1. Your Google Places Page

Do a search for your company name in Google Maps and click on the result. Look at the top right, above the little map. There’s one of two things you’ll see here:

• Business owner? – You need to claim your listing. The process is straightforward, you only need a Google account. Click on the link that says “Business owner?” and follow the steps.
• Owner-verified listing – Someone has claimed your business listing already. Hopefully, you’ll remember who did this for you (if you didn’t) and can get access to it.

Now that you’ve claimed your page, it’s time to make it look good. That means adding categories, photos, videos (if you can), a description of what you do, your hours, and so on. Right now, don’t worry too much about getting the right keywords, just get that profile 100% complete.

Want more help? I’ll be writing more articles about Google Places in the future – subscribe to get notified!

2. Check Your Citations

Do a search on Google for your company’s phone number. Use your main number, no extensions or special lines, and format your search like this:

“780-555-1212″

(but use your actual phone number)

You’ll likely get a number of results, especially if you’ve been in business for several years. Fire up your Link Inventory spreadsheet and start going through the results, recording them in the spreadsheet as needed.

Many of these sites will require you to sign up for an account – keep track of that information as you’ll need it later!

Again, with each site, make sure that your information is as complete as possible. Some sites may charge for a link to your website – if they don’t, make sure that link is there!

This can take a while, so tackle it in batches – 5 a week or 1 a day, for example.

Why This Helps

Your Google Places page is the foundation of your local search presence, especially in Canada, where Google owns more than 70% of the search engine market. The more complete it is, the more likely you are to come up in search results. There’s other factors as well but completeness is key.

Citations build credibility for your business. The more listings that you have for your business in local directories, especially with links to your site, the more than your business is regarded as reputable. Reputable businesses are rewarded with higher rankings in search results.

There’s a lot more that goes into the process, but this is a big part of the work involved in ranking well for local phrases. Questions, comments, results to share? Post them in the comments!

That being said, let’s get this out of the way: If what you did was so easy to learn and do that anyone could do it after reading your blog or email newsletter, you shouldn’t be doing it as a career. What you do, on a surface level, is only one part of your “job”.

I’ve often said that anyone can make a website (it’s true! anyone can!) but not everyone can make a website that makes money, or encourages repeat visiting, or gets people to visit your store or sign up for your event.

Also, writing reluctance can come from a fear that what you’re doing isn’t particularly amazing or interesting, and who is going to want to read about accounting tips, anyway?

Lots of people.

There is someone on the internet, right now, looking for exactly what you do. But they’re probably not searching for “accountants in Saskatoon“. They’re probably searching for “tax tips for charities in Saskatchewan“. And if you’d written that article about that very topic, they’d be on your site right now.

Let’s fix your reluctance, right now.

I’ve broken down writing resistances into three major categories. Your own resistance is likely one of these flavours, and if you’re really lucky – all three!

1. I’m too busy!

I used to be too busy, too. I was too busy to publish anything on Local Magnet from April until last Monday. Why was I busy? I could tell you a laundry list of work, big projects, friends visiting from out of town, and so on.

But the real reason is that I hadn’t made time in my day for writing. I do now – it’s in my calendar. During that hour, I write one blog post. If I come up with ideas for more, I schedule them for future writing hours.

Right now, book an hour in your schedule every day to write. That’s your hour. It’s an important meeting with yourself – make it happen.

2. I don’t have anything to say!

This is usually code for “I’m a fraud!“. Do you feel that you’re not an expert and therefore you shouldn’t say anything? If you’re concerned about that, I encourage you to read about the Dunning-Kruger effect.

If you are concerned that you are incompetent and therefore shouldn’t share what you do with everyone, get over it. That is a sure sign that you’re likely competent and care about getting better at what you do.

I first came up with the idea for Local Magnet about two years ago. It fermented for far too long because I was “too busy” and then I was afraid that I didn’t know enough to start it. Which is ridiculous – I’ve been doing this successfully for 10 years, happy clients and all. But still, I held myself back.

Then I gave myself a deadline. And better than the deadline, I told people who weren’t my friends and wouldn’t forgive me if I was late on delivering. I told people who I’d just met, new colleagues here in Edmonton. It made me deliver because I’d just met these people and their opinion of me was still being shaped. If I hadn’t delivered, then they would have looked negatively upon me. So I did it.

