Google Dramatically Changes Search Result Page For Restaurants, Hotels, Bars...

It's called the "carousel".  It's a brand new search result layout that Google has implemented for some local business categories such as hotels, restaurants and bars.  Do a local Google search for one of these categories and you'll now see an interactive list of results on the top of the page (even above the ads).  Check out an example below:

This new layout has big marketing implications for small business owners as we predict that even more business verticals will be added to this format in the coming months. If you're an owner of a restaurant, hotel or bar, and would like to discuss how to optimize your online strategy to take advantage of this new "carousel" layout please give us a call at 866-234-7170 or contact us online at info@networkforsolutions.com

"Behind The Curtain" (Part 2) - 5 Things Small Businesses MUST KNOW

In part 1 of "Behind The Curtain" we exposed the 2 biggest Internet marketing falsehoods that small business owners are told. Part 2 takes it a step further. If there were only 5 critical pieces of advice we could give to a small business owner regarding the marketing & advertising of their business today they would be:

1. Isolate your advertising programs and evaluate each one individually - Many small businesses do multiple advertising programs at once (yellow pages, direct mail, online advertising, etc.) with a single large media corporation, and do not know which programs are performing well and which programs are not. Representatives from these media corporations will often present "bundles" where multiple programs are packaged as one. The problem with this approach is the business owner does not see the cost and performance of each program individually. Ask your representative to review with you the cost & performance of each program individually so you can decrease or eliminate the programs that are not performing up to par, and devote more of your budget to the programs that are working well. Another recommendation is to seek the expertise of an independent consultant, who is not biased towards any particular advertising medium. They will give you an honest evaluation of each individual campaign and recommendations on how to better invest your budget.
2. Refuse to pay as much for print advertising as you did in the past - If the audience has declined (which it has) then so should your investment. People still use the phone book and read the newspaper but not nearly as many as before. There's still some value for your business in having visibility in these mediums so don't decrease your presence, just decrease your investment. Your yellow pages or newspaper rep will not like this, and will say you can't do it, but you can. If you need help executing this strategy contact us.
3. Refuse to do long contracts with Internet marketing programs - If a company tries to make you sign a 6 or 12 month contract for Internet marketing services just say no. Most reputable Internet marketing firms offer short term, or month to month programs because they know if you're happy with their services then you will continue on with them, without needing to be "locked" into a contract.
4. Own and have full control of your website domain name - There's been far too many nightmare situations where a business buys a website from a company without realizing they don't own the domain name. When they decide to sever ties with that company they lose the website and have to start over from scratch with a new domain. Make sure you are the owner of your domain name and have it registered under your own registrar.
5. Don't advertise on Yelp - We have nothing personal against Yelp and actually stress the importance of a business having a free listing with them but stick with just the free listing. The truth is Yelp has a very aggressive sales force and the most inflated pricing on the Internet. Until this changes don't sink your advertising funds into Yelp because the return on investment can't be justified. There's far better places on the Internet to invest your budget.

The goal of "Behind The Curtain" is to help make the Internet marketing industry more open and honest, and to help educate small business owners with the knowledge needed to make intelligent decisions, based on the truth.

"Behind The Curtain" (Part 1) - The 2 Biggest Internet Marketing Lies That Small Businesses Are Told

Unfortunately the Internet marketing industry contains some salespeople who either don't have the experience and knowledge to properly advise small business owners, or deliberately mislead business owners into doing business with their company by giving them false information.

In part 1 of "Behind The Curtain", we expose the 2 most widely told falsehoods in the Internet marketing industry and how business owners can protect themselves from being misled.

