Search Engine Marketing Ideas for Locally-owned Freeport ME Businesses
In addition to being a conversation starter, I want this blog to be useful–to make some tangible impact on the economic future of Freeport, ME.
The post I wrote about strengthening locally-owned businesses in Freeport (A Citizen Marketing Campaign to Boost the Freeport, Maine Economy) clearly struck a chord with people. Lots of great public and private comments from business owners, and plenty of residents excited about trying to help with the concept of a Local’s Guide to Freeport, ME. I continue to think that a concerted effort at promoting our locally-owned businesses is one way to assure a future economy for Freeport, ME that benefits residents and positions our town as unique and different for visitors.
So over the course of the last couple blogless weeks (my apologies–it’s summer and I’m a little busy at work), I’ve been observing web search patterns as they relate to local Freeport businesses. This post looks at opportunities within search engine marketing (SEM), as one element of an overall marketing campaign to boost locally-owned Freeport businesses.
Someone may know the stats on the percentage of visitors to Freeport that do internet research before their trip, but judging from the general web trends within the vacation and hospitality categories, it is fair to assume it is significant. With the proliferation of smart phones, more people are researching while on their way or once they’re here. For any locally-owned business seeking to capitalize on this traffic, a successful web presence, and particular attention to how web searchers find you, will be well worth some time and effort.
Here are my initial thoughts on some basic web and search engine marketing tactics locally-owned Freeport businesses (as well as citizens who wish to support them) can follow. These make take some time, but all can be achieved at no cost.
1. Claim your business on the major local search engines–Google and Yahoo. Google Local (the same thing as Google Maps) and Yahoo Local remain the dominant players. Everyone searching Google who uses a locationally-based term will generally get Google Maps as a top search result. The opportunity to be in the top position with a direct link to your business is huge, but if you haven’t taken control of your own listing, chances are that link won’t be right. Claim your business on Google here. Claim your business on Yahoo Local here.
2. Keep watch on other local directory aggregators, both old and new. The local search war has been and will always be one of the web’s wildest categories. I’m not expert enough in the local search game to recommend these, but there are many sites both old school (local.com, citysearch, yellowpages, insiderpages, etc) and new school (Yelp, Merchant Circle, Kudzu, Angies List, Smalltown and many more). Fundamentally, these business models are trying to rank for search on your business name, and you don’t want to lose that to anyone. Of these, I cautiously recommend checking out Yelp. It takes a social networking slant with user reviews, has very strong traffic, is one of the most popular iPhone applications and has some traction within Freeport. Yelp has strength: a review of Buck’s Naked I wrote on Yelp is currently ranking higher for the search term “bucks freeport me” than Buck’s own site. The place to list your business on Yelp is here.
3. Engage your customers by asking them to write reviews. Within the local search category, user reviews are increasingly critical. Most of the local search engines are displaying user reviews with your listing. And while I can’t prove this, the Google algorithm likes engagement, so I suspect that businesses with higher levels of user engagement will rank better. In my research, the review engines that are most important for Freeport businesses are Google, Yahoo, TripAdvisor and Yelp. These get aggregated across many of the other local search sites. Residents of town can help by taking a little time occasionally to review your favorite local businesses on these sites.
4. Check your listing on FreeportUSA.com. If your business is listed on the Freeport Merchant’s Association site, make sure it is accurate. I’ve come across a number that have incorrect, non-existent or bad links. Keep in mind that until you’ve established your own web presence, the inherent strength of freeportusa.com, given its age, traffic and pagerank, is likely to siphon your traffic.
5. Get your own web presence. If you don’t yet have a site, you should. It is critical to winning search traffic and the best way to communicate with the world about your business. The Derosier’s website, IMO, is a great example of a local business site that is simple but conveys a great story. You need something, and it is better to have a couple pages live than to wait to launch the sophisticated website of your dreams.