3. I’m afraid!

Fear is the tricky one because it can manifest itself in so many different ways. For me, fear comes in the form of procrastination. When I finally do tackle the thing that I’ve been putting off, I realize that it’s because I was afraid that I couldn’t do it or I wouldn’t be any good at it. Which is silly, because now it’s done and it wasn’t that bad and it turned out fine.

Sometimes I hear from clients that they are afraid that something we try will be too successful. I know that growing too big too fast can kill a company, but being too successful won’t destroy your company if you’re really prepared and motivated to accept the results.

I can’t tell you how to tackle your fear, but I will refer you over to this great post by Julien Smith, about “How to tell if you’re doing your life’s work“. Essentially, if you’re terrified, then you know that you’re doing the right thing. And he’s right.

How scared are you? Can you do the work anyway? Then do it.

Just start writing.

You don’t need to be a HTML or JavaScript expert, but you do need to be able to edit your HTML a bit. If you can’t, ask your web designer to add in this code for you.

Here’s what a typical PDF link looks like in HTML:

<a href="http://www.example.com/files/menu.pdf">

Now, here’s that link with the Google Analytics tracking added in:

<a href="http://www.example.com/files/menu.pdf" onClick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/downloads/menu'); ">

Note that in the above example, the code is on two lines but it should be on one in your code!

Note the new part, which I’ve pulled out below:

onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/downloads/menu'); "

The only thing that’s important to change is this:

/downloads/menu

You can change that to whatever makes sense for you. It doesn’t have to have a slash in it, like the example above. You can make it very simple, like this:

<a href="http://www.example.com/files/menu.pdf" onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/menu'); ">

Be sure that all the ” and ‘ marks are in the right place! After you’ve made the change, click the link to make sure that the file still opens.

You will see the data on the number of downloads when viewing reports in the Content section of Google Analytics. Check out my article on useful Google Analytics reports if you’re not sure what else to look at while you’re in there.

Also, don’t use this technique to track clicks to external websites from your site. There is a different technique for that, and you can read how to set that up here. It is more complicated then the example above, so I will make sure to break it down in a future article.

If you have questions, please ask in the comments below!

Before we get started, set the time period for your analysis. If you have data for more than a year, compare the current data against the same time period last year. If you don’t, look at the last full month and take notes – start a journal of your observations and come back every month to review.

1. Visitors > Visitor Loyalty > Loyalty

How many times are people coming to your site? Are they only coming once or do they return regularly? In other words, does your website invite people to come back? If you don’t have a blog or anything else that’s updated regularly (e.g. sales or special promotions), then you won’t have a lot of repeat visitors. If you do have a regularly updated blog and you don’t have a lot of repeat visitors, figure out what you can do to encourage return visits.

2. Visitors > Visitor Loyalty > Recency

Related to Loyalty, when visitors come back, how quickly was it? Again, if you have a blog, hopefully this will correspond with how often you update (e.g. 7 days ago).

3. Visitors > Visitor Loyalty > Depth of Visit

This statistic provides a much better picture of how well your site is doing in drawing visitors in than the “average pageviews” or “pages/visit”. If there’s a sharp drop off between one and two, then you have a problem where the site isn’t compelling enough to keep visitors there. We’ll look at what pages are the problem ones later on.

4. Traffic Sources > All Traffic Sources

If you have been doing any work on getting links to your site, you should see a real diversity in the link sources. If you don’t, then the links that you got aren’t driving traffic to your site. Yes, links are important for search engine optimization, but they’re also important to drive visitors to your site.

If you have bought a link (e.g. Yellow Pages), then check that data very carefully. Click on the Source and then see how many visits, how many pages/visit and the average time spent on the site. Divide the cost of the link by the visits, and that’s your cost per visitor for that link. Consider that data carefully when deciding whether or not to renew or purchase more links. Visitors aren’t a numbers game – I’d rather a site had 500 visitors who were highly engaged than 5,000 who visited one page for 2 seconds.

5. Traffic Sources > Keywords

Take a look at the keywords. If your site is ranking well, you’ll likely have a lot of different keywords in this report. What I compare is branded vs non-branded searches. For example, let’s say that your site had 2,000 total visitors by 1,000 keyword searches. Now, scroll to the bottom of the screen and in the Filter Keyword box, choose excluding and type in your company name. If the number of visitors or number of keywords drops off siginificantly, then you don’t have a lot of keyword diversity for your site, and you need to work on improving your site’s profile in the search engines. I like to see at least 80% non-branded visitors and phrases. So in my example, after excluding the company name, I should have at least 1,600 visitors by 800 keyword searches.

