

If you have any questions after reading his article, drop me a line.

For starters ask yourself – does your business advertise in a directory? If so, you are probably a great candidate for search marketing, as directories are identical to search marketing – just in paper form. If you do a lot of radio advertising, flyer or direct mail advertising you may also be a good candidate for search marketing. These mediums have a sense of urgency around them and most businesses use them to drive sales or promotional events. Those business owners believe the demand already exists and therefore, they want to increase their share of it.

With that in mind, search marketing can be a great support mechanism to ensure growth in sales. For example, start your search marketing campaign on the day that your radio spots run – targeting the same message in your radio ads as on your search ads and using keywords pulled directly from your radio ad. What you are most likely to see is an increase in your search marketing campaign right after a radio ad run – people hear the ad, but need another venue to make the contact. This is the old technique used when companies would run a radio ad on a Thursday promoting their newspaper ad on a Friday for a sale on the weekend. Now, substitute newspaper for search marketing and you will be surprised at the ROI model with that combination.

Search marketing is not the end all be all form of marketing – it is another important piece of a marketing mix. The biggest mistake business owners make is that they are “hoping” search marketing is the answer to their sales lows (for all products/services) as opposed to asking the question – does search marketing really make sense for this particular product/service? Will users even know what it is to look for? If I examine my retail customers – what do they ask when they come in to my store and can I apply this to search marketing?

To start with, load your MSN Messenger and click on the Yellow Pages Tab on the left hand side,

Then select the tab to the right called IM Search, which brings you to the following screen:

Now we is a detailed description of the service, but if you want to start to get information from the bot, just click on the Add Me button,

At this point - it asks you whether you wish to start a conversation with imlocal@msn.com - since this is an automated bot, you can safely start a conversation. At this point, it takes you to the messenger window where you can start your conversation. When you first launch the service it basically sits there until you give it a command. You can type a variety of things, I will choose Dentist.

You will notice that because this is the first time I have used the bot - it also asked me for my postal code. I selected a random postal code and you can see that the bot is now going to get me information on dentists closest to that postal code.

Looking at the screen above, the bot has given me the 8 closest dentists to the postal code that I selected. From here I have the option to type "m" or " more" to see more results or simply type in a number to select a particular dentist and get more information.

I opted to select more information on dentist #8. The bot gives me a couple of more options - it provides me with a link to view more information about the dentist which loads this dentists YellowPages.ca advertising. I also have the choice to type in "dd" for driving directions or if I want to view a map to this location I can accept the invitation to do so.

When I select map, notice that my messenger window expands to provide me with a detailed map on the left hand side of the screen - powered by Windows Live - this is a very cool feature.

Finally I can select "dd" and it will provide driving directions from my address to the this location.

So, if you are a big user of MSN Messenger and Yellow Pages, now you can have the best of both worlds, through your computer or handheld device.

Back in May of this year, Google announced in Click to Play Video Ads. Basically, you target your advertising - similar to that Google’s text ads and pay when somebody views your video. The ad agency types will argue that this is not branding, in the traditional sense, but then again, the Internet is changing many of the traditional ways business has been done.

What I like about Video ads is that if you truly want to distinguish your business from your competition - get a good video done for your business. If you are not sure where to start, visit my post on Spot Runner and have your TV ad built for you online.

SEO G did a great job of explaing the benefits of these types of ads in a recent post, Google Pay Per Video Ads (PPC Video) — Beginning of Larger Media Play? in summary they are:

1. Images Can Be Unobtrusive
2. Text Ad Blindness
3. A Picture is Worth 1000 Words (And A Video Is Worth A Million)
4. Geo-Targeting for Branding

So let’s recap the process here - a) Google launches Pay Per Video Ads (PPC Video) back in May, b) Google purchases YouTube.com in October and c) You kick your competitors in the teeth.

Think about it - you are a florist in downtown Calgary. You have a video ad - no chance would you waste your money promoting on your local television station, instead you take your video, purchase PPC Video ads on Google - and deliver your message to only people with a Calgary IP address on websites that talk about flowers, weddings, valentines, etc. This ad will eventually show up on YouTube.com where a potential customer is watching a wedding video, happens to be in Calgary and sees the opportunity to watch your video. If they are not in the market for flowers - no cost to you, if they are in the market, you pay to show your video, they pay to purchase flowers from you.

Sounds like another way that the small business owner can increase sales.

For a full explanation of each of the methods below, please visit William’s web site and the post “20-Ways Search Engines May Rerank Search Results“

Search engines try to match words used in queries with words found on pages or in links pointing to those pages when providing search results. Often, the order that pages are returned to a searcher are based upon an indexing of text on those pages, text in links pointing to those pages, and some measure of importance based upon link popularity. Before pages are served to a viewer, however, they may be reranked for one reason or another. Here are some possibilities:

The rankings that you see for web pages in response to a query may not be the same rankings that other people see.

Great explanation of the various method - very nice job by William - thanks for the posting.

I started playing around with Swicki, but the way is a brand owned by Eurekster that basically is “tag” based community search. Not sure what I mean by this, look at the top of my blog page - you will see my community powered swicki.

Essentially what this does is track all the searches done everyday by users and presents the information in such a manner that is based on tags or searches and presents the information in a random type fashion. Why do this? For starters, it prompts users about different search terms. Let me give you an example:

Search is a powerful tool, if and when you know what you are looking for. By let’s face it, not counting the super technies, searching can be a daunting task if you can’t quite hit the right combination of words. What tags do - or a site Swicki - is present to the user with what other people have already searched for and what is most common.

This can be a great tool for business owners to present to their Internet users, as sometimes it is very difficult to conduct a search of a merchants web page. Let’s face it, if your business follows the 80/20 rule, then running a swicki on your site, specifically for search results, could save your users a lot of time in trying to figure out the right combination of keywords to use to the find the product. Chances are somebody has already searched for your content, so make it easy for the next user to search the same subject by clicking on the tag or text link instead of having to re-enter the search term.

Two reasons for this post today, 1) to remind everybody that newsgroups can be a great tool for small businesses and 2) to highlight the fact that Google Groups has relaunched and it’s pretty darn nice - see screen shot below.

Small Businesses and Newsgroups

The first problem with newsgroups is spam - there is a lot of it. However, newsgroups are still used by a large portion of the public that is looking for specific topics of discussion. This can range from everything to do with cars, business, health, pictures, photography, etc. When it comes to newsgroups there are over 100000 of them, so they basically cover every topic know to man.

So how does a local business use newsgroups? To start with find the groups where you local audience resides, for example in Calgary I might watch calgary.general as a newsgroup. Let’s assume that you are an automotive repair shop. Every week, I would view the newsgroup scanning for posts looking for user who are asking for information on auto repair. When you spot a question, provide the response and tag your companies website with that response. What you don’t want to do is simply post in the newsgroups promoting your web site without any context - this is called spam. Nobody on the newsgroups will consider it spam if you post a reply and the signature of your reply contains your business name and website URL.

What this does for you is a couple of things; a) you start to become that groups expect - this will lead to sales, maybe not right away, but over time it will, b) it helps with your SEO marketing by creating links as well as opening your site and business to the groups search on Google, and c) it is a good place to refine your business story.

As for Google Groups, here is the new beta site screenshot below. If you have not tried newsgroups, take a look - there is a lot of good information available.