When it comes to the Internet, the customer doesn’t always have to be right.

A few weeks ago, we talked about how it’s becoming increasingly difficult to manage your online reputation. There are just too many prominent platforms online for angry customers, nefarious competitors, or criticizing chaos cravers to take unfair shots at your business.

With the arrival of local search (where customer reviews are integrated with technologies like Google Maps in search results), this problem has become even more significant. If the first thing a searcher sees about your business is a nasty (even if unfair) review, that alone could undo all the rest of the work you’ve put into an Internet marketing strategy.

Thankfully, Google has recently made it just a little bit easier to defend yourself.

According to Google’s Lat Long Blog:

Starting today, if you’re a verified Google Places business owner, you can publicly respond to reviews written by Google Maps users on the Place Page for your business. Engaging with the people who have shared their thoughts about your business is a great way to get to know your customers and find out more. Both positive and negative feedback can be good for your business and help it grow (even though it’s sometimes hard to hear). By responding, you can build stronger relationships with existing and prospective customers.

For example, a thoughtful response acknowledging a problem and offering a solution can often turn a customer who had an initially negative experience into a raving supporter. A simple thank you or a personal message can further reinforce a positive experience. Ultimately, business owner responses give you the opportunity to learn what you do well, what you can do better, and show your customers that you’re listening.

Click to Enlarge

You must be the verified owner of a verified listing in order to respond. Google also posted a user guide with some tips (be nice, don’t make it personal, etc.) for responding without losing customers a little bit less precarious.

At Masterlink, we believe strongly in mutual benefit of these sorts of online conversations, and offer a full suite of online reputation management services that ensure you a reputation that’s accurately reflective of your sterling business.

Last week, we talked a bit about why your site visitors might not stick around long enough for you to make a sale and how to improve  high “bounce rates”. Cluttered design and navigation issues, poor website performance, and boring, muddled content can each send a site visitor packing.

But let’s say you’re consistently getting them to hang out a bit and listen to what you have to say—what’s next in making your web design affect your bottom line?

Here are three keys:

1. Content. Content. Content.
Yep, content is still king. SEO can grab a web visitor. Snazzy web designs can get them to click around a bit. But it’s content that sells, just like a salesperson greeting a customer in an actual store. In fact, this might be the only time a visitor takes the time to dive into the nitty gritty details of what’s written on your site, rather than just scanning and clicking around.

Beyond hooks and slogans, the key is to anticipate the visitor’s needs and desires in the content before they get there. Think about all the doubts and skepticism that a visitor brings with them to your site. Make them feel understood and reassured in a way that builds real trust. Back this up with accurate and expertise-driven detailed content about your products and services that builds a sense of respect and faith in what you’re selling, and you’ll be in good position to develop a deeper relationship.

2. Lights. Camera. Call to Action.
Some customers need a slight nudge. Others might just not know what to do next. Regardless, concise, clear call to action is critical element of your web design.

Many business owners seem to think that if a visitor likes their product or service, they’ll just sort of figure out what to do next. Don’t assume this. Give them a compelling, clear-cut offer, and then make it as easy as possible for them to take the plunge, in a step-by-step way. This includes:

• An attractive “Contact” page, featuring more than just a form. Give them email addresses. Give them phone numbers. Give them a Google map with all of your locations listed. Give them a name and a face for who they’d be talking to if they make the all.
• “Add to Cart” functions if you’re selling a product.
• Forms for quote requests.
• Clear information about pricing, packages, and product specs.
• Online chat with salespeople.
• Access to newsletters, blogs, and white papers.

3. Be Memorable

In the end, the time just won’t be right for many otherwise interested site visitors. But if you connect with visitors in a real way, make them feel understood and cared about, and make yourself stand out from the competition, you’ll be there in their memory when they’re ready to pull the trigger.

This is where a comprehensive web design matters most, with all the different elements working together. A visitor should leave your site impressed by your professionalism, expertise, personality, and the way you anticipated their needs and desires. Sacrifice any of these, and the experience won’t be so memorable.

Contact one of our Dallas web design experts to learn more about our approach to web design and creating compelling web content. We’re here for you if it’s time to rethink your web design.

