Heard about Google Boost? No? You’re not alone. And you’re probably the perfect victim, er, candidate.

Boost is a new feature that allows local businesses to purchase Pay Per Click (PPC) ads directly through their Google Places account instead of messing around in AdWords. It’s only available in a few areas now, but should be rolled out nationwide soon.

Evil Genius or Innocently Helpful?

Boost is simply a stripped-down AdWords integration with a slight improvement on how the ads are presented on a results page and within Google Maps. It’s a brilliant move by Google to reach the companies that don’t yet buy AdWords ads and may not want to learn how. They even have telemarketers reaching out to local businesses to upsell them on Boost and Tags.

With a couple clicks and a credit card, a locally-targeted ad will start showing for keywords that Google deems relevant to your business.

Sounds great, right? Here’s the warning – Boost automatically creates terribly inefficient AdWords campaigns with no easy way to know if the campaigns are successful or not! Even if you log into your AdWords account (same Google account as your Places page), you can’t manage the keywords, bids or ad text associated with the “Places Ads” campaign:

Optimize this...

The First Hit is Free

See what we did here?

Campaigns generated by Boost are automatically added to the Place user’s AdWords account. Didn’t have an AdWords account? You do now. Sneaky!

See where this is going?

Google Boost is simply a gateway into the AdWords cash machine. Almost like magic, Google creates multiple campaigns with hundreds of broad and modified broad match keywords with extremely high automatic CPC bids.

Wow, that’s bold. And dangerous. And potentially a huge windfall for Google.

Once a business realizes they have an AdWords account, they are more likely to increase their spend, add to their campaigns or simply “let it ride” and let Google collect a hefty residual to keep showing the Boost ads in perpetuity.

This could be construed as better than not having any PPC visibility, unless you are the type of person that likes to know whether or not your  marketing investment provides any type of return.

Cons: Transparency, Metrics, Customization

I can’t emphasize this enough: Google Boost campaigns CAN NOT be edited in AdWords.

Advertisers have to go all in.

Within the Boost interface, advertisers only see click and impression volume by keyword category. Cost data are aggregated across the entire Boost campaign. Conversion data are not available because clicks from Boost are not differentiated in Google Analytics unless you link your Analytics and AdWords accounts. This leaves unsophisticated advertisers with no ability to determine if the ads are actually helping build their business or refine the Boost ads for greater efficiency or effectiveness. This leads to my theory of PPC’s intractable problem.

Keyword-level data are available in AdWords but it’s useless if it can’t be changed.

The ad titles themselves are fixed based on the Google Places business name. If a business name is longer than 25 characters, too bad. It will be truncated. The 70 characters of body copy are customizable but only one ad can be run at a time.

Finally, the advertiser can only choose between two destination URLs: the Google Maps Place Page for the business or the home page of the advertiser’s website. Specific landing page URLs are not an option.

Pros: Save Time, Improve Visibility

Some businesses haven’t yet experimented with AdWords, and that’s okay. Using Boost, they can advertise immediately with minimal effort. There’s no need to hire or train anybody to manage a complex AdWords account. (but you get one anyway…)

Search results are enhanced with a blue map pin and details from the Places page that normally are not found in AdWords ads. This could lead to greater visibility and higher interaction rates. This is possibly the ONLY reason to choose Boost for tightly controlled campaigns.

To Drink the Koolaid or Not?

So how well does Google Boost work? Based on my preliminary, unscientific data, not well when compared to existing Google Places content and AdWords campaigns.

Here’s the breakdown after a week:

The final verdict?

Here are some key takeaways:

• A tightly controlled AdWords account will outperform a Google Boost campaign with little effort.
• Businesses that are not on Google Places or haven’t optimized their listing are missing the biggest (and cheapest) opportunity to improve their visibility in search results.
• Boost is a stripped-down AdWords gateway. If your business is interested in advertising online, skip Boost and go straight to AdWords. Even if you have to hire somebody to set up and manage it for you, the cost savings over Boost will likely pay for the consultant.

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Are you running out of ideas to further optimize your site and online presence for search engines? Did a recent redesign or SEO campaign address ALL of the accessibility, relevance and credibility issues your site faced? Do your internal processes include SEO input and are all your customer-facing teams active contributing to your SEO success?

Congrats, my friend. You’ve reached SEO Nirvana. You should write a book!

In reality, SEO is never done. But for the sake of argument let’s assume you’ve maxed out your SEO potential and need something else to justify your salary and follow up on your “big win”. What do you do next to continue to improve your business?

