Blog – Page 65

Actionable Lessons From 2014 That You Need to Know

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Did you feel overwhelmed this year by what seemed like a constant barrage of Google updates? You’re not the only one. A series of new guidelines, new dashboards, and new search algorithm updates made it a full-time job to stay on top of Google in 2014. As a business owner with your own hectic schedule, you probably weren’t able to keep up with those changes as much as you would have liked. That’s okay. Prospect Genius is here to highlight the most important points to take away from all of 2014’s changes.

Person jumping over 2015 What’s the underlying lesson? As Google continued to refine its search algorithms, and search engine optimization continued to adapt, we were reminded that it’s just as important for your campaign to have a solid foundation as it is for your campaign to evolve with Google’s changes.

Here, we give you some of the actionable insights we gleaned from 2014 so you can have an even stronger campaign through 2015.

Oldies but Goodies

The more things change, the more they stay the same. This year, we saw firsthand that some of the old, tried-and-true ways for business owners to lay the groundwork for a campaign still work. Here are a couple of classic ways you can take initiative and make sure you’re primed for a strong campaign, no matter what updates Google throws your way.
GET REVIEWS
We’ve said it over and over again on this blog, but we can’t say it enough: Customer reviews are a crucial aspect of your online presence. When prospective customers see a significant number of reviews and a positive consensus about your company’s services, they will be exponentially more likely to hire you for a job.
In 2014, we saw many clients experience great success with their SEO campaigns after fortifying them with strong customer reviews. Take a look at a few for yourself:

Conner & Sons Repair — This Michigan-based appliance repair company has a 4.9 rating (out of 5.0) from 34 reviews on its Google listing. Its first year with PG, this company got approximately 65 calls per month; the second year, it averaged over 100; the third year over 200. In August 2014, it received a whopping 551 calls! That number hasn’t dropped below 300 since.
Ace Appliance Repair, Inc. — Based in New Jersey, Ace Appliance Repair has a stellar 5.0 rating from 23 reviews! Not surprisingly, these appliance repair pros went from around 75 calls per month last year to 120-160 calls per month this year.
Jimmy Gusky Heating & Air LLC — This D.C.-metro outfit boasts a 4.6 rating from 14 reviews. That’s a slightly lower number than the two clients above, but this company is already pulling in around 75 calls per month!

While there’s no way to definitively prove that the high number of reviews in these cases caused the high number of leads, we certainly don’t think it’s a coincidence. The takeaway? You should always be asking customers to leave reviews on your Google listing. Your company’s success may depend on it.
SHARE YOUR LOCAL BUSINESS LISTINGS
This is another topic we’ve written about extensively, and it still holds true: Prospect Genius—or any online advertiser, for that matter—needs access to clients’ Google My Business accounts in order to properly optimize and manage them. We need to keep tabs on your local business listing’s performance and update it whenever necessary to remain in compliance with Google’s ever-changing guidelines.
We understand the hesitancy to share log-in information in this day and age, but that’s why Google instituted the Google My Business platform, which allows you to name a manager of your account without requiring that manager to have your password. But if you don’t name Prospect Genius as the manager of your listing, then we’ll have difficulty tracking your campaign performance and making sure all of your online information matches. This could result in conflicting information (something Google will penalize you for) and poor visibility.
As we said in our April 2014 blog post, “Hand Over Your Google+ Local Listing to a Pro“:

If you’re paying for professional online advertising services, it’s wiser to let your money work for you. You’ve made an investment in an online advertising company, so why not facilitate that company’s job to the best of your abilities? Rather than complicating matters by actively interfering with your own listings, you’re better off relinquishing a little control and letting your hired specialist do the work.

You’ve trusted Prospect Genius to perform your online advertising, so let us do the job right.