Depending on how you look at it, it’s either the golden age of customer service or the cutthroat age of bullying business. Regardless, it’s the era of Twitter reviews, Chowhound critiques, and Facebook rants. Welcome to the Yelp generation.

For the most part, the web and social media have created a wonderful, vibrant community built on robust exchanges of information and opinion. Everyone has access to a bullhorn. Every customer has three or four ways to rate and review businesses. This empowers customers, and gives companies access to the feedback needed to truly hone their services around customer and client desires and needs. But it also creates a thousand new ways for your reputation to get dragged through the mud.

Techcrunch goes so far to say it plainly: “Reputation is dead.”

Trying to control, or even manage, your online reputation is becoming increasingly difficult. And much like the fight by big labels against the illegal sharing of music, it will soon become pointless to even try. It’s time we all just give up on the small fights and become more accepting of the indiscretions of our fellow humans. Because the skeletons are coming out of the closet and onto the front porch.

Today we have quick fire and semi or completely anonymous attacks on people, brands, businesses and just about everything else. And it is becoming increasingly findable on the search engines. Twitter, Yelp, Facebook, etc. are the new printing presses, and absolutely everyone, even the random wingnuts, have access.[...]

The random slam against your restaurant anonymously left by the owner of the competitor around the corner. The Twitter flame about how bad a driver you are, complete with a link to a picture of your license plate.[...]

Our minds haven’t evolved much over the last few thousands of years, but the spread of quick fire opinions is now moving at the speed of light and forever findable on the Internet. We’re still wired to think of gossip as something that spreads quietly behind the scenes, and relatively slowly. But we’re already in a world where it’s all completely public, there are few repercussions to the person spreading it, and it is easily searchable. No wonder people freak out. We’re fish out of water.

Despite its ubiquity, the web is still a relatively new, rapidly evolving part of life for many people in America. And it might take quite a long time for our society to adapt and learn how to handle this new overload of information and opinion in a healthy way.

Unfortunately—while, yes, we should be more forgiving, more willing to take what we read with a grain of salt, and less reliant on the opinions of others—anyone who’s been the dinged with an unfair review online somewhere (even if only as result of an honest misunderstanding) or been the target of an organized smear campaign by a rival competitor knows that simply hoping for a society-wide Internet paradigm shift isn’t enough. And people seem to say things behind the mask of the Internet that they never would face-to-face.

That’s why we offer our online reputation management (ORM) service. Basically, we employ a three-step process to ensure you a reputation that’s accurately reflective of your sterling business:

• We monitor & track what’s being said about your company around the web.
• We analyze how such comments affect your brand, reputation, and, ultimately, success as a business.
• We influence the results by participating in the conversation, consulting with you to speak up in defense of your products and services, and creating positive listings in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) to help push down the negative results.

The last thing you want to do is be blind to the negative reviews being posted about your business.

We can give you the peace of mind that comes with both accurately understanding your own reputation and having a few tools to fight back, and basically make the unpredictable nature of user-generated content just a little bit more, well, predictable and manageable.

Contact us for more information about online reputation management.

Facts and strategies are cheap in the search engine optimization (SEO) world, as one day’s success-certified SEO formula is the next day’s waste of code.

Last week, we talked briefly about how Google’s increasing emphasis on local search could dramatically change SEO. Specifically, we showed how the page placement of local search results (the Google map, local listings and user-ratings) could sometimes push otherwise perfectly optimized websites further down in the search rankings. Worse page placement could equal less incentive to spend a bunch of time and energy getting such a page to the top.

Amazing how rapidly things can change.

SEO watchers around the web noticed this week that Google has already started experimenting with different page placements of local search results. According to Mike Blumenthal’s Understanding Google Maps & Local Search, some of the tinkerings include:

1) The Places listings are BIGGER and look like the organic results except they have a map pin.

2) As you scroll down the MAP scrolls with you. So even when you are at bottom of page in the organic listings the map moves down and shows on right.

3) ONLY 7 (purely) organic listings show and in this instance most are directories or assn. Only 2 are Dentists.

4) To get on the top TWO screens you need to be in local. Most of the organic are 2 screens BELOW the fold.

5) Reviews are more prominent

6) Link to Place Page is marked as such, instead of just “More Info” which means better branding and name recognition for Google Places

7) It’s pulling meta description from the site – just like organic.