Here are the 2 most common Internet marketing lies that small business owners are told:

1. We run your search engine advertising for free! 100% of your monthly budget goes to the search engines and we get paid by Google! The truth is when you run your Google advertising through a large media corporation there are a lot of hands in the pot. In most cases you are paying a 50% margin or more to the media corporation. For example, if you invest a $1000/month budget into a Google advertising program through a media company, $500 of that is going directly to the media company and only $500 is going to the Google Advertising. No one is saying that the media corporation doesn't deserve to be paid to provide this service, but 50% is absurd. A fair percentage is 10-20% and most smaller firms are in that range. If you have the time and knowledge to run your own, you could do the self-serve option with Google, but we typically recommend working with a smaller firm that is transparent and honest about the cost of providing the service. Google advertising can be extremely beneficial to a business if done properly and with the right strategy, but proceed with caution! If a company won't disclose what the cost of their service is, or says there is no cost, steer clear!

2. We have a "special relationship" with Google that allows us to get your business better placement, results, lower cost per click, etc. The truth is no company has any advantage because of how big they are or how many clients they advertise on Google. Large corporations have been claiming for years that they are "tied in" with Google or can deliver better results because of their size or "secret partnership". This is, and has always been, a flat out lie. If a sales rep tries this approach with you steer clear! It's a major red flag that they either lack serious knowledge on the subject or are straight out lying to you. Either way that's not someone you want to do business with.

The goal of "Behind The Curtain" is to help make the Internet marketing industry more open and honest, and to help educate small business owners with the knowledge needed to make intelligent decisions, based on the truth. In part 2 we will disclose the 5 most critical things for a small business owner to know right now about marketing/advertising.

Important New Data About Working From Home

Telecommuting (working form home) is a hot topic right now. Marissa Mayer (new CEO of Yahoo) recently told employees they couldn't work from home because it hurts "speed and quality." The debate will fuel on with opinions from both sides, but we predict that telecommuting will continue to increase at a rapid rate moving forward. Here are 5 interesting things to consider based on new data:

1. Telecommuters are almost twice as likely to work more than 40 hours a week.
2. The average annual savings for a business if an employee with a telecommute-compatible job works from home half the time is $11,000.
3. The average telecommuter saves $2,000 to $7,000 annually on transportation and other expenses.
4. The percentage of telecommuters increased 60% from 2005 to 2011.
5. Telecommuters are 6% to 10% less productive than on-site employees when doing repetitive work but are 11% to 20% more productive when performing creative tasks.

[sources]

A New Free Tool From Google To Help Keep You Organized

We all seem to be living busier, more fast-paced lives than before due to an abundance of information flying at us from all directions. There's more to do and more to remember these days, and being efficient is crucial to success in business and life overall. Google has unveiled an application called Google Keep to help the average person stay organized (ideal for the busy small business owner). Below is a quote and short video from Google:

"Every day we all see, hear or think of things we need to remember. Usually we grab a pad of sticky-notes, scribble a reminder and put it on the desk, the fridge or the relevant page of a magazine. Unfortunately, if you’re like me you probably often discover that the desk, fridge or magazine wasn’t such a clever place to leave the note after all...it’s rarely where you need it when you need it.

To solve this problem we’ve created Google Keep. With Keep you can quickly jot ideas down when you think of them and even include checklists and photos to keep track of what’s important to you. Your notes are safely stored in Google Drive and synced to all your devices so you can always have them at hand.

If it’s more convenient to speak than to type that’s fine—Keep transcribes voice memos for you automatically. There’s super-fast search to find what you’re looking for and when you’re finished with a note you can archive or delete it."



Google Keep is available on Google Play for devices running Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich and above. You can access, edit and create new notes on the web at http://drive.google.com/keep and in the coming weeks you'll be able to do the same directly from Google Drive.

What You Need to Know About Your Website Traffic

We believe that every business website should have some form of analytics or tracking installed so that traffic can be measured and analyzed. Along with that though comes the need to understand the information that is captured. An analytics report will give back an awful lot of data & metrics but what does the business owner really need to know in order to evaluate the performance? Keep reading and we will tell you exactly what's most important to know:

One of the single most important (and often overlooked) aspects of a website traffic report is the % of new visitors vs. returning visitors. Google defines a "new visitor" as someone who visited your website for the first time. Your current customers most likely search for your business by name. But prospective customers tend to search by topic, such as "dentist" or "florists" or "oil change".


