2009 Online Loudoun County Promotion Business Challenge - Month 2

Here’s an update on our 2009 Online Loudoun County Promotion Business Challenge, to help stimulate business investment in the county, attract more visitors and commercial investors, and overall generate a lot more positive and attractive attention for Loudoun County as a business investment destination. Sadly, the business community doesn't appear to have stepped up to the challenge – though the Government has. How do we know?

Consider what an investor, an investment company or simply a company or business looking for attractive communities and business climates would search for on the Internet, using Google for example. Analyzing and modeling search terms for maximum relevance, impact and legitimacy is part art and part science – and happens to be something we're very good at. As a marketing agency, here's how we break down the crucial search phrase that provides a close-to-realistic indicator of who's promoting Loudoun most effectively online:

The phrase – needs to be not too long, not too short, taking a cue from the most effective website "title" tags, i.e. no more than 70 characters

Keywords/Keyphrases:

• "Loudoun" – obviously; not necessary to include "county"
  
• "Virginia" – will help attract searchers looking for more regional locations
  
• "DC" – ditto
  
• "Business" – this is the primary topic; singular is found in more adjective descriptions
  
• "Location" – this is the secondary topic
  
• "Invest" – an "action" attracter word
  
• "Great" – a very common and easy to use/understand adjective used frequently
  
• "Community" – a very commonly used measurement and focus of location-based investments
  

Order of Keywords/Keyphrases – the order is very important, as most terms near the front of the search query are deemed more important than those at the end...so here's the final phrase we've come up with to measure who's promoting Loudoun business the best online:

"Loudoun Virginia business DC location great community invest"

(If you come up with a better generic, overall phrase - please suggest it!)

Results:

We've run the query against Google, and aggregated/sorted/de-duped to highlight business results that indicate their content actually promotes the County (and isn't just picking up these keywords randomly). So, given this fairly objective analysis, here are the top 16 businesses who appear to be currently doing more than any others in promoting Loudoun on the Internet as a business investment destination, whether intentionally or not:
(Note that your search engine results may vary a little, for many reasons)

1. DullesSouthOnline.com – intentional promotion
   
2. KME Internet Marketing – intentional promotion
   
3. Cardinal Bank – unintentional 3rd-party news reference, but good
   
4. InsideNOVA.com – relaying Governor Kaine’s comments about Raytheon moving to the County
   
5. Loudoun County Virginia Business Networking – intentional promotion
   
6. Telos Corporation – comments by John Wood indirectly via Loudoun's BizConnect (though mispelled)
   
7. AOL Community Matters – intentional promotion (but it's from 2006!)
   
8. Realty Direct Eastern Loudoun – intentional promotion
   
9. Kae Davis, Real Estate Virtual IT Assistant – her “Active Rain” blog
   
10. Tony Arko, Real Estate Consultant, Market Advantage Real Estate – his “Realdiablog”
    
11. Ingrid Myers, Realtor - promoting Loudoun and Prince William counties
    
12. Kelly McLaughlan – Localism.com Blog repeats from Active Rain
    
13. The Loudoun Times - Gateway to Loudoun Blog syndications
    
14. Ellen F. Crawford CRS Broker Associate – RE/MAX
    
15. Washington Metro Builder’s Realty Council
    
16. ShenandoahConnection.com
    

Using Social Media Search Engines, to try and see what conversations, tweets or mashes regarding these words is taking place, doesn't yield many commercial entities at all, save for a handful of realtors, the blogs at the Loudoun Times and LoudounExtra, and Gateway to Loudoun County (though a commenter in the Trump Blog recently checked in with a good entry).

Therefore, where are all the Loudoun businesses online, promoting in one way or another both their affiliation with the county, and support of it as a premier business investment destination? It's time to step up – we'll have another review next quarter – at the end of the year, whichever Loudoun business legitimately shows up the highest in these rankings, will get some very search-engine-optimized online kudos and press.

What can you do, as a Loudoun business? Simply start talking about how great the County is, on your website, your blog, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, Friendster - wherever. Just do it.