Good article in the New York Times today about managing your small business’s online reputation.

Don’t forget to claim your business on Matchpoint.com if you haven’t already.

Just a few weeks after launching our free business pages, we are pleased to announce that all business owners can now add unlimited coupons and photos to their pages!

Coupons & Offers – create demand in a down economy

In this economy, everyone is looking for ways to save money or get a better deal. As a business owner you can capitalize on this trend by publishing coupons to your Matchpoint business page. Your coupons will be featured prominently on your page where they will be seen by potential customers as well as found by search engines. Once you publish your first coupon it will in the new “overview” tab as well as under a new “Coupons / Offers” tab. Also, each of your coupons will receive their own page so they can be easily linked to and passed around.

Photos – showcase your work!

A picture is worth a thousand words and sometimes says it all. Now you can add an unlimited number of photos to your business page. Photos are a very powerful way to showcase your work to potential customers. Adding a few photos of your products or latest work could be just what’s needed to land your next customer.

In addition to uploading a photo, you can add detailed descriptions to your photos. This is a handy way to share your thoughts or describe what the photo is all about. Descriptions are also very helpful as they give your photos more visibility in the major search engines like Google and Yahoo.

Unlimited coupons and photos are FREE features for business owners. Just login or signup for a free account to list your business and get started using these great new features.

Microsoft has released a study that surveys small business owners about their attitudes towards search engine marketing. This is my favorite quote:

… seven in 10 small-business owners who participated revealed that they would rather try to do their own taxes than start a paid search marketing campaign…

The take away is that search marketing (and all the keyword/bid/auction voodoo that goes along with it) is very confusing and difficult for small business owners who do not have time to wrap their head around it.

Luckily businesses can get the benefits of search marketing but skip all that complexity by signing up and promoting their business at Matchpoint.com.

We’re headed for PubCon and will be exhibiting at booth #53. PubCon is widely regarded as the most progressive and advanced SEO/SEM/Webmaster conference in business today.

I send one or two employees to every conference. I send my entire team to PubCon.” – Gillian Muessig, SEOMoz

Peter Adams (our President) will be speaking on the panel, “The Wonderful World of Widgets: How publishers can use widgets for fun and profit”, on 13 November at 2:50pm at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Here are some of the highlights you’ll learn from this session:

• Why a Publisher would want to widgetize their user experience
• Where different uses for widgets can increase revenues
• How to add variety and value to your websites

So come on out to PubCon Las Vegas, see our presentation and the rest of the informative sessions. To help you get there, here is a discount coupon code for 20% OFF the cost of PubCon registration.

Use this code: ad-83720 when you register at http://www.PubCon.com

Plus, we’ll walk you through a quick demo of the our advertiser and publisher products in booth #53 and you’ll get your own ppccpcclp hat.

See you in Vegas Baby!

I had the occasion to attend Online Market World because Matchpoint President Peter Adams was invited to speak on a panel entitled, “The Truth About Local Search”.

Online Market World may not be top-of-mind for most of the hard-core SEMers that I encounter day-to-day, but their Hwy 101 billboards at least attracted attention. For those that don’t travel along that corridor, the question espoused was “Need more traffic?” So, if I were a company that is looking to drive more online visitors (traffic) to my website, then I would be intrigued. Conference coordinators expected 2500 people at this conference on 1-3 October at Moscone West in San Francisco.

While I don’t need to review the whole conference here, I did want to talk about the Local Search panel I attended. The moderator, Christopher Scott, author and e-Commerce expert, was quite lively and the crowd wanted to know: How to reach the local consumer? Who are the providers of local search out there? How do you get around the directories? and How can I get away from having to use yellowpages.com ever again! These were the questions the audience brought up at the start of the session.

In addition to Matchpoint, the panel included Zvents’ VP Marketing Paul O’Brien. The representative from Local.com was unable to attend, so Christopher went over Local.com’s slides including the typical list of Don’ts and Do’s.

Peter started his presentation by addressing the audience question about who are the players in the local landscape. He divides them into three basic categories:

1. Search Engines—Google, Yahoo, MSN and a slew of vertical/alternative search engines;
2. Directories, such as Yellowpages, Superpages, citysearch, Yelp and Matchpoint; and
3. Content sites, such as WallStreetJournal.com, lasiksurgeon.com, petside.com, and washingtonpost.com.

Most studies will show that local intent coming out of each is fairly evenly divided: Search engines about 33%, Directories about 30%, Content has around 30%.

The biggest advantage of using Search Engines is that you have control of what you advertise; the “con” is that it’s hard to scale. SMBs and even large businesses would have difficulty managing millions of keywords over thousands of geographies. The biggest “pro” on Directories is the qualified audience. When someone is doing a search on a directory site, they are looking specifically for that service or product, which means there is commercial intent. The disadvantage is that your business will be listed with your competitors, but that is also true of search engines. With Content sites you have a massive audience, but they are hard to localize.

Then the question of qualification and relevancy was addressed. Stating the obvious, and sometimes frustrating point—people will click on anything. It’s hard for a business to create relevancy with 70 characters, so they get stuck with a lot of costly, irrelevant clicks. When looking for a service, it’s all about finding the right fit. Having extensively studied the click behavior of consumers, Peter reinforced the need to optimize.