Today’s Top Hits

So, you’ve laid a strong foundation. Your content is valuable, your online reviews are glowing, and your advertiser has access to your listings. Now, it’s equally important that you make the necessary upgrades in order to adapt to Internet marketing’s ever-evolving landscape. It’s imperative to keep up with Google’s changes, or you’ll get left behind.
In 2014, we were able to examine the latest algorithm updates and determine some of the most significant actions our clients can take to boost their campaign performance going forward. Here are the highlights.
USE PAID ADVERTISING
Paid advertising became even more prevalent in 2014. Pay-per-click, or PPC, is widely recognized as a valuable investment, and it’s even more effective when combined with SEO. (Read more about that here: “Optimize Your Site Before You Bid on AdWords.”) PPC and SEO complement each other, as a site with optimized content will have a higher “Quality Score” and therefore see greater PPC success. Having an optimized site will also allow you to pay less for bids on AdWords. The best way to integrate PPC with your existing Prospect Genius campaign is to upgrade from Core to the Premium package.
In fact, PPC has grown so much in popularity that Pauline Jakober, a leading paid search strategist, recently published a whole article on Search Engine Land dedicated to extolling its benefits. Titled “5 Incredibly Practical Reasons to Do PPC in 2015,” Jakober’s article cites PPC’s consumer-targeting capability and lightning-fast results as top reasons to start using PPC this year.
Paid advertising can be leveraged outside of search engines, too. Many social media platforms, most notably Facebook, offer some form of paid advertising. In Facebook’s case, a business can create sponsored posts, which are posts you pay Facebook to target at a specified demographic. The sponsored post will then appear in the news feeds of individuals within that targeted group. Ultimately, as your posts reach more and more people, you’ll see an increase in your number of Page “Likes.”
PUBLISH MORE CONTENT
These days, Google’s algorithms favor websites that have a continuous flow of fresh content. The way Google sees it, the more up-to-date content is for its users, the better. This doesn’t mean you have to add a new page to your site every week; it just means you have to make updates every once in a while.
The best and easiest way to do that is to add a few short blog posts every month. (Every Prospect Genius LeadTrax™ site comes equipped with a fully functional blog you can update at will.) Posts don’t have to be lengthy or detailed—they just have to show prospective customers that you care about them and that you’re passionate about your work. You can recount a recent job so prospects can get a glimpse at what your process looks like, or you can give a few handy tips to homeowners. An updated blog will show off your knowledge about your trade, and it will boost your site’s SEO value to boot.
TARGET YOUR CONTENT
Specificity has become hugely important with the latest search algorithm updates. To use this to your advantage, try adding a couple of pages to your LeadTrax site that are specific to one brand or product. This way, you can capture targeted searches for things like Maytag appliance repair, Trane furnace repair, and so on.

Your Participation Is Key

Prioritizing user experience, Google constantly seeks to improve the quality of its search results. That means Prospect Genius has to make a continuous effort to elevate the perceived (and actual) value of our clients’ websites. But while we’re hard at work on your site, it’s just as important for you to do your part. Take initiative.

Make a concerted effort to get more reviews from your customers.
Give us access to your Google (and Facebook) listing.
Let us display your address on Google+ Local.
Write your own blog posts.
Add more specific pages to your LeadTrax site.

No matter how many updates Google makes to its guidelines and search algorithms, there’s one thing we’ve learned that will never change: When you take an active role in your campaign, the results will grow exponentially.
Here’s to a prosperous 2015!

