I (Tim Judd) attended the morning session “Google’s Latest Word on Local” and while the description in the Agenda promised that “the reigning power in Local on line advertising” had a new sheriff in town, most of us mulling in the hallway before the early session didn’t expect much to be different. Then Todd Rowe, Google’s director of global SMB reseller partnerships, presented Google’s new approach to working with Local Ad Words Resellers. Now, I have sat through any number of presentations by various Google’s team at various conferences. Each one was given by a different person…the job of looking after Local gets passed around a lot at Google…they were uniformly mysterious cagey and generally opaque. Google is Google…and who the heck are you anyway was the general approach. The attendees would walk away scratching their heads, did Google understand the potential of Local Search? Did we just sit through an hour long session and not learn a thing?

Today was different. The new guy for local channel addressed the conference today and there was a surprising difference. The new guy isn’t from Google…he’s an ex SAP guy (elocallisting runs our accounting on SAP, btw) who is all about building and running a big powerful channel program.

While not actually apologetic he did concede that historically the Local Search crew had been inaccessible, inscrutable, and generally a difficult to work with (a hush came over the room, yeah we know this) and then something we hadn’t expected – that is going to change. In the new world, Google is appointing a Global Partner Council which will meet a couple of times a year and at those meeting (I picture them as happening in dark smoke filled rooms) Google will share the vision of Local Search and ask for input. Also they have up’d their head count, increased the number of partner relationships and they have decided that from now on they will actually answer email. That’s incredible, and very exciting. If it works and it gives us poor integrators and resellers better visibility into where Google is headed so we can plan our products and strategies accordingly that will help a lot.

Meantime, at eLocal Listing we’ll keep slogging away getting local businesses leads from Local Search, making the phone ring with new business for local businesses. The world is changing rapidly and if you are a local business even trying to keep up is a huge task. In fact it’s impossible. We’ll do what we do, we’ll get our customers found in search….and we’ll see what happens with the new Google guys.

I will keep my ears and eyes open to see if somewhere in a closet, empty room, or hallway, the real Google guys aren’t tied and gagged and desperately trying to get free and give the morning session on Google’s Latest Word.

Tim Judd
President and CEO of eLocal Listing, the nation’s leading provider of internet marketing.
www.elocallisting.com

OK, so I shouldn’t be too tough on Ask.com as the mistake happened two years ago, but I can’t really resist poking a bit of fun at ask.com on May 5th (Cinco do Mayo) and after Experian® Hitwise® announces that its share of searches has increased 4 months in a row.

In an article posted on April 7, 2010 Experian® Hitwise® announced that Google accounted for 69.97 percent of all U.S. searches in March 2010.  Yahoo! made up 15.04%, bing.com 9/62%, and Ask.com 3.44% the fourth month in a row that Ask.com saw an increase in searches.  These statistics show a small decrease in search volume to Google, Yahoo!, and bing, but it is still clear that Google remains the King of Search Volume in the U.S. and it doesn’t look like they will be dethroned any time soon.  Making an Internet Marketing Strategy that includes being found prominently on Google a must for savvy business owners.

So, back to poking a bit of fun at Ask … and it has nothing to do with their Search Share, instead it has to do with a blunder they made on this very day two years ago.  In creating their logo for May 5th, 2008 … instead of Cinco de Mayo .. they misspelled it Cinco Do Mayo … Too funny!  Hey Google … we like the subtle changes in your logo as well … subtle, very subtle!

eLocal Listing provides Internet Marketing to thousands of small businesses across the U.S.

Never before has eLocal Listing’s Found Fast Products made such an impact so quickly.  The success story of United Glass of Louisiana demonstrates how eLocal Listing gets business up on the major Search Engines and fast.  On March 26th Holly from United Glass was contacted by Herb La Madrid from our corporate headquarters for a 3 City Found Fast Multi-City Package.  This regional package includes free submission to Yahoo! And Google Local, as well as the creation of a Profile Page that balances SEO and Marketing.  In less than a week they received their first call from their eLocal Listing Internet Marketing Package and the calls just keep coming.  In the first three weeks of April, United Glass has received over 4 quality calls as a direct result of their Found Fast Multi-City Package.  In less than one month, they have received 16 calls.  We look forward to driving more calls to United Glass.

