A leading indicator is a factor that changes before its category changes in the same direction.  It’s a signal, like the direction of the stock market is a leading indicator of the direction of the economy.

But what if we change the context from the economy to sales? What are the leading indicators of sales declines and improvements?

To focus on closing ratios and sales results is to focus on lagging indicators. It’s too late in the process.  In my work, we usually focus more on prospecting activity, contacts and meetings – and we call them key activities that are most predictive of sales improvement – or leading indicators.

Focusing there is focusing on areas you can manage and improve. But there are other earlier factors in success. What about lead generation and public relations efforts above the contact activity of the sales force?

At most local media companies, the answer is: “What lead generation efforts?”  Above the sales team level of most local media companies, there are no significant lead generation efforts.

B2B companies that sell into companies like dentists, medical specialists, technology companies, retailers and law firms are using lead generation tactics well above a field force. Many of them use event marketing & trade shows, direct mail, market education programs, social media and/or telemarketing campaigns, loyalty programs, webinars, voice to voice programs and more.

But we local media companies, who sell advertising (B2B) still operate like we expect businesses to call regularly to request our ad salesperson.  Really?  We don’t market and promote for high quality leads.

We just do the minimum. On the website, there’s a media kit and a contact name and phone number to call. Some local media companies run a few house ads in print, too.  We sell classified ads to consumers. But B2B lead generation or product promotion events?  Not so much.

We own a very effective ad medium.  We should be taking advantage of it.  We should be doing online webinars and in-market workshops. We should be blogging and twittering and friending and reviewing.  We should produce and sponsor events – and we should collect data and glean leads from it, regularly.

Many media companies tried a few things with unimpressive initial results and then just quit trying. It’s time to practice what we preach again – to use our advertising medium in a mix with other marketing tactics to reach our best new prospects.

If you are a local media ad salesperson, are you doing your part, beyond just cold calling?  How are you using technology and social media to improve your referrals, testimonials and leads?

If you are a local media company publishing or ad exec, what are you doing to focus on and fuel activities that are most predictive of success?  Are you just pushing your sales team for more of the activity or are you actively marketing to stimulate more leads and a more receptive audience for your sales teams’ presentations of your brand solutions?

Do you set a metric for the number of published press releases and articles or speaking engagements?  Do you set a number of direct mail, email, newsletters or digital impressions? To your sales activities, add metrics for these higher level sales-related and lead producing activities that create opportunities.

Sales managers: How many calls can your staff make in the marketplace each week?  Is it lower than you would like to see?  Do you need to look again at your territories for time lost to travel?  Are sales support & process so weak that too much time is spent on customer service?  Is sales team engagement low?  Contributing factors might include compensation, training and performance management.  Solve problems and find opportunities.  In this way, you help fuel the factors that are most predictive of success.

Studies show that well-trained and managed staffs with better company support will consistently outperform salespeople trained in on a “sink or swim” basis with less support and management focus.

Even small, local media companies can afford social media and lead generation on the website – and in print.  Your team can speak to the chamber of commerce and ad clubs, etc. Compared to the cost of turnover and curbed enthusiasm from excessive rejection, simple lead generation, good sales training and product promotion efforts will be real bargains – contributing to more & better quality contacts and activity – key leading indicators of the sales improvement you seek.

Print and online should complement each other. One of the benefits of the Web is that it provides the business with almost endless space to tell its complex story or to show its depth of inventory or to provide lots of information about a product people like to research and consider carefully.

Media salespeople should prospect among web only advertisers who fit into the categories above – businesses like realtors and auto dealers – to discuss how adding print will benefit their key online marketing efforts.

The more upscale the prospect, the better, because print invites an audience to the web that is less likely to rely on twitter and facebook to find new sites of interest.  Print represents the brand’s values, sells its more institutional messages, and then sends a whole new audience to the web site while they are in the early consideration phase.

If we really want to practice consultative selling, it’s worthwhile to try this switched up focus.

Google focuses on reviews and photos from place pages

It’s the talk of Search Engine Landia!  Google has done it again.  They’ve made major changes that impact lots of businesses – either positively or negatively – and they didn’t give a heads-up ahead or any meaningful guidance after the fact. That’s the Google way.

