october 2007

Today is an interview I did with Ahmed Farooq from iBegin.com. I had heard of the site and took a quite peak around but when I hooked up with Ahmed via Facebook I asked him if could enlighten me.  

Q. iBegin- can you tell us what it is? A. Hard to pigeonhole iBegin. In a nutshell - “we do local“. I personally believe that local is more than just local search - it is about anything that is relevant on a local level. That’s why we have not only local search, but also weather, geocoding, and business data (iBegin Source). With more coming soon of course.

Q. How can ibegin help a small business in Augusta GA? A. iBegin Source is our entry into the business data market (think Acxiom or InfoUSA). We have had thousands of users download the data, and have quite a few customers using it on commercial websites. As an SMB, you want to make sure you appear everywhere you can online. By making sure your listing is accurate and upto date on iBegin, you make sure it is accurate and upto date on a whole lot more sites (with all their associated traffic). This is true for any business anywhere in the US.

Q. How does a business know if it is already listed? A. Just search on http://source.ibegin.com/ for your business and your address/ZIP. Pretty easy.

Q. Where do you get your data from? A. A variety of sources. We buy broad (full US) data from the state government, federal government, credit companies, and other business-oriented companies (think any company that provides B2B services). We also buy niche data - be it a vertical (eg Mexican Restaurants) or a niche local (eg Pasadena). We do *not* spider any data from the web.

Q. What does the future hold for iBegin? A. iBegin Source is just getting started. The amount of noise we are making has steadily increased since we launched - more and more local-oriented businesses are using us as their backbone (skipping over the much-more expensive traditional data providers). I mentioned earlier that we had more coming soon - I don’t want to tip our hat, but relationships (in any context) is something we find extremely interesting and will be expanding on soon.

Q. Will you be making more cities available such as augusta.ibegin.com? A. We took a break from city sites (eg Toronto and Ottawa) so we could build a robust framework for the underlying data (iBegin Source and iBegin Geocoder). Once the beforementioned ‘relationship’ systems are complete, we will likely begin to move into other cities too.

I just wanted to take a second to note that right now (more or less)  things are relatively separate. Basically our areas are:

Business Data - iBegin Source City Sites - Toronto, Ottawa, etc Weather Geocoder

While all of them are interconnected (eg iBegin Source and City sites use Geocoder, and so forth), the integration will increase a lot more in the future. We have a few other areas to launch, and over time everything will integrate more tightly.

Thanks Ahmed for your time and ...

Ok-is there anyone from SuperPages reading this blog? If so, please contact me. I am a bit ticked off. Why? Because I have been getting phone calls from SuperPages asking to review my business information-to make sure it is correct/up to date.

When the first call came in, I said all the information is correct because I put it in myself. Well a couple of days later I got another call. Today I got a call at 9:51 am from SuperPages asking to review my business information. I said everything was correct. 

The person on the phone (who I might add have a very familiar accent) said that the only way to change information was through him. I asked him what he was trying to sell. Nothing he said. Also I asked him if I could only change my information through him, why does it have a link on my profile page: “Update Your Profile”. No response on that one.  The caller did not really answer any of my questions.

The conversation finally ended with the caller saying, “You will not receive another phone call from us.” I said thank you. Guess what? At 1:39 pm I got another phone call from the same number. Ok guys what is going on?

Has anyone else experienced this?  Outsourced telemarketing from top notch local search companies, man I am disappointed. 

I have hit a milestone today, my 100th post!  I have really enjoyed sharing here at LocalBizbits and look forward to the future. I want to thank everyone for their support, feedback, and encouragement.

I will be adding site sponsors here soon, so if you would like to support LocalBizBits, please send me an email and I will send you some of the details.

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Chris Linnett, wrote a nice piece, How Sputnik Changed Local Search. The article I think really puts local search into perspective.

“We have seen significant growth in local search and are laying the foundation for faster and greater improvements, but we have been living through the early part of the curve…”

Local search marketing is just beginning and how will it look in 5 - 10 years, no one can really say.  As we are in the “early part of the curve” small business needs to have some patience as the process gets worked out but should take advantage of getting on board now.  It is always best to be ahead of the curve! I look forward to see how things pan out.

I often hear local advertisers talk about what advertising worked and what didn’t… they almost always consider the medium and rarely the message. Then I wonder… “So… 100 people typed in the category of your business, your town,and visited your site… then decided */not/* to do business with you… why do you think that is? Hmmmm…

A recent survey conducted by Nielsen/Netratings  for WebVisible showed just how important website design really is. Peter Krasilovsky  has a nice write up on the survey at the The Local Onliner . What really struck me is:

“Eighty-five percent of respondents agreed that the quality of a business owner’s website is an important factor in earning the consumer’s trust. Over 75 percent of respondents said they were more likely to make a purchase from “an unfamiliar business with a quality website,” than “a poor website from a known business.”

Eight-five percent!!! In Yellow Pages, we used to call this ‘completing the ad cycle’. Somebody would get recommended to your business or see your advertising and they would come to the Yellow Pages to get the numberor learn more …and if you’re not there or if you’re not well-represented… you’re going to lose that customer.

Well, what’s old is new again, right? Check out how many referrals were potentially lost in one month alone by glancing at the analytics of this local search campaign  good place to start a web marketing campaign is at the beginning… with a good design. Paying for a good esign up front will save you thousands in marketing costs down the line.

======================== Today’s post is from our anonymous Internet insider, Mr. X.

Why Small Businesses Don’t Invest in Online Marketing by Janet Meiners was a great article at MarketingPilgram last week. Before I read the article, I took a guess on what it would say. You will have to trust me, but my answers were pretty close to those in the  article.

Janet says education is the key to getting small businesses moving. Hey that is what this blog is about!  Local search marketing is all about getting listed and optimized for your neck of the woods. Please if you have questions, let me know and I will address them here.

Small Business Guide to Optimizing Universal Search, by Lee Odden is another great article for those who want to learn more about the search engines. Lee defines what universal search is and how it works on a number of search engines.

He goes through the various aspects or angles small business can use to promote themselves and increase their visibility. Lee wraps up his article:

“The Work Will Never End But the Benefits Are Long Term As long as there are search engines, there will be some kind of optimization for improving search engine visibility. What small business marketers need to consider are all the digital assets they have to work with and enable content creation, optimization and promotion processes to give both search engines and customers the information they’re looking for in the formats they’ll respond to.”

Yes there is some work involved smal business owner, but it is worth it. If you need help, contact a professional but it is important that you do something! You can’t win if you are not in the game…Ok I am off of my soapbox now

Andrew Shotland has a nice post I recommend you read: The Local Business Information Cloud. This post is a summary of a talk that Gib Olander from Localeze, gave at the SMX Local Search Conference about 2 weeks ago.

It is a straight forward and informative article. The “business information cloud” is basically the information you provide about your business on-line. The more you can provide, the “bigger the cloud” and thus more ways for searchers to find you.

Andrew provides a nice list of key information you need to provide.

I contacted Gib and ask him if there was anything else he wanted to add. “It looks like Andrew did an exemplary job of capturing the key points. The only thing I’d add or stress is that it is important for a business to own their findability. Adding the relevant keywords or “findability tags” to your local business content cloud can make the difference in be found or having your competition being found.”

“Own your findability”- in other words, you need to be proactive in getting listed on-line and to make sure you have a plan.