United Glass has been providing quality auto glass services in Kenner, LA for over 50 years.  They focus on customer service and are committed to excellence.  Their services include:   Auto Glass, windshield replacement or repair and mobile auto glass services.  We think that United Glass Rocks – Hear what they have to say about our services.

April 2010
United Glass has been in the glass business since 1959 and have tried several different online advertisement services, however they charge us per lead even if we don’t book the job.  We signed up with eLocal Listing and love their product and service.  eLocallisting is different from other Online Advertising companies because 1) You know when someone is calling through eLocal’s Internet Marketing because of the prompt ahead of the call.  This makes it easy to keep track of how many calls you are getting a day.  2) The quantity and the quality of the calls versus the other guy’s (wrong #s, etc) are much higher with eLocal Listing.  3) The set fee each month and not per lead allows us to budget and plan rather than wonder how much our marketing is going to cost each month. 4) Last, but not least is the Customer Service that is provided by eLocal Listing.  They call to keep you updated on your account and we absolutely love doing business with eLocal Listing.  They are friendly, honest, and helpful.

Thank You eLocal Listing
The Staff and Owners at United Glass of Kenner, LA

Thank You United Glass – We think you rock!

An online tool that allows eLocal Listing Customers to Easily Track Campaign Success and ROI

Temecula, CA (PRWeb) April 22, 2010 – eLocal Listing, one of the nation’s fastest growing local internet marketing companies offering affordable online advertising solutions for small to mid-sized businesses, announces the launch of their Quick Glance Dashboard. eLocal Listing’s Quick Glance Dashboard is an online campaign tracking and monitoring tool that allows Multi-City customers to gain access to detailed and thorough information about the success of their internet marketing campaign 24/7.

With the Quick Glance Dashboard customers can track all campaign activity in an easy to use dashboard that allows customers to track campaign activity at a glance with intuitive data, charts, and graphs. And because they are available on line 24/7, customers can glance when they get the chance.

The Quick Glance Dashboard allows customers the ability to keep track of the number of calls, visits, emails, text messages, and now clicks to a customer’s web site as a direct result of their eLocal Listing Found Fast Internet Marketing Campaign.

Our unique Call Tracking and Call Reporting features lets customers see call dates, times, duration and status and even allows them to listen to each call generated by their eLocal Listing Campaign. The Quick Glance Dashboard provides insightful graphs and charts that allow small business owners the ability to monitor call activity, visits to their Profile Pages, emails, text messages, and website clicks. In addition, our user friendly graphs help business owners with internal sales training and staffing requirements through easy to use graphs that detail missed calls, call volume, and call quality. All of which are designed to help turn a search in to a sale.

Phil Dizon the lead engineer on this project and a graduate of University of California, Irvine, also played an integral part in the development of our Found Fast Technology and the installation of our SAP Business One System comments on the launch. “We are excited that our customers will reap the benefits of our new Quick Glance Dashboard. Designed with our customers in mind, it is a simple and easy way for our customers to see how well their profiles are doing over time; from the number their profile page has been visited to the number of calls and emails received. Our beta launch received a great response from our internal users and our customers who participated in the test; we anticipate that the official launch will receive similar accolades.”

The Quick Glance Dashboard is currently available for eLocal Listing Multi-City Customers with Call Tracking.

About Us

eLocal Listing, LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Search Initiatives, LLC and is located in Temecula, CA. eLocal Listing specializes in managing internet marketing campaigns for small businesses. eLocal Listing’s small business online advertising solutions are both affordable and effective. The company has over 100 employees and currently provides local internet marketing solutions to over 10,000 customers.

