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Jan 13
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DirectFeed – Your Business Needs This Service!

By Local Search, Online Advertising, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Did you know over 40% of business listing information is incorrect across the internet.

This bad information is costing you customers and hurting your online marketing efforts. The simple way to start correcting this bad data is to use DirectFeed. DirectFeed is an enhanced owner-verified business listing service.

DirectFeed submits your accurate business listing to the four major data providers: Factual, Acxiom, Infogroup, and Neustar (Localeze). Together, these data providers are referenced by over 300 online listing directories.DirectFeed - Listing Distribution

Optimize your listings for four factors that impact local search rank:

  1. maximize the number of online citations (very important trust factor for search engines)
  2. ensure listings appear on public, trusted sources  (like Yelp, Google, YP, etc.)
  3. improved accuracy and consistency of business listing information
  4. increase direct website traffic from directories (i.e. get more new customers from online directories)

To see how DirectFeed works, check out this video.

Dec 17
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Google My Business – Adding Your Business to Google [VIDEO]

By Local Search, Online Advertising, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Uncategorized

It is very important to establish a listing on Google My Business. Google My Business is a platform that puts your business information on search, maps, and Google+. It creates a cohesive environment and it makes it easier to manage how your business appears across those three platforms.

Now if you’ve previously used Google Places for Business, your account has automatically been upgraded to Google My Business, but you’ll want to review the information as new options are available to you.

Let’s walk through how to set up your page on Google My Business.

 

Nov 19
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Customers May Not Like Your Business – Online Reviews

By Food for thought, Local Search, Online Advertising, Online Marketing, Online Reviews

How do potential customers view your business online?

As a business owner or manager, you should be able to answer this question quickly and confidently…and hopefully the answer is “very positively”.  You need to be completely sure of your answer.  If not, you may need more space for that “white elephant” in the room aka “online reviews”.

Today’s customers do not behave like they did just a few years ago, for you to be successful you need to understand behavioral changes. Questions to consider:online reviews elephant image

  • How are MY customer’s behaviors changing in today’s digitally powered world?
  • What effect does new media like reviews and social have on my business?
  • Where do my customers look for my business or service?
  • How much research goes into their decision to purchase?
  • When I search for my business online, what shows up?
  • What does my online review profile look like?

These types of questions have a direct effect on every business operating today, whether you are a roofer, a demolition contractor, or a home service provider.

Google (& others) recognized these shifting behaviors and decided to uncover how buying behaviors have changed over the last few years.  So Google being Google, decided on a large-scale study to find the answers.  The study, called “The Zero Moment of Truth Macro Study (ZMOT)” was in partnership with Shopper Sciences.  The methodology consisted of: Read More

Nov 12
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Review Generation – Are Bad Reviews Hurting Your Business?

By Local Search, Online Advertising, Online Marketing, Online Reviews, Reputation Management
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently” – Warren Buffet

This famous quote was delivered many years ago. Businesses that didn’t heed the warning probably aren’t around to do things differently. In today’s fast-paced, high technology world, businesses not embracing Mr. Buffet’s sage advice won’t need to wait 20 years to establish a sound reputation. Businesses today can develop a 5-star reputation in as little as a year AND lose a stellar reputation in much less time. In fact, Mr. Buffet’s advice of ruining a reputation in five minutes may actually be an eternity in today’s online world.

Why some businesses dislike reviews

The main driver for what the community thinks about a business is reviews. Reviews are great if a business rightly deserves positive reviews. In a market based economy, the market (customer) has the final vote on the success or failure of a business. Fair or not, this is reality, and business owners need to understand this quickly. Businesses that monitor and react to online reviews will be in a far better position to succeed in the future.

Business owners cite many reasons for disliking reviews, here’s a sample: review generation

  •           Inaccurate information
  •           Unfair, little recourse to rectify
  •           Not real, competitor driven
  •           Anonymous or unverified

Reviews are here to stay, therefore, it is incumbent upon business owners to understand their roles in protecting their online reputation. Business owners aren’t powerless (even though it may feel that way), many tools exist to help shape or re-shape an online review business profile.

What is Review Generation?

Read More

Aug 20
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How Much Does Dumpster Rental Advertising Cost?

By Dumpster Rental Advertising, Dumpster Rental Marketing, Local Search, Mobile Responsive, Online Advertising, Online Marketing, Online Reviews
As the waste management industry continues to consolidate across the country, smaller dumpster rental companies experience difficulty competing against the “waste management Goliaths” of the industry. These Goliath companies hire SEO experts, they spend enormous sums on paid search, and due to their sheer size, their operating costs tend to be lower (they own the landfills).

Six Building Blocks to Online Marketing SuccessHow does a local dumpster rental company compete? The simple answer, quite well actually! The search engines really don’t care if you are a big company or a mom and pop. This isn’t to say that competing is easy, it never is. You must still do the dumpster advertising basics well.

