4 Quarters Design & Build is a Five Tech client that witnessed this bleed first hand.  Their recently redesigned website earned them the opportunity to take part in a TV news story and gain valuable offline exposure for their business.

A recent deck collapse in the Twin Cities led the WCCO reporter to find a deck construction expert to contribute to their story.   A quick search on Google by the TV reporter and he had his expert, 4 Quarters owner Brian Jacobson.

Building Credibility
It’s easy to see that the key to a successful website and online marketing is credibility.  The right look and feel, helpful content and other elements all contribute to your website being viewed as a trusted resource.  That resource might be needed by a search engine or by a TV reporter, either way the benefits can be numerous.

Congrats to 4 Quarters and Brian on the air time, can we get your autograph?

Here is one of our clients, a CPA firm with 2 offices that have earned top rankings in both the local and organic results.  Their positions are boxed in red.

Consider that the user not only has 2 links to click into to bring them to their website or more information on their business, but they greatly climb the user’s trust curve by being seen multiple times on the page.  Here are the results for their 2nd office.

Occupying more of the search results page real estate should be the goal of any business.  The first step is understanding that local search and organic search are two separate things with separate elements and ranking formulas.

Your local search listings are generated from how your business is registered with the engines as well as other online resources. A great step to start with for many businesses is using GetListed.org to verify if you have claimed your local business listings with the major search engines.

With the combination of local search and organic search results working together, you can greatly increase your website’s exposure.

Two packed sessions of Minnesota business owners, marketers, web designers and more soaked up an incredible amount of Internet marketing knowledge from leading experts as well as staff from Google and Bing.  GetListed.org’s Local University delivered as promised with solid education, best practices, approach, tools and more that anyone can implement at some level for marketing online.

Personally, in helping bring the Local U event to the Twin Cities it was satisfying to hear so many of the positive comments following each session and read all of the tweets.  Below are just a few Twitter comments from the day:

This is one workshop that is only out to educate it’s attendees, not sell.

Thank you to all involved, local sponsors Deluxe & ReliaCloud, the attendees, speakers, promotional partners and friends that help me pull this together.

The amount of valuable local search and online marketing information that was shared is awesome.  Smart people that enjoy sharing their vast knowledge is what Local U is all about.  How great is that?  I’m proud to have been part of this great group and event.

Here are a few photos from the event ….

Learn more on GetListed.org and the Local University series, who’s next stop is Cleveland, Ohio in June.

Who is this conference for?

This has been a big question I get when talking about the event.  I thought I would offer a small summary of what I feel every level of business owner, marketer or SEO can get from this great opportunity.

Entry Level - If you are a business owner, running a business or a small business marketer you may very well get the most out of Local University.  A solid amount of the information and sessions are gear toward baseline education, do-it-yourself tips and giving you a clear understanding of how things work and how you can benefit.  Confusion on Internet marketing will be replaced by clarity.

Intermediate Level- Where some of the information covered might be a good refresher, you’ll still get some new angles and information.  There is no doubt that the local search expertise presenting will give you more insight into this exploding area of the web and business.  The Q & A sessions will also give you access to ask questions in some areas that might be of specific interest to you.

Expert Level- Here is a great chance to support the industry you work in.  The chance to learn may still exist within the local search presentations, but the chance to network with other great Internet marketing minds as well as business owners and other local marketers is fantastic.

This 4 hour workshop will cover fantastic information on search engine optimization, local search , social media and more.  It’s a jam packed line-up that can benefit all levels of Internet marketers.

• Register now and use the code five2010 to get $40 off, dropping your cost to just $89 for this event.

Thank you to the local sponsors helping make this event possible, Deluxe and ReliaCloud.

Organized by GetListed.org co-founder David Mihm, the seminar featured a great line-up of experienced Internet marketers as well as Google and Bing representatives.  The Local University seminar will be heading out to other cities in 2010, bringing a fantastic wealth of information for any business or organization looking to improve their online marketing knowledge.

In just a 4 hour session, attendees took part in detailed presentations, real world case studies, Q & A sessions, how-to’s, do-it-yourself tips, resources and more.  Overall it was some incredible search, social and local/maps information, from talented presenters, all for $129. A complete steal to get a ton of  basics, the best practices and the baseline to market online.

The panel of speakers form left to right were Mikko Ollila of Bing, Ryan Hayward of Google, Matt McGee of Small Business SEM, Mike Blumenthal a local search expert, David Mihm of GetListed.org and Mary Bowling of seOverflow. Not pictured above was Spokane SEO expert Ed Reese.

Local University is a must for any business that wants real answers, real examples and access to grasp the opportunity to succeed online.

In addition to attending the seminar it was a chance for me to finally connect in person with other search marketers I have read, done business with and interacted with for some time.  I had a great time meeting a few new ones too like Mary Bowling, Mike Blumenthal (aka Professor Maps) and Mike Ramsey as the presenters took in dinner the night before.

Minneapolis In The Local University Future?
The one last piece that put me on a flight to Spokane was to attract the Local University offering to the Minneapolis area later this year.  The amount of information, the level of expertise and the complete offering would be perfect for the local business community here in the Twin Cities.

I can tell you that the event left Spokane buzzing, satisfied and hoping for another one.

