Local Business Is Our Focus

Prosenergy is a marketing venture created to help local businesses when they need it most.  We use the most powerful marketing medium the world has ever seen:  The Internet.

Who We Are

  • high-level
  • software-based
  • marketing consultants
  • solution providers

Another way of saying it: Through the use of proprietary methods and state-of-the-art tools, we leverage the explosion of mobile marketing and social media traffic to boost the marketing of your business. We can now accelerate Web traffic for small business owners just like big companies have been accustomed to receiving in the past. Small business owners, take heed: Mobile marketing and social media are a game changer. 

And you need to know and manage what others are saying about you, your products and services – that’s reputation management.

That’s why we specialize in:

  • mobile marketing
  • reputation management

If you are a business owner and you would like:

  • more Internet traffic
  • to appear on page 1 of organic search results for Google, Yahoo and Bing
  • to be on the Google or Yahoo map listing for your business type
  • to increase profits
  • all of the above done for you OR shown to you or your staff to do it yourself

contact us today.

We offer ‘done for you’ traffic generation services that boosts your business’ Web presence and increases profits.

You’re good at what you do. That’s what keeps you in business. So keep doing it. We’re good at what we do. So let us handle your internet marketing to boost your profits.

Our approach works especially well for businesses that have a local-only market – like restaurants, car dealers, attorneys, chiropractors, CPAs, carpet cleaners – who have largely been ignored by the revolution in marketing that has come along with the ever-increasing popularity of the Internet and reliance upon local search to find and contact merchants for goods and services.

In this economy, if you’re like many locally-based business owners with whom we’ve talked, you have an unbelievable number of challenges…

  • Decreasing numbers of new customers and clients
  • Slimmer profit margins, especially prompted by bargain hunters
  • Discovering that the old “tried and true” Yellow Pages (and other print and traditional media) don’t work as well anymore
  • Trying to figure out how to use the every-changing Internet as an effective marketing tool
  • And so on…

Some sobering facts

  • “The Yellow Pages industry will lose 39% of its annual revenue over the next 5 years, amounting to a loss of $5 billion in annual revenue by 2013″  (source: Borrell Associates)
  • “70% of online searchers use “local search” to find offline businesses” (source: comScore Networks)
  • “60% of all local business searches now happen online  (33% happen in print Yellow Pages and 82% of the people using Local Search websites follow up their research with offline action”  (source: TMP Directional Marketing – comScore)
  • “54% of Internet users have substituted Internet/Local Search to replace the phone book”  (source: comScore Networks)

Now, consider these questions

  • If you’re spending thousands of dollars every year on Yellow Pages ads, what kind of results have you been getting?
  • How have you been measuring the results?
  • Are you even measuring the results?
  • Are your other traditional marketing methods getting you all the prospects and customers, clients, or patients you want and need?
  • How effectively are you using the Internet to attract new prospects and customers or clients to your business or practice?
  • Do you have a top Google ranking in the Local Results for the words that your prospects are typing in to find you (or your competitor)?
  • Did you know you can directly measure your Internet results?
  • Did you know there’s a huge difference between “just having a web site” on the Internet and “New Media?”

What does all of this mean to you?

If you’re in an area where people are going online to search for your local business solution, and you’re not listed in the Google Local Results and have top Google ranking, you’re missing out on potential business. Bluntly, you’re toast!

How do you find out? Get a complimentary Opportunity Analysis AND get a website critique (if you have a site) by completing the form on the right side of this page. You’ll then be positioned to know what and how much potential business is available for you. And how much you’re missing.

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Big Google social search announcement

google logo1 Big Google social search announcement A big change was announced by Google within the last 24 hours.

Google rolled out a seemingly small search engine ‘tweak’ that’s going to fundamentally change the way we search.

How?  The short explanation: They are more effectively integrating YouTube and Google+ into your search results provided you’re signed into a Google Account.

