Let’s start with a quick refresher course on claiming your Google Places page. If you haven’t already done this, here is what you need to do.

• Go to http://www.google.com/ and find your business, if you get to the places page and see this message, you know you still have to claim your page.

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• Once you have gone through the steps to claim your listing, you will be able to add any basic information that is missing, including hours of operation, address and phone numbers. List your name, address and exact phone numbers as Google doesn’t take kindly to geographic or keyword stuffing. If you have a toll free number, you can add more than one phone number, but list your local phone number first as this will help to localize your listing.
• You next step will be to choose your keywords, categories and description information. You can choose up to 5 categories to describe your business, if possible use all five, but choose only those that accurately describe your business and avoid location words as Google doesn’t like them here. Your description, on the other hand, can and should include geographic or location keywords, while still being easy to read.
• After this step is completed, it is time to add photos and video to your profile. Add at least one photo, even if it is only a logo or photo of the outside of your location. Also consider adding geotagged images to Google Picasa or Flickr. By adding geotagged images to these sites and linking them back to your Places page, you are providing Google with additional geographic data. You can also add up to five YouTube video URLs and since YouTube is now a Google company, it certainly won’t hurt to do so. Video is an engaging medium and adds a compelling image to consumers who visit your Places page.
• Ratings and reviews are important to your rankings, so ask frequent customers to rate you online. It’s not advised to post your own reviews, but if you can get a few positive reviews online it will certainly help the cause.

All of these factors go into helping improve your ranking because Google takes several things into account when providing search results.  The three primary factors are:

• Relevance – Google only shows you those listings that are relevant to your search. For example, if you search for sporting goods stores, they won’t show you listings for car dealerships and fast food chains.
• Prominence – Prominence is determined by how well known those stores are based on sources across the web.
• Distance – Distance is calculated based on how far the stores are from the locatiaon you typed in your search or from your general location.

Now that you have claimed and optimized your Google Places page, let’s take a look at what’s going on with the newest additions to the Google arsenal…Tags, Boost and HotPot.

Google Tags help your organic listings to stand out on a Google results page or a Google Maps search results page.  Google Tags are the bright yellow marker that highlight when business have videos, photos or special offers on their page. They look like this.

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Google Boost is an online advertising solution that enables you to create an online search ad from your Google Places account.  A Google Boost ad appears in the Pay Per Click listing area with a special blue marker and looks like this.

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Google Tags is a flat rate, online advertising product.  While Google Boost is a per click advertising product. Neither affect the ranking of your business on Google or Google Maps.

Google HotPot on the other hand can affect the ranking of your business’ local search result.  It is Google’s new local recommendation engine that allows users to rate and review stores, restaurants, and businesses, and then share these reviews with friends.  When logged in, Google HotPot will also send you personalized recommendations based on the ratings you and your friends provide with the goal of providing you with exposure to new places you might otherwise not have visited.

As Google continues to evolve and add new products to its local search toolkit, it is vital that you have a firm foundation to stand on. Now is the time to ensure that your Google Places listing is claimed and that all information is correct. Firm up your Google Places listing now and start exploring the options available with Google Tags, Boost and HotPot.  Then see what happens to your local search rankings!

YouTube just announced that they are going to open up all English videos to auto-captions.  So, here’s what you should know:

• Any video with clear speech will benefit from auto-captioning.
• Avoid background noise, as it will make it harder for machine-generated translation to pick up and accurately caption the content.
• If you are the owner, you can improve the auto-captions by downloading and manually editing them.
• Captions can be translated into 50 languages even though auto-caption is only available in English at this time.

So how does this impact your SEO efforts?  Now is the time to bring together your scriptwriter and your SEO writer for a little meet and greet.  Text is king in the world of SEO and content is much easier to index than video.  Your auto-captions are your text.  So make that text work for you by building in those ever powerful keywords.

You can get more information on the tech specs for videos and captions on the YouTube site at:

http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=100077

It’s not Al Gore’s internet anymore!  MySpace, Google, Facebook and YouTube are changing everything!  If you’re not capitalizing on their dominance, you’re slowing your company’s growth!

Today’s consumers–and today’s franchise buyers–are increasingly sophisticated and use the internet more and more every day.  For shopping, for news, for selling their “stuff,” for keeping in touch with family and friends, for learning, for recommendations, checking on their favorite sports teams, singers, actresses, and for finding the best franchise in which to invest!

If your company is not keeping up with the rapid changes on the internet–you’re falling behind. And it’s obvious!  Your site is “old” if it hasn’t had a major facelift in the last 3 years!

There are 3 main points of focus for Franchisor Websites and we’d like to spend some time discussing how the internet can impact each:

• Prospecting for, and Signing, New Franchisees
  • Search Engine Optimization
    • Focus on Niche Keywords
    • Repeat them on your Homepage
  • Pay Per Click Advertising–Google AdWords, Yahoo Search, MSN Landing Pages
  • Geo Targeting
  • Educating Prospects
  • On Line Reputation Management
  • Sales Presentation: Webinars
  • Video Demonstrations & Testimonials
  • Email Marketing
• Finding Clients & Customers for Your Franchisees
  • Building Your Brand
  • Creating a Buzz
  • Social Media or Social Networking
  • Each City (or Unit) Should Have a Page
  • A Media Room where Press Releases and Articles are posted for the Media.
  • Coupons to Drive Traffic to Stores
  • Geo-Targeting
  • Public Relations
  • On Line Reputation Management
  • Video Demonstrations & Testimonials
  • Surveys
  • Customer Newsletters (Talk to the People that will Listen)
  • How Do You Overcome Negative Postings on the Internet?
  • Social Media–Facebook
  • Email Marketing
• Communicating with Your Franchisees
  • Operations Manuals
  • Forms for Royalties
  • Dashboards
  • Chat Rooms-Bulletin Boards-Blogs
  • Educational Webinars
  • Surveys
  • Franchisee Newsletters
  • Posting Advertising Materials
  • Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP)
  • Quarterly Town Hall Meetings
  • Best Practices Examples
  • Knowledge Repository
    • Presentations
    • Proposals
    • White Papers
    • Training Modules
  • Daily/Weekly News
  • Calendar of Events
  • Team Web Sites
  • Internal Metrics
  • E-Learning: Training for Franchisees & their Staff
• Technical Decisions: Do Customers & Franchisees Use the Same Website?
  • Can Franchisees post their own sites?

Sites You Should Review:

• YouTube.com; Facebook.com; MySpace.com; LinkedIn.com; CopyScape.com; SpyFu.com; Go-To-Meeting.com; MyMeeting.com; Google Analytics; Twitter.com; Google Alerts; Yelp.com; AngiesList.com; Wikipedia.org

Point to Ponder: Is Your Website Your Number 1 Lead Generator or an 8-ton Dinosaur that’s Embarrassing You?