A lot is happening on the search scene with the boiling competition between Google and Microsoft’s new search engine – Bing. Bing has been live for better than half a year and the results of Microsoft’s efforts are proving to be extremely fruitful for local businesses.

For a long time Google has been preaching it’s strive to “return relevant results” to searchers and for the most part, compared to past search engines, it has delivered on that promise. Where Google has fallen short is in the realm of local search. Google “maps” and “local business results” were to be a search miracle for small, local business, but proved to be one of the company’s biggest embarrassments with the ease in which the local business results can be “spammed”. Since Bing was launched, Microsoft has delivered on its promise of more relevant results and has demonstrated the superior ability for small businesses to be found locally on the Internet and that ability is resulting in more conversions from a search engine with a smaller market share.

In my 6 months of testing Bing and Google side by side the results are much different than I expected. Using our company website, www.mymarketingcompany.com, and its many interior pages, I created a comprehensive list of the keywords used in the company pages and with the help of a tool from SEO Book called “Rank Checker”, I was able to compare the indexing and search results ranking of my company’s web pages side by side between the three major players in the search arena.

The overall goal in website development is to have the pages of the website indexed by the search engines for the keywords they are optimized for, and to have those pages rank well in search results of searches using those keywords. If a search engine delivers on its stated goal, to deliver the most relevant search results for keyword search queries and your web pages are relevant to that search query, they will be displayed in the search results. The more relevant the information on the page, the higher it will rank.

Well, in theory anyway but unfortunately for Google results, this has not been the case.

So who is doing a better job? Google supporters will be quick to bang the gong for Google and Microsoft supporters will be quick to cheer for Bing as you would expect, but the proof is in the results and the results of my study were quite interesting to say the least. Due to the disparity in the search results I need to separate them into two categories, local search and national search.

Local search is defined as any search query that a searcher will expect a result for a business located in his/her metro area. For example: Searching for landscaping company.

National search is defined as any search query that a searcher will not expect a result in any geographical location. For example: Searching for deals on airline tickets.

Local Search

For most small business in America this is the search category they are most concerned with as is our company. I optimize our company web pages for the service and geographical location we wish to provide a particular service in. Within those locations I have competitors so I would expect to see their web pages along side mine in search results.

What I used for my criteria as a means to “grade” a search engines ability to return relevant results was its ability to filter irrelevant web pages that contain the words that are used in the search query but the context of the web page is blatantly irrelevant to the intended search context. A search for “Sarasota Billboard Advertising” (which is only one of the 55 search terms used in the study) should display relevant results for companies that provide billboard advertising in the Sarasota area.

It would seem to be a simple exercise, right? Well the results will amaze you.

Let’s start with the 600 pound gorilla – Google. With 70 percent of searches being performed on Google, and as long as they have been providing Internet search services, you would expect them to be the master of search. Unfortunately the study proved otherwise. Google’s local results were, to put it bluntly, surprisingly pathetic. So pathetic in fact that our page dedicated to copywriting ranked number two in the search results of “Sarasota billboard advertising”.  On the copywriting page the only instance of the keywords “billboard advertising” was a link to the billboard advertising page. There was no other mention of the word “billboard” anywhere in the title, description, headers, or anywhere else on the page yet it ranked number two. Our web page on billboard advertising, which is loaded with variants of the keywords “billboard advertising” as well as “billboard advertising” being occurring in the URL extension, ranked 59. Our web page on billboard advertising also has more external one-way links to it than our copywriting page and backlinks are supposedly how Google measures the “importance” of a webpage.

Our competition did not rank any better, the number one billboard vendor did not even rank in Google, but their AdWords ad did… Seems rather easy to optimize a small add for correct keyword placement so then why does Google have such a hard time with a webpage?? I also found it highly peculiar that the website for the national media company, CBS, whom is the owner of the billboards in our area, was nowhere to be found in search results unless you performed the search inside quotation marks.

There are only 8 “local” companies providing billboard advertising in our community yet only 3 out of the top 11 search results were company web pages developed specifically for promoting billboard advertising services of some kind and I am stretching credit being given. Two were for mobile billboard ads, and one was for an aerial tow-behind-a-biplane banner company. The rest were just pages that contained the search keywords but not necessarily the context you would expect in a search for billboard advertising.