What does it do?  Google has now changed how they present search engine results to the average browser.

As Google says on their website:

“We’re transforming Google into a search engine that
understands not only content, but also people and
relationships. We began this transformation with
Social Search, and today we’re taking another big
step in this direction by introducing three new features:

1. Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for
you, such as Google+ photos and posts–both your own and
those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to
see on your results page;

2. Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which
enable you to immediately find people you’re close to or might
be interested in following; and,

3. People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and
Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest,
and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because
behind most every query is a community.

Together, these features combine to create Search plus Your
World. Search is simply better with your world in it, and we’re
just getting started.”

Here’s the full post on the Official Google Blog:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/search-plus-your-world.html

So what does this mean for your SEO efforts?  Are backlinks dead?

Absolutely not!

Any change of this sort opens up new opportunities, and yes, there will be winners and losers.

But this should have little impact on most small-to-medium-sized businesses in the short term.  In fact, this update will assist with integrating your existing social media into your ‘regular’ (non-social) search.

But it would be foolhardy to pass up the opportunity to develop your social media presence, especially on Google+ and Youtube, if you haven’t already.

SEO is constantly changing.  If you want to continue to rank well with Google, then you need to stay in front of that change.

So embrace the change and make the best of it by strengthening your social media presence, especially if you’re in a business where there is a significant social aspect to your marketing.

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Free tools let you record on-screen video

004 52 150x150 Free tools let you record on screen videoThere are probably going to be times when you need to record your screen.  (No, we’re not talking about just a screen capture.  To do that, all you have to do is press your ‘Prt Scr’ key to copy the screen to the Clipboard, then Paste it into a document or graphics program like Paint.)  This allows you to record video and sound, if you like, just like someone is looking over your shoulder.

Clients have needed to share what is happening on their screens, for instance, and as they say, a picture is certainly worth a thousand words.

Fortunately, there are some free and easy-to-use tools out there for handling this.  The one I use is called Jing and you’ll find it here:

http://www.techsmith.com/jing

I like it but there’s another tool that appears to be very similar and it comes highly recommended by others:

http://screencast-o-matic.com/

Of course each of them has a premium version, but you don’t need it to do most anything discussed here.  If you decide to upgrade though for the added features, it surely won’t break the bank as they cost no more than $15/year.

What I recommend is to pick one, try it out and you’ll be hooked.  Then if you need a tool for recording what you’re doing, you’re good to go.  You can use it for:

  • tech support (to help others or to pass your info to others helping you)
  • creating short tutorials to train employees or contractors how you want something handled
  • marketing to promote your business

 

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Groupon May Be Poised for a Collapse

groupon logo Groupon May Be Poised for a CollapseIf you know me, I’m not one for sensational headlines just for the sake of publicity.  So I chose this headline because this guy makes a strong case for exactly that.   If you’re a small business owner considering doing business with Groupon, you owe it to yourself to understand more about this potential business partner – and that’s what they are, in a sense.  (Disclaimer here:  I started my own Groupon competitor, a ‘daily deal’ site called Long Beach Deal of the Day
that I haven’t promoted heavily thus far, but that’s because my consulting business has kept me so busy, NOT because of competition from Groupon.  So trust me, envy or ‘sour grapes’ is not the motivation for this post.  It’s only that I want my fellow small-business owners to be aware of what risks are posed by dealing with this leviathan.)

Groupon has what everyone understands by now is a very lucrative business model.  But this is the first time I’ve seen anyone break down exactly what they’re doing.  And he does it now with espionage or stealth; he simply reads their own legal agreements and talks with merchants who’ve done business with them.    Speaking of legal agreements, he even dedicates another article to breaking down the legalese in their contract.    This is priceless, by the way, because most of us don’t keep a lawyer on retainer to review our legal agreements, even though we sign them all the time.  Please be very careful before you sign one of these.  He makes a strong case for the agreement being written strongly in Groupon’s favor.