HomeAdvisor: Helping Large Companies Crush Small Ones

Last Updated: December 22, 2014

Are you using HomeAdvisor to locally market your appliance repair company? You’re joined by hundreds of other nearby appliance services, many of which are at a huge disadvantage. You’ve probably gotten this feeling already—that the game is rigged in favor of larger companies with greater resources—and we’re here to confirm your suspicions. HomeAdvisor is bad for small businesses like yours.
Let’s start off with the most obvious pain point: the speed at which you’re forced to respond to leads. By now, you’ve realized that the only way to be successful on HomeAdvisor is to respond immediately to any and all leads that come your way. However, as a small, one- or two-man operation, that means you have to balance your work with answering the phone and hunting down leads. As you know firsthand, it’s awfully difficult to answer the phone when you’re already on another job with your hands inside a dishwasher or squeezed behind a refrigerator. Frankly, it’s unrealistic for a small appliance repair outfit like yours to land these jobs unless you happen to be free at the moment the call comes in. This is where big businesses get a huge leg up on you.
While this unrealistic demand for immediacy is enough of an obstacle, there’s another major problem with HomeAdvisor: the cost. At the start of your program, you agree to pay a certain amount per lead. But based on the feedback we’ve heard from many of our clients (who are small business owners like you and former HomeAdvisor customers), leads are often shared with as many as five to ten other businesses. You probably already had a feeling that the odds were stacked against you, but let’s do the math: If leads are shared with five different businesses, then that means you have a one-in-five chance of closing each lead. So, if you think about it, you’re actually paying five times as much for every lead you finally do close. On top of that, we’ve heard reports from our clients that HomeAdvisor would occasionally charge them far more than what they were told they’d be charged per lead. Has that ever happened to you? Clearly, HomeAdvisor is rigged in favor of big businesses with big budgets, because most small companies like yours are hurt by such an expensive, unpredictable investment.
But that’s not even the most frustrating part, is it? You know that even when you do respond to a lead in time, there’s a significant chance that the prospect on the other end is looking for a service that you don’t even provide! That’s because HomeAdvisor is fundamentally incentivized to send you as many leads as possible, even if they’re barely relevant to your company. The reason for that is simple: The more leads HomeAdvisor sends you, the more money it makes. Since HomeAdvisor will still charge you for a bad lead, you’ll not only be taking time away from work to track it down, but you’ll actually be losing money on it, too. Again, big companies might not have a problem with this, as they have plenty of room in their budgets. You, on the other hand, really feel the consequences of HomeAdvisor’s poorly designed services.
It’s no wonder HomeAdvisor has a one-star rating on ConsumerAffairs.com.
Prospect Genius took all of the above pain points into account when we created our lead generation program. We take great care to ensure that our goals are the same as your goals, that our success is dependent on your success. Unlike HomeAdvisor, our Core package uses SEO (search engine optimization) to generate leads and only requires a flat, monthly fee. We provide you with your own fully functional website and metered phone number. This way, when a prospective customer discovers your website or Google listing and dials that phone number, they will be calling you directly. You won’t have to go on a wild goose chase for leads that four or five other businesses are also hunting down. You can respond at your earliest convenience (although promptness should always be a priority) without worrying that you’ve automatically lost a job. Best of all, it doesn’t favor big businesses over small ones. Everyone has an equal shot at success.
You don’t need an “advisor,” you need a partner! Prospect Genius champions small businesses like yours. We offer a wide variety of online marketing tools that will match any budget. Go ahead and browse our advertising services—or better yet, give us a call for a pressure-free chat with one of our representatives! It’ll only take five minutes to figure out if we have products that make sense for your particular situation.
Stop working harder than you have to—and stop lining the pockets of a company that’s only helping your larger competitors get a leg up on you!
Call now at (800-689-1273).