You should also look at the keywords themselves. Not only are they a rich source of content to write about on your blog, but they provide great insight on what people are searching for and what drew them to your site.

6. Content > Top Content

What content is driving the most views? These are the “greatest hits” of your website. These are the pages you should focus on to keep people engaged on the site. You’ll get the biggest bang for your buck and the most testing results if you try out different techniques on these pages.

Remember, a website is a living beast – it isn’t static and sacred. Change things, try out new stuff, don’t be afraid to fool around with your site. If it isn’t working, you’ll know right away (because you’ve been checking your analytics) and you can try something else.

7. Content > Top Landing Pages

I think one of the biggest mistakes that people make with their websites is assuming that visitors always start with the home page and go from there. This report will dissuade you of that notion pretty quickly. Visit each of the top landing pages and think to yourself – if I had never been to my site before and I started with this page, would I know what was going on?

Also, if there’s a big drop between the entrances to your home page and the other pages, again, it means that you need to work on your site’s profile.

8. Content > Top Exit Pages

If these line up nicely with your top landing pages, then you definitely have a problem. Visitors are starting on pages other than the home page, and aren’t interested in moving on, and then leaving. Out of the top 10 by number of exits, which ones have the highest percentage? Focus on improving these first.

Check out these reports on a monthly basis, keep that journal going, and you’ll start to see major improvements in your website traffic and your business!

The first step in blogging regularly is to figure out what you’re going to say. You thought I was going to say “get a blog set up” first, didn’t you? That’s the last concern. Getting the blog set up is easy. Figuring out what to write is hard.

Daily writing about your business is one thing that everyone struggles with, myself included. You’re so deep in the business that you cannot figure out how to communicate what you do in a way that demonstrates your expertise but also doesn’t give so much away that anyone can replicate what you do, therefore putting yourself out of business. Frankly, if what you do is so easy to learn that anyone could do it after reading your blog, you shouldn’t be doing it as a career. I’ve often said that anyone can make a website (it’s true! anyone can!) but not everyone can make a website that gets people to visit your store, sign up for your event, or buy your stuff. That’s the hard part. Code is the easy part.

Also, often the reluctance of writing about your business comes from a fear that what you’re doing isn’t particularly amazing or interesting, and who is going to want to read about accounting tips, anyway? Lots of people. There is someone on the internet, right now, looking for exactly what you do. But they’re probably not searching for “accountants in Moose Jaw”. They’re more likely searching for “how to claim tax credits in Saskatchewan”.

I can tell you, from personal experience, that people search for the strangest things online. The people who need your business the most do not use phrases that we think of – they search using questions, trying to solve specific problems that they have. It’s late March – I don’t need an accountant, I need tax help, STAT. If you solve their problem, you’re a hero!

Tools like the Google AdWords Keyword Tool can be great at finding general keyword phrases (like “accountants in Moose Jaw”) but it isn’t that great at figuring out what questions will land visitors on your site. To get those topics, here’s some ideas:

1. Call up a client and ask them what questions they have about an aspect of your business.

2. When you talk to your potential customers, take notes on the questions they ask and how they phrase those questions.

3. Check your website analytics for keywords that only result in one visit a month – it’s likely a question phrase. For example, on my own site, I received some of these search questions in the past month:

• how do i improve my pay per click campaign
• how not to take a hit on taxes when selling a business
• email blast will improve seo rankings

There’s three topics, right there. I haven’t written specifically about any of those topics (yet) but these people still ended up on my site. Imagine the extra traffic if I’d written a post on those topics!

Get writing! Include the link to your blog post in the comments – I’d love to see what you come up with.

In the midst of a busy day at the shop, Sarah was able to sit down with me to discuss how social media works for her business.

You mentioned your promotion with Living Social – how did that go?

I really liked it. I did it when Living Social first came into Edmonton and I sold 125-ish of them. I’ve gotten about 60% of them back and they expire in about a month. My concern was that people didn’t tip – a lot of people – but I also think those people weren’t the people that will come back.

There is someone who used it today, they tipped, they’re really great and I know they’ll be back. The dynamic of my shop is very much a community coffee shop. I like to talk to everybody. I introduce everybody to everybody.

About 5% have come back. A lot of people will buy the coupons because it said Whyte Avenue and they want to experience it. Those are people who will be back in the summer. It was good to do in the winter for me because it did keep people coming in and put my name out there.

When did you first start using social media for your business?

I joined Twitter a year and a half ago. Before that I was on Facebook, as long as the business has been open. Personally I’ve been on Facebook about five years.

