ATILUS - Web Design | Internet Marketing

Google Local Search

Google Local Search is one of the fastest growing segments of search. Have you heard of it? No?! Well, that’s okay. But you’ve absolutely already used it and by properly harnessing Google Local Search for your business you can grow your traffic, sales and business, like never before. Read on…

I spent much of last week diving into Google Local Search. We’ve had experience with it, but honestly, it used to be as simple as, verify your business address, and come up on the first page for related results. But, things have changed. And, you really do need to strategize if you have a lot of competition. But, before we get to the meat of how to rank for Google Local Search. Let’s take a look at what it really is:

Google Local Search

You are familiar with Google Local Search. Trust me. Even if you have no idea what I’m talking about, you’ve seen and used Google Local Search. Odds are you’ve seen these listings, clicked on them, even purchased products or services through companies you discovered via Google Local Search.

Google Local Search is simply Google’s way of showing you more targeted local results.

Many times these results are listed beside a big map when you do a search. Take a look; go do a local search for car insurance. In my area I typed: “Naples Car Insurance.”

If you’re in the Naples area, you’ll see a map of Southwest Florida with points plotted, along with a list of A through G of companies that fit your search. Company G is Naples Car Insurance company, Pro America Insurance.

As a side note, if you’re not in the area you may not see the local listings. You can try your own local search to see a similar layout.

How Does Google Local Search Work?

Google local search works through location. Location is determined in two ways, your location (as the person doing the search) and the businesses locations (the results google shows you). Based on these two factors, as well as many other smaller factors, a list is shown. Your location is determined by your IP address (your physical address on the web) so Google can pretty accurately determine what City you are in. The business address is determined in a number of different ways (business website, outside local websites, business owner) - we’ll come back to this in a minute.

Why Local Search?

Why local search? There are two ways to look at this, why would Google do this and why do we want local search? Google wants to do this because it’s inline with their mission to index the world’s data, and provide the best search experience to users. Companies have been trying to do this for years. I remember attending a meeting with a new upstart company, funded by a pair of smarmy millionaires who wanted to do local search. They had this nifty idea on how to get all of the data in - paying stay at home mothers. It was kind of crazy, but possibly lucrative. It failed. Other comapnies have tried - yelp.com, citrysearch.com, among others. The truth is search has been good when it came to general information, but not location. Google came up with a simple idea to:

a) spider through all of the websites/companies out there and try to determine their address and

b) allow business owners to claim or post their own listings

As users we want this because it provides us with even more data on local companies/businesses, and for the first time it really puts the onus of what is revealed to searchers on the business owners. Local seasrch - in part - relies on businesses creating their own account, page, adding descriptions, selecting relevant categories, and physically providing Google with the correct info.

Why Your Business Needs to be on Google Local Search

Because of greater exposure. More views, more business, more sales. Google’s had local search setup for years. But, it wasn’t until very recently that google started displaying local search results (remember the map and A-G listings) alongside normal search results. And they do look good and bring in business! First of all they pop, they are totally differentiated from the other listings (either paid, or organic) and they look much more professional with an accompanying map. Finally, they bring in tremendous results. A local listing not only shows (hopefully) for popular search results in Google.com, but it will also appear when a person is doing searches specifically at http://local.google.com. To give you an idea of just how often people are using this kind of technology, a client of ours was at the back of the list of 1600 businesses in their same genre/area, but they still received nearly 1000 impressions (people seeing their local listing) in one month.

Naples Florida Car Insurance

Atilus is proud to announce Naples Florida Car Insurance, Pro America Insurance, Inc. as our latest client. We are providing a lot of ongoing services for the Insurance Firm, based in Naples Florida including:

• ongoing search engine optimization
• code and website updates
• pay per click marketing

Since starting the relationship just two months ago, we’ve already made a number of enhancements and look forward to many more in the future. The website has already begun to rank nicely, in the top 10, on Google for searches like “Naples Florida Car Insurance.” On a personal note we highly recommend in these troubling economic times to check out their services (they provide both car, home/house, life, and health insurance services). Pro America has a top notch team that provides their clients excellent service and we look forward to providing the same to them.

Welcome Pro America Insurance, Inc.!

Lutgert Exchange Mentions Atilus, Harry Casimir

It’s not too often we toot our own horn, but from time-to-time we do like to keep you informed of what’s going on at Atilus, mention our awards and/or acolades in order to give you, our friends and clients, a taste of what is going on.

With that said we are proud to announce that our very own Harry Casimir was recently featured in the Lutgert Exchange newsletter. The Lutgert Exchange Newsletter is the quarterly newsletter for the Lutgert College of Business and includes the latest news and information on Florida Gulf Coast University’s College of Business.

Download The Newsletter (PDF)

You’ll need to scroll to page 9 to see my friend and business partner Harry Casimir. Here’s an excerpt from the mention:

Atilus Director of Operations Elected to FGCU Alumni Board of Directors

Harry Casimir, Director of Operations and co-founder of Atilus, a web development company, has been elected to the board of directors of Florida Gulf Coast University Alumni Association. Mr. Casimir is a 2005 graduate with BS in Computer Information System. Harry founded Atilus with classmate Zach Katkin in 2005. Since then the company has developed over 500 websites for large and small businesses and nonprofts.

