Google Local Business Ranking

by ApexPredator on 2010/01/24


Google Local Business Listings are HOT for small business serving local markets.

Googlemaps are hot because of two things:

1. Customers seem to trust Googlemaps over sponsored listings,  perhaps over organic listings as well – fewer and fewer people, it seems, want to be “sold to”
2. It’s been reported that 84% of all searches are now by consumers seeking local products or services

Googlemaps generally show up when a search query for a service oriented business is entered followed by a municipality, city or geographical area. The order can be reversed: geographical area followed by a query for a service or a product. A search for “car dealerships + geographical area” will often return a 10 pack, assuming there are 10 auto dealerships in that area.

Some definitions you will find useful to navigate Google Local:

  • GLBC (GLBC= Google Local Business Center, Google’s name for the website where you claim your listing)
  • One box= a map with no other competing companies, positioned above both organic and sponsored listings.
  • 3 pack – 3 company listings
  • 7 pack – 7 company listings
  • 10 pack – usually found where there are dozens of companies that took the time to complete a listing with GLBC

A Google query can return a map box prominently displayed so that it stands out from both the bland-by-comparison organic listings and the sponsored listings.

Googlemaps are most often seen above the start of the organic listings, depending on how many local businesses there are competing can be either 1, 3, 7 or 10 listings with an associated map.

If a given city or area has only one company offering a product or service you’ll see what’s known as a Onebox.

If there are 3 or more, you will often see 3 listings and a link to “more results”, the businesses that rank well are usually the ones with the most complete listing. Make sure you enter as much information about your business as Google provides, being verbose is preferable to being succinct when it comes to offering Googlebot something to munch on.

Most companies are totally in the dark as to what to enter as their business information. Conventional advertising predicates crafting descriptions, copy and entering information based on a companies best guess as to what their potential customers are looking for.

The biggest error small business owners make is to forget that an algorithm is going to determine who gets to rank higher than who

… you’ve got to make that algorithm happy first or you’ll never get the opportunity to make your customers happy.

If all 10 competing company descriptions/ listings are basically the same… the algorithm MUST default to a secondary set of ranking factors. Virtually every company our team has ever worked with is so caught up in the day to day running of their operation they can’t see the forest for the trees… they are woefully unimaginative when it comes to really getting into the minds of their customer base.

Steps you can take to improve your ranking in Google local business listings:

  • Pictures, as many as possible, you’re allowed 10
  • Videos, they must be YouTube videos (makes sense, Google owns Youtube, it’s their play ground, they get to set the rules)

Our local SEO firm charges $1500.00 to take over a local business listing and improve it’s current ranking. If we don’t boost your position, you get your money back…so I’m not going to tell you “Everything”, but these I’ll give you for free:

  • Your FIRST category should be one of the Predefined categories
  • Be very careful in making up your own custom category, the box “will let you”, that does not mean your doing so isn’t going to help send your ranking in the toilet

You will want to solicit reviews from your customers, I’ve even seen attempts to “buy” reviews, while that smacks of tacky, there is certainly no shame in offering a returning customer some incentive for leaving a review.

If you cheat and add your own reviews… you will get found out, Google knows more about you than your mother does.

I’m of the opinion that Google “gives you enough rope to hang yourself”,  I base that opinion on the many clients who come to us frantic after having been penalized for their excesses.

If you’ve read all the current posts, Googled the topic (that’s how you found this page, isn’t it?) and are stuck, we have tricks up our sleeves, there are ways to make an old picture “new”.