It’s Local Search Results that got the major updating – and WOW it’s a major focus on local!  The change is complicating in that there are now 3 options for Local business searches –

• Organic Web search (which has now become a blend of local & organic with unknown hierarchy of factors) plus
• Places Search (with new, undefined algorithm) and
• Maps Searches.

Here’s what I like: Map in right rail forces paid ads down page but also calls user’s attention into right rail where they are.  I think they’ll get better clicks than before.  I don’t care much for Ad Words but it’s an interesting, gutsy move that people swore Google would not make.

Page 1 results also feature reviews and photos from Place pages, making it even more essential to get those Google Place pages (plus yahoo and Bing profiles) claimed!

Here’s one of several things I don’t like: Looks like businesses without websites are completely out of luck.  I don’t yet understand the implications for mobile. People want to see the nearest businesses, sometimes, on local search – even if they don’t have a website. 

(Almost half of all small businesses still don’t have a website!)

More fun is sure to come on this issue, for days to come, as everybody in SEO and Local Search get to work to figure out the good, the bad and the ugly of this latest Google adventure.

In the meantime, we are updating screen shots and features on Biz Visible services for distribution on Tuesday to our Plano partners.

4 Different Addresses for 1 Business!

When it comes to local search results, the devil is in the details – details that are haunting all 3 of my new clients from last week – a church, a service business and a small retailer. 

Looked like a snap, initially, to help my new clients reach their goals for local search.

After getting unexpectedly bad results on relevant local searches, I sensed some wicked problems lurking in their business records.  Their directory and search engine listings confirmed the worst – deviant business details – inaccurate, conflicting and downright confusing data. 

Data conflicts can haunt local search results for years.  The trouble often lies dormant in business listings, virtually invisible until revealed in local search results.

3 Colossal Search Engine Listing Mistakes to Avoid:

1. Inconsistent (conflicting) Listings, from the start: 

Write a standard address file and use that file everywhere – for your Who-is record, your filing records, your phone company records, your business permit records, your website contact info, your search engine listings, your directory listings, your facebook listings and your review site listings – Everywhere.  Your business listing slogan must be: “Everywhere the same!”  Make it so!

2. Address change conflicts:

When you change the address on an existing business record, the old address will still exist on some databases that aren’t updated.  To the search engines, it looks like you’re in 2 places at once, causing penalties in local search results.  For fewer problems, be comprehensive in changing every record you know of – all at once.  If you also change your business name, you have the opportunity to close the old listing (delete if possible) and add a brand new business name at a brand new address.  This fresh record will have no history, and that’s easier to overcome than address conflicts.  As another example, a business may be in the city limits of one town, but, to get mail delivery, may be required to maintain an address in a different town.  That means filing records have different addresses than phone database listings.  These address errors can be nightmarish.  Consider working with a professional – and bring your patience for the long ride.  No easy fix.

3. Toll-free and Local Phone number conflicts:

If a toll-free number is indispensable to your business growth, then by all means get the number and use it!  But be careful how you publish that number in your listings.  Consider leaving off the 800 number on all local listings. Why?  If you’re set up in the phone records with a local number, but you only publish a toll-free in your search engine listing record, the search engines may penalize for the conflict or delist as a spammer.  The toll free number impedes your improvement of local search results.  If you must list toll free numbers, make them up in a graphical format rather than text.  The graphics won’t be picked up by the search engines.

I’m happily working with my 3 new clients to help them get more customers, but getting results “like a snap” no longer applies.  Now, we must begin the painstaking process of scrubbing the devil out of the details.  There’s no glory and little excitement.  “Tedious” is the word. 

The good news: You’ll think you’ve died and gone to heaven when you see how much better local search results you’ll achieve with clean, consistent records.  You’ll be adding more new prospects and, hopefully, lots of new customers, too.  Don’t delay.  If you have the time and patience, clean up your records today or pay a small fee to a professional for help. 

Fill out my Contact Me form for a free, no obligation phone or email consultation.

For small business marketing, it’s all about change – but you need not worry about being left behind.  Some of the simplest of today’s local search options are also among the most effective.   And, it’s not all about paid ads and search engine optimization, either.

Not that paid ads & SEO are necessarily bad. 

