If you have a retail location where customers can come to your place of business, are you doing all you can with mobile marketing? First, let’s acknowledge that the cell phone has changed in the past 5 years so drastically.

In this article, we are going to discuss ‘Location-based Marketing.” A tool to capture your customers as they are looking for you and rewarding them for visiting you.

Just like the Wal-Mart greeter, your location-based ‘Thanks for Being Here’ coupon or message uses web applications with specific location information to deliver the right message to the right person at the right place AND time.

Here are some examples:

• a mom finds the specific address and gets turn-by-turn directions to the closest pizza place to take her son’s team out after a road game win.
• consumers are looking for nearest coffee shop and notice that the one that is an extra 1/2 mile away is offering a second cup for free with the purchase of one cup.
• a college couple learns the show times of the movies playing at nearby theaters.
• a Dad has pain in his lower back and needs a Chiropractor. He searches his mobile app and finds recommendations for a one near his office with a first time patient coupon if he ‘Checks In.’

Like the name implies, Location Based Marketing (LBM) are services that take advantage of their location as a key ingredient of providing relevant information to your customers.

So what ways can you take advantage of LBM? Below are some steps you can take now!

1. Make sure you have an account and have ‘claimed’ your business in top mobile location services. Yelp, Bing, Yahoo Local, Google Places, Facebook Check-In, and Foursquare. Free and easy.
   
2. Add a coupon for ‘check-ins.’ It’s easy to create a coupon with these services and don’t require any special graphic design skills. According to eMarketer, one in ten mobile users redeem coupons via their mobile device. By 2013, the number using such coupons will nearly double, and 16.5% of all US adult mobile phone users will redeem a coupon that year. http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/one-in-ten-users-redeem-mobile-coupons-18438/
   
   
3. Build relationships with customers. Much like any social media, you need to engage with your audience and customers; poll questions, provide some customer services, offer advice. Posting once a day or a few times a week on Facebook or Twitter keeps your name in front of them.
4.  Help customers contact you. Make sure your website has the crucial information in crucial locations. We are adamant about adding your phone number on the upper right of each website design and it is coded as a text object allowing mobile users to tap the number to immediately dial. Then your contact page should have your address as a link to a map or is easily copied and pasted into a mobile map app (like Google Maps).As you claim your listings in these mobile apps, be sure to include your address(es), hours, and your services.
   
5. Consider a Mobile Website. Consider a redirect for your mobile users to a mobile website. At GlobalSpex, we do make sure that your website does not break on a mobile device but it is not necessarily mobile friendly. You can create a mobile-friendly website using a redirect code (the site will recognize if you are using a mobile device) by simplifying the navigation, easy to read without zooming or pinching to much, as with #4, make it easy to contact. But give your users the option to see your desktop website.
   

1. Host a webinar or teleseminar. Now is the time to consider outlining those 12 topics you consider relevant to your clients needs. Help them grow their business and understand your business a bit more. If you already do a webinar, consider changing the format. Doing just webinars? Try a teleseminar. Make sure you choose a topic that is relevant to your audience and see what kind of response you receive
2. Start the e-newsletter. Now is the time to consider what you’ve put off. Those emails may be flooding your inbox, but they are there because they work. You don’t have to be a prolific or great writer, consider hiring someone or start small and work on the topics you love to talk about the most. Just as with #1, make sure it will speak to your audience and spell-check. Already doing a newsletter? Have you checked your email stats as well as whether your emails are sending traffic to your website. It might be time for some restrategizing. Need to up the number newsletters? Need to send different content?
3. Update your website / blog. Website looking a bit outdated? Perhaps it’s time to reconsider your website or your blog. I shared in my blog when it might be time to consider a redesign. First impressions matter most when designing your website.
4. Start a pay-per-click advertising campaign. I’m a huge fan of pay-per-click advertising. Right now it’s a bit pricey with Google Adwords, unless you really focus on a specific demographic. It is a doable option considering the price of a local magazine ad can cost $1500 per month. But Facebook right now can be rather cheap. Again, make sure you choose your demographic well and tweak and tweak and tweak your ads. Yes, you pay for the traffic – but – it’s definitely worth it on the long run. Let us know if you’d like help with your PPC campaign.
5. Content! Posting once per month to blog might not be enough anymore. Consider video blogs or writing on more topics. Don’t forget to post them to Facebook fan page!