Fee for us to improve your current Googlemaps Ranking: $1500.00 (we do it for you)
Fee for a phone consultation where we tell you what to do: $500.00 (you do it after we find out what is hurting your ranking)



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Frederick Web Promotions

6688 Canada Goose Ct
Frederick Maryland 21703

240 644-7530

davidbrucejr@frederickwebpromotions.com
Twitter Me, I’ll answer: http://twitter.com/frederickwebpro

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Social Media As Link Spam | My Official Penance

by ApexPredator on 2010/01/23


Social Media is not a replacement for Effective SEO
In untrained hands, social media can effectively blast your company url all over God’s creation: that is not effective SEO. While it gets your link out there it’s also link dumping (1)

Getting Eyeballs on your site
Eyeballs on your site beats no eyeballs on your site, but if you’re going to get any real traction, you’ve got to keep the followers you get to follow. If I had all the twitter followers who followed and quickly unfollowed I’d have tens of thousands of followers by now.

Redefining Effective Use of Social Media
To use *a* social media property, one tool at a time is not going to get near as many eyeballs on your site as if you hook them together using an aggregator.  The graphic below depicts how to do this and it will “get eyeballs on your site” but will they buy anything?

Then there is Google’s consideration of a bounce rate (2)…

What this does is get tons of people exposed to your message, for a few seconds… long enough for them to see that you aren’t really going to join their MLM or that you weren’t what they thought you might be.

If you post to Stumbleupon and immediately get 100 “page views” to your post, look again, look at your Google Analytics report: of the 100 you might get 4 that stayed on your site for more than 12 seconds.

Does a 12 second visit constitute a “real visitor”?

If someone clicks and clicks away in less than 30 seconds, were they going to buy anything?

Participation (Follow Me On Twitter)

Participation is what makes a blog, a blog.

Participation is the sole reason Google favors blogs over static websites.

In case you are one of the people who don’t “get it” a blog will beat the living hell out of a static website in Google ranking everyday (assuming both are new sites). A static website has ZERO chance of outranking a blog.

If you are attempting to compete against an existing website that already has Google trust, and you keep hammering away with a blog, you will rank right next to that competitor… for as long as you post. Stop posting and you disappear.

What makes social media effective is the two way participation, that IS the reason Google favors them.  No participation and you’ve turned a blog into a static website.

So I’m doing my penance. I’m unhooking my twitter from most of the networks illustrated in the graphic

When I first started using Social Media I kept finding web 2.0 properties that allowed, even encouraged posting to my personal Facebook Profile, my wall.  I learned that according to Facebook’s terms of service our personal profiles are not to be used for commercial purposes, that’s what a Company Facebook Page is for.

Social Media Syndication Network Flowchart
Graphic Courtesy Daniel W Crampton of FriendFeed Fun

This flow chart of how to integrate your participation of social media to maximize your company or your brand image in the public eye.

But I signed up for everything under the sun! When I post to one, I post to a half dozen or more.

End result?

My personal Facebook profile gets all my tweets in stereo or triplicate. Effectively making many friends ignore my posts (unless of course they have a vested interest in the services I offer: Local Search Ranking for brick n mortar small businesses)

So here is my effort to sin no more.

I want people to tweet me as if it were my telephone.
Tweet Me, I’ll respond

I want people to post to my Facebook Fan Page Wall.

I want participation, that means I’m going to have to go to almost full time moderating my pages to keep the MLM offers or googleads posts or forex offers from filling up my sites.

=====

1) Link spam (wikipedia definition)

Brian D. Davison, associate professor at Lehigh University, defines link spam (which he calls “nepotistic links”) as “… links between pages that are present for reasons other than merit.”

Link spam takes advantage of link-based ranking algorithms, such as Google’s PageRank algorithm, which gives a higher ranking to a website the more other highly ranked websites link to it.

2) Bounce Rate

From Google’s Help Section:

Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert.

Bounce Rate as defined by Wikipedia

Bounce rate

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bounce rate (sometimes confused with exit rate) is a term used in web site traffic analysis. It essentially represents the percentage of initial visitors to a site who “bounce” away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site.

The formula used to calculate bounce rate is: Bounce Rate = Total Number of Visits Viewing One Page / Total Number of Visits

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Google Local Business Listings Ranking Improved

by ApexPredator on 2010/01/22


Latest news from Frederick Web Promotions:

Google Local Business Listings aka Googlemaps ranking can be improved.