Focus on Mobile

Mobile web usage grew 110% last year according to Quantcast. While it’s still only accounting for a small percentage of overall web use, some sites are seeing 15-20% of their visits from mobile devices (iPhone, Android, iPad, iPod Touch, Blackberries, etc.)

Click to enlarge

Most of these devices have fully-functioning web browsers built in and will display your website as it was intended. However, due to limited screen size your calls to action or conversion elements may be below the fold or not apparent.

Additionally, people that search the web on mobile devices search differently. They are more likely to be looking for information “on the go” and adjust their keyword queries accordingly. They don’t want to wade through a dense website to find what they need.

Mobile search results are ranked differently than desktop searches with a higher priority on geographic proximity and “mobile-friendly” site architecture.

Check your website from a variety of mobile devices. Better yet, watch other people who aren’t familiar with the site try to use it. Can they find the right content and take the desired actions? Create custom segments in Google Analytics to identify site usage and conversion trends and anomalies for mobile browsers.

You may  not need a full mobile website, but it’s in your best interest to keep tabs on this rapidly-expanding segment of your market. A mobile landing page with all your vital info may be enough, but you won’t know unless you look.

Convert More Visitors to Customers

This sounds easy, but there’s an entire industry building up around Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). In layman’s terms, CRO aims to squeeze more conversions from the same amount of traffic. Instead of spending more money to drive more traffic to your site, optimize the elements on your site to convert a greater percent of visitors to customers.

It starts with gathering the right data. Web analytics tools like Google Analytics, Piwik, and Omniture can provide conversion funnel analysis. Integrating phone call tracking closes the loop on transactions or conversions that take place over the phone instead of online.

Once the key metrics are identified and being recorded, semi-automated tools like Unbounce.com and Google Website Optimizer can simplify A/B and multivariate testing to identify combinations of landing page elements (images, text, buttons, layout) that result in higher conversion rates.

Build Email Relationships

Using email marketing solely to push marketing messages on customers is still effective, but increasingly marketers are using email campaigns to nurture a relationship with a customer by supplying helpful content rather than a salesy message.

People’s inboxes are crowded and a major source of frustration and stress at work and at home. Lighten the burden by giving people something to look forward to and a reason to open and share. Plus, past customers are easier to “convert” than new prospects. Reward your loyal customers with special offers and content that makes their lives or jobs easier.

Finally, use a full-featured email marketing program to measure response and hone in on the messages that your recipients value. I use and recommend MailChimp although there are dozens out there to choose from.

Solicit Feedback

Customer feedback can help you identify gaps in your marketing plans or product or service offerings. There are many, many ways to gather feedback, but I’ll focus on the two most important here:

1. Use survey tools on your site to get feedback on your performance. Similar to a Suggestion Box in your office, online survey tools like KISSinsights or Kampyle can aggregate the data into useful analytics with simple additions to your site’s code.

2. Encourage your customers to create honest reviews on your business listings on local search engines, social networks and reviews sites. Some good starting points are Google Places, Yahoo Local, Bing Maps and Yelp. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of these sites so make it a point to target the most important ones for your industry and spread your customers’ love around by periodically mixing up the sites you send them to.

Once you have some positive feedback, highlight testimonials in appropriate places on your site and other marketing materials to provide social proof and 3rd party validation to prospective customers.

Test Bold PPC Changes

Go big or go home. Small changes to PPC campaigns can result in small improvements, but big changes can help get you on the path to better ROI faster. Don’t be afraid to test a new bidding strategy, ad text or targeting method to see what works. If you can fail, “fail quickly” and go back to what works briefly before testing something new. When you find something that works better, stick with it and test yet another bold change.

Use AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE) to test large-scale or bold changes to bids, ad text, landing pages or keyword lists without sacrificing your current performance.

Create Compelling Content

Do something unique. Provide value. “Value” is an intentionally vague (and over-used) term, but by value I mean something that is educational, newsworthy, humorous or insightful. People value their time, so keep it short and easily digestible.

Look outside your industry for content ideas that your competitors haven’t used yet. Then, promote your content across your social media and email platforms for even greater reach. Don’t overdo it on social media or email. Remember what your grandmother said, “Everything in moderation.”

Get Fast(er)

Users demand and reward faster websites. Google now factors site load times into their constantly-changing ranking algorithms.

