Convert Offline

With Superpages ranking highly in Google for a ton of local search queries you may want to figure out how to get your listing to the #1 spot so when folks click-thru from these top rankings you become the number 1 choice. This is just a little twist on barnacle seo using SuperPages PPC to get high quality traffic to your website.

Search Results Page For What Is Sure To Be A Very Popular Query

Begin by doing a search on Superpages.com for your type of business, get a feel for it. Think about what a consumer would type in when looking for a business like yours. Is your competition there? If not keep looking, you might be in the wrong category? Think about what a consumer would type, not what YOU think they SHOULD type

You found your category? Good. Now go back to the results and look in the left-hand most column. You’ll find suggested related categories under best match. Write down the ones that apply to you. Below that you’ll see headings: Products, Services & Brands. I’ll tell you how to get your business listing in those “categories” when we talk about the business profle later in this post.

Let’s talk about the layout. Superpages has 2 columns of listings, in a well-searched heading both are dominated by advertisers. As you would expect the left column of listings is going to get the majority of traffic. Forget about the right unless your interested in advertising nationally.

The left column contains up to 25 listings with up to 10 pay-per-click advertisers. The rest of this post will be dedicated to using pay per click on superpages as it is only way to grab the top spots.

Ok, here’s how it works – the Algo. Like Google, placement is based on relevance so placement is determined by your Click-Thru-Rate (CTR) as well as your Bid Amount. So like Google you want to write compelling copy.

Unlike Google, superpages has 4 campaign types and you need to understand them to know in what types of searches your ad will show and the types of searches in which your ad will not show.

1. Local
2. Metro
3. State
4. National

Your account can have as many campaigns as you like.

Advertisers that use a Local and/or Meto campaign will show in the results when a town or city is included in the searcher’s query. For example, Chiropractor Paramus NJ would display only advertisers in Local & Metro campaigns (covering the Paramus area).

In a Local Campaign you can advertise in your
a) Your Home City
b) Your Home County which will obviously include your home city.
c) Your Home County + ANY County That borders that County.
Counties separated by water are in most cases ok when reasonable. Bergen County NJ borders Westchester County NY despite the Hudson but Orange County Ca is not considered local to Hawaii.

Metro areas are pre-determined by superpages and coverage area maps are provided in the account set up tools in the PPC portal.

State campaigns are shown when the city is omitted and just the state is typed-in. For example, Chiropractor NJ.
This isn’t very practical for a local business and I don’t use it. If, however, you target the whole state you can and probably should include this.

National – No geography is used by the searcher indicating they want to search the whole country. Not a good option for a local business.

Local and Metro campaigns are your best bet so let’s talk more about those options. Your goal is to cover your entire service area without showing your ad in areas you don’t service. Obviously showing ads outside your service area is going to cost you money without any hope of a return.

If your service area is larger than just your home & contiguous counties, you will need to go to a Metro campaign to cover your whole service area. Maps of Metro areas are provided as you set up your progam on the superpages.com ppc portal. If your service area is bigger than Local but smaller than a Metro, you’ll have to decide. Perhaps start with a Local and move up if you find the ROI is there.

If you do a metro campaign, you will want to include a local campaign as well. The more local you get the more local signals you can provide at the listing level. You may choose to display your actual address in the local campaign and hide it in your metro. There are advantages to displaying your actual address in a local campaign I’ve been told, but I think I’ll save that for a future post.

As you go through the portal, superpages walks you through setting up a campaign step by step in the fashion of a wizard. When you get to the business profile option you’ll want to fill out as best you can as each word you include in your business profile becomes a keyword that will allow you to come up in a keyword search.

Superpages.com is kind of a hybrid between a search engine and IYP as it will search for business categories like a traditional Internet Yellow Pages but it will also search for keywords if the query demands it. And the place it seaches for keywords is the business profile.