I am currently working on a Social Media one-hour workshop that I will be sharing via a webinar and with the Fort Bend Chamber. I’ll let you know more as we progress, but until then, I hope you have a wonderful transition into the new year.  I will keep everyone posted on it progress and share with you how can learn more about Facebook and LinkedIn. I would love to know what your biggest questions are about social media so that I can address them in my webinar. Send your questions to our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/globalspex.

But why do they target websites? Especially since they many have their settings set to not show comments before they can be approved? Generally, comment spammers are just fishing with a large net and hoping to hit the website jackpot.

So Why Comments?

They are not necessarily targeting you but every website. Comment spam is a desperate, somewhat effective form of mass marketing. They think that they might get you with one or two of their poorly worded but often recognizable comments and you’ll allow it. If you were to check the link they provide (and I don’t recommend clicking on it) it usually is some website selling poker games, prescription drugs, or a link farm (website with thousands of useless links).

Why my WordPress Website?

Link building is an important search engine optimization technique. The number of links that point at a site is one of the factors that search engines use to determine how important a page is, and therefore how highly to rank it. Many WordPress websites have a “nofollow” links in their comment settings, which tells Search Engines not to follow this link and give it a creditable grade. But there are a few websites that allow people to post followed links that will increase search engine rankings. Comment spammers hope to hit on a few of these “dofollow” sites.

Why So Much Comment Spam?

Comment spam comes in two forms – automated spam bots and spam written by humans. Automated bots are a wide-net approach, attacking the most common blogging platforms (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Typad), and use computers to perform the task. With all of the websites they can attack the likelihood is that a small number might work. Spam from a human is harder to recognize. People are paid a small fee to leave comments on blogs that might add to a site’s Google index.

How Do I Recognize Comment Spam

• They have included a list of websites in the comment which are unrelated to your blog’s topic
• Leaving the name of a business instead of a real name, for example “Jamie’s Virginia Plumbing”
• Poorly worded, badly mangled English using hyperbole about your post, for example “Thank you for this facts I has been searching all Msn in order to come across it!”

I wrote a blog post last week on how to manage your comment spam on your WordPress website.

You’ve just logged into your WordPress to make some changes to your website and the first thing you notice is that your site has been attacked by comment spam. Ugh! Now what? Do you manually check each comment and hit the spam link or do you just ignore them? That can be tedious. By default, WordPress makes sure that each comment must be approved before they show; so you shouldn’t worry about these awful comments showing on your website.

There are a couple of plugins you can do to prevent and manage your spam:

In my business, web design and internet marketing, we consider both when working on a client’s website. It is this time of year that we get the most requests to review and critique websites in preparation for redesigning them. Most are from companies that are unsure if their site is working, some just have very old websites, others know they need to redesign but are just not sure where to begin. When redesigning your website, there are a few factors that we will review. With social media (Facebook or Google+), technology (mobile vs. desktop), and goals changing every day, is it time to update your website?

What Has Changed In Your Business?

Over the past 2-3 years, has your priorities and focus changed? Have you modernized your brand, updated colors, or edited your tagline? Has your target market narrowed or expanded to include other product lines? If so, then you might consider a complete redesign to reflect changes in the brand.

But sometimes a complete website redesign is not always necessary. We just updated an interior designer’s website by simply removing superfluous colors and graphics and switching her logo. This required minimal work but it did update her website to reflect her new brand.

Have You Been Reviewing Your Website Statistics?

It is very important that you keep track of your website’s traffic. How can you make changes without knowing what works and what does not? You can find out if folks are visiting the pages you need them to visit. How long are they staying on a certain page? Which pages attract the most visitors and traffic? What are your best search engine phrases and find out if your social media work is paying off. Maybe last year most of your traffic came from Google but this year it has been Facebook or Twitter? This will affect how we would design but also what functions to include.

What is the Purpose and Goal(s) of Your Website?

You’ll need to consider the main purpose of your website. For retail, it might be sales and customer support; for lawyers it might be phone calls and initial inquiries; for doctors it might be appointments; for consultants, email subscriptions. Maybe it is to provide basic information about your small business but you’ll want to take advantage of mobile technology like iPhones or Android. Make sure your users can reach you easily with phone number techniques and maps.