The algorithm Google employs to determine which company is ranked where in Google local is:

  • Different than the algorithm for the main body of search results (aka the organic search results
  • Slower to update
  • Easy to get in trouble with
  • Google’s “rules” for what is acceptable and what is not acceptable are ambiguous

If you had a high ranking in Googlemaps and you just found your listing fell.. Frederick Web Promotions can help.

How much is a Googlemaps ranking worth to your business?

I law office we just helped reported that they feel they lost $10,000.00 in gross sales from in ONE MONTH temporarily “disappearing” from the Googlemaps index

What is your company missing by not being listed at the top of Googlemaps?

Frederick Web Promotions most requested service is companies hiring us to either improve their ranking in Google Local or help them get back in when Google penalized them for some transgression.

Fee Structure for Frederick Web Promotions to help with  Googlemaps ranking:

We tell you how to do it- phone consultation $500.00
We fix it for you: $1500.00

Verifiable Results, Verifiable References Available on Request.
Don’t take our word for it, call our client list and ask them the local SEO services provided by Frederick Web Promotions put more money in their cash registers.

Ask them if they “got their monies worth”

In advertising ROI is the name of the game.
What ever you spend on Advertising has got to pay for itself or you lost money.

Return On Investment.

Getting a top Googlemaps ranking is the best ROI you’re going to get in 2010

Call 240 644-7530 today
do it before your competitor does.

We do not accept all requests.
Similar to a Franchise, if we take a doctor in one county, we can not take any other doctors.
If we have a home remodeling contractor in one county, we can’t take any other carpenters.

Some client’s we respectfully ask them to take their business elsewhere

Local Google Advertising by Frederick Web Promotions

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Yahoo Local Business Listings | DIY SEO

by ApexPredator on 2010/01/19


Yahoo can provide traffic to your site via means other than Yahoo…Even though Google is the big Kaunas.

Fix your Yahoo Listing to fix your Google ranking

If you’ve listed your brick n mortar small business with Google Local (Googlemaps) you’re way, way ahead of the game. If you’ve done so at:

  • Yahoo Local
  • Bing Local
  • BOTW
  • Yelp
  • Insiderpages

You’re even farther ahead of the game. However: If you’ve moved your place of business (your physical street address), changed your phone number, moved to a new website, changed your url, changed your email address as your company has grown… and failed to update those “lessor” business directories, you could be hurting your Google ranking.

Google does not search the entire globe in .22 seconds, none of them do, they can’t. What Google does do is search it’s Cache and if that cache has the out of date local business listing: well say goodbye to a significant portion of what ever GoogleJuice you’ve built up.

A couple of posts ago I wrote about my problems in getting Bing to update an out of date local business listing, this post is about trials and tribulations of getting Yahoo to fix an out of date Yahoo Local listing.

Yahoo’s a bit  behind Googlemaps when it comes to updating an old or incorrect business listing. So is Bing.

When I first hung my shingle out I was X, I moved from X to Y, from there to my current location (which is my dream location btw). Along the way I moved from a shared hosting set up on a local portal to my own domain, changed phone numbers  a couple times (am loving my blackberry and looking forward to a Android or Iphone when I make up my mind)

I failed to keep the lessor business listings up to date, and Google is still returning the old data in some of my serps.

Yahoo, Bing and Google all provide free local business listings. Google at least has a halfway decent method in place for you to update/ fix/ appeal if you’ve been demoted etc. Bing has “issues” (they claim to have sorted them out), Yahoo has a method that claims to update in within 5 business days.

To get your business listed at Yahoo Local:
First, head over to Yahoo and click the “Local” button found in the center of the navigation bar.
Yahoo Local Business Listing

Check to see if your business is already listed, a customer can add you to Yahoo Local without you doing so. If you aren’t there add yourself, if you do find your company there look for this: “Own this business? Get guaranteed top placement.”