PLUS it adds some snippets from reviews on the Place page. So best of both worlds and BIGGER!

Click to Enlarge

In this format, the best-optimized websites are back on top… at least, of course, until Google decides to experiment with placing the local search results in a different spot. Or perhaps mix in a variety of placements, based on the importance of local search to that particular query. Or at least until a new, innovative way of organizing and accessing information emerges.

Two points:

1. As always, fundamentals matter the most when it comes to SEO, and an effective, well-designed site that gets shared around by clients and customers will grab the attention of the search engines one way or another.

2. Even if Google and the other search engines tinker with the placement of local search results, don’t expect them to ever minimize the importance of local search. It’s here to stay, even if the algorithm and factors the search engines love most might change.

It’s something we’re watching very closely, because local search can have huge implications for your company’s Internet marketing strategy. Stay tuned…

Search engine optimization around location increasingly matters. Here’s what you need to know:

What is it?

It’s optimization for searches that take into account location—of both the searcher and the local business—as well as other, more traditional searching factors. According to Google, 73 percent of all online activity relates to local content. Each of the major search engines now routinely mix local elements in with regular search results.

What’s led to its development?

The rise of smartphones and mobile web usage. The growing integration of web-usage into all areas of life and business. The demands of a more web-savvy public.

But also just the basic mission of the search engines: as we talk about often at Masterlink, their primary goal to get you the best, most accurate, most valued-by-the-wider-web-community information possible at any specific place or time. And if such best possible information can be tailored to your current location, then they’re going to try to get you that as well.

How does it work?

So let’s say while out on the town you get an urgent craving to slurp down some spicy green curry—Google is waiting, wok in hand. Search for “Thai food in Dallas,” and you get a result that looks something like this:

Boom: Directions. Prices. Reviews. Phone numbers. Links to websites and access to menus. Everything a customer could want short of a ticket to Bangkok.

But even if your office location doesn’t really matter — say, you’re a Dallas web design and Internet marketing company working for small businesses all across the city as well as nationally — location SEO still matters. Why? Trust. Familiarity. Community pride. The fundamentals of good business are still, well, fundamental. And customers and clients will still value the ability to meet you in a concrete location and build that business relationship.

How does it change SEO?

Look back at that Thai food listings. Let’s say you owned a local tom yum shop, and had worked really hard over the past year to get your site listed at the top of the search rankings. Suddenly, with the local business results occupying the top of the page, your well-respected, well-linked, well-optimized site might find itself in the middle of bottom of the page.

Furthermore, users are increasingly likely to look for more narrow results when it comes to location searches. So instead of “Thai Food in Dallas,” check out “Thai food in Plano.” The results change. A site perfectly optimized for a larger, more competitive area might get missed by more specific searches.

What can I do?

We’ll talk more extensively about this in the coming weeks. But here are some basics:

1. Register

The obvious first step is to register your business (even if you don’t yet have a website) with mainstream search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Also make sure your business is listed on directories like Yelp and Citysearch, plus more traditional paid listings like Superpages.com and Yellowpages.com.

2. Spread the (Your Own) Good News
After registering, ask your best clients to write reviews. Ratings and reviews are one of the first factors clicked on by searchers.

3. Experiment. Have Fun With It. Just Don’t Forget About SEO Basics.
Since location searching is still relatively new, there’s plenty of space for exploration about what boosts rankings. But the game hasn’t completely started over, and all the standard elements that search engines love still matter the most. The location-specific elements are just a new twist on an ever evolving marketing arena.

Here’s your new search engine optimization strategy:

1. Build a company that is valued by your customers and clients.
2. Build a smart, effective site that highlights this value.
3. Build a company that is valued by your customers and clients.
4. No, really, build a great company.

Here’s why:

A few weeks ago, we mentioned that Google had made a small tweak in the search algorithm, referred to as “Mayday”, and that such tiny changes in the formula could mean significant drops in search engine rankings for companies that focus more site optimization than on what the site actually offers to customers and clients.

Apparently, it happened as expected.

According to Web Pro News:

Google’s recent algorithm update, nicknamed “Mayday” by webmasters got a lot of people riled up, as many claimed it seriously affected their rankings, and potentially their revenues.