He calls them essentially a loan shark.  Strong words, I know, especially for this darling of the tech investment community.  But please withold judgment till you read the very strong case he makes.  It’s almost enough to make me want to put some real effort into promoting my own daily deal site just to give local merchants a decent alternative to these guys.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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NowRelevant – A better search engine?

You may not realize Google and most of the other search engines filter out a lot of results from the list it delivers to you. There are various reasons they do this including eliminating duplicate results (that’s why we constantly say avoid duplicate content on your site – if you want your stuff to rank in search results).

This search engine, NowRelevant, does not filter out results. But it only goes back 14 days because that’s a lot of data to have to track. If you want to see what you have been missing, try searching for anything first in your preferred search engine, then repeat the search below and compare the results. It may surprise you. There’s a place for both approaches but, until now, the all-encompassing approach wasn’t available to you. So there’s no telling what you’ve missed out on over the years.

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Should restaurants care about local search?

long beach map1 Should restaurants care about local search?There is a lot of confusion, misinformation and plain ignorance among local business owners about the value of local search.  We’ve been meaning to put something together on this when we discovered a very good article by SEO consultant Vanessa Fox on restaurants and local search.   The short answer is ‘yes’, whether they’re in Long Beach, Chicago or Timbuktu.  What follows applies not only to restaurants but many, if not most, other types of local businesses.

As a local business owner, why should you care?  For starters, there are just too many good tools out there, many of them free, that can leverage the power of your listing information.  Listings are business directory listings that many companies maintain on the Web.  Examples include those that started with paper only, like the Yellow Pages, and others that are a creature of the Web, such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, and of course, Yelp.

There are literally hundreds of these directories, most of them free to use.  They aggregate information from a variety of sources so that they can be useful to people who use them to search.  That means if your business information is out there in one directory, it’s usually picked up by the rest of them.

Since many, if not most, of these directories use scraper technology (automation) to collect that information, it can be inaccurate or incomplete without anyone knowing it.  If it’s your business that’s affected, you want to know about it.  And the directories welcome your input in making the information as accurate as possible.  In fact, they usually allow you to update it free of charge.  That’s called ‘claiming your listing’.

Of all the listings you should be concerned about, Google Places probably has the most clout (partly owing to the fact that Google is the most popular search engine and guess which directory shows up in a Google local search?  Just type in the city and business sector you’re in, for instance ‘long beach restaurant’, and see what comes up.

long beach restaurant local map2 Should restaurants care about local search?Those little red bubbles you see in the accompanying screenshot, every one of them is either put there by Google or by the business creating an entry for themselves (which is also free). They do not mean that business has a website.  Virtually every one of them starts out as an entry by Google scraped from information they collected somewhere on the Web.  Then, if it’s claimed by the business owner – who must prove they are the rightful owner – it can be updated.  This not only allows you to correct or update information but also enhance your listing to make it more informative, not only to human visitors but also to the search engine ‘spiders’ that crawl the Web collecting all that information they display in search results.

Knowing the right terms to put in the listing to get it to rank well (come up toward the top) in search engine results is beyond the scope of this article.  Suffice to say that just editing the content on your free Google Places listing can help your ranking substantially.  If you want to know more, contact us.

This article has gone on long enough already.  Please check on the restaurant article mentioned above to see all the reasons even a business like a restaurant would want to control their listings.   Every business we know of could use more exposure.  Just make sure it’s good exposure by controlling the content.  Start with the free directory listings mentioned in this article.  This is especially true if you don’t have a website as your listings ARE your web presence.

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50 Funny Ideas for Facebook Updates

FB narcissism image 50 Funny Ideas for Facebook UpdatesHaving a hard time trying to figure out what to write on your Facebook page?  Or concerned maybe you’re too serious?  This could help: 

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How Video Travels from You to YouTube Back to You

Whether you do video marketing or not, if you’ve ever wondered how video actually works, this terrific graphic and the accompanying article (but who reads anymore icon wink How Video Travels from You to YouTube Back to You ) explains it well.