If a major goal of your Internet marketing program is to generate potential new customers (as it is in most cases) then the new visitor % stat is a really important one since it's a great indicator of who is visiting your website. Is your website traffic mostly existing customers and returning visitors, who probably typed your business name into a search engine? Or do you have a higher percentage of new visitors (potential new customers) who found your website by typing in a new business search (like "insurance agent", "transmission repair shop", "roofing company in Boston", etc.)?

The ideal new visitor % in your website traffic report will differ based on your business category but if you are finding a small percentage of your website traffic coming from new visitors then you probably have a case of poor search engine rankings for new business searches in your local market. For example, if you are a dentist in Providence, RI and your website does not show on the first page of Google for the keyword search "Dentist Providence, RI" then you most likely are not getting a large percentage of new visitors to your website. Instead, your website traffic is mostly comprised of existing patients who need to find your phone number or address. Existing customers finding you is certainly a good thing but if business growth from the Internet is a goal then you also need a healthy percentage of new traffic consistently visiting your website.

Have questions about whether your website traffic is helping you achieve your business goals? Contact us!

Network For Solutions

A short video that explains who we are and what we do for small businesses:

What Einstein Would Say to Internet Marketing Companies

I think those in the Internet marketing industry would all agree that it's a very complex field they work in.  One part of the job is to be a subject-matter expert - to be a master of search engine optimization, social media marketing, and website design, among other things.  It's an industry that's constantly changing.  Google updates their website ranking algorithm hundreds of times a year now and new social media sites are popping up left and right.  It's our job to stay ahead of the curve for our clients and deliver results in this ever-changing landscape.  It's a complicated and tough job but we know what we signed up for and are very grateful for the opportunity to help businesses online.

However, there's a second piece of the job that many are failing at in this industry, which goes back to Einstein's quote.  Far too often, Internet marketing firms are confusing small business owners by failing to simplify the message.  Granted, it's no easy task to take all this highly-complicated information and put it into a simplified form that the business owner will understand, but it's crucial. If the business owner is confused about what services they are getting, and what the results of the program are, then the Internet marketing firm is not doing the full job.

In far too many cases online marketing companies are either not relaying this information at all, or relaying the information to the business owner in "industry terms", with technical jargon that means nothing to them.  I often compare it to a doctor speaking a bunch of medical terms to the patient when giving the diagnosis and treatment plan.

So remember, a good Internet marketing firm should not only have expertise in Internet marketing, but also in communicating a simplified message to the client.

The Most Misunderstood Metric in Website Analytics - Bounce Rate

At Network For Solutions we feel it's critically important for our clients to track the performance of their Internet marketing.  One of the best ways to do that is by periodically looking at website traffic reports (or website analytics).  These reports provide extremely valuable information such as how many visitors a website is getting, where they are coming from, how they got there, how long they are staying on the site, how many pages of the site they visited, and percentage of new visitors vs. returning visitors.  These are some of the best metrics to look at when measuring performance and there will be future posts on each one, but right now we want to focus on one metric that we feel is the most misunderstood and often times most misleading one - the bounce rate.

The official definition of bounce rate is the percentage of website visitors who view only one page of a website.  So for example, if your website gets 100 visitors in a month, and 50 of those visitors only viewed 1 page on the site, then the bounce rate of the website would be 50% for that month.

First off, whoever came up with the name bounce rate made a big mistake in our opinion.  It's a very misleading name when considering what bounce rate actually stands for.  If you just heard the name without knowing what it means the logical first impression would be that a website bounce is when a visitor lands on a website and quickly leaves.  In reality, bounce rate has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of time a visitor stays on a website.

I've lost count of the amount of times I've heard someone who works in the Internet marketing industry misrepresent the meaning of bounce rate.  The most frightening instance was a couple of years ago when I witnessed a high-level executive of a very large media corporation tell a room full of small business owners that a website's bounce rate is the "percentage of website visitors that bounce from the site within 7 seconds of arriving" (yikes!).  Now this person was not intentionally trying to mislead the business owners in the room, but it's a scary reminder that some of the people who are considered experts in the Internet marketing industry are not as fully educated as they should be.  This results in misled business owners who deserve to know the true meanings of these metrics.