SEO Can Take Months: A Hard Lesson in Planning Ahead

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Back in 2008, Bob got laid off from his full-time desk job during the economic downturn. Frustrated with the corporate world and itching for more independence, he decided to strike out on his own and do something that he loves: working with his hands. He always had a strong work ethic and often found himself cutting down trees and planting bushes for friends and family, so he figured, “Why not open my own landscaping business?”
The following year, Bob made a minuscule living while his wife’s nursing job covered the majority of their household expenses. That’s usually how the first year of owning a brand-new business goes. Over the next several years, he tried out some advertising on his own to boost his business. He made a small website and a Facebook page, posted flyers, and distributed his business card. Business picked up a little bit, but it wasn’t enough.
Four years later, in 2012, his wife told him that their finances were getting too tight and that they needed to be saving more money. After all, they wanted to be able to send their kids to college some day soon. Bob’s phone still wasn’t ringing much come springtime, when he should have been getting slammed with landscaping jobs, so he hired an online advertiser. The advertiser, realizing that Bob needed jobs immediately, fixed Bob up with an expensive pay-per-click (PPC) campaign and promoted Bob’s Landscaping on various business directories and social media. As a result, Bob’s phone did ring with more jobs; however, the jobs weren’t pouring in like he’d hoped, and he found himself having to book jobs with flaky customers who often cancelled their services at the last minute or wound up not being able to pay in full. Not only was Bob frustrated, but he was also hemorrhaging money.
Finally, at the end of 2013, his wife’s voice of reason chimed in. She told him that they couldn’t keep losing money every year: There was college tuition and a mortgage to think about. He would have one final year to turn the business around, or else they would have to shut it down for good. This agreement lit a fire under Bob, and that very same night he started researching other advertising options. That’s when he came across search engine optimization, or SEO.
The next morning, he found and called a reputable advertising provider, who explained that SEO usually takes about three to four months to start producing measurable numbers of leads. That meant Bob’s Landscaping would start receiving good quantities of leads right around April—the start of Bob’s busy season! He signed up and, sure enough, come springtime, Bob’s phone was ringing off the hook. This time, he was able to book contracts early in the season with reliable customers who actually planned ahead. This was the type of customer he’d always wanted but was rarely able to find. Even to this day, instead of having to take any flimsy job that comes his way, he’s able to cherry-pick those enviable customers and turn down jobs that don’t seem worth the service call. His company’s finances are on the upswing, and he’s been able to keep his doors open ever since.
In short, Bob is exceedingly glad that he set up his SEO during his business’s downtime.

The Early Bird Gets the Worm

That’s the moral of this story: If you want to become like Bob and be able to cherry-pick quality customers, then you need to plan your advertising well in advance. By giving yourself a good three months for your web presence and SEO to ramp up, you won’t miss out on those valuable, early contracts. Plus, those early jobs could easily become lifelong customers if they’re satisfied with your work.

The Sooner You Act, the More You Save

When you plan your advertising in advance, not only will you get higher quality leads, but you’ll get them for a much better price. That’s because you won’t have to go into an advertising frenzy at the eleventh hour in order to get enough leads to sustain you through your busy season.
For example, let’s say you want to get 50 calls per month from May through July.

If you sign up for SEO in January, you’ll be able to reach that goal and pay roughly $300-$500 per month.
If you sign up for SEO in February, you’ll be able to reach that goal only if you also add a small-scale PPC campaign for one of your services. This will cost you roughly $600-$800 per month.
If you sign up for SEO in March, you’ll be able to reach that goal only if you also add a full-scale PPC campaign for at least two of your services. This will cost you roughly $900-$1,200 per month.

Take a look at the table below, which shows how much extra you’d have to pay if you waited to start advertising in February or March.

In other words, if you sign up for SEO in January in anticipation of the coming spring’s busy season, then you’ll end up paying the lowest price—and you’ll probably land the better customers to boot!

Learn From Bob

This year, don’t go through the hardships that Bob went through. Take a lesson from his story and skip straight to your happily-ever-after.
Note: Though based on very real experiences of several of our clients, “Bob” is a fictional character presented here for instructional purposes only.

What Can You Do Now to Up the Ante of Your Campaign in 2015?

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Around this time every year, we hear from a lot of clients asking us how they can add more oomph to their campaigns. They want to start off the next year strong. This year, of course, has been no different. We’ve already had several proactive business owners ask us what they can do to put themselves in a position where they will see even more leads than before. With that, we decided to dedicate this post to the numerous ways in which you, our clients, can improve and build upon your existing campaigns. If you’d like to maximize your online advertising success, read on!