This makes it clear just how incredibly complex the process is.  Now, maybe you’ll be a bit more understanding if the video has hiccups when it’s running or when you’re uploading a new one.  Still, isn’t it marvelous how well it does work?  If you have a product or service that you want to promote, video marketing is a great tool, no matter how complex this looks.  Whether you’re in Long Beach or elsewhere, we’ll be glad to explain how you can get started.

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Content marketing endorsed in video

Even if you know you are providing a valuable service to your customers or clients, it’s always nice to hear others endorse your efforts.  We’ve been preaching that ‘content is king’ and ‘quality is queen’ for years now.  Recently, an endorsement of our approach came from an unexpected source.  But let me set the stage first.

If you’re trying to get traffic to your website, you can buy it, tweak for it or earn it.  Bought traffic includes things like PPC (pay per click).  Tweaking it amounts to SEO (search engine optimization), both on-page and off-page.  Then, when I say ‘earn it’, I mean you can produce real content – articles or blog posts.  Yes, it takes time and effort.  But it does pay off, big-time.  The momentum builds rather slowly – over weeks or months – as your content gets indexed by the search engines, then shows up in organic searches, then gets read by others, who visit your site and hopefully buy what you’re offering.

I received a video from Andrew Lock.  He offers an entertaining presentation of useful free business advice he puts out weekly; see below the video to sign up.  In the video, he interviewed Shelby Larson who has been doing a more modest form of what we do for at Local Web Science for a few years now.  She has no connection to us – for all I know, she doesn’t even know we exist.  But she describes a similar approach to ours, defends it with the same reasoning we use and also tells what results clients should expect.  Since our approach is more aggressive and comprehensive than hers, it’s reasonable to expect us to also achieve faster and better results than they do.  The interview starts at 8:55 and the part I’m talking about starts at 16:30 -

Shelby Larson interview video

So it’s nice to have an independent endorsement of our methods for getting more traffic to your website.  In fact, what better endorsement than to build your business based on the model, as she has?  And clearly it’s thriving, as is our business, because we offer such a great value to struggling businesses desperate for more customers and clients.  When times are tough, ROI is more important than ever, and is harder to achieve.  Affordable, effective promotion of your business via Internet traffic provides the highest ROI you’ll find.

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Funny video (parody) about the Google Slap

Warning:  This is R-rated and might be offensive to some because of the characters portrayed.

While it has to do with affiliate marketing, I pass it along for the entertainment value.  It sure is trying sometimes to deal with Google, so ya gotta lighten up occasionally. If you’re not familiar with the term, the Slap refers to Google (rather arbitrarily, it seems) deciding, without warning, that your site doesn’t meet their standards, so they delist you. You suddenly disappear from the radar of their search engine, effectively killing all traffic to that site. It’s not fun, and it’s hard to get any answers out of Google explaining what they didn’t like. Still, some patterns have been observed, and it’s on the basis of this that the story in this video was created. It’s ironic that Google makes billions off commercial uses of their products, yet they seem to have a love/hate relationship with the very people who are making them money – and trying to make some for themselves. (Some have said the same about eBay. But that’s for another video some other time.)

We don’t risk the Slap with the sites we build for you, but we also don’t get a lot of direct feedback from ‘the beast’. That makes the value of what we do that much greater because we have figured out – some say ‘reverse engineered ‘ – the right things to feed Google to get your site ranked high and fast.

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Great local printer in Long Beach

March 4, 2010

If you’re in the Long Beach, CA area, we are fortunate to have THINK Communications 800-610-6717 The prices are excellent and so is the service.  I got 2-sided color glossy finish heavy card stock (sorry, don’t know the weight) – 1000 for $20!  And for just $7.44 more I got them delivered to my door [...]

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