Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Shrouded behind the opaque layers of search engine algorithms and search engine marketing strategies lays a simple fact about local search engine marketing that too many talented businesspersons forget: marketing is about customers. And how to get them? Tell stories.

Importance

Stories are powerful. Every culture relays its heritage and social values through storytelling. The Native Americans had their wigwams and longhouses, the Victorian English had their stages and the Americans have their cinema theaters. Customer reviews and feedback, pioneered online by companies such as eBay, Amazon and Epinions, tell stories: tales of hospitable service, affordable rates and superb products. In today's online world, this is more important than ever. A new internet-savvy generation of shoppers, termed "social researchers," look to peer feedback to influence their decisions. According to a a recent study, 70 percent of online shoppers consider other customer feedback as either "important" or "very important." This, by extension, means the business should do so as well.

Talk

Appealing to a prospect is difficult; gaining a customer is a godsend. Trying to get their feedback sometimes might as well be a search for the Fountain of Youth. That is why the ever-resourceful local web marketing community has invented a new way to make customers talk. Give them every opportunity to share their opinions with other people. Let the customer talk. Filling out a template, complete with preformed questions and checkboxes, is an impersonal act, and makes the customer feel robotic and inanimate. Giving a customer free reign to speak his or her mind gets the powerful truth out. Forget the e-mail surveys in favor of consumer-friendly letter invitations, website forums and easy-to-use submission text boxes. Most importantly, companies who really want to know what their customers think can utilize customer relationship management (CRM). The business should make sure the customer knows he or she has an attentive listener.

Things Not Anticipated

A word of caution, however, is that the customer may say things the company does not necessarily want others to see or hear. There is always one bad apple. One may wonder how to keep the barrel unspoiled. Internet marketing firms and public relations agents have found a way to help with the rants of irate customers by creating online reputation management, which monitors and partially controls an internet reputation. Thankfully, most horror stories can be removed with a kind word and understanding apology. Low-ball tactics like copyright-infringement suits or tattle-tailing to webmasters are discouraged. When this does not work, search engine reputation management can be deployed, although it does take time to be effective.

Successful Integration

Qualitative customer feedback coupled with quantitative statistical analysis, such as bounce rates, keyword accuracy, time per page and conversion rates, is a potent one-two punch for local search engine marketing.

Get customers and get reviews, which gets more customers. That is one method of effective local internet marketing.

Author is a freelance writer. For more information on local search engine marketing please visit http://www.local-marketing.com

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