How Will You Express Your Unique Selling Proposition?

Let’s admit it, everyone has a website now. We have gone past the question of, “Do I need a website?” to “How will I get my website to standout?” How you do that is not just with a professional looking site but with content. How will you speak to your target market and how do you want them to respond? Will you solve their problems; answer their questions as only you can answer?

What Technology Should You Consider?

Your new site should be visible on mobile devices. If it is not, it is time to consider your website’s platform and reconsider that Flash website. Then with blogs having an impact on search engines, will you need to incorporate WordPress or some other blog platform? Based on the goals we’ve discussed earlier, what features and technology will you include making sure those goals are met? An option form for your newsletter, maybe an appointment scheduling system, a frequently asked questions page, Facebook feeds, or webinars from lawyers giving tips on contract.

Where Are You Most Spending Your Money and Time?

Can you improve your time and expenses on the new site by making small updates and edits yourself or by a staff member? Consider a content management system during your redesign so that you can tweak wording, update photos, and maybe start a blog. Rather than waiting for your web developer and paying those high fees, you could be making those simple changes yourself. But, be sure to ask yourself if you have the time and inclination to keep the site updated. Google’s new algorithm incorporates how often a website is updated.

Have you Considered Search Engine Optimization?

Any time you decide to change our website, you must think about the impact it might have on search engines. Look for ways that you can tighten up your Meta Tags like title and descriptions. Be sure to do some key work research on Google’s Keyword Tools. Can you tweak your content and incorporate internal links?

As you redesign, if that is the direction you decide to go in this New Year, be sure to do some research. It will pay off in the long run.

The keywords and phrases you use in your Meta description tag may not affect your page’s ranking in the search engines, but this tag can still come in handy in your overall SEO and social media marketing campaigns.

What Is the Meta Description Tag?

It’s a snippet of HTML code that belongs inside the section of a web page. It is usually placed after the Title tag and before the Meta keywords tag (if you use one), although the order is not important.

The proper syntax for this HTML tag is:

If you’re using a content management system (CMS), look for a field to fill out that’s called Meta Description, or possibly just “Description.”

Many years ago, the information contained in a Meta description could slightly help a page rank highly for the words that were contained within it. Today, neither Google, Bing, nor Yahoo! use it as a ranking signal.

In other words, whether you use your important keyword phrases in your Meta description tag or not, the position of your page in the search engine results will not be affected. So in terms of rankings, you could easily leave it out altogether.

But should you?

There are 3 important ways that Meta descriptions are being used today that make them an important part of your SEO and overall online marketing strategy:

1. They can be used as the description (or part of the description) of your page if it shows up in the search results.
2. They are often used as part of the descriptive information for your pages when Google shows “extended sitelinks” for your site.
3. They are often used as the default description in social media marketing links such as Facebook and Google+.

Let’s look at each of these in more detail.

1. Meta Descriptions in the Search Results

People often think that whatever they put in their Meta description tag will be the default description that the search engines use under the clickable link to their site in the search results. While this is sometimes true, it’s not always the case.

Currently, if you’re searching for a site by its URL (for example www.highrankings.com) Google tends to use the first 20 to 25 words of your Meta description as the default description in the search engine result pages (SERP). However, if you have a listing at DMOZ, also known as the Open Directory Project (ODP) and are not using the “noodp” tag, they may default to that description instead. (Do a search at Google for www.amazon.com to see an example.)

Bing and Yahoo!, on the other hand, don’t always default to the Meta description tag for URL searches. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t. A search for www.highrankings.com at Bing or Yahoo! shows content from my home page as the description rather than the contents of my Meta description tag.

Of course, real people aren’t typically searching for a site by URL, so what the search engines show for those types of search queries is not as important as a true keyword search. So don’t get hung up on what you see when you search for your site by its URL or if you’re doing a “site:command” search to see how they’re indexing your pages.

Instead, go to your favorite web analytics program and find the keyword phrases that are currently bringing you the most traffic. Then see what your description looks like at Google when you type in those keywords.