When you look at the data collected in the study, you are left to make an assumption as to the reason the most relevant pages of keyword search terms are being buried so far in search results. The study suggests this burial of relevancy is a means for Google to force the owners of the most relevant pages to either pony up and pay the “ransom” for an AdWords campaign or not be seen in search results. Of all the web pages we randomly examined, only 10 percent of those pages actually ranked in a position that would have a good chance of being seen, well, appeared within the first 3 pages of search results. This was not only endemic to our company pages, but also the pages of our competitors and other product and service providers.

Bing results were miles more impressive and much more relevant to the search query. Five of the top 10 search results were links to company pages intended to promote billboard advertising services in Sarasota, the remaining 4 out 5 were secondary links by online advertising services pointing to the same landing pages of the companies in Sarasota providing billboard advertising services.

Of our 55 keyword terms used in the study, we found Microsoft’s Bing to consistently display more relevant local business search results for a search query than Google. Google only indexed the correct page for the correct keyword term 27% of the time compared to correct indexing by Bing 76% of the time.

Accurate indexing of local content equals relevant and accurate results for search queries. It would appear that Bing’s indexing relevancy for local content is 3 times more accurate than Google’s.

National search relevancy

For national search terms we used 40 keywords and found there to be no major difference in overall search relevancy. For example the word “oyster” returned the results we expected for a single keyword. The results were quite evenly spread out among the most popular uses of the word oyster. From the edible bi-valve, to Oyster yachts, to Oyster hotels, the results were nearly identical.

However for our study Google performed slightly better in our relevancy standards of indexing and returning pages where content matched the keyword context 73 percent of the time compared to Bing’s 69 percent.

In Summary

Though it is not as obvious in highly competitive search terms, It has become extremely apparent Google is monetizing local search to its benefit. Relevancy on a local level seems to be second seat to selling pay per click ads. Google clearly has a better ability to match context relevancy to its search results than it is currently providing but instead has tweaked the algorithms to bury a large percentage of relevant pages so far in the search results that many local business owners must opt of an AdWords ad to be seen by consumers interested in their services. When you add that to the SEO circus Google has turned the Internet into, it is hard to maintain that warm and fuzzy feeling Google once provided its users. This writer firmly believes the game is rigged at the expense of local small business owners who can not afford an expensive AdWords campaign.

Google maps may have helped some businesses but with the ease of ability to spam the local map results it can not be deemed reliable in terms of relevancy or very reassuring that you are actually finding a local business rather than a referral service. The more “reviews” and the higher your “ratings” the higher you will place in the local search map. It really is as easy as getting all your friends to write a review for your business and you will be at the top of the list. I am sure many of you have heard of the locksmith referral examples that have swept the media, it was a referral service that had spammed the results and the same service was coming up in multiple metro areas nationwide and often had 20+ listings in each city.

Obviously Google and Matt Cutts’ war against spam has proved to be a complete joke when it comes to local search. They have done more to hurt the small local business owner than any large Internet company has ever done in the past by allowing the abuse to continue and remain in their search results. At one point in time the Internet held significant promise for affordable local business advertising only to be taken away by typical corporate greed. Google AdWords has gone from an opt-in form of advertising on the internet if you wanted more traffic, to nearly a required one if you want any traffic at all.

What is particularly perplexing is the fact that Google is aware of the problem with local search yet they do nothing to remedy the situation. It seems this further supports the monetization theory. If Google created something that was too good at returning relevant results to service and product seekers, the vendors of those products and services would have no reason to participate in an AdWords campaign.

An interesting side note; Microsoft physically mailed a letter to my company for us to confirm our location and business “existence” by sending us a pin number to verify our listing within Bing’s webmaster tools. Obviously Microsoft is determined to deliver a more relevant local search result and spam free user experience to the users of the new Bing search engine. Though I have never been a big fan of Microsoft or it’s products due largely to its “bully” mentality while Gates was in control, it would seem the “new” Microsoft is seriously working on its image and starting to produce the products computing consumers expect with its introduction of Bing, Windows 7, their push to a more standards compliant web browser, as well as working with the W3c in development of the next web standards.

Since July, my business has received roughly 80 percent of its Internet leads from a search engine that only occupies 10 percent of all searches conducted on the Internet.

