Find Buffalo Blog

I thought I would post on FindBuffalo.com’s traffic from March … and this isn’t anything associated with April Fools (is that disclosure?).

Users
Total User Sessions: 5,906
Average Daily Sessions: 190

Traffic Sources
Direct (entering URL into browser): 5,316
MSN / Live Search: 201
Google: 74 (slowly picking up speed)
Yahoo: 59
WifiFreeSpot.com: 18

Top Keywords
“buffalo cinema”
“Buffalo MN”
“buffalo mn newspaper”
“josh ortman” (Buffalo Basketball player)
“city of Buffalo MN”

We’ll see what happens in April. I have seen more traction with Google in the last few weeks and the Buffalo boys basketball team’s state title run brought some new exposure as well. I’m hoping to get some more time in the coming weeks to add some new content and features to the site as well.

I posted about the Google Webmaster tools and now I here is my experience with Yahoo’s Site Explorer tools. I had read some earlier posts on other blogs that stated they were unimpressed with Yahoo’s efforts. It seems that Yahoo listened a bit and rolled out some improvements … and I have been happy with the service. I submitted a few weeks back, signing up was very easy (must have a Yahoo account). Site Explorer also allows you to submit RSS feeds. That alone has prompted me to work on creating a news feed from my News & Info page on FindBuffalo, which should be done soon. They seem to crawl the feeds often and proof is easy to find as the tool will actually list out the last time they crawled the pages they have indexed. That’s a great feature. I’ve also noticed that it seems they have paid more attention to blog posts that contain Yahoo in them. My post on Yahoo Local has been crawled as recently as yesterday where other blog posts have been left alone. Has anyone else experienced this?

They are also crawling my pages with redirect URL’s more often, such as FindBuffalo.com/foxefyre . I’ll continue to report my findings but so far I’ve actually been more impressed with Site Explorer than Google Webmaster and I’ve seen better indexing from it. As noted in the Google post, you can use www.xml-sitemaps.com to create a text site map for Yahoo with their free service, more reason to use them.

Usually sequels fall short of the original, but not in this case. I found out this morning that FindBuffalo is now linked on the Buffalo Schools Web site for District 877 (see page). As I blogged before in The Building Blocks of Content, I have had conversations with the Community Education director on how FindBuffalo can benefit them with PR, event and news item posting. Community Ed submitted their first news item this week on Early Childhood Family Education registration which is now posted on the site. They are also linked in multiple areas of the site. In turn, I made the request to provide a link to FindBuffalo.com, if they had a page or section on their site to do so … and presto!

The City of Buffalo’s official website now links to FindBuffalo.com. The link is within the navigation drop down menu on the second level (see Community, then Organizations). I’ll have to do a little research on if this provides any weight in the SEO world for FindBuffalo. Obviously having a strong anchor like “Buffalo, MN Community Portal” would be preferred, but who can argue with the credibility. As I move to establish links from other community, government and organizational sites in Buffalo, having the city’s blessing is a strong feather in my hat.

Last night I was messing around with Google’s Webmaster tools and found quite a few beneficial tools for understanding Google, it’s indexing and their new adoption of site amp reading.  The SMC (content management tool) will soon have a built in feed of XML for the site map to appease Google, Yahoo and MSN but until then I found another solution.  Check out this XML site map generator that aids in your crusade for free.  It’s a pretty easy process and worth the 5 minutes.

The business directory on FindBuffalo.com offers a local business the opportunity to have more information displayed on their company and offering. The PLUS listing allows the display of the company logo, up to four (4) photos, contact info, website link, text on services or products, directions and a Mapquest link. The PLUS listing page will also have editable page titles, meta information and unique URL to aid in SEO efforts.

View an example PLUS listing at: findbuffalo.com/foxefyre

In Fox Fyre Gallery’s case, they do not have a website, so the PLUS listing can now be the most informative page about them on the internet. It also allows them to eventually be indexed with keywords/terms related to their services and locale of “custom framing Buffalo, MN” or “picture framing Buffalo, MN“. This benefits the business and FindBuffalo as well for generating traffic. Foxe Fyre also receives a custom URL (as linked) that they can give out over the phone to someone wanting directions or to use on a business card or other print collateral.