And surprise! What you’ll find is that your search results description will be different for every search query! You may see any combination of the following used:

• Your entire Meta description tag text as the complete description (typically if it’s highly relevant and contains no more than 25 words).
• A full sentence pulled from your Meta description tag, but not the entire Meta description (if it contains more than one sentence).
• Text from one part of your Meta description mashed together with text from another part of it (if it’s more than 25 words long).
• Some text from your Meta description mashed together with some text from the page.
• Some text from your page mashed together from some other text from your page (nothing from the Meta description).

Some of the circumstances that cause Google to not use text from your Meta description may include:

• The information in the Meta description tag was not specific to the page it was on.
• The search query used some words that were not in the Meta description, but those words (or some of them) were used in the page content. This includes words that Google considers somewhat synonymous, such as “copy” and “copywriting” or “SEO” and “search engine optimization.”

But even the above are not hard and fast rules. Google doesn’t always use all or part of the Meta description even when the exact search phrase was contained within it – especially if the search query is also contained within the content of the page. Suffice it to say that there are no hard and fast rules for when Google will show it and when they won’t.

My recommendation is to always use keywords on any pages where you get search engine visitors (or hope to get them). Make them very specific to the page they’re on by describing what someone will find when they click through to the page from the search results, while also using variations of your targeted keywords.

Because Google will show only show around 20 to 25 words as your description, many SEOs recommend that you limit this tag to a certain number of characters. In reality, however, you’re not limited to any specific number. Your Meta description tag can be as long as you want it to be because Google will pull out the relevant parts of it and make their own snippet anyway.

For instance, if you’re optimizing a page for 3 different keyword phrases, you could write a 3-sentence Meta description tag, with each sentence focusing on a different phrase. You could probably even insert more than 3 phrases in those sentences if you’re a good wordsmith. The idea, however, is not to stuff this tag full of keywords, but to write each sentence to be a compelling marketing statement – a statement that naturally uses the keywords people might be typing into Google to find your site.

2. Meta Descriptions and Extended Sitelinks

These days, Google often uses the first few words from your Meta description tag when they create the “extended sitelinks” for your website. But this too is not set in stone and is highly keyword dependent. You’ll see different sitelinks and different descriptions showing up depending on the words a searcher used at Google.

As an example, if you do a search for “High Rankings” at Google, you’ll see my sitelinks for that search query.

At this moment, Google is showing my home page as the top result with 6 inner pages beneath:

• Forum home page: Description is from DMOZ/ODP. This page has the generic Meta description that is on every page of the forum.
• Link building forum home page: Description is content pulled from the page that uses the words “High Rankings” in it.
• SEO articles page: First part of Meta description.
• Newsletter home page: First part of Meta description.
• SEO/SEM resources page: First part of Meta description.
• SEO classes page: First part of Meta description.

For the most part, they’re using the first part of the Meta description as the sitelink snippet, but not always. You may have noticed that I optimized those Meta description sitelink snippets that are showing by front loading them so that the first 5-7 words or so are a short description of what the page is all about.

But here’s the rub. Do a Google search for “Jill Whalen SEO.” You should still see sitelinks, and you’ll even see some of the same ones as with the previous query, but some of the descriptions are different:

While the forum home page shows in both, this time Google has pulled text from the page rather than using the DMOZ/ODP description. This is likely because this search query had the word “SEO” in it while the other one didn’t. The SEO articles page also shows up here, and it is using the same Meta description snippet as the High Rankings query. The other sitelinks are different from before, with 3 out of 4 using the Meta description.

As you can see, while you do have some control over your sitelink descriptions via your Meta description tag, Google might not always use them (just as Google does with their regular search results). Your best chance of having them show is to use, close to the beginning of your description tags, the words that you know pull up sitelinks. Also, be as descriptive as possible within the first 5 to 7 words.

3. Meta Descriptions and Social Media Marketing

Ever wonder why some Facebook links have great descriptions and others don’t seem to make any sense? It’s because some site owners have taken the time to write a summary of the article and place it into their Meta description tag, and some have not. If your article has a Meta description, Facebook and Google+ will default to that when you share a link on your profile or “Page.” If there’s no Meta description, you’ll usually see the first sentence or so from the page being used as the default.

While anyone can edit the description that Facebook defaults to, most people don’t. And at this time on Google+ you can’t even edit the default description. You can either leave it as is or delete it all together. Let’s face it — most of the time the first sentence of an article is not a good description of the rest of it. It’s not supposed to be, because that’s not what a first sentence is for!