And best of all, all those leads from Bing were free.

Be thankful Bing is replacing Yahoo. Perhaps then many of us local business owners will no longer be held for ransom as we are now and we will actually be able to be found on the Internet more readily. That is of course, until Microsoft follows Google’s lead…

Roy Hunter

Florida Marketing Consultants

August 2, 2009

http://www.mymarketingcompany.com

OK, so you built this fantastic website, published it, signed up for Google Analytics, check it each day and nothing is happening. Reminds me of a comment I made in previous article how so many people think if you build it they will come… Unless you are McDonald’s, Wall Mart, Home Depot… It just isn’t going to happen.

In that previous article I gave an example of how you can be creative when increasing your content to drive traffic to your website as a means of increasing your ranking in the Search Engine Result Pages or SERP’s for short.

That article can be found here: http://www.mymarketingcompany.com/wordpress/?p=18

In this article I am going to discuss another hands on approach.

The first thing you have to understand is generating traffic takes time. You should be devoting at least 3 hours a week to optimizing your new website, increasing the content by adding additional pages, writing blog articles, and chasing the people you want to look at your new website.

A fantastic way to drive traffic to your website is to write a blog. No matter what you do for business, I am sure there is something you can say about it. For example; you have a dog products business. You sell everything from collars to doggie strollers. You don’t think you can write anything about dog stuff? Sure you can, write an article about your newest product lines, mention some of the outrageous toys you have for sale. Do you sell dog training aids? Pick one and write an article how the aid is best used and what your professional opinion is about it.

Not only does a person that does not own the training aid get to see how it is used,  (which can persuade the buying decision) someone that just purchased one will also find your article informative if they are not sure how to use it.

People who are not your customers, who own dogs, are going to find your articles by searching for information on dog products on the Internet. If they do a search for “training aid reviews” and they find your blog on that training aid, they may become new customers when they discover you sell the product.

If you write an article about any product, mention you sell product in your store. Suddenly you are gaining customers that were not looking for your store, they were looking for information about a certain training aid they want to buy. They found your article, which led them to your store, and now they are your customer. It really is that easy and it works.

Another good way to find customers is by participating in online forums. Business forums about small business development and marketing are fantastic, not only can you learn something but you can promote your business at the same time. Every time you post a question or make a comment in a forum, put a link to your business in your signature. Talk about your business in your replies. Tell everyone “I have a dog product business and this is something that worked for me” or “I have a dog product business, can anyone give me advice how to”…

I am sure you get the idea.

Readers of those forums will own dogs. When they see a post from you and discover you have a dog business and the link is in your signature, they are going to look out of curiosity. If they see something they like, they are going to buy it.

There are a lot of interesting ways you can find customers, the main thing, be creative, get the word out. Someone will see your page and like what you are offering.

My marketing company exists to help people promote their business. That is what we do and nothing else. I write articles to give you, the reader, ideas how to promote your business. On our website we give you free tools to develop and promote your business.

We have over 3000 links to information essential to business and marketing development. It is a virtual library at your fingertips. I would encourage you to look at the directory, it is quite impressive. It is the same information I often use for my clients.

You can find it here http://www.mymarketingcompany.com/links.html

I have also recently added a marketing forum. It is a place where you can get free help and more ideas on marketing strategies, AS WELL AS PROMOTE YOUR BUSINESS! But to promote it you have to participate.

You can find the forum here: http://www.mymarketingcompany.com/forum/

I can not do everything for you unless you are willing to pay me a lot of money to do it. All I can do is give you ideas and some tools to use so you can do it yourself. It is up to you to either do the work or pay someone to do it. If you want your website to be seen, those are the only two choices you have. The internet is a VERY competitive place and you can not hit a home run unless you step up to the plate.

Roy Hunter
July 16, 2009
http://www.mymarketingcompany.com/

I get a lot of inquiries about web page ranking in search engine results by a lot of my clients so I thought it would be helpful to write a quick article on the subject.

We have all heard the term, build it and they will come. That might work for McDonald’s, however, just having a web page on the internet these days simply is not enough to get the customers you need. If you are representing your business with a single web page that only contains a minimum of information, chances are pretty good it will not be seen in the organic search results of most search engines. Then you find yourself forced to rely on pay-per-click advertising if you want to have your site appear on the first page of relevant search results for the goods or services you provide -  and this can get expensive.