[…] Here are a few samples of reader comments from our previous coverage of the update:

“In conjunction with the drop in Google traffic, I have seen a matching drop in clicks out from my site to other sites. So it’s real, and it’s not been rosy to deal with.”

“Every time they make an improvement something else goes wrong.”

“Yes I have worked hard trying to rank and it keeps changing. Decided to go to other methods and forget about Google and their ranking.”

[...] One reader offered some sound advice:

“Never forget the first rules in SEO: It changes all the time. So, Google has made a change, which is not the first one. Do the basics right and you will have a sound long-term strategy.”

In an interview with the site, Google SEO liaison Matt Cutts says: “We’re trying to spot what are the signals of quality, whether for pages or for sites, that really are going to be good for users. [...] So part of what ‘Mayday’ addresses is trying to say ‘How do we return the best sites—the sites we think users are going to like?’”

We agree, and say as much often here at Masterlink Interactive: Focusing your web site’s SEO too much on a single, specific search ranking factor leaves you vulnerable to the whims and business interests of the search engines themselves. Quality sites that visitors love will thrive in a rapidly changing search environment.

This doesn’t mean that understanding the more complicated ins and outs of SEO isn’t important. Quite the contrary—the right tweaks can mean the difference between first page and third. SEO is constantly evolving, and someone (like us!) a little bit obsessed with following and figuring out the industry can benefit your company in a big way.

But web design quality is primary, and a site built solely to please the search engines is bound to fall whenever their algorithms get tweaked. We help you build sites that your customers and clients value, and it’s that element that the search engines are working endlessly to make sure matters most.

Contact us to develop a customized web design, search engine optimization, and comprehensive Internet marketing strategy.

Say it smart. Say it with heart. And say it in as many different ways as possible.

Some interesting stats were released this week from a new Nielsen Three Screen Report about how people are watching online video.

According to Web Pro News:

High-speed broadband access, now in 63.5 percent of homes, has created a better user experience for watching online videos and nearly a quarter of households have smartphones, allowing people to “place shift” and watch video anywhere.

Despite the common perception that viewers of videos on mobile phones are mostly teens, more than half (55%) are adults aged 25-49. While mobile online video viewing is still fairly limited, year over year growth is notable at 51.2%.

[…]Also in the first quarter 138 million people watched video on the Internet spending on average 3 hours, 10 minutes.

When it comes to mobile video, 20.3 million watched mobile video in the U.S., spending on average 3 hours and 37 minutes each month.

So online video is officially mainstream. How do these stats affect your web design and Internet marketing strategy?

Basically, it just means that there’s more and more reason to effectively integrate video into your comprehensive web presence. It can pay big dividends: Catchy content tends to get passed around. Shared links both spread your message and boost search engine rankings. Video platforms like YouTube give viewers the chance to respond and interact with your company. And with the rise of mobile video, these elements could be targeted in ways that will benefit users on-the-go, potentially giving your company a critical edge.

In other words, there are limitless ways now to creatively reach potential customers.

At Masterlink Interactive , we recommend a multi-faceted approach to Internet marketing and web design. All of our clients provide great products and services—our goal is just to help broadcast those impressive capabilities via as many different platforms as are needed to reach their potential customers. Different people will respond to different modes of communication, so it’s important to modify your message where possible.

Beyond video, this also means integrating elements into your web design like social media marketing, flash design, and e-mail marketing.

Contact our Dallas interactive marketing experts to learn more about video elements in web design and internet marketing.

If you noticed a slight change in your Google-driven traffic this past week, it may be due to a small tweak the search engine made in its algorithm — one that brings up an excellent point about web design and Internet marketing.

According to SearchEngineLand:

Google made between 350 and 550 changes in its organic search algorithms in 2009. This is one of the reasons I recommend that site owners not get too fixated on specific ranking factors. If you tie construction of your site to any one perceived algorithm signal, you’re at the mercy of Google’s constant tweaks. These frequent changes are one reason Google itself downplays algorithm updates. Focus on what Google is trying to accomplish as it refines things (the most relevant, useful results possible for searchers) and you’ll generally avoid too much turbulence in your organic search traffic.

However, sometimes a Google algorithm change is substantial enough that even those who don’t spend a lot of time focusing on the algorithms notice it. That seems to be the case with what those discussing it at Webmaster World have named “Mayday”.