Do you have a strategy?

I have recently started to write down a strategy. Since I’m the only one here I’m lucky in that I don’t have to explain to someone else how I want my business to be portrayed.

If you don’t have a strategy and you’re paying someone to do your social media then there can be quite a disconnect between what you want to say and what’s actually being said. For me there isn’t – I know what I believe. I started writing it down though as I want to make sure I don’t get carried away.

I have strong beliefs about community and connecting and small business. My goal is to help support and grow not only my small business, but small businesses in my community. If we don’t support each other then who is going to support us?

I teach other local businesses how to do their social media and encourage them to keep participating in it. For example, yesterday I showed one of the guys at the bike shop across the street a hashtag search for #yegbike. They were the Edmonton Groupon yesterday and people were talking about them, but they were oblivious to it.

How do you track new business that you get from social media?

I don’t physically track, but on any given day 50% to 70% of the people that come in are from Facebook or Twitter. I talk to everybody so I know where they come from.

Do you think that social media has has a positive influence on your business in terms of bringing in new people?

Definitely. I am baffled when people choose to ignore the benefits of such a free, smart way to communicate and correspond with people. For small businesses it’s easier because you want to be genuine as people are going to see you every day. When you go to Staples you might get a different person every time you go. I do know that lots of people come in just to kind of see what I’m all about because I am a little quirky.

You just changed your Twitter profile picture – it was the blue fish with the tiara on the wall before. Why the change?

I asked a while back, “Should I change my profile picture?” Everybody said “Yes, because you are your shop. Your shop is not the fish.”

I noticed that I didn’t get as many responses when I first changed my picture – it’s interesting how people will just look for the picture. They won’t even look for the names. Personally, I try not to associate people with their Twitter names – I look at the pictures and learn their name.

What do you know now about social media that you wish you had know when you started your business?

My dad was on Twitter before I was. My dad is a retiree and he’s been on Twitter since he was still working. Between him and another friend, they were saying, “You should get on Twitter. You should get on Twitter.” I thought it would be more time consuming!

My friend Gord taught me – he came in and spent 10, 15 minutes with me and explained Twitter and showed how it would work for me.

How much time do you spend on Twitter every day?

My computer is always open, so if I have time I’ll tweet. I don’t schedule tweets. I don’t believe in that because I want to have real communication with people. If I tweet and people respond it might take me a little time to reply – I have customers. They know that I can be busy, but I don’t believe in faking it. I think that scheduling for my business isn’t right because I want to encourage the conversation.

I handle Twitter a bit differently than a lot of other businesses do. A lot of them just pimp their business the whole time – I rarely talk about my business. I mention my specials once or twice a day and free cookie Friday.

If there is a business who’s thinking, “Now is the time to start social media”, what would you say to them? You mentioned training.

Training. I would say find somebody – buy them dinner – get them to teach you how to do it or even pay somebody. For me there are quite a few businesses that I’ve taught just because that’s the community that we’re in. We’re here to support each other.

If other people are handling your Twitter or any of your social media to have a plan. It’s important to have back up so you’re able to say, “You’re not doing this right. You’re not projecting my business the way it should be. Or you’re just missing the point.”

Having a clear social media strategy is like having a clear marketing direction for your business. If you don’t know what you want out of your strategy then what’s the point of doing it?

I want people to come here and leave happy. My business is about experience.

You can listen to the show (called Is Your Website Driving Away Business) here. Warning – the audio will start right away.

Thanks, Larry!

If you aren’t logged into the LinkedIn website (like a search engine), then the link now looks like this:

http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Elocalmagnet%2Eca&urlhash=vxip

That’s known as a 302 redirect, and it means that the link goes to the final destination, but isn’t “counted” by the search engines as a link.

Before, if you customized the links to say something other than “My Website”, these links were able to pass value to your website.

This move is likely due to LinkedIn clamping down on profile link spam. It’s entirely possible that LinkedIn may change this in the future, possibly for a fee.

If the links leading to your site relied on LinkedIn links, time to look elsewhere!

One of the major downsides to presenting yourself through social media such as Twitter and Facebook is the pressure to be always on, always happy, always your most awesomest self ever. As you embark on social media, you’ll likely feel this pressure, too.

It’s tough. I’m sure that you’ll have some days where you want to sit on the couch and do nothing all day. And that’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re a failure or you’re somehow not cut out for business, it means that you’re human.