If paying for ads is the only way that you can get your business on page1 of relevant search engine results, then paying for optimized keyword ads, like Google Ad-words, may be a great idea.  You’ll deal with the frustration of shifting costs and tactics – and that is no small thing – but you can always pay someone else to manage these ads for you.  But is paid advertising really the only way?  Would you consider solutions that are potentially more efficient and as effective – even if they seem almost too simple?

Search Engine Optimization has it all over Ad Words and other paid ad plans, when it comes to complexity.  SEO is really never finished, because the rules are always changing.  Still, if your business is virtually invisible on the search engines, then you need some sort of SEO help to run a successful small business.  But is traditional SEO the only way to get found on page 1?  Is it the best, most efficient way?  What about a solution with more lasting impact?

Paid ads and traditional SEO may have a place in your ad plan.  But, depending on competitiveness in your category, doing a good job with your search engine listings may be all your business needs to perform well on local search results for your target keywords.

Take these 3 basic steps, first:

1. Get your local business information (address, hours, etc.) onto google.com, yahoo.com and bing.com business listings.  (This is NOT the same as submitting your website to the search engines.)

2. Make sure listing information is accurate and enhanced with features like video and coupons to engage your customers and potential customers.

3. Manage your information so that it is consistent across all major search engines and directories.

Very few local businesses have taken these first steps, and many are paying the price by failing to appear in the local map results area of local searches.  Be the exception in your category.  As a result of adding these listings, you’ll activate real advantages for your business over local competitors who don’t have a clue.  The number one advantage is that you avoid sending potential customers to your competitors who managed the listings to get more new business and more money.

There is a right way and a wrong way to do it, so study up to do it right.  Otherwise, you may miss out on the surest ways to be found on local search and local map results.  And, as well-intended as you are, you might inadvertently do a few things to damage your results. 

(And undoing the damage can be a nightmare!)

 To avoid that kind of trouble, ask for help from search engine help desks.  It’s absolutely free, except for your time and brain drain. 

You can also hire a local marketing firm to set up your listings – someone who earns a fee by knowing how to do it right the first time.  You will pay a little for a good set-up, but you will also avoid the drain on your own time and focus. 

Ignoring this post could cost you lots of money.  Do first things first so that your business has the best chance of hitting and staying in the top local search results.  Listing your business info with the top search engines means more visibility and clicks – more calls and new customers – and more money!

People click at least 3x more on 7-Pack and natural search results (below the map) than they click on paid Pay Per Click ads to the right of search results. 

Oh, and did I tell you that the 7 pack listing is free?  These listings serve high up on the search result page.  They get great clicks from people ready to buy!  What’s not to like?

 Here’s a screen shot of a local map result for the Google search, “fort worth dry cleaners”. 

Claim & manage your listings to make the 7 Pack

When you click on “reviews” or “more info” for a listing, you go to that business’s Place Page, where you’ll find its reviews as well as other useful information.  People LOVE reviews when they’re trying to decide which business gives the best service or has the best product or price, etc. Here is a screen shot.

Enhance your free Google Listing for More Customers

CLAIM YOUR LISTING to avoid hijacked listings and inaccurate info.  Major search engines try to verify change before it’s published, but the verifiers are only human!

Don’t forget Yahoo! and Bing, because their huge audiences shop and buy, too.  Besides, Google checks your listings on those sites, too, as part of the equation for whether you get on the map result and if so how high up!   They also use info off the key directories (like Superpages.com) and review sites (like Yelp). 

Google aggregates reviews onto Place pages from outside sources like Yelp, in addition to reviews posted on Google.  According to SEO experts, bad reviews count just as well toward good local search placement as good reviews do.  One thing for sure: If you want new customers, you prefer the GOOD reviews that will improve your click rate.

You may have noticed that Sponsored Links (competitors’ ads) appear on place pages.  You can’t keep competitive offers off a place page like you can on your own Site.  If you’re in a competitive category, you’ll still want some PPC advertising like Google adwords or the local newspaper’s combo package of PPC and behavioral targeting.

To start, here are your bare-minimum requirements:

1. Claim your Google Place page – and your listings on Yahoo! and Bing.

2. Control, complete and enhance your information on them, making sure it is consistent on each one.

3. Manage your free information on the top 10 local directories like SuperPages.com .

4. Manage your free information on the top 10 review directories like Yelp.

5. Conduct review gathering blitzes once a quarter.

The local 7-Pack results are displayed in a premium position on local search results – and they are free.  They get great click rate. You want your business to regularly appear on the 7-pack. 