Make sure you fill out every box provided, be as verbose as possible; Search Engines spiders crawl TEXT, they don’t do as well with graphics. Graphics are for the human visitors, you’ve got to please the robot visitors before a human will ever get a chance to see your listing.

You’re going to get a choice of paid or a free listing, if you choose the free listing, Yahoo will send you an email. Yahoo will claim to “review” your listing and get back to you in 5 business days (don’t hold your breath).

Yahoo Local Listings Confirmation Email

If you have outdated information listed and need it updated:

Click on Help and fill out everything they ask, don’t skip anything, remember this is a free listing, don’t give them any reason to ignore your request
Yahoo Local Business Listing Help

Google will spider the old, innaccurate listing and might store the wrong data in it’s cache.

Google has a vested interest in ensuring Yahoo stays afloat: the Obamunists would have a anti-trust field day if Yahoo “went away”.

Search is THE number one ultimate tool that nearly everyone uses virtually every day. “Google It” is now considered to be a verb, everyone knows what that means.

  • 80% percent of all internet traffic begins with a search engine; what is more dramatic is that even when users know what they’re looking for many prefer to type into the search box of some search engine rather than type a URL into the browser.
  • 73% of internet users perform searches several times a week.
  • Local search and local results constitute 84% of total search volume.
  • 81% of users begin their internet experience at the search engine.

Astounding Fact: even when people know where they want to go, they still type a query into a search box! The search box seems more inviting than the browser url box, many people aren’t even aware that they can type a url into the browser, the assumption is that a search box is preferable to the browser.

Depending on who you listen to Local Search constitutes between 73% and 84% of TOTAL search volume.

How important is local search to your small business venture:
Old information posted here (from way back in the paleolithic era of internet usage)

Local Search Statistics

  • 73% of activity online is in one way or another “related to local content”
    (Google 5/07)
    For every one dollar U.S. consumers spend online, another five or six are going to offline purchases that are influenced by online research
    (MIT Technology Review, April 2005, “E-Commerce Gets Smarter“)
  • 97% of Internet users in the U.S. gather shopping information online, and of those consumers 51% explicitly characterize their behavior as “Shop Online, Purchase Offline”
    (NPD Group)
  • New Research by The Kelsey Group and ConStat Indicates 70% of U.S. Households Now Use the Internet When Shopping Locally for Products and Services
  • Findings also suggest the Internet is poised to surpass newspapers as a local shopping information resource.
  • 70 percent of online searchers will use local search to find offline businesses.
  • The TMPDM-comScore study shows 86 percent of online users will be searching for a local business at some point in time.
    Research by Kelsey Group
  • 43%  of search engine users are seeking a local merchant to buy something offline.
  • 54%   of search users have substituted Internet/search for the phone book

Source: comScore Networks

The Kelsey Group reports that 74 percent of Internet users perform local searches.

There are approximately 300 million searches per day for information on the Internet
(Nielsen/NetRatings 2005)

60% of activity online is one way or another “related to local content” (Google 5/03)- For every one dollar U.S. consumers spend online, another five or six are going to offline purchases that are influenced by online research
(MIT Technology Review, April 2005, “E-Commerce Gets Smarter“)

97% of Internet users in the U.S. gather shopping information online, and of those consumers 51% explicitly characterize their behavior as “Shop Online, Purchase Offline”
(NPD Group)

117 million Internet users accounted for over 3.7 billion searches conducted on the Internet in the month of August 2004
(comscore qsearch, 01/2004-4/2004)

25% of ALL commercial Internet searches are conducted by users looking for local merchants
(Kelsey-Bizrate 2004)

35% of ALL searches are “local”
(DM News)

Source: http://www.skyabovelocal.com/questions/local-search-stats

Maximize your ROI (return on investment) with Expert Keyword Analysis from Frederick Web Promotions

Call David Bruce Jr @

240 644-7530

Schedule a consultation today!