The benefits of Directories for local search are many. Topping the list is that directory search forms qualify the commercial intent of users. This of course leads to higher conversion rates, bringing your prospect one step down the sales funnel. Most directories will qualify by category and geographic area. Matchpoint goes further to qualify with additional questions that are category specific—like a Yellow Pages 2.0 should be.

Peter’s conclusion: It is paramount for businesses to have multiple ways to connect – cater to consumer behavior. If you don’t have a website, you would miss those people that want to click for more information. There are people who want to call, and people who want to contact you by email. At Matchpoint, he sees an even split between the people that want to click, call or connect via mail. People want to contact you in the way they want to, so you need to be available in all three ways.

Zvents’ Paul O’Brien talked about how to optimize web pages—local SEO mirrors website SEO. To maximize how the search engines find and index your site, Paul advised the audience: don’t use java script, don’t use flash, don’t use PDFs, and don’t put important content information IN an image. Another secret tip is to handle the parameters at the end of your site so that they don’t show. Because the parameters dynamically generate web sites, Google automatically reads them and thinks it is not a permanent site.

Then the moderator opened the panel to questions from the audience. To state the obvious, local search is about being where people are looking for local but it’s been a tough nut to crack so far. You want to be there on a local level – go where all the eyeballs are. The audience received lots of helpful tips.

Peter addressed the question of local search on mobile phones. In the US, the number of people doing any kind of search from their phones is still very low. Other countries, such as Japan, it’s very high. But with web browser on smart phones, like the iPhone, you have access to local search even if you won’t have a special app.

Excellent reference sites on local search are Greg Sterling’s blog Screenwerk, and LocalOnliner from Peter Krasilovsky.

The audience must have enjoyed the conversations, as the scheduled 1.25 hour session extended into 2 hours. To summarize: Businesses need to be local, where the eyeballs are and available to connect with consumers in the way that is most convenient for them. To get the most from their online efforts, they need to maximize their relevancy and get qualification from searches. And businesses still need to blend their traditional marketing with online marketing. That’s the truth about local search.

While the saying goes, “it’s an honor just to be nominated”, I’ll tell you..it’s a THRILL to WIN!

Matchpoint was selected as the Search Engine Strategies Awards’ “Most Advertiser-friendly Search Engine” at the SES SJ conference last week.

The ‘Most Advertiser-friendly Search Engine’ is a highly competitive category,” said Kevin Ryan, vice president, global content director for Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch. “Once the finalists were determined by the SES and SEW editorial teams, our panel of industry peers evaluated the submissions and voted on the winners.  Congratulations to Matchpoint for its accomplishment.”

Advertisers can see why Matchpoint is so friendly and how we can help them generate highly qualified leads that work with the way their business works.

SES Awards press release

August 13, 2008

Matchpoint Evolves Ad Product, Integrates Widgets

The Kelsey Group’s Michael Boland recently wrote about Matchpoint’s additional new product offerings.

Matchpoint will soon be rolling out a new set of ad products to complement its flagship online lead-gen forms. On its own site, it will integrate more of an IYP setup with searchable business listings. With each search results page, a lead-gen form will be offered that is germane to the category searched.

This broadens the appeal of its destination local search site and gives users the option of calling a business or filling out a quick form that qualifies their needs and prompts a set of businesses to respond (user contact info kept confidential—more on its lead-gen product strategy here).”

It’s great to see that a prominent analyst like The Kelsey Group gets our product and distribution strategy.

Search Engine Strategies names Matchpoint as a finalist in the category for “Most Advertiser-friendly Search Engine” at its SES Conference’s First Annual SES Awards.

Finalists in 15 different categories will be judged by a panel of industry experts and the SES Awards editorial staff, and the winners chosen based on innovation in methodology and execution, achieving success goals, excellence in tactical execution, and overall approach and category relevance. The winners will be announced throughout SES San Jose during its keynote panels, which are being held August 18-21 at the San Jose Convention Center.

It’s an honor to be a finalist but even sweeter to win. Businesses can see how Matchpoint is advertiser-friendly by visiting our AdCenter.

Parenting magazine, page 29 of the August 2008 issue states “A SITE WE LOVE” and clearly gives Matchpoint kudos for our service’s ease of use and privacy.

Since you clearly don’t have time to track down carpet cleaners for quotes, they can come to you via Matchpoint.com. Click on a type of service (and there are a lot!) and fill out a little form with what you need. Within a few minutes, you’ll have several quotes from local businesses, but they won’t have your personal info (the site’s the intermediary until you make a decision). Plus, it’s totally free.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Jump in the next time you need to find a service provider and try Matchpoint for yourself.

The Search Race for the Top 10 is sponsored by AltSearchEngines. And is now accepting votes or “picks” and Matchpoint would like your vote!

Here are the details on the voting process:

1. click on the box below or go to www.thesearchrace.com and register for an account.

2. you will get a email message to confirm–this is to ensure that each person can only vote once.

3. then find Matchpoint in the rankings under the Top 100 tab, we are #14 this morning.

4. next to the Matchpoint name, there are “Comments Pick Share” links. Click on “Pick” – that gives us your vote.

Thanks for your support.

Alternative Search Engines covers the cutting-edge of alternative and niche search engines, and is edited by Charles Knight, a respected industry analyst.