Google listings and local search results should rank high in Local SEO plans, but few SEO companies focus on it – possibly because local search is so simple and cheap – but powerful.  Study up to perform the bare minimums for your business, above, or get more help with this today. Ask for Info on Google Listings: [contact-form]

The time to get started is NOW!  Right now, while 90% of Place pages aren’t claimed by the business owner, is the cheapest, best time to stand out as a dominant player in your category.  Seize the day!

I promised more ideas about getting the most out of your Web site and internet marketing.  Hope you can appreciate this week’s little shortcut to some great tips from SEO experts.

Want to get better search engine rankings?  Back links are critical.

As a live illustration of how link building works, here’s your link to a list of 101 ways to build links:

http://www.seobook.com/archives/001792.shtml  – from Aaron Wall of SEOBook.

No way around it.  To rank decently in natural search engine results, we must get lots of links from other high quality sites back into our own.

…More soon.  (Are we having fun, yet?)

Getting your website toward the top of relevant search engine results is essential to good marketing these days.

But keywords on a page are only a small influence on how your business ranks in the search engines. 

Sleep Experts falls a bit short in another search engine optimization factor called backlinking.  A backlink is a link from a different website to your website.  The goal is to get more of these.

Why does this matter?  Most search engine optimization (SEO) experts agree that the number and quality of outside sites linking into your website is one of THE most important factors to your search engine results. 

How do you know who links to you?  You can find the links Google recognizes by typing in link:www.sleepexperts.com in a Google search.

A lookup of sleepexperts.com on Alexa  www.alexa.com includes a longer list of the sites linking back into the www.sleepexperts website http://www.alexa.com/site/linksin/sleepexperts.com . (Search engines have different rules about types of links they recognize.)

Here’s an Alexa link for Sleepy’s, a different local mattress retailer with stores in the northeast: http://www.alexa.com/site/linksin/sleepys.com .  Wow!  Over 400 outsiders link into www.sleepys.com.

No matter how you look it up, Sleepy’s has lots more backlinks than Sleep Experts.  Sleepy’s is higher ranked and competes well for mattress searches, even in non-localized searches. 

The good result is not just because of backlinks, but they are very important to website results.  It’s important for you to get some good backlinks to your site.

How do you get other sites to link to your site?

WHAT NOT TO DO:

Don’t buy a bunch of spam-type links. That tactic won’t help, because the links are low quality.  They might even get your site ignored or banned.   

HOW TO GET STARTED:

1. Press Releases

Send out regular news-worthy press releases.  You put a link in the press release (a link to your website).  When your press release distribution company (like www.prweb.com for example) posts the press release on their Site, their page contains a link back to yours.  The search engines pick up these press release pages in search results, too!

2. Articles

Write articles about your area of expertise for reputable sites that focus on your specialty.  Put a link in the article.  When your article is posted, the publisher is linked to your site – and the article content is picked up in the search engines.

3. Negotiate Link Trades for Donations, Events, Charities

If you are active in the local community, make the most of it. When a high profile business or other local organization asks to set up your product or service at an event or asks for a sponsorship for a worthy cause, ask them for a “Thanks to (your business)” link on their site to yours.

There are many more ways of getting good backlinks to your site – and quite a lot of complexity in this area, too.  Some businesses have delegated Link Marketing to in-house marketing departments.  Where internal marketing resources are stretched thin and in-house expertise is light, it pays to get professional help to jump-start your link building program.

On-page keywords and backlinks are just 2 factors among dozens that affect your website’s performance on the search engines.  I’ve simplified a complex topic. Even keywords and backlinks involve complexity that I haven’t touched on here.  Beyond this level, I, too, rely on my SEO experts.

Search engines aren’t very transparent about how you can do well in natural search results.   And, they often change the criteria.  This lack of transparency and flux complicates an already difficult challenge, especially for small businesses with limited budgets.

Doing a couple things right helps in more ways than just SEO:

• Always work on publicizing your website to get traffic and legitimate backlinks. 
• Update your pages with good content and appropriate focus on your keywords. 