6. Consider a blog to support your website. The White Cedar Inn Blog and the Freeport Cheese & Wine Blog are two businesses in town that are effectively using this alternative publishing platform to capture traffic. Search engines tend to rank blog content high, so they are an excellent way to capture traffic around secondary search terms. For example, on the search term “l.l. bean concert series,” White Cedar Inn is in position #4 and Future Freeport Blog is in position #6. Beyond search, a blog is a great way to maintain an ongoing dialogue with customers and the community.
There’s much much more to say on this topic. Please let me know in the comments if you have other thoughts and especially if you find posts like this to be useful. Thanks.
P.S. Adam Nappi and I hatched an idea to get together some evening with laptops to write local business reviews. Wendy Caisse at Buck’s has agreed to host us. We’re working on a date. If you are interested, send me an email at ptroast at gmail dot com.
P.S.S. I’ve been continuing to add businesses to the Local’s Guide to Freeport, ME Google Map. Traffic to it is growing nicely. But it still isn’t a complete list. Please take a look and let me know what locally-owned businesses I’m missing.
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Comments
Thanks Eric. Glad you found the post useful. It is clear that local businesses in Freeport have some real opportunities to improve in search. Your blog Freeport Cheese and Wine blog http://fcandw.blogspot.com/ is a great move and always a good read.
Peter,
A couple of comments about this post…even though FMA may outrank a new site because of the age of the FMA site, it is a valuable incoming link to a website, for all the reasons you gave. If a business is in Freeport, and wants a valid incoming Freeport-based link, this is a good one.
In your list of ‘business directories’ that a business could be on, you list Merchant Circle. They routinely attempt to lure businesses to list on their site. They’ve gone so far as to purport to have the real ‘White Cedar Inn blog’ on their site. I would strongly advise against businesses getting involved with them at all.
I don’t even respond to their emails.
Thanks for doing the research on SEM for Freeport! And thanks for mentioning the White Cedar Inn blog.
Monica
Nice work Peter. You’ve addressed a valuable marketing method in a very clear and helpful manner for many people.
First I’d like to echo your suggestion to check your listings on FreeportUSA.com (or anyplace else you have your info listed) and keep us updated on changes.
Monica is exactly right - the FMA website has massive reach. If anyone is looking for anything Freeport, they will find the FMA site is prominently returned in the search. It’s extremely valuable if they can find you from there. Many of our active members report the highest referral rate to their own website is from the FMA site. If you change your web address, hours, products, etc. we won’t be able to update it unless you tell us.
Secondly, while FMA is a membership driven organization, we do provide many marketing and publicity opportunities for Freeport overall. We provide substantial free publicity to community happenings from the Farmers Market to authors speaking at the Library, to events at Wolfe’s Neck Farm, FPAC and the Creative Arts, and more. We often provide online banner promotion of things like the Freeport Historical Society membership drive. More than 44 thousand people checked our online calendar for things to do in Freeport last year. If you know of things happening, send us the info so we can post it. It all means more activity for everyone.
It’s also helpful (and often fun), to set alerts for yourself. You can go to Google (other’s too) and set an “alert” for “Freeport, Maine”. Then when anything hits the Internet related to it you’ll get an email with a link to the source. (That’s actually how I first found Peter’s Blog.)Following those sources back can often give you a new place to promote your business.
The things mentioned in this thread take some time and lots of determination, but THEY WORK! Again, excellent topic, Peter. Keep up the good work.
Dick Collins
Peter,
Thanks for this post (and your on-going attention and dedication to helping Freeport as a community and a business area)….you boiled down this to basic levels and made it so easy to access the sites - Yahoo!, Google and Yelp for “owning” our business listings - by that, I mean, not just saying go to Google and “own” your listing…..but, here’s the specific site to hit.
You’ve opened my eyes quite a bit to “local search” on websites….thanks!
The idea for getting a bunch of local business owners together to write reviews is a great idea! Count me in!
Eric Fullagar
Freeport Cheese & Wine