Load times can even affect your site’s ability to convert visitors into buyers. Tests at Amazon.com revealed that every 100 ms increase in load time on their site decreased sales by 1%. Imagine the negative impact of a page that takes 5-10 seconds to load!

Take advantage of caching, Content Delivery Networks (CDN) or private servers to speed up your site and improve user experience. If you don’t know how to do this yourself, ask your nearest friendly web geek to assist. The payoff will be well worth the effort required.

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Imagine being able to lease space on a high-value domain name like Attorney.com with the exclusive rights to your geographic area.

RootOrange is making it happen by showing different websites on a generic URL based on the browser’s IP address. Basically, if I browse to Attorney.com from Richmond I’ll see a local attorney’s website, while if you visit the site from Seattle you’ll see a Seattle-based attorney’s website instead.

In geek-speak, the different sites are served in an i-frame and targeted based on the browser’s IP geo-location.

Is This a Bad Idea?

From an SEO standpoint, I can think of many reasons this is a bad idea for local businesses concerned about SEO and long-term sustainability:

1. No Ownership or Equity in the Domain – Businesses essentially lease the domain name from RootOrange. At the end of the lease (or when lease rates become unsustainable), the businesses are left with nothing of value. No domain name, no website, no way to tell repeat visitors where to find them in the future.
2. No Visibility in Search Engines – Maybe RootOrange has concocted a solution, but currently search engines either ignore content in i-frames or attribute the content to the site that serves it, not the site that hosts the i-frame. The proposed implementation would seem to indicate that the generic domain (i.e. Attorney.com) would have no unique content of its own. Currently it is a parked domain with ads on it and no apparent content strategy to rank well in the organic search results.
3. Potential Cloaking Issues - Cloaking occurs when human visitors are shown different content than search engine crawlers in an attempt to manipulate search results. Again, maybe RootOrange has figured this out but I can foresee issues when these previously high-ranking domains are penalized for serving different content to humans and bots.

Is This a Good Idea?

Then again, domain leasing could be the equivalent of leasing a prominent office location on your town’s Main Street. Type-in traffic (web users typing in attorney.com) would be equivalent to drive-by visibility or window shoppers that notice your business just because it’s there.

It also may be a cost-effective alternative to the industrial-strength SEO required to compete on generic, high-volume keywords.

But to the sophisticated marketer that knows the value of “the long tail” of search queries, location-based domain splitting may just be a short-term distraction that delays the inevitable leap of faith into SEO that gives your competitors a few more months or years head start.

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Google Queries in 2009

According to Google’s 2009 search stats, over 1/3 of unduplicated search queries entered into Google in 2009 HAD NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE.

Let that sink in for a moment. That’s up from about 25% a couple years ago.

Does your content strategy allow you to take advantage of people’s creativity and difficulty finding the answers to their queries? Or are you stuck with stagnant content that does not evolve and adapt to meet consumers’ changing needs and vocabulary?

But Wait, There’s More…

If you are not concerned about your position in today’s search results, you should at least be preparing for tomorrow’s. The Google ranking algorithm literally changes daily:

• Number of search quality improvements made by Google in 2009: 540, ~1.5 each day

And if you’re not effectively competing in local search results, consider this whopper:

• Proportion of Google result pages that show a map in search results: 1 in 13

Do Not Be Alarmed

I share these stats not to scare you, but to open your eyes to the nearly infinite opportunities to attract quality search engine traffic from a wider set of keywords and search channels.

Sure, your boss questions every day why you don’t rank on the first page for “widgets”, but the smart marketer knows that there are still plenty of battles to be won. It’s just a matter of picking the right ones.

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Competition is usually a good thing in a capitalist society, but it’s not always friendly and it’s not always fair. If your website is being outranked by a competitor’s site when you Google your products or services, it may be because they hired a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) consultant to improve their site’s visibility for various high-value keywords.

A good SEO consultant leaves very little evidence of their efforts (other than better rankings and more traffic), but you can spot the work of a competent SEO if you know what to look for.

Here are 7 signs your competitor may have hired an SEO:

1. The rel=”nofollow” Attribute

This little bit of code in a website link is used to prevent search engines from crawling through the link to the destination page. People familiar with SEO use it to keep search engine crawlers from passing PageRank to pages that shouldn’t appear in Google’s index.

A normal link looks like this:

<a href="http://www.yoursearchadvisor.com">Your Search Advisor</a>

a link with the rel=”nofollow” attribute will look like this:

<a href="http://www.yoursearchadvisor.com" rel="nofollow">Your Search Advisor</a>

To look for this on your competitor’s site: Click the View > Page Source menu option in your web browser. Use the Find command and search for “nofollow”.