Keyword Research Analysis Fee for your small business: $500.00

Become Our Fan On Facebook and Get Half Off: Keyword Research Analysis for Facebook Fans: $250.00

Frederick Web Promotions on Facebook
Frederick Web Promotions
6688 Canada Goose Ct
Frederick Maryland 21703
240 644-7530
davidbrucejr@frederickwebpromotions.com
http://www.frederickwebpromotions.com

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New Job Opening: Who’s Gonna Answer The Twitter?

by ApexPredator on 2010/01/18


The Death of Traditional Marketing

Who is Going to Answer the Twitter?

Web 1.0 was like Television Ads, Print Ads, Newspapers, All Media was one way.
They Talked TO us.
We did not talk back… they didn’t want us to, we never thought to, we got pissed sometimes but there was no point in dwelling on it, there was no outlet for us TO respond

Web 2.0 means engagement

I know you don’t want to hear this

Those small businesses that “get it” will reap tremendous rewards, those that don’t… someone is holding you a place in the unemployment line (because you’re headed there very, very soon)

Who is Going To Answer The Twitter?

It’s a new job classification:

Receptionist 2.0

Advertising 2.0 means hiring someone to do reputation management

New Job Opening: Who's Gonna Answer The Twitter?
Photo Credit: TechCrunch

Facts to consider (You’re going to have to get a grip on this, it is what it is, the status quo is long gone)

  • 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations, only 14% trust advertisements
  • People care more about what the group of social networking friends think about a product or
    a service (especially a service) than what Google search results say about a product
  • 25% of Americans report they’ve watched a short video, on their phone
  • 80% of companies report using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees

hulu has grown from 33 million streams in April 2008 to 373 million streams in April 2009

25% of search results for the world’s top 20 brands are links to user generated content  (That’s USER Generated, not Webmaster Generated)

Social Media has overtaken Porn as the number one activity on the web

Youtube is the second largest Search Engine

Not Yahoo, Not Bing… People use Youtube as if it were a search engine… because it is!
Facebook could possibly wrest that #2 spot from Youtube

Our local Frederick Maryland newspaper The Frederick News Post sends out twitter tweets… one way
Ditto for the Washington Post

They both have Direct Message turned off, Why? Why Do they not man the damn thing 24 hrs a day?

Someone’s Got to Answer The Twitter… think of it as if it was a replacement for the phone. People Twitter FROM their phone, they want something to eat  in a new city, they don’t use the yellowpages, they don’t even use Google.. they Yelp

Yelping is now a verb just like Google is a verb

You want to stay in business? really? You want to keep your job?

Someone has got to tell the boss what he (or she) does not want to hear:

Someone’s Got to Answer The Twitter

Now Hiring: Twitterceptionist!
Now I’ve got a new job classification: Social Media Optimization in addition to Search Engine Optimization

David Bruce Jr of Frederick Web Promotions
SEO Apex Predator For Hire
6688 Canada Goose Ct
Frederick Maryland
SEO Services in the US, UK and Australia
http://www.frederickwebpromotions.com

240 644-7530

LinkedIn Resume On Steroids
http://www.linkedin.com/in/marylandsearchenginemarketing

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Dont Forget Bing Local Business Listings

by ApexPredator on 2010/01/17


Bing has a long way to go to come close to competing with Giant Google. That doesn’t mean you should ignore the “little brother” of a search engine.

It is true that Google dominates market share when it comes to search, but many of the customers you’re trying to reach are not as computer savvy as the rest of us are. Right out of the box, a new computer comes with Internet Explorer as the default browser and Bing as it’s default search option, you have to take steps to make Google the default.

bing logo

For months now Bing’s local business listings have been undergoing an upgrade.

Bing Local Apology

On Bing’s Local Business Center website they claim to have sorted things out:

Bing Local Listing Center
We have made progress in identifying and addressing the specific issues which have caused a delay in the processing of business listings. …

If you’d like to change a listing for your own business or for one you represent, click the Continue button.
You will be prompted to sign in with a Windows Live ID.