You will also need to determine what links you want to do display at the listing level. Go back to superpages.com and do a search. Under the listings you will notice links. Phone, More Info, Map it, Email etc. These are all clickable and in a pay per click you can imagine what that means. You guessed it, you’ll pay the full price of the click and might never even get traffic to your website if you decide to display these links. You are also likely to have a higher CTR than a business that doesn’t display them. I’ve made the decision that I will only pay for a click to my website, so the only clickable item I will display as part of my listing is the url. If I need to bid higher because of decreased CTR I will do so.

Because I track my site using Google Analytics I also use url builder otherwise the traffic will show as direct traffic in Google Analytics. If you don’t understand that last sentence. Don’t worry about it. Use the tracking provided by superpages.com and don’t give this paragraph another thought.

Subscribe | Submit

The 3 fears that all small businesses must overcome to be active in local search engine marketing are:

1. Local Search Engine Marketing doesn’t work.
2. Local Search won’t work for my type of business
3. Search Marketing won’t work for me.

Afraid Of The Unknown – Overcoming Fear #1

Sharing statistics is the best way to help a potential local advertiser understand the importance of advertising on the web. The ability to relate it to other media, as in this chart from Screenwerk is perfect.

Next, breakdown the traffic by site, this is getting a little old ( July 2006 from Comscore), but it’s still the best study I’ve seen on local.

Wouldn’t You Like to Be A Pepper Too! – Overcoming Fear #2

To overcome the fear that search isn’t right for the particular industry look at the competition.

Do a few searches on some of the sites mentioned above and look for others in that industry who are having success. Defining success is difficult… but the most convincing is time. If a competitor has been advertising on that site month after month… year after year… it proves it’s working for that industry.

Every Man Is An Island – Overcoming Fear #3

Copy is the key to overcoming this fear. Ask, “Why would someone choose your business over the competition?” The answer is very often the headline… and if you have a good headline… you want people to see it.

Small business owners are savvy enough to know that ad copy/promotional text/web design are important. They know it intuitively, but are not experienced enough to articulate it quite that way. So, this fear is the one that leads to procrastination… and if it’s a sales call… it will end with “I’ll think about it.” What they need to think about is the message but they don’t know it. If you don’t help them… then and there… you’ve missed it.

A small business will get involved with search, when they understand why and how:

Why they should advertise in Search Marketing.

And then…

How to do it effectively.

When these 3 fears are overcome, a small business will engage search marketing aggressively.

Subscribe | Submit

I recently came across a keyword report provided by an IYP doing paid-search advertising for a local advertiser. The advertiser is a Heating & Air guy located in Central New Jersey.

I’m not going to say what IYP managed this campaign and because I got this report from a third party I couldn’t tell you whether the business is happy or not with the results. And because I’m looking at this keyword report in a vacuum, my objective in this post is not to judge the campaign. But rather to educate small business owners that are getting into search marketing for the first time as to what questions they should be asking their SEM.

Let’s begin by taking a look at the last 7 days of the report (note: I copied this excerpt from the original format into Google Docs and removed the column containing IP addresses):

Keyword Report .

1. Is the SEM fee-based or are they charging a percentage of spend?
2. Are there separate ads set-up for the different keywords? i.e would searchers find one ad, appropriate, for the keyword frigidaire and a different one for refrigeration?
3. Do each of the keyword/ad groups go directly to a page on my site that is relevant to the keyword when the ad is clicked?
4. Could I see the list of negative keywords for each of the campaigns? (and could you add ‘four seasons’ to it?)
5. What is the Click-Thru Rate for each of the ad groups?

Question one has to do with motive. Questions 2 through 4 represent the bare minimum of competence. Question 5 is a measure of quality in how well the SEM executed questions 2-4. If I did not get satisfactory answers to these questions I would abandon the SEM firm… not Search Marketing.

With all that said, you may be wondering why I did not mention conversion. That would certainly be among the first questions I asked when measuring the competence of a SEM. However, I did not mention it before in this article because I think that is the only question local businesses are asking their SEMs. And if they want to get the most out of their search campaigns they are going to have to get beyond that and demand more.

Please let me know your thoughts on this keyword report and/or any additional questions you think local advertisers should ask their SEM in the comments.

Subscribe | Submit