My goal is to provide the business with an internet presence or another quality link into their site to improve their own SEO in addition to the lead generation the page on it’s own can have through users searching the directory. I’ll be sure to post more once I have some examples of these PLUS listings generating traffic from search engines.

Thank you for indexing me last night sometime between 12:00am and 6:00am.  I have been waiting for you for days.  How did you finally reach me?  Was it a link from another site?  Was it the request for indexing I submitted to you?  Was it the PR (see post below) that came across your news desk?

It sure would be helpful if I knew how you found me.  Maybe you should consider sending me an email, educating me on this process. But the important thing is we are together now and you can start to know my every move and offering.  I do hope this relationship is a wonderful one.

p.s. - I know you and Yahoo aren’t exactly friends, but could you mention to her that I exist?

Thanks!

I’m a strong believer in PR and press releases. In FindBuffalo.com’s infancy it will be important to tap into key PR opportunities to generate branding, awareness and buzz for the site locally. One thing that was easy as well as a must was to write a press release about the launching of FindBuffalo.com.

As you can tell from reading my blog, an accomplished writer I am not. Writing an adequate press release is not rocket science if you follow some basic rules. There are a lot of PR advice sites out there, just search it. I also feel that if you have zero talent or time to produce this, then seek a pro to help you out. It is more than worth it.

I used to visit PRweb to distribute a press release online, but they have moved away from free services to only fee services so it led me to seek out another source for this. I came up with PR.com after a search and used their free distribution service, but I did pay a small fee to include a link in the release. I linked the text “Buffalo, Minnesota” in the opening sentence to FindBuffalo.com in order to generate a bit of SEO weight. Click here to read the press release. The service also secured that the release would appear on Google News. Click here for Google News result display

In addition to seeking out ways to get PR, I hope that the site creates some opportunities by it’s unique offering and perceived value.

While I await being indexed I’ve poked into a few search terms and what currently shows as results. When I search Google for: pizza buffalo, mn the first three results from Google Local are:

Local results for pizza near Buffalo, MN 55313
	Domino’s Pizza - 0.9 miles N - 96 14th St NE - (763) 682-3830 Pizza Hut - 1.8 miles N - 1101 Highway 25 N - (763) 682-2592 Buffalo Superamerica Inc - 0.9 miles E - 301 10th Ave S - (763) 682-5541

This is interesting because there are also 3 other pizza places in Buffalo, but they somehow lose out to Super America, a gas station with a pizza shop in it. I’m not sure if the local results are limited to 3 displaying, or how they determine/weight which 3 are displayed, but I would think Bucks Pizza, Pappa Murphy’s or Ageno’s Pizza would be more relevant for searchers. This is a good example of when a company should use a service like LocalMN to bolster their local search presence and results in Google, Yahoo, Ask and others. You’d better believe that the importance of this local search service and how it can convert searchers to customers is extremely important.

The first organic result is a page on Career Builder for Pizza Hut and a management opening in Buffalo. The next 10 results are all yellow page or directory results. I would think Domino’s or Pizza Hut, who both offer online ordering would find a way to tweak their SEO to have a local presence at this level of search. But, they obviously don’t. As soon as I get indexed this will be one of my goals, to get the top ranking for pizza listings in Buffalo and to also sell a PLUS listing to each of them and try to get those pages on page one.

As with all projects the second you launch them it seems as if you missed things all over the place. Maybe that is just me and speaks to my BETA testing skills. I created a “Hot 5″ list of things that need to be corrected, tweaked and looking into and I think I’ll keep that as a weekly thing. If things move along and more items are shored up then I can extend it to be a monthly list. Nothing life threatening though …

The other piece here is waiting to get indexed. If this blog had generated some readers this is where I would ask for your 2 cents. Since it will be me reading this a few times to make sure I have no major errors in spelling … I can’t answer my own question. I have 2 sites linking to my home page right now so hopefully Google and Yahoo will crawl one of those and end up here. I submitted to the big dogs of search so hopefully they will come soon. I feel like I’m sitting on hold with some 800 support service, waiting to exist.