Exception to the rule: Some Content Management Systems (CMS) include the rel=”nofollow” attribute by default on some outgoing links, so your competitor may not even know they are doing it.

2. A sitemap.xml File

An XML sitemap is a “Table of Contents” for your website that is coded in a way that search engines find very useful. Most human visitors will never know it’s there. Search Engine Optimizers use them to tell a search engine crawler where to find each page on the site, when it was last updated and its importance relative to other pages on the site.

To find this on your competitor’s site: Go to their home page and add /sitemap.xml to the end of the URL. This is the default location for a sitemap although it can be placed elsewhere.

For example, my sitemap is here: http://www.yoursearchadvisor.com/sitemap.xml

Exception to the rule: Again, some CMS platforms generate a sitemap.xml file by default. Other times, your competitor or their SEO may place the sitemap in a different location to keep it away from prying eyes.

3. A robots.txt File

Similar to a sitemap.xml file, a robots.txt file is a specially-formatted text file that webmasters can use to keep search engine crawlers from accessing certain parts of a website. For example, you may not want pages from the “insider information” section of your website to appear in search results so you would include that section in your robots.txt.

To find this on your competitor’s site: Go to their home page and add /robots.txt to the end of the URL. This is the default location for this file.

4. Google Webmaster Usage

Savvy SEO’s will register websites with Google Webmaster Central to get more detailed statistics about how and when Google crawls their website. To “verify” site ownership, Google provides a META tag that must be uploaded to the website to prove that you own it before sharing the crawling information.

To look for SEO involvement: View the source code of your competitor’s home page and search for the term “verify-v1” in the <head> section. Chances are somebody on their team is knowledgeable about SEO if you see something that looks like this:

<meta name="verify-v1" content="GRFWZR/Xs/Gsomerandomdigitsm4jGWF/BUg=" />

Similarly, the tag for the Yahoo! Site Explorer code looks like this:

<meta name="y_key" content="e7somedigits3c" />

Exception to the rule: The engines provide an alternative method of claiming a website that involves uploading a unique HTML or XML file to their server. These are much harder to find since the file name is random so you won’t find it unless you know what to look for. Your competitor might have registered their site this way and you wouldn’t know it.

5. Claimed Listings in Local Search Engines

Google Maps, Yahoo Local and other local search engines allow business owners (or their SEO or marketing people acting on their behalf) to “claim” or “verify” that they own the business. Once they have done so, they can add or edit the business listing, remove inaccurate information, upload photos, fix incorrect map placements, and a variety of other useful fixes.

To look for SEO involvement: Search either of those sites for your competitor and click on their listing. In Google, it will say “Provided by the business owner” within the “more info” section. If you see that, it could indicate that an SEO consultant encouraged them to claim their listing and update the details.

6. Optimized Meta Data and Page Titles

If an SEO is working on your competitor’s website, they will likely be optimizing each page’s copy for specific keywords. Sometimes they overdo it and it’s obvious which keywords they are targeting.

To look for SEO involvement: Check your competitor’s source code (File > View Source) and look for blatant over-use of high-value keywords in their page titles or Meta descpription and keywords tags.

They look like this:

<title>This is the Page Title</title>
<meta name="description" content="This is the page description which may include blatantly obvious keyword usage." />
<meta name="keywords" content="keyword, keyword variation, another keyword variation, keywords plural, you get the idea" />

7. Links Increasing Over Time

Proper SEO requires improving the quality and quantity of links pointing to a website. If your competitor is utilizing a competent SEO, you might expect to see the number of links to their website increasing over a period of weeks or months.

To look for SEO involvement: Use the Yahoo Site Explorer tool,type in your competitor’s web address and click “Explore URL”. Click the “Inlinks” button and then use the Show Inlinks selector to choose “Except from this domain”. Write down the total number of links. Check again every few weeks and keep track of the link counts. If their link count is rising faster than yours, it might indicate that they hired an SEO to build links to their site.

Exceptions to the rule: If your competitor is doing a lot of marketing, public relations, promotions, or is in the news, it could result in an increase in awareness for their site which could lead to more links regardless of whether they are doing it with SEO in mind.

What Next?

None of these signs are dead giveaways, as mentioned in the exceptions to each rule. But if you find more than 3 or 4 of these elements in your competitor’s site, you may consider fighting fire with fire and learning more about SEO.