For Our Starters

First and foremost, if you’re currently enrolled in our Directory Dominator or Starter program, you can upgrade to the Core program. Core is lead generation, instead of basic web presence management, so upgrading is a good way to get more calls and e-mails.

For Core Customers

If you’re already a member of our Core program, there are plenty of things you can do to make your SEO campaign even more effective.

Make sure your LeadTrax™ site has a page for every service you offer so you don’t miss out on valuable leads.
Make sure your LeadTrax site is not promoting any service(s) you no longer offer so you don’t have to turn down jobs.
Make sure you notify us if your contact information has changed. That way, you won’t miss leads because they went to an old e-mail address or phone number.
Update your phone package if you need to add more lines or route your calls to a different number. You can change the forwarding number yourself in the Client Portal if you have only one line.
Add brand pages to your LeadTrax site (e.g. “Maytag Appliance Repair,” “Trane Furnace Repair,” and so on). This will help you capture traffic from more specific searches.
Let us disclose your hidden addresses. If you’ve requested to have your business address hidden, let us display it, at least on some directories. Most directories require a physical location these days, so a hidden address means your business can’t be listed in those directories.
Add a second LeadTrax site if you’re expanding your business to cover a new service area. (This only works if you’re actually opening up a second physical location.)
Add SocialStream™ to your campaign and have our team create blog posts for you and share them on your social media accounts as many times per month as you’d like.

If you want to make a more drastic change, you can always upgrade to our Premium package and enjoy all the immediate benefits of pay-per-click when it’s combined with your existing SEO.

For Premium Customers

If you participate in our Premium program, then you’ve already done a great job setting yourself up for optimal lead generation. While Premium combines the best of SEO and PPC, there are still a few adjustments and additions you can make to maximize your campaign’s success.
As a Premium customer, you can make any of the changes in the list above. In addition, you can also kick up your PPC efforts by adding a remarketing campaign. Powered by Google AdWords, a remarketing campaign targets your ads at people who have recently checked out your website. This keeps your business at the top of their minds, building familiarity and trust in your brand.
(Note: Remarketing campaigns are also available for customers who use our PPC service exclusively.)

Climb the Mountain

The steps involved in search engine ranking depicted as a path up a mountain As we’ve said before, you can compare online advertising to the slow ascent up a mountain, with the top-ranked position on Google acting as the peak. But, just like climbing a mountain, you have to start at the foothills—which, in this analogy, are local directories and Google Maps. Then, as you climb higher, you’ll reach optimized website content, social media, and PPC. The higher you climb, the more competitors you will outrank.

At the end of the day, your goal should be to get closer and closer to the peak of this mountain. If you feel like you’ve been hanging out at the same altitude for too long, then it’s time to get out your grappling hooks and start climbing again. Prospect Genius has a wide variety of services designed to hoist you all the way up to the summit, so why delay? Call your account manager today to see what you can do to make sure you climb even further in 2015.

Common Ways Businesses Sabotage Their Own Advertising

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Way back in September, we discussed how you can figure out which form of online advertising best meets your company’s needs. Then, in October, we reviewed the traits you’ll want to look for in a provider. Now that you’ve found the right program and the perfect provider for the job, a successful advertising campaign is yours to lose.
Here are the ways many business owners wind up unintentionally sabotaging their own online advertising campaigns.