If your goal is dramatic improvement, get professional help and expect to spend some time and money.  Acting on good professional advice will pay off in more traffic to your store, to your website and improved sales results.  But it takes time to move search results from near the bottom to nearer the top. 

I’ve taken my own lesson.  I sell some product for a family retail business on the Web.  Our backlinks have been from unranked pages on social media and blogs – and no help in SEO.  As I retool my site plans with a focus on SEO, I’ve found that patience is a critical asset.  When it comes to search engine optimization, instant gratification, as much as we may yearn for it, simply does not apply.

 Next week: more ways to improve results from your small business website, with local examples.

My association with Sleep Experts started as a very personal story.  A couple of years back, I wasn’t resting well, even with 8 hours of sleep.   Lack of a good night’s sleep hurt my appearance, my gait, my temperament – my focus – almost everything. I researched mattresses on the Web and, then, I visited local stores.  Sleep Experts came out on top of that process, and, as a result, I’m a satisfied customer – and I look and feel much better.

But I had to find them first. Everyone knows that if you want to buy a product from a business in your town, you must be able to find the store. The same holds true on the internet.  If you want people to research and/or buy your product on the internet, they must be able to find your website.

It’s easy to find Sleep Experts website when you do a Google search for its products in its market.

Sleep Experts consistently is near the top for Google searches like “mattresses Dallas Fort Worth” and “sleep experts dallas fort worth”.  They do many things right to make it so.

Improving search results involves more than good keywords on your web pages, and some factors are highly technical. But many on-page KEYWORDS factors are so simple that non-technical people like I am can understand and apply them.  Let’s look at how Sleep Experts uses 3 simple on-page keyword factors to improve search engine results.

 1. Use Keyword in your title tag:

 The keyword in the title tag is important to your search engine results.  Sleep Experts does a good job.  Find the title tag by going to www.sleepexperts.com . Right click on any “blank” area of the page.  Click “view source” to see “title”. (If you don’t get this, don’t worry.)  Here’s the Sleep Experts title tag:

 <title>Mattresses – Sleep Experts – Mattress Stores – Dallas, Fort Worth, Plano, Frisco</title> .

This tag shows up in Google’s link back to your Website. Sleep Experts didn’t “stuff” the title tag with too many keywords.  It gives sensible information about the business.  And search engines like Google use the words in the title tag as one factor in how high you rank in a related search result.

Look at your homepage.  What is your title tag?  If it contains just the name of your business, rewrite it and ask your webmaster or tech savvy friend to change your title tag. 

 2. Use the keyword as the first word in the title tag:

 “Mattresses” is the most important keyword for the search engines to match to related searches, and it’s the first word in Sleep Experts’ title tag.  That first word helps your site rank higher in related searches.

3. Use keyword in the root domain name:

Sleep Experts also uses a keyword “sleep” in their domain name: www.sleepexperts.com .  If your keyword isn’t in your domain name, this is not nearly as critical as having the keyword in your title tag.

There are other factors for keywords on your pages that affect your search engine results.

Here’s an up-to-date list that includes the top keyword factors as well as the many other factors affecting your search engine rankings http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#ranking-factors .

Caution – Don’t “stuff” keywords in meta keyword tags or anywhere on the page!

If you “stuff” keywords anywhere on your web pages, using excessive repetition or other tactics, search engines may ignore your site completely.  Don’t hide keywords with invisible text, either.  If it seems sneaky, don’t do it!

SEO workers who focus mainly on adding keywords to your meta keywords tag or stuffing keywords on your pages in any way are using out of date information.

Share Velocity and SEO Experts

When I recommend an SEO tune-up, I am passing along the up-to-date expertise gathered from local SEO experts and the most credible Web resources, like Search Engine Watch www.searchenginewatch.com . All recommended work is double-checked and completed by tech-savvy specialists who thrive in the ever-changing world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  The Share Velocity goal is to make it affordable – and understandable.

My expertise is in small business advertising and marketing – on and off the Web, and if I can understand a few basic principles of SEO, so can you!  Focus on 3 critical factors for keywords on your web pages:

1.       Keyword in well-written Title Tag

2.       Keyword as first word of title tag

3.       Keyword in the root domain

Next week, more simple tips to improve ROI from your website with local examples.