Remember, search is a marathon not a sprint. If they have a head start, it doesn’t mean you can’t run a smarter race and beat them to the finish line.

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This is no surprise to anybody that has investigated local search marketing lately, but Google just announced a fundamental shift in the way they represent local search results within the normal web search results.

You are probably used to seeing Google Maps local search results show up when you type a normal location-based query into Google. They tend to look something like this:

Google Local Search Results

So what changed? They are now using your computer’s IP address to geo-target the local results even if you don’t type in a geographic modifier keyword.

According to their blog post:

We like to make search as easy as we can, so we’ve just finished the worldwide rollout of local search results on a map, which will now appear even when you don’t type in a location. When you search on Google, we will guess where you are and show results near you.

That means you can search for “pizza” or “dentist” without adding a location keyword such as “Richmond, VA” or “Ann Arbor, MI”. Google will show you the closest results based on your IP address if they can determine it with any accuracy.

Implications for Search Marketers

If you have a local business or any physical presence (storefront, office, distribution center), head over to the Google Local Business Center to create or claim your business listing in Google Maps. From there, you can take advantage of the following offerings:

• Verify that your information is correct and correct any errors
• Add more detailed information about your products and services
• Upload photos or videos
• Add coupons

Additionally, focus on optimizing your website for local search terms. Be sure to include your address, zip code, and phone number (with area code!) in your site’s footer, on a contact page, or any other appropriate place. Even if people don’t have to type them in to Google anymore, you want the search engine’s crawlers to note your physical presence.

Don’t try to fake your location to appear more relevant than you really are. Many companies are trying to create fake, spammy business listings in Google Maps. They are routinely getting removed and penalized for this behavior. Keep it legit!

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Differentiating a commodity is difficult, just ask anybody that sells gas, rice, or copper. These products are relatively undifferentiated and therefore can’t be sold at a premium. A supplier must bend to the will of the market and price their products properly or risk being undercut by another supplier selling the same product at a lower price. These price wars benefit the consumer but hurt the suppliers.

What if you are a supplier in an increasingly commoditized market such as Search Engine Optimization consulting? How do you differentiate your services from your competitors without straying too far from the “mainstream” SEO consulting business?

Unique Selling Propositions

Vast fortunes can be made based on a proprietor’s ability to develop and promote a Unique Selling Proposition (USP, also called a Unique Value Proposition or Unique Selling Point) for their product or service. A USP is critical because it conveys a unique benefit to the consumer.

Unique: radically distinctive and without equal

Benefit: something that aids or promotes well-being

If you sell pizza and can demonstrate that YOUR company delivers pizza faster than anybody else, you can persuade a lot of customers to buy from you simply based on the fact that they will get it sooner. Although your pizza may be exactly like your competitors’, your faster delivery time is the unique benefit.

Goats On The Roof

Want a practical example? Imagine you own and operate a small country store in small town in rural Georgia. Thousands of travelers drive through your town each week on their way to and from a nearby recreational lake and they have a half dozen country stores to choose from in your town alone. How do you differentiate your business and get more than a 1/6th share of the customers and revenue?

Simple, you put goats on your roof. Build them an intricate series of bridges, houses, and ways for visitors to feed them.

Goats On The Roof

The Goats

This is an actual country store in Tiger, GA named Goats On The Roof.

The Results

Drive through Tiger, GA (Google Map) on any given weekend and you will see that almost everybody stops at Goats On The Roof simply to feed the goats and marvel at the novelty of the idea. My hunch is that not many people would care to stop if it were simply Goats In A Field or even a Goats In A Petting Zoo. You can bet this attraction has resulted in significantly more business for the proprietors and a better shopping experience for the customers.

The Lessons for SEO Consultants

You may notice a lot of competition in your town or across the country for the consulting services you provide. This is validation that SEO works and that companies are deriving enough value from it to invest and recommend it as part of a larger marketing strategy to other businesses.

What are you doing to differentiate yourself from the other SEO consultants or firms in your town? Livestock might not be the answer in our industry, but perhaps you can position yourself as the “go-to” person for reputation management crises, local search marketing, or mobile search optimization.

Can you offer anything different? Faster turn-around times? Better and more useful reporting? On-site training and knowledge transfer for your clients’ marketing teams?

By developing and promoting your USP, you are able to differentiate yourself from seemingly similar businesses. This will lead to greater visibility and for your services, and most likely improve your client acquisition and retention efforts.

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