Thanks for listing with Bing Local. We appreciate it!

(Bing Local also uses an authorization process to make sure you are authorized to make changes. We don’t want your competitors to modify YOUR listing with THEIR phone number do we?)


Getting Bing to update an old listing has been challenging (euphemism for really sucks)

To list your local business in Bing, go to the Bing Local Listing Center. First check to see if you already have a local listing set up. If you do, you can modify it. If not, you can create one.

Once you start creating your listing, Bing will ask you to log in using your Windows ID. If you don’t have one, you’ll have to create one. No Windows ID, no access to all things Bing.

From Bing’s Site:
“One Windows Live ID gets you into Hotmail, Messenger, Xbox LIVE — and other places you see”

You’ll be asked to enter in your contact information and business address, as well as a bunch of additional information like phone numbers, Web pages, email address, hours of operation, payment methods, photos, etc.

There’s also a long section for additional information like your company tagline, (what is a company tagline) business description, what brands of product you might carry (what if you sold Nike shoes but not Reeboks) , specialties, affiliations (Chamber of Commerce memberships perhaps), languages spoken, parking options (let people know they do or do not have to validate parking) , etc.

It’s to your advantage to fill out as complete a profile as you can. More data to crawl equals more opportunities for Bing to associate your listing with the keywords your potential customers will type to find what they want. You want them to find you.

Remember Keywords are currency

From there, you can select up to six categories (Google only offers 5 categories by comparison) to place your business in based on associated keywords. Reputable sources suggest that the categories are prioritized with Bing, we recommend entering your biggest money-maker or what ever product (or service) you offer that has the highest profit margin first.

Here’s What I’ve been waiting (3 month) for:

Frederick Web Promotions Bing Local Listing

And here’s what I’ve been putting up with for over 6 months:

Outdated Bing Listing for Frederick Web Promotions

Maximize your ROI (return on investment) with Expert Keyword Analysis from Frederick Web Promotions

Call David Bruce Jr @

240 644-7530

Schedule a consultation today!

Keyword Research Analysis Fee for your small business: $500.00

Become Our Fan On Facebook and Get Half Off: Keyword Research Analysis for Facebook Fans: $250.00

Frederick Web Promotions
6688 Canada Goose Ct
Frederick Maryland 21703
240 644-7530
davidbrucejr@frederickwebpromotions.com
http://www.frederickwebpromotions.com

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Free Article Directories For DIY SEO

15.01.2010 DIY SEO

Do It Yourself SEO
Do It Yourself Search Engine Optimization by using respected article directories for sales, help people discover your site, and provide backlinks for the search engines to evaluate how high your rank should be.
Submitting well written articles on your topic is one of the best ways available to help establish your credibility in [...]

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Advertising is Dead… Google Killed It

15.01.2010 local google advertising

Local Business Listings
Google Local Business Listings, Bing Local Business Listings, Yahoo Local Business Listings
For 2010 and beyond they are the Single Most Important Source of Revenue a Small Business Can Hope For.

Not TV advertising
Not Yellow pages listings
Not Newspaper Ad spots
Not Newspaper Classified Ads
Not local Magazine Ads

The biggest shopping center the world has ever known is [...]

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Traditional Advertising No Longer Works

06.01.2010 local google advertising

A top listing in Google is what brings in revenue. Google IS the shopping center of the world, wake up and smell the coffee, if you’re not listed in the top 10 of Google search results… you simply do not exist. That said there are several places within a top ten search results page (serps, [...]

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What Generates The Most Small Business Sales?

05.01.2010 local google advertising

What Makes People Buy From You?
01/04/2010
Search Queries
, that is what puts money in your cash register, it’s the engine driving sales in this decade.  Queries are keywords…
Do you know what people are typing into that miraculous little box in the center of a Google page?
Do you know what people are typing in as a query?
That is [...]

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