[...] This change impacts “long tail” traffic, which generally is from longer queries that few people search for individually, but in aggregate can provide a large percentage of traffic.

This change seems to have primarily impacted very large sites with “item” pages that don’t have many individual links into them, might be several clicks from the home page, and may not have substantial unique and value-added content on them. For instance, ecommerce sites often have this structure. The individual product pages are unlikely to attract external links and the majority of the content may be imported from a manufacturer database.

Our favorite Google webmaster Matt Cutts posted a YouTube explanation of the tweak as well, describing it as “…an algorithmic change that changes how we assess which sites are the best match for long tail queries.” Cutts calls the change a “quality win,” and the goal, he says, should search relevancy, not search rankings.

They both highlight an important guiding philosophy about web design: obsessing and designing your site around a single, specific search ranking factor leaves you vulnerable to the whims and business interests of the search engines themselves.

Google’s goal is to get searchers the best, most accurate, most valued-by-the-wider-web-community information possible, and is constantly tweaking its search algorithm to weed out any emerging SEO gimmicks that undermine that aim.

So let’s say you own a Yamaha Mortorcycle parts shop in Dallas. You can’t just put “Yamaha Mortorcycle parts shop in Dallas” a thousand times on your site and hope to come out on top. Google values more than just keyword volume. They want the companies at the top of their rankings to be valued in their communities (and to have websites that reflect as much).

Similarly, our SEO goal isn’t to artificially boost your company’s presence on the web. It’s to help you highlight and draw attention to the excellent services you already provide.

So from your initial web design to the implementation of your on-going Internet marketing strategy, we take a more nuanced, comprehensive approach to interactive marketing and SEO.

This means aspects like:

• First and foremost, a quality, adaptable, customizable web design (view our web design portfolio here).
• A content management system supported by our Dallas staff that allows site owners to quickly and easily make changes.
• A MarketMaster™ interactive marketing plan that maximizes results by anticipating and meeting your unique needs.
• A social media marketing plan that both engages your customers and site visitors in a meaningful way, and boosts SEO via link building.
• An Internet marketing strategy built around social media marketing, pay-per-click services, online reputation management, email marketing, blogging, link building, conversion optimization and web analytics services.

Each week I have the privilege of speaking about the developments of the Internet on Everything Internet Radio. In the two years since our show began airing we have covered a wide range of topics including Internet Marketing, Blogging, Wordpress, Google, Yahoo, Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click Advertising, Web Design, and Security just to name a few. The Internet is a rapidly changing place and what was in two years ago in some cases is gone today. The life cycle of the new products and ideas has grown ever shorter over the years and is likely to continue getting shorter.

We introduced Twitter to our audience 18 months ago on Everything Internet and it was just a cute word, we were twitting, tweeting, and trying to explain a blog that was only 140 characters long. When we would get questions and explain it, people usually responded with “why would I want to know what my cousin had for lunch”. In fact one cell phone company actually launched a campaign featuring a father tweeting and a mother on Facebook using their mobile phones while their teenage children attempt an intervention.

While there has been a lot of fun poked at things like Twitter, there are emerging very useful applications of the technology. It will be interesting to see if Twitter can actually make it. They still lose money.

Along with Twitter we spoke about My Space which was replaced for the most part by Facebook. Like Twitter these social media applications have trouble finding ways to make money. Thanks to Farmville and freemium games, Facebook is making a profit. (freemium is a new Internet word for part free and part fee based products). Predictions however say that Facebook will soon be replaced by yet another form of Social Networking within a couple of years.

Old stable Internet operations also have their challenges. It seems Google is gobbling up all the new ideas as quickly as they hear about them. Even companies like EBAY have slowed down when they changed some policies that their users did not care for. Amazon keeps running strong in the web store space but both Google and Yahoo are angling for the space.

One of the best things about doing a weekly radio show like Everything Internet is having a company Like Masterlink Interactive to draw on for expertise. None of us can know it all and being able to tap the experts at Masterlink has provided a valuable resource for our clients and listeners alike. It really helps when your resource for knowledge has been there from the start of the Website industry. Masterlink has been there since 1995. For those of you mature enough to know that’s when it really started to develop.