Contact info:
Carolee Collins carolee.collins@elocallisting.com
1.800.285.0484

The unofficial Google motto for the longest time has been “don’t be evil”. It’s a laudable goal and one that they have done a pretty good job of living up to for many years. However, there is one glaring hole in their shinny armor where evil is in danger of oozing in. We are a local SEO company focused on getting small businesses found in the search engines at a price they can afford. The Google Local Business Center allows local businesses to adopt their listing for free, it’s a community service where millions of happy, honest, fluffy, and well behaved local businesses update their own listings so that all the world can find them.

Google has opened a way for large companies with lots of offices to enter and manage their own information but beyond that small business are pretty much on their own. One of the more unpleasant side effects of this laissez faireapproach is that business of the less friendly and fluffy kind can in fact easily adopt competitors listings in an attempt to drive customers to them by fraud. There was a recent case in Australia where a florist was convicted of doing just this and received a fine and a bunch of community service time. Google claimed they were “shocked just shocked” to hear of such underhand and hard to predict behavior. That is a little hard to swallow as we come across it all the time.

The simple solution would be for Google to allow companies (or their agents like us) to adopt their listings and lock them through a verifiable and traceable approach…like…hummm…let’s see…how about a credit card! It doesn’t even have to be charged…but it would at least deter the casual scoundrel. Without some form of suitable security the LBC will remain vulnerable to abuse. Of course one way to absolutely secure your listing is to join the LBC advertising program and pay for your listing to be featured for local queries…but making business do that by making the rest of the LBC chaotic would be evil wouldn’t it?

Temecula, CA (PR Web) October 2009 — eLocal Listing, the leading provider of affordable Internet Marketing solutions to small and medium-sized businesses, announced today that they have entered into a strategic agreement with PixelFish, a leader in providing affordable and effective custom video ad solutions. As part of this agreement, eLocal Listing will begin offering its customers these professionally crafted videos as part of our Multi-City & Premium Online Advertising Packages.
New customers will receive a free of charge, professionally designed 20 – 25 second long video embedded onto their eLocal Business Profile Page and distributed across the Internet. These videos have proven to capture the attention of a targeted audience and initiate a call to action by consumers.
Both eLocal Listing and PixelFish are pioneers in providing affordable and effective online advertising solutions that level the playing field by giving small and medium sized businesses unparalleled access to these must have business tools; a strong online presence and an online video ad.
“It seems like only yesterday that eLocal Listing was one of the first (if not the first) to bring online video to small businesses with the introduction of the eLocal Video program”, said Tim Judd, CEO and President of eLocal Listing. “Our relationship with PixelFish is another way that eLocal Listing can bring value to our customers. We are online marketing specialists not movie makers, our videos were great but the professionally produced videos created by PixelFish have proven to be even better. We can now give small businesses videos which compete with businesses with much larger marketing budgets. It’s very exciting for us to be able to offer small businesses videos from a production team that has won three highly coveted silver Telly awards and the 2008 Horizon Interactive Award. The work produced by the team at PixelFish is compelling, concise and right on target in delivering a message that converts a search into a sale. It is like having an advertising agency on your team. We are proud to be partnering with such an innovative and talented team.”
John McIntyre, CEO of PixelFish adds, “We are truly excited about the opportunity to partner with an online marketing innovator like eLocal Listing. eLocal Listing’s commitment to giving small businesses access to the power of video fits perfectly with our strategy of providing the most affordable and effective video ad solutions. eLocal Listing shares our vision of going beyond simply producing a nice-looking video and taking it to the next level of delivering the most effective video for each business that measurably improves lead generation and conversions.”