How to Ruin SEO

Hire more than one advertising company at the same time. The advertisers will counteract each other’s work, you’ll likely ruin your web presence, and you’ll be paying twice as much. To cause even more damage, don’t tell your advertisers you’re working with another company. See also: For SEO Companies, Two’s a Crowd.
Post fake reviews. Google, along with most online business directories, can detect when you’re posting an anonymous review from your own computer. You’ll get flagged as spam.
Post reviews from locations far away from your listing’s IP address. If you’re a local service provider and you have customers post reviews from distant locales, search engines and most directories will find that suspicious, leading to a penalty.
Tinker with your Google Maps listings. If you want to get flagged by Google, just keep changing information on your Maps listing. Google will detect random changes coming from a second IP address and will most likely penalize you.
Don’t send your PINs and log-in info to your provider on time. Instead, you can forget to call your account manager with the PINs that Google and Bing send you, preventing your provider from completing your listings’ authentication process (which obviously prevents your campaign from performing).
Use a fake address on Maps listings. Whether it’s Google or Bing, you can try using a fake address that places you in a prominent service area—but only if you want to get caught and have your listing suspended.
Don’t use a consistent business name from site to site. To confuse search engines and dilute your campaign’s potency, use different variations of your business name on various directories and listings. Even differing punctuation and spelling can affect your web presence.

How to Ruin PPC

Search for your own ads frequently. Doing this will drive up your ad group’s costs (due to high volume impressions and low click rates), so you’ll be causing yourself to pay extra for the exact same services.
Click on your own ads frequently. High click rates will raise the perceived value of your ads and therefore your ad costs. Again, you’ll be causing yourself to pay more without any actual increase in lead generation.
Don’t utilize the reporting tools and performance trackers available to you. Prospect Genius offers a Client Portal with a number of tracking features, and many other advertising companies offer certain tracking as well. But don’t use them if you want to ruin your PPC campaign. When you want to check on your campaign’s performance, just keep searching for and clicking on your own ads. That’ll do the trick.

How to Ruin Local Directory Listings

Purchase Facebook “Likes” and Twitter followers. Having a large number of followers on Facebook and Twitter may look nice to newcomers at first glance, but it’s quite transparent and ultimately does nothing for your web presence. In fact, Facebook is cracking down on fake accounts, so if your fan base is full of them, then you’ll soon feel the repercussions.
Post fake reviews. To repeat what we said above: Most online business directories can detect when you’re posting an anonymous review from your own computer (thanks to your IP address). Usually you’ll get flagged as spam; in the case of Yelp, those reviews will be completely filtered out before they even make it to your page.
Tinker with your company contact info on Facebook. This will be confusing not only to your fans, but to search engines as well. Facebook and Bing are actually connected, so changing your company info on Facebook could wind up impacting your performance on Bing.

How to Ruin Pay-Per-Lead

List your company multiple times on the same directory with slightly varied information. Business owners might try signing up for the same pay-per-lead directory multiple times, whether accidentally or on purpose, which only leads to confusion for consumers. Plus, you could wind up paying to receive the same lead twice.
Use your paid phone line in your contact info on other sites. If you provide your contact info to sites like the Better Business Bureau, Yelp, or Facebook, use your paid phone number. This way, you’ll pay your directory service for any calls that come through that line, even if the leads weren’t generated by that service. Who doesn’t like paying extra?
Don’t complain about bad leads. Sometimes, PPL directories list you for the wrong services or the wrong location, and you’re sent leads that inherently can’t lead to an actual booked job. You still pay for these leads, so unless you ask for a refund, you’ll be paying money without getting any return. To keep it this way, don’t call the directory’s customer service to correct the error or get a refund.
Don’t answer customer calls or respond to e-mails. This way, you’ll still get billed for the leads that are sent to you without ever booking any jobs. It’s a lose-lose!

Don’t Get in Your Own Way

Obviously, this is all a tongue-in-cheek way of telling you what not to do once you’ve started an online advertising campaign. Being a small business owner is hard, and we want only success for you. We don’t want you to ruin or sabotage your campaign; instead, we want you to be your own strongest supporter. Let your advertising provider do all of the work that you hired them to do, and don’t interfere. By all means, keep in touch with your provider and ask for updates on your campaign’s performance and results. Just be careful not to cross the line between asking friendly questions and derailing your campaign’s chances of success.
If you’re unsure whether you’re doing the right thing, simply call or e-mail your provider and ask! You’ll both be grateful that you did.

Prospect Genius

HomeAdvisor: Helping Large Companies Crush Small Ones

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