The following steps  identify the “basics” for dumpster rental advertising:

Mobile-friendly website – no way around this step. The search engines give priority to websites that are mobile-friendly versus non-mobile-friendly websites. Why do they do this? Searchers now more than ever use mobile devices to conduct searches. Search engines want to deliver a great experience, so they push up mobile-friendly websites in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page). Plus, you want to convey a professional look and feel to any potential customer. Read More

Jul 30
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Hometown Internet Marketing Becomes HometownLocal, Delivering Local Search Marketing Solutions to Home Service Companies

By Local Search, News, Online Advertising, Online Marketing

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Hometown Internet Marketing Becomes HometownLocal, Delivering Local Search Marketing Solutions to Home Service Companies

HometownLocal online marketingJuly 30 – Grand Rapids, MI – Hometown Internet Marketing LLC has become HometownLocal, to better align with today’s changing needs for local digital marketing solutions. Local search is the fastest growing segment of online marketing and HometownLocal continues to develop innovative solutions to meet these needs.

HometownLocal has established itself as the gold standard in lead generation for select home service categories since 2008. Over the past year, HometownLocal has expanded from its lead generation roots to a full suite of online marketing services including website design, reputation management, social media, business listing service, paid search, and lead generation.

The home service categories that HometownLocal specializes in are waste & recycling, home exteriors, demolition, and excavating. A focused approach on specific home services has led to superior marketing results for HometownLocal clients that far exceed what non-specialist, local marketing companies can deliver.

Successful strategy for local search marketing requires a comprehensive approach summed up in HometownLocal’s “Six Building Blocks to Online Marketing Success™”. Read More

Jul 29
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Top 5 Advertising Tips – Roofing Business

By Google AdWords, Local Search, Roofing Advertising, Roofing Marketing

The hard part is over; you took the risk to start your own roofing business, now what? You need customers. Without a massive marketing budget, where should you begin? The top 5 advertising tips – roofing business is a good starting point. This is also a good list for a seasoned roofing business that might be looking for additional ideas.

For price comparisons, refer to the dollar signs after each tip, one $ = lower cost.advertising tips - roofing business

  1. Directory Listings (Free – $) – these are online directories like Yellowbook, SuperPages, com and Hometown Roofing, plus many others. You can “claim your free listing” or create a new one. Claiming or creating these listings can take hours and/or days, depending on the amount of time you are willing to invest. Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing routinely display these listings, so they are important. Complete as many of these listings as possible. Tip – you can hire a business listing service to populate these listings at a reasonable cost and they maintain the listing. Read More
Jun 06
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If You Don’t Tell Your Story, Others Will – The Value of Online Reputation Management

By Local Search, Online Advertising, Online Marketing, Reputation Management

Online reputation managementFor small businesses, many positive changes have occurred with the creation of the internet. Today, small businesses can compete with the larger, more established companies. There are some negative things that can happen as well, such as spamming and negative reviews. All of these can influence your online reputation, and this is why you need online reputation management.

What is online reputation management?

Online reputation management is a process and strategy that involves monitoring, finding and then influencing the reputation and credibility that you have in the online world. Through good online reputation management you will be able to develop a good reputation thus shaping the online perception of your business. Read More

May 14
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Tackle Online Reviews without Getting Dirty!

By Online Advertising, Online Reviews, Reputation Management

online reviews

There are numerous websites (e.g., Yelp, Google, and Hometown) online that focus on gathering reviews for products, services and businesses, not to mention lots of communities where people talk about their experiences online (e.g., Facebook, Twitter). Your business will receive both positive and negative reviews, so it’s very important to make sure that you find a way to deal with all reviews quickly.

How to deal with positive reviews?

If users are leaving positive reviews for your business, thank them for their support and showcase some ideas that you have for future product/service updates. It’s crucial to continue the dialog with your customers, as this will encourage a return visit or purchase. Hopefully, they will share their experience with others, generating more sales for you. Another benefit, consider this quote – “There is no advertisement as powerful as a positive reputation traveling fast” (Brian Kozlow). Share all positive reviews on social media! Read More

Jan 26
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Online Reviews – Are They More Important Today?

By Local Search, Online Advertising, Online Marketing, Online Reviews

online reviewsThanks to the increased exposure of the web all over the world, more and more people are turning to the internet when it comes to making important decisions in their lives. Because of this, online reviews are becoming more and more relevant when it comes to searching what customers think about a certain product or service.

Why people read online reviews?

The answer is very simple, because they manage to obtain immediate access to these reviews and at the same time the opinions come from many past customers, which definitely makes reviews more relevant. More than 90% of online buyers are reading reviews for any product or service, which means that if your business wants to generate more sales, it definitely needs to have a lot of positive reviews online in order to get the attention of potential buyers. The #1 landing spot for your reviews is Google. Google likes to see reviews listed for businesses. In fact, many people in the SEO world believe having reviews helps with organic rankings. Google has never confirmed this, but the belief still exists. Read More

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