Been spending the morning tweaking some of my client’s Google Local Business Centre (GLBC) listings to take into account some pretty useful new features that the boffins have introduced.

One of the points I never tire of making when I’m out and about talking to other business owners is that you may not actually need a website…but what you do need is a web presence.  GLBC provides this and sometimes a well constructed GLBC listing is all you need to keep the new clients rolling in.  Why?

Take a look at these search results for the term ‘glasgow builder’.

By the time Google serves the adverts at the top and then lists the results from Google Local Business Centre, there is no space for any organic results on the screen.

A recent study from Jakob Nielsen indicating that web users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the page fold.  That means the large majority of searchers won’t bother scrolling down for the results if they can see a listing in front of them that holds their attention.

Another great feature of GLBC is the reviews option.  Users may be tempted to click on a result from GLBC if it has lots of reviews attached to it.

Google Local Business Centre new features

Given the amount of prime page real estate Google is allocating to it’s GLBC listings these days, it’s obviously something they are choosing to focus on.  In fact, they’ve introduced some new features in the past week that increases the efficacy of the GLBC system greatly – and makes it more usable for businesses that aren’t tied to a specific location.

1. You can now specify whether your business location is a destination for customers (ie a shop where they come to you) or whether your location is merely an office and you take your service to your customers (termed “”this business serves customer at their locations”).  This works on a number of levels but the main benefit is that if you deliver your service at your customer’s locations then you now have an opportunity to say how wide your service area is.
2. “Do not show my business address on my Maps listing” allows you to hide your business address whilst still maintaining a presence in GLBC listings.  This is tremendously helpful for home-based businesses and anyone who has no interest in receiving business visits to their home address.  It remains to be seen whether this privacy option has an overall impact in your GLBC listing.  I’m currently testing it out.

It will be interesting to see how users adapt and abuse these new features.  In theory, you would be able to hide your address but say you cover an area almost 2000 miles in diameter but I’m pretty sure this will have an adverse effect on listings.

We’ve just completed a bit of a website re-skin for Mclaren’s Pianos.

We started working with Jamie Mclaren (aka The Piano Wizard) when he was selling second hand pianos from a tiny workshop just along from our Glasgow Web Design studio in the Hidden Lane some six or seven years ago.

Whilst his previous website has been great for his business, it was felt it was time for a bit of an overhaul.  Mclaren’s also benefit greatly from our website optimisation and SEO services and as a result, pretty much own the first page of Google for terms such as ‘piano sales glasgow’, ‘piano scotland’, ‘piano glasgow’ and a whole raft of other piano-related (and ultimately income generating terms).

In fact last year, we even highlighted the work we’d been doing on his website to highlight how effective basic website optimisation can be.

His business has gone from strength to strength as a result of his hard work and his prominent search engine positioning and we’re delighted to be working with him, every step of the way.

When news is free

I HATE getting the bus to work.  By the time I’ve walked to the bus stop, waited on a bus, got on the bus, caught swine flu and been deposited outside the Ubisan Office, I could have cycled to the office almost four times.  Aside from the risk of communicable disease and being attacked by Rottweilers named after Celtic football players, the only plus is I get to sit down and read a leftover newspaper for half an hour.  Even if it is The Sun.

Don’t worry, I washed my hands afterwards.

Whilst I’ve contributed to the chatter myself about newspapers feeling the pinch and trying to charge for or limit content it opened my eyes even further to the way things are going on my last bus journey.

The Sun Sports section carried a story about Andy Murray’s final third round match with Verdasco and because of the paper going to print it didn’t know if the Murray victory would be enough to qualify him for the semi’s of the ATP Tour Finals as it depended on the result of the following match.

To find out, The Sun encouraged you to log on to their website to find out.  What did I immediately do?  I logged on to the BBC Sport website (stored as one of my favourites on my phone) and read the story there.

Rupert Murdoch would hate the fact that:

1. I didn’t buy the paper in the first place.
2. I went to the BBC for the news rather than the website he wants me to go to.
3. The information was free.

Everybody has their own source that they trust for news, views, restaurant reviews etc whether it’s a friend, somebody at work or God forbid, a search engine!   What’s your source?

For those that are interested, Murray didn’t get through and here’s the links to the two stories.  I guess Rupert got me to visit in the end.  Doh!

The BBC. (Headline: Andy Murray knocked out of World Tour Finals at O2)

The Sun (Headline: I MUZ BE OFF THEN )

I’ve been going to a fair number of work-related events lately and what’s amazed me (more than the huge amount of bacon rolls some people can consume in 30 minutes!) is how poor an understanding some business owners have of their company’s own web presence.

Even basic information such as number of visitors.  The classic line from Mr One Man Business is “my web guy told me I got 30,000 hits last month“…that’ll be around 3 visitors a day on an image and script-heavy, Frontpage-designed site then?

Knowing how busy your website is is important, but other stuff needs covered too…stuff like “where am I on Google?”, “what does Google see when it finds my site?”, “what are my competitors up to?”, “who links to me?” and most importantly, what straightforward steps can I take to improve things?

This might end up being a bit of a crazy move, but we’ve decided to help small businesses out by offering to carry out FREE website audits .  For no cost, we’ll take a look at your site, generate a very useful report and give you some pointers on how to improve your web presence.  No strings, no obligations.  As if we weren’t busy enough!  Madness!

“Web design glasgow” is an interesting search term for me….it’s not worth a huge amount of traffic but it’s certainly a term I’m interested in improving my rankings on.  After all, Web design is what we do and Glasgow is where we are based…

If you’re scratching your head a bit over this, search for “mewmewmucktarah” and it might enlighten you a bit to what I’m up to…

Recession-savvy…is being aware of the recession and how it affects your business.  It’s about being just as aware of the dangers as you are of the positive opportunities.  A while ago I wrote about speeding up during the slowdown and it’s worth checking out.

If you don’t allow yourself to get freaked out during these tricky times then you might just clear enough space in your head to think about how to get ahead.

Web design…is what we do best and when we apply our recession-savvy thinking to your web project you’ll get some pretty impressive results without breaking the bank.  It doesn’t stop with the website either – we look at cheap ‘n’ cheerful ways of using the internet to market your brand and sell your products.  We don’t just think outside the box, we live outside it.  My God, that sounds cheesy but it’s true.

Here’s some questions you shouldn’t be afraid to ask anybody that might be getting involved with your website/web strategy…

• What’s the least amount of money I can spend to achieve the biggest impact?
• Do I really need a website?
• What’s the first three things you would do to improve my site?
• Can you provide me with some client success stories?
• Is there anything you’ll do for nothing for me first to prove you know what you’re talking about?

Feel free to ask us!