What most business owners think is a simple task of getting their business offerings seen, creating an effective web page that is a highly useful tool for marketing of goods and services is much more complex than it seems.

You have to market your marketing.

Not only do you need to market your business offerings, you also have to effectively market what you are using to market your business.

This is where so many business fall short of achieving an effective internet marketing strategy.

I ask my clients, “Why should consumers do business with you?” and they begin to tell me how good their customer service is, how unique their products are, about the quality of their work, how affordable it is to use their service, how good their food is…

Then I ask them “Why should someone look at your web page?” So they can see what we do. What are you doing to make them want to see what you do? That is usually where I am responded with silence and confusion.

What a lot of business owners do not understand is they are often not the only business offering the goods and services they provide. Search results often display 10 results per page for a search query. For example, if you are a Mexican restaurant in a very large metropolitan area such as Dallas Texas there may be 200 Mexican restaurants for local residents to choose from.

What are the first ten Mexican restaurants in the search results doing to be ranked in the top ten? How did they get there?

They are offering viewers a reason to look at their website, they are offering more than one web page as a point of entry to their website, and they are using search keywords other than “Mexican Restaurant Dallas” to do it.

There is one basic principle that needs to be kept in mind to understand why a web page is in the top 10 search results, POPULARITY. They are the websites that viewers like the best, go to the most often, and can get there the easiest.

Don’t think about marketing the business, market the website.

I don’t know how many times I have said this to a client and had them look at me like I was crazy. “We want the website to market the business!”

First things first. A website is not going to market your business if it can not be found and offers no reason for viewers to look at it. It will not be popular as a result, and it will not come up in the top 10 search results.

What will make viewers want to view your website? CONTENT, VARIETY, and INFORMATION!

If you can create content for your website, it is like waiving a magic wand over it and viewers will come.

This article is a little too short for me to go into a lot of different ways of creating content for various businesses. I am going to stick to the Mexican restaurant example and show a few ways content can be created that is specifically designed to boost the popularity of a website, which eventually will increase it’s placement in search results, so the real customers you are interested in finding – can find you.

Consider interests that are related to what you sell and produce content based on that interest. What is common to a Mexican restaurant? Mexico. If you are from Mexico create a page on your website about the area you are from, some local pictures, points of interest, things to do, great hotels in that area, how to travel there, the favorite local cuisine…

Do you have a recipe that you are willing to share with a viewer? Create a page specifically for that.

What you are doing is creating web page’s within your website that someone looking for information on traveling to Mexico, or a new Mexican dish to try at home will find. They may be located in Colorado and your business is in Texas, but you are creating popularity for your website through content, which will boost the search ranking of your website for the viewers in Dallas Texas.

Multiple Points of Entry

If you are focusing on a few search words for people to find you and drive them to a single web page page for your business, you are limiting who can find you, the search words used to find you, and how many people will find you.

If I enter the search term “Restaurant specials in Dallas” I expect to see in the search results the Dallas restaurants that are offering specials through their website. If I see a Mexican restaurant is offering a free margarita with every dinner and I like margaritas and Mexican food, I am going to look at that website.

Having a web page within your website that is devoted to your restaurant specials, you are creating a side door for viewers to find you based on different search terms and interest. They may not be specifically looking for a Mexican restaurant, they are more interested in specials being offered by restaurants, and because you have a page dedicated to specials, you just found a new customer.

What side doors can you offer your customers? What can you do to make your website popular?

Marketing a website is a complex task, it takes time, effort, and content. The results are not immediate. A local marketing consultant in your area can be a wealth of assistance in proper website development and show you the best ways to market your marketing website.

If you want to see a good example of a website optimized for multiple points of entry, look at our company website located HERE. As you browse through our links you will see that every page has the same header, footer, and link table. If you were not directed to our home page and you entered our site through any of our other link pages, you would think you had found our main page. We have 9 categories of marketing listed in our link table, every page has been optimized for each specific category. If a searcher is looking for internet marketing, the Internet marketing page is what will come up in their search results.

That is a lot of categories which includes a lot of keywords.  How many does your website have?

Looking for free marketing advice? Join our free marketing forum and post your questions HERE.