If you get a chance, drop by the www.eiradioshow.com website and listen to two years of archived program segments or listen live Saturdays at 1:00. You will find just about everything that is and will be happening on the Internet. You will also hear from some of guest experts we have on the show many of whom come from Masterlink Interactive.

By Ed Frazier - CNN 1190 AM - Everything Internet

Apparently, providing 100 million people a free service with no way to make money from it isn’t a lasting business strategy.

Twitter (finally) began trying to capitalize on their enormous success when it rolled out a form of limited advertising last week. We’ve been expecting this move. Curious about it. Even rooting for it, because we assumed it would be something innovative that would change the Dallas Internet marketing landscape. And now it’s here.

Well… almost.

According to the TimesOnline:

Last week at Chirp, its first conference for software developers, the firm revealed it has almost 106m registered users and is adding 300,000 a day

Twitter’s popularity hasn’t been in doubt, but the firm’s management has been bugged by constant questions about how they will spin those tweets into gold. “As much as we want to tell people to shut the hell up, it’s important,” said co-founder Ev Williams last week.

Plan A is an advertising platform called Promoted Tweets that will serve up ads based on keywords in Twitter search queries. [...]

For critics, the plan doesn’t come close to justifying Twitter’s $1 billion (£650m) valuation. Promoted Tweets, however, is just the start. What Twitter does next is worrying many of the people who have propelled it to the top.

Basically, the move is just a first step. To understand how it works, take Starbucks for one popular example. Currently, if you Twitter search “coffee,” the first result is clearly identified as “Promoted by Starbucks Coffee” from the Starbucks Twitter feed. Even when new results pop up, the Promoted Tweet keeps the top spot. The ad changes whenever the company chirps out something new (every few days or so) specifically for that purpose.

Starbucks Sponsored Tweet

It works well for instant updates about promotions and catchy one-liner ads, and it takes a more subtle, conversational approach to advertising.

And it’s an interesting idea because, well, the ads are required to work. Twitter is leery of any sort of intrusive advertising that would slow the microblogging platform’s explosive growth, and it seems like it doesn’t want any sponsored dead weight clogging users’ search results. So if the Tweet doesn’t catch on (via retweets and click-throughs ) they change it. According to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone: “There is one big difference between a Promoted Tweet and a regular Tweet. Promoted Tweets must meet a higher bar—they must resonate with users.”

Let’s think about that — essentially, ads will only be allowed if they are effective. That might sound like an unusual burden, but it also reduces the risk of investing a bunch of money in a failing ad campaign. The success of this aspect is one we’ll follow closely.

So how you can make Twitter advertising work for your Social Media marketing strategy?

Well, so far, Twitter is experimenting with only a few highly visible partners, like Red Bull, Best Buy, Bravo, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America. And, so far, the ads are limited to search results. But all this could soon change.

According to Stone, Twitter is just taking it one step at a time:

“Before we roll out more phases, we want to get a better understanding of the resonance of Promoted Tweets, user experience and advertiser value. Once this is done, we plan to allow Promoted Tweets to be shown by Twitter clients and other ecosystem partners and to expand beyond Twitter search, including displaying relevant Promoted Tweets in your timelines in a way that is useful to you.”

“Since all Promoted Tweets are organic Tweets, there is not a single “ad” in our Promoted Tweets platform that isn’t already an organic part of Twitter. This is distinct from both traditional search advertising and more recent social advertising. Promoted Tweets will also be timely. Like any other Tweet, the connection between you and a Promoted Tweet in real-time provides a powerful means of delivering information relevant to you at the moment.”

So you’ll have to be patient. But, as WebProNews reminds us, Twitter can already be put to work for your business in a variety of ways:

1. Get in front of journalists. More of them are using Twitter and Facebook according to a recent study.
2. Use things like Twitter share buttons on content to promote sharing of content (once it’s been tweeted, it may get retweeted repeatedly).
3. Remember that brands on Facebook and Twitter are favored by consumers.
4. You can learn some things about audience engagement from Justin Bieber. Seriously.
5. Get found in real-time search (here are some tips for that).

Stay tuned. We’ll keep you updated here on the blog as well as on the Masterlink Interactive Twitter page. Follow Us!

Stuart Frazier | Operations Manager for Masterlink Interactive