The real problem with this common myth about bounce rate is that business owners often get freaked out when they see the bounce rate of their website.  They see a bounce rate of 50% and immediately think that half of their website visitors are instantly leaving their site and chalk those up as useless traffic.

Here's the reality:  bounce rate is actually a relatively insignificant metric for most small business websites.  A well-optimized small business website should be designed to quickly convert visitors into leads (mainly in the form of phone calls).  For most small business websites the optimal process should go something like this:

Step 1:  A consumer searches for a local service or product they need (usually on Google) and chooses a business that is highly visible in the search results.

Step 2:  The consumer arrives on the business website, is comforted by the professional design, sees that this business can serve their needs, and contacts the business by calling the phone number on the same page of the website that they arrived on.

So yes, this scenario would be considered a bounce because the website visitor only visited one page of the site.  Does a high bounce rate seem like such a bad thing now?  I know plenty of small business owners who would take website bounces all day long.

Of course not every situation is exactly the same and in some cases an extremely high bounce rate can be a red flag, but the point is that Small Business America need not fear the bounce rate!  In most cases it's an insignificant statistic and there's plenty of much more important metrics within your website analytics that will help you measure performance.  Have questions or feedback? (866) 234-7170 or info@networkforsolutions.com

A Brand New Reason Why Your Small Business Needs Facebook

One of the most common questions we get asked by small business owners is "Why is it important for my business to have a Facebook page?"  Up to this point our answer included:

1.  It helps the visibility of your business on search engines like Google.
2.  It's a great way to engage your existing customer base.

Now we can add another huge new reason: Facebook is on its way to becoming a search engine for local businesses.

Yesterday, Facebook updated the Nearby feature in its iPhone and Android apps to enable users to find nearby local businesses by name or by category. Results will be ranked by ratings, recommendations, check-ins and "Likes".

Facebook is entering the local search arena.

Only those businesses that have a Facebook Page will be listed, creating a powerful new incentive to create a Facebook Page.

It’s only mobile (for now). And there are no ads planned for the immediate future, but you can imagine that will change in all probability over time and we believe that the goal is to compete with search engines like Google and review sites like Yelp.

Below is an official statement from Facebook as well as a few tips for local businesses:

Local businesses have always relied on word-of-mouth recommendations to gain new customers and grow their sales. Whether they’re a new restaurant in the neighborhood, a favorite salon, or a trusted tailor, small businesses often depend on social endorsements to get discovered.

And recommendations from friends become even more important when people are on the go. In fact, 150 million people visit Pages on Facebook every day globally. And in the US, over half of visitors to Facebook Pages are visiting them from a mobile device. 

Today we're pleased to announce updates to Nearby, accessed via the Facebook mobile app: now, in addition to showing which friends have checked in at a particular place, Nearby helps people discover places near them based on their friends’ recommendations. People can explore by category (ex: restaurants or hotels); connect to businesses directly from their phone (by liking, checking in, calling, or getting directions); rate the places they visit via a five-star system; and share their recommendations with friends.

If you have a Page on Facebook with a location, your business now has another way to be discovered by Facebook's 600 million-plus mobile consumers.

When someone looks for a place, the results that appear in their Nearby list are based on things like their friends' recommendations, ratings, check-ins, and likes. If you're a business with a physical location, here's what you can do to ensure your place is more easily discoverable in Nearby:

• Update your Page to include all of your basic information, including your address, store hours, phone number, and details about your business in the About section
• Update your category to make sure you appear when people are looking for your specific type of business
• Encourage your consumers to like, check into, rate, and recommend your place

Based on this news, there has never been a better time for a small business to contact Network For Solutions.  We will make sure your business is ahead of the curve and utilizing the Internet the right way!