Therefore, I strongly advise you to always write a compelling 1- or 2-sentence description for all of your articles and blog content that may be shared via social media, and place it into your Meta description tag. This will give you a big jump on your competitors who haven’t figured this out yet, making your social media content much more clickable because people will know what the article is actually about before they click on it.

Overall, the Meta description tag gives you a little bit more control over what people might see before they click over to your site. The more compelling it is, the more clickthroughs you should see. If your Meta description tags can help with that, then it’s certainly worth the few minutes of time it takes to create interesting, keyword-rich tags that sum up what users will find when they arrive!

Jill Whalen is the CEO of High Rankings, an SEO Consulting company in the Boston, MA area since 1995. Follow her on Twitter @JillWhalen
If you learned from this article, be sure to invite your colleagues to sign up for the High Rankings Advisor SEO Newsletter so they can receive similar articles in the future!

One of the Top 25 Fastest-Growing Woman-Owned Businesses in Houston is internet marketing firm GlobalSpex, Inc. in Sugar Land. In fact, when the Houston Business Journal ranked it this month in terms of its 2009 – 2010 percentage revenue growth, GlobalSpex came in 20th, ahead of its local competition. This significant achievement is proof positive of Christina Hawkins’ vision and determination to sustain her sales growth.

“I’m hugely satisfied, Christina told me. Our sales growth comes largely from penetration of new business opportunities we’ve identified, including web design, web hosting, social media management and search engine marketing. Houston is still our main headquarters, but this year we have seen significant growth around the US and around the world too.”

GlobalSpex’ new client base comprises savvy people needing to promote medical, legal, oil and gas companies online. Moreover, they care for their customers and are growth-orientated just like Christina. This just goes to prove how effective a niche technology company can be in Sugar Land when it teams up with best experts around the world.

How GlobalSpex was Ranked

The Houston Business Journal, who awarded recognition to the Top 25 Fastest-Growing Woman-Owned Businesses in Houston, used a two-pronged model to single out the list. They combined key factors of percentage sales growth and absolute sales growth during their period of review. This enabled them to spot the woman-owned Houston firms that were truly moving forward, and to rank Christina Hawkins’ business in the top 25.

This shows the success of Christina Hawkins’ business methods, and offers great encouragement to other women entrepreneurs trying hard to run their businesses in Houston. It’s especially good to know that a local Sugar Land marketing firm can succeed the way that GlobalSpex has, under current economic conditions. Well done Christina. You are in the top 25 Fastest-Growing Woman-Owned Businesses in Houston.

• increased traffic
• more calls from prospects
• downloading an e-book
• increased newsletter subscribers
• increased facebook fans (send traffic to Fan page)

• One-time Coupons – Websites like Runa, which triggers immediate coupons to customers that are only valid for that one session. If they leave and come back the next day, the coupon will disappear.
• Simplify searches – 20% of online visitor prefer actually searches rather than searching categories. Even better, while searching, allow for autocompletes, the type you see in Google search.
• Improve your Buy Now and Add to Cart buttons. Make sure they are visible, big, and clear.
• Eliminate distractions from your checkout pages. Clarify what you need customers to do with a clear path to the final goal; purchase

• Add testimonials. Flaunt what is great about your services by showcasing what others have said about it.
• Calls to action. Be sure you tell your visitors what to. Never make them guess. Then repeat throughout the page.
• Don’t hide your phone number. We all hate hunting for the elusive phone number. How can you be trusted if you can’t pick up the phone for me?
• Move your calls to action to a prominent place. Your phone number or whatever you want folks to do, should be front and center. Maybe not literally, but it should be very visible.
• Do you need a two-column or single column layout? With a single layout you can direct the user through a series of questions as they flow down the screen. These are usually called Squeeze pages.
• Headlines. Make them bigger and more prominent so your users can separate content.

What ways do ensure conversions?

Video streaming by Ustream

With the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics projecting that female-owned businesses will generate up to 57 percent of small business jobs between 2009 and 2018, women in small business are showing no sign of slowing down. In this infographic, we break down the landscape for women-owned businesses.

Click the infographic for a larger view.

via: Women Flex Big Muscle in Small Business [INFOGRAPHIC]