About eLocal Listing
eLocal Listing is a wholly owned subsidiary of Search Initiatives, LLC and is located in Temecula, CA.
eLocal Listing specializes in managing internet marketing [internet marketing] campaigns for small and medium sized businesses. The company has over 120 employees and currently thousands of customers who take advantage of eLocal’s expertise in Search Optimization and internet search. www.elocallisting.com

About PixelFish
PixelFish, Inc. is a technology-driven provider of award-winning video advertising solutions. The company has developed a revolutionary platform for quickly and easily creating, distributing, and optimizing the most affordable and effective custom video ads. Its intuitive online applications enable a range of video solutions that meet the varying needs and budgets of businesses of all sizes, supported by its global network of more than 3,000 professional videographers. PixelFish is the leading provider of custom-produced video ads to Google, YellowBook and other ad network, search and directory partners. Founded in 2006, PixelFish is a privately-held corporation headquartered in Torrance, California. To learn more, please visit www.pixelfish.com.

OK, I have waited my entire career in product marketing to have a product or to associate myself with a company with a great name. What did I get ? Atex, MEI and product names like IAR, Integrated Accounts Receivable, OK, I named it and sure it was concise and clear, you knew what you were getting right? Yep, an integrated Accounts Receivable package, but try to be clever in your press releases or your promotional packaging. I always wanted some sort of a name that I could rhyme with, make up cute little diddies, use puns, clichés, all those things that people roll their eyes at (and Marketing Coordinators that are 20 years younger, say “I don’t get it”, (shout out to you Jackie, miss you)), but I longed for the catchy, the inane, the just plain silly. Even if it never made it to print or web, it would have been fun to sit around and think of what we could say … I can just imagine the laughs we would have had back in suite 102, Aaaron, Steve, Justin, and the crew! Certainly, eLocal Listing is a name that is solid, makes sense, not a bad choice, again clear and concise, what do we do we provide Internet “e” Local “too obvious to put in parentheses) and Listing, as part of our Internet Marketing campaign we submit Google and Yahoo! Listings. And the logo, oh Steve and Aaron, just refrain … it is OK, I get it … blue, black, chart representing growth, business like. Sure it reminds you of the AT&T bars, but it beat the “ Mickey Mouse” ears logo we had before. But try to use either one of those to come up with a catchy slogan or marketing campaign. Sigh I had been relinquished to a career with product with a boring name … Oh flash back I worked and had to design a website for a company called PPI who had three big RED ARIAL ITALIC BOLD LETTERS as their logo … not good .. sorry, I digress and I will through this entire blog. It will make no sense and may appear self indulgent, but imagine my wonder when I was presented (like a gift) with something I could finally work with, a name, a logo, a partnership with a company who has a cool logo and a name that anyone who has ever had anything to do with marketing would die for … I had a fish. OK, I always wanted a dog, but a fish would do!

So, no I am not going to tell you what I am actually talking about (yet) … I have a fish (of sorts), so for the next few minutes, I am going to get it out of my system … so Martin, our amazing Social Media guy points me to an all Fish Quote site for inspiration … Oh this is fun!

So, let’s see now I can use sayings like “get hooked on”, the whole teach a man to fish saying, fish tales, fish stories, nothing fishy here … fish and visitors stink after three days … Sorry, I know I can’t actually use that one, but I always wanted to quote Ben Franklin in something I did …

Alright so it isn’t as easy as it seems … but it was fun nonetheless .. I guess I could use some help … anyone have any good fish quotes … after all those years with boring names and logos and I draw a blank … Comments, responses are welcomed and encouraged, can’t give you anything for them, just a thanks!

“Give me a fish and I eat for a day. Give me a PixelFish and I eat for a lifetime.” That is your only clue on what I am talking about!

Til next time … more great stuff coming.

This post was written by Carolee Collins

Here is a recap from e Local listing’s Stephen Espinosa DMS 09 – Direction Media Strategies session.

Fixing the taxonomy structure of a site is not enough on its own, the other content and tag structures is as important if not more important.