Hopefully I’ll have some good news soon, but don’t hesitate to let your voice be heard with a comment below.

The Details Matter
A successful Google AdWords campaign involves the right research, configuration and tracking to get you anywhere near the perceived pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.

When done right, pay per click marketing produces a marketing formula of sorts, a map of numbers that lets you evaluate the investment it takes to land a conversion.  Depending on your business and website, this conversion might be an e-commerce sale, a specific download, visitors to a specific page or just getting users to your website.

While this post is just an overview, the following main items are key to a solid AdWords PPC campaign:

1. Research – You must understand your audience, the keyword terms they will be searching for.

2. Configuration – The correct set-up of an AdWords account, campaigns, settings, budgets and tracking tools are all key elements.

3. Copywriting – What your ad says matters! In many cases you will want to test different ads and text to see what performs best.

4. Landing Pages – The most overlooked item is landing pages. You need to understand that when a user clicks an ad, you have this small window to convert them. Sending your ad link to your home page is not going to cut it, take them right to the conversion point and make it easy for them to buy, download or contact you.

5. Evaluation – The ability to track and review data is one of PPC’s biggest assets. Having Google Analytics and your AdWords configured correctly to track each movement is a must. Without it, your flying blind.

6. Adjustments – The best campaigns are reviewed and assessed weekly and even daily. Just setting it up and letting it run is a bad idea.  You want evaluate and make decsions on the right adjustments to find your strongest results.

We hope this quick overview is helpful.  If you have been wanting to explore Google AdWords or have tried it the wrong way in the past, Five Technology is here to help you with the right strategy to get results.  Give us a holler!

With all of the complexity in SEO, we offer this simple question to help clients get a better grasp.

Is Your Website Worth Being Found?

Does your website answer questions?  Does your website provide service or process examples?  Does your content educate or provide insight? Does your website offer tips? Is your content well structured and linked?

The fact that you want more leads, does not make your website a good resource for others.  Rankings are not determined on how badly you want visitors and new business opportunities.

View search rankings as an evaluation of your website as a resource, a trusted resource.  If your website isn’t a resource for people searching Google, Yahoo or Bing for answers or information, then you won’t rank well.

3 Tips To Become A Resource Online & Improve Search Rankings

1. Be clear with your content on what you offer.  Stay away from marketing speak and deliver the concise message of what you offer/do.  Simple beats sexy … “We are a trusted Minneapolis air conditioning service and repair company.”

2. Develop better content ideas than “About Us”, “Products” and “Services”.  If you have a process, outline it.  If you have satisfied clients and experience, put together case studies.  Build a list of “10 things to know before selecting your car insurance provider”.  The more you help a website visitor, the more trust you create.

3. Web content that is easy to understand and valuable attracts links from other websites.  Links act as votes of trust for your website.  Getting back to #2, do you think your “About Us” page is worth linking to?

So the next time you head to Google to find an article on SEO tips, consider changing your approach.  Give some thought to how valuable of a resource your website is and what you can do to improve it.

There were some great Buffalo and Wright County businesses / organizations in attendance and I enjoyed the 45 minute presentation. Getting to share my knowledge and passion for the web is one of the best things I get to do at Five. Thank you to the Chamber for the invite to speak and present!

Speaking of presentations, we will be announcing a business blogging seminar soon for late May.  We should be getting the details out next week.

Thanks to Five web programmer @travisneids for taking the photos.

A New Top Keyword
I thought I would update that post with how this new Google search feature has effected our search engine traffic.  Prior to this local feature, our top terms of referral traffic were our company name and then “web design MN”, “Minnesota web design” and other variations.

In the past week we have a new top term for bringing traffic to our website, “web design”.  Prior to the Google change, we would have never even dreamt of competing for the term of web design without a location or another term attached. In doing just some minor research, we appear in the local search results for 11 different zip codes.  With our office being rurally located, we bleed into other areas results from as far as 20 miles away.  If we were right in Minneapolis this wouldn’t be the case, but the search volume for “web design” would be much higher.  Not too bad of a trade off.

This new local search feature creates a lot of opportunity for small businesses to attract more buisness from Google.  It also shines a much brighter light on local search, a focus we will see increase in the coming months for sure.

Instead of having to search “Dentists in Delano, MN”, you can just type “Dentists” and get local results on page one. Google is using the location of your Internet provider (ISP) to determine where you are, so there will be some variables and inaccurate results, but local search results are there.  Google is trying to improve your search results, feeling that your search probably has local intent.

Local search blogger Paul Jahn weighed in on the new local search feature and the change location ability.  Having an ISP that is local is one hurdle, but Paul points out the “change location” feature to help correct that.  As my example above shows, my results are for Maple Plain which is 10 miles from where we actually office in Delano.  There are still a few Delano results though.

Matt McGee also put together a great post over at Search Engine Land on this and gave some examples, the positives and the challenges.

Local Search Is Important & Improving
The biggest takeaway here is that local search is getting easier for the user.  Google is working to understand what you want.  It is also going to become even more important for the small business to make sure they are represented in the Google 10 pack of local results.

Small business now have the chance to compete for popular one keyword or two keyword searches.  This opportunity shouldn’t be ignored.  This addition is great on many levels and I’m sure we’ll be posting on it more in the coming months.