I worry that in the echo chamber of social media, where all the “gurus” and “experts” and “rockstars” are on and awesome at all times, it’s somehow shameful to admit that you aren’t always a shiny happy person too.

I’m writing this post just after noon on a Sunday. I have a bit of a headache because I slept funny and I’d really rather be reading this great new book (not work related at all) that my fiancee bought for me yesterday, but here I am, writing this post. My secondary goal for the day is get caught up on my inbox, which seems to be breeding and creating child emails. And then, catch up on work. Not much fiction reading in my future.

Then I opened TweetDeck briefly and saw people having fun afternoons in one column, and a bunch of guru types in the other, posting articles and being chipper. I haven’t seen many – if any – “guru” types say “having a crappy day, ate some chocolate and watched trashy TV” in their Twitter feed, have you? (If you have, send links!)

If we are truly being authentic online, why is it frowned upon to be actually honest and admit when things are hard, when we’re not excited about doing something? Something like “I have a bunch of email and I don’t want to deal with it. Screw you, email!” Or, “I’m burned out.” When someone asks you how you’re doing, do you respond with the expected “great, thanks!” or the honest “I’m having a tough day”?

Take stock of where you are, what you’re doing, and how you’re feeling. Are you actually being productive, getting work done, feeling a groove? Or are you sitting at your computer, feeling like you should be working but you’d rather be cleaning / sleeping / spending time with your spouse and/or kids? Do you feel vaguely guilty about not being on and awesome all the time?

It’s okay to have downtime. It’s okay to be human. And frankly, I agree with Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flick and Hunch – working hard is overrated.

Let’s set up a support group. We should call it Humans Anonymous, and at the meetings we’d admit that it’s impossible to be 100% on and awesome all the time. I suspect that it would be very popular.

Hello, my name is Dana. Sometimes I like to take some time off, even when I have unread emails in my inbox and a big to do list.

Addition: Lisa Barone is definitely an expert and has a lot of followers. Her status update today is an example of the kind of honesty I love to see.

Who is your ideal client?

If you sell real estate, your ideal clients are people in your community who are looking for houses. Luckily for you, that means almost everyone at some point, but you can narrow down your search even further to families and professionals in your community. Find parents in your area that write about parenting, and follow them on Twitter. Find people involved with the arts in your community, and follow them on Twitter.

The summary of this lesson: follow your clients, don’t just follow your peers. We all make this mistake when we first join Twitter. Like attracts like, and we go where our interests are. If you start thinking like a client and look for their interests, you’ll find your sales. This applies to you whether you’re a web designer, a painter, an accountant, or a home renovation specialist. Follow your clients, and engage with them. That’s the next step.

Use Twitter like a real person

“Twitter is a conversation.” This often-used statement among online media folks is a cliché because it is true. If you’re just opening up Twitter and reading people’s Tweets every day, without doing any tweeting yourself, you’re never going to be able to connect with clients on it. If someone writes something amusing, tell them in a reply on Twitter that you thought their link was funny.

The same goes for things you post. People are more likely to connect with you if you post stuff that you would post whether or not it was a business account. I post things that blatantly show off my politics all the time. I just don’t antagonize people that don’t share my views, and I make sure that everything I post is interesting enough to recommend to someone else.

How do you sell on Twitter

The key to selling on Twitter is not selling at all. You should start a blog and regularly post to Twitter so that people know what you’re all about, and can visit your business if they are interested. The opportunity of Twitter is being able to get to know people in your community from the comfort of your office without spending money on traditional marketing.

Now, if one of your followers asks about something in your area of expertise, which will inevitably happen, you can certainly mention that you are open for business. In my case, I met the owner of this blog by thanking her for retweeting an article I wrote, noting that she was local to me, and asking if she ever had a need for a copywriter, being a web designer. I’ve since done copy for a few of her sites and have recommended her services to numerous businesses and friends.

How much time do I spend on it?

If you spend ten minutes a day managing your Twitter presence, and set up your blog to post to Twitter, that should be all the time you need. I spend maybe an hour a week replying to messages and reading Twitter updates. You don’t even need to spend that much time on it if you are the owner of a small business.

Put yourself out there

Since Twitter is about community, there is no better place to find local customers. Twitter is a great way to build your reputation locally. Volunteer at your favourite charity and tweet about it, inviting others to do the same. Offer to speak on your area of expertise at local events, and tweet about them. Twitter is a great way to network both online and off, and you’ll likely find yourself making friends just as easily as you make sales once you’ve got it down.