YellowPages has to figure out a way to deliver answers to questions asked that don’t follow a normal YP (YellowPages) structure

Engaging the community to add more content is important, user or business generated content drives SEO results

SEO needs to filter through the entire organization, from sales people up through all aspects of product

If you rely on business to create their own content you can run into big problems

Setting the right expectation is important, in the early days of SEM (Search Engine Marketing) sales people scorched the earth and burned a lot of trust.

WebVisibles’ sweet spot is 800-1200 per month and they look for one year engagements to allow for peaks and troughs in the market

IYPs (Internet Yellow Pages) aren’t doing a good job of optimizing and distributing local customer videos, the search engines want to display video to video destinations….local videos are the easiest way to get ranked on the front page of search.

SEO can be less tangible but adds enormous value, if it can also stop one of your competitors from getting to the front page.

Videos are sexy…elocal sees 3.1x improvement in performance…video ad networks don’t work as well as youtube and yahoo video

One of the strongest ways to get multiple hits is to put data on multiple domains

Freshness of content is as important as having content…don’t expect immediate results…it’s not “Set and Forget”

You have to be committed to SEO from the top…it’s not black magic it’s an important way to drive results

So there you have it! A great recap from e Local Listing‘s Stephen Espinosa’s session at Direction Media Strategies.

I had the privilege of being invited to Webmaster Radio to speak on SEM Synergy Hosted by Bruce Clay, president and founder of the international SEO and SEM company Bruce Clay, Inc. I was interviewed
by Virginia, an Associate Writer and director of the radio show. Also had Ben Saren as a guest who is an Online media entrepreneur and CEO of CitySquares.com.

We began talking about the new buzz about hyperlocal content. Which as Ben Saren says “Has actually been around for over 100 years.” Ever since the days of the newspapers.” Everyone wants Hyper Local news going on in there local neighborhoods. It’s not just about the main city in question anymore, it’s about the towns and neighborhoods. Now with the usage digital media means like photo and video cameras, audio recorders, and blogs.

Hyperlocal Blogger Toolbox:

Smart Phone or any find of digital phone that can take picture, tweet, and record video!
GeoToolKit http://outside.in
http://flickr.com
http://youtube.com
http://twitter.com
http://theflip.com

Hyperlocal Websites and Blogs:

http://neighborlogs.com/
http://wikicity.com/wiki/Main_Page
http://everyblock.com/
http://fwix.com/

Hyperlocal Twitter Tools:

http://localtweeps.com/
http://chirpcity.com/

Listen to this Podcast on Hyper Local Content.
Connect with me:
http://twitter.com/seotips2go
http://twitter.com/elocalrocks

TechCrunch50 was probably the biggest event I have been to yet! The amount of companies there was astounding! I had the privilege of meeting one of the biggest Hip Hop superstars there, Chamillionaire! Don’t be quick to judge, Chamillionaire has some deep insights when it comes to social media and web 2.0! He was on the judges panel for reviewing the startups at TechCrunch50. There were over 47 companies that were selected from over 1,000 applicants.

These were the selected TechCrunch50 Companies:

• 5to1.com
• Affective Interfaces
• AnyClip
• BreakThrough
• CLASEMOVIL
• Clicker
• ClientShow
• Clixtr
• Cocodot
• Crowd Fusion
• CrowdFlower
• Dataxu
• Glide Health
• Hark!
• HealthyWage
• iMo
• Insttant
• iTwin
• LearnVest
• Lissn
• localbacon
• Metricly
• MOTA Motors
• Perpetually
• rackup
• Radiusly
• Redbeacon
• RefMod
• Sealtale
• SeatGeek
• SGN Platform
• Spawn Labs
• Sprowtt Marketplace
• Storysomething
• Stribe
• The Whuffie Bank
• TheSwop.com
• Thoora
• threadsy
• ToonsTunes
• ToyBots Woozees
• Trollim
• Udorse
• Yext

All these companies were competing to be the top presenting company at TechCrunch50 to win a $50,000 grand prize! The TechCrunch50 Best-In-Show Award was determined by a panel of experts and the conference organizers.