I would like to personally congratulate Harry for both the mention and the appointment to the Alumni Association. A big thank you is in order for Harry as well as the other members of the alumni association who, through donating their time and expertise, have provided such a great alumni experience for FGCU alumni’s.

A Website on time - Planning For Success

If you have recently had a website designed/developed, one thing you may have realized is that your web developer asks a lot questions. Why is this?

The answer is very simple; there are a lot questions because no one knows your business and your industry better than you. A web development company can research, study and analyze both your business and industry, but at the end of the day you still can teach the professional a thing or two.  Most people and companies don’t understand this concept as basic as it may sound. A great web developer will use you to marry your expertise in your business and industry with their expertise in web development & Internet marketing.

A web project can sometime feel like you’re riding a train or flying in an airplane – completely out of your control and rife with delays and complications. But the same way you can plan ahead to avoid headaches during your travels, you can take measures to ensure your web project gets off the ground on time and delivers as far as timeline and budget.

A Word of Caution

Planning is boring and working on the actual “thing” (web design, marketing technique, etc.) is fun, so most people prefer to skip the boring part and move directly to the fun part, but the result is always the same – disaster. By providing a web Design/Development company your wish list of what you want, they can better help you craft an accurate proposal and plan that will meet your deadline and budget.

Here are some approaches you might want to try next time you tackle a web project (this is both for developers as well as businesses thinking about implementing a website change):

Write down what you want for your web project. Assuming you are about to create or redesign your organization website… write down what you want and what you expect from your new website! Sounds simple enough right? And it is. Don’t worry about having the technical knowledge to know exactly what to write, just use plain English, highlight things you’ve seen on other websites you like. It is the web developer’s job to decode this and figure out what it will take technically. To help keep things simple, divide this list into 2 sections: Must have (requirements) and Nice to have (things that would be great if budget and timeline permit).

More specifically, here are some things you should be able to provide.

• Add basic a description about your organization, about this project and what it needs to accomplish.
• Be clear on whether this is a new website or a re-design of an existing website.
• State the website objective, for example, ‘to start we want an online brochure or basic website with about 10 pages. Our short-term goals: having an online presence to start attracting local businesses to use my company service more. For long-term goals: add a login for business to manage their account and so on.’
• You can even add how you hope to track the success of the website; for example: ‘I will know the website is successful if I start getting about 2 leads/potential customers a month from the website’.
• Provide some ideas about your target market, some relevant keywords you would like to include in your website. Let it be known whether you already have a domain name and hosting. Be clear whether you want to host your website with the new company or with another company.
• Give some ideas on the kind of look and feel you would like for your website, for example, ‘we would like to have a business and high-tech look and feel to our website since most of our client be in the high-tech industry.
• Unless you just invented a new product or service, your organization probably has plenty of competition and complements; find those websites you compete with, as well as websites you like (consider design, message, marketing, etc.) and don’t like and write why you like them and why not.
• Be clear on when you need the website to go live (specific date) and a budget you are working with. Giving a budget helps you and web designer save time, because some web designers have budget limits they work within so by proving your budget, it help the designer determine whether they can tackle your project or not.
• Also mention whom you wish to maintain your website after it goes live. Don’t be afraid to ask about things you are not sure about.

Prepare your website pages and content. If you know your website will have about 10 pages, write your content and have someone with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) experience edit the content.

This may sound like a lot of work, but writing your website content before launching the website will help and your web designer layout the website better and make things go much smoother and quicker.

Here is the list:

• List all the pages want to have in your website
• Write a basic description about each page
• Write each page’s content. Try to keep short as possible, but be very descriptive and precise as possible because you have little time to capture your website visitors’ attention before leaving.
• Determine if you want image/photo in each page and if so, give basic descriptions on the type of images you would like to see on each page.

Be understanding and anticipate delays. Not every web project delays and runs over budget, but if you factor in delays then you will not be caught off guard when they eventually happen. But you can eliminate the headaches and frustration by planning ahead (see above steps). A web development project typically involves work from both your developer AND you; understanding that your obligations to the project help or hinder the timeline are very important in making sure you stick to your goals.

Select a web company wisely. It’s true, not all web design and web companies are created equal. Most freelancers and companies will have a portfolio of websites they have done. Here are a few things you can look for while searching for a potential web designer, see if they have done any website that match your taste or something you like. You may even want to take it as far as calling companies in the portfolio and asking about the project whether they would recommend such a company.

• Do your homework about the company(ies) you have decided to bid for you project.
• Shop around, there are HUGE variations in price in this industry

Although this basic information is best suited for basic brochure website, you can apply the same techniques to a bigger web project. A well planned project is the best executed one because it saves everyone involves some headache at the end.

Windows 7 – What it Means For Your Business

Microsoft has finally listened to the users of its Operating System and decided to build Windows 7 around users’ feedback.

Did you submit your feedback to Microsoft for the Windows 7? If you did, I have to say thanks because the new OS is awesome.

I had the chance to mess around with the new OS and yes, they have worked a lot of kinks out.

Will you upgrade to Windows 7 this year? Do you might telling us why?