Ranking on Google Places is similar to organic SEO in that you need links called citations. Or NAPs.
Name Address City, State, Zip Phone
You will also want to put a geo site map on your site as well as a .kml file.
Remember you are ranking your Google Place to come up into the "seven pack". It will list your URL if you claim your Place page. There are ways to optimize your Place that can help your ranking into the "seven pack". But like organic you need those citations.
Many local website owners have recently seen their search results get encroached upon by Google Places 7 packs. Realtors, Mortgage pros sites, dentists, doctors and more local based sites have seen Googles preference for local force their organic results down below the Places results. Many believe it is Google's affinity towards the growing mobile market that is causing this preference.
Last Tuesday I went back to my roots. As a Realtor 20+ years ago I would network with Investment Real Estate Brokers for pocket listings. Usually it was for apartment buildings. I was invited back by Michael Stark. And this is a reenactment of the presentation:
There are a couple easy fixes that you can do to help you if your site has been bit by the Penguin.
And I am guilty too, so if you look at this site, I repeat a bunch of words in the category links. Hopefully by the time you see this it is fixed. Mr Penguin says, "So stop the incessant repeating of words."
As far as the links coming into your site, you probably have the same anchor text repeated over and over.
Instead add links that use the following as anchor text.
Your URL as so: www.yourdomainname.com
Click Here
The Title Of Your Website
This will help to dilute the over use of your main keyword in your links.
Recent changes in Google. A lot of sites have been decimated off the web, basically off Google, therefore off the web.
A lot of things have happened this year, and we're right now in the middle of the eye of the hurricane. We're right in the eye of the storm. And I'm getting a lot of people just freaking out wondering what are we gonna do?
When you're in the eye of the storm, you don't do anything with SEO. You just, you look at what's happened, you assess the damage, but you got more damage coming.
Because more than likely, Google is going to do what they've done always in the past when they've done such huge damage. They roll back at some point.
So, when they roll back, they will be causing another huge uh, tsunami of waves and we'll have to deal with that. But there are some things that have happened that might give us a clue as to what's happening within Google. Understand first and foremost, Google, is an advertising company.
This is the story of Google and SEO. Condensed as it may be.
One day Google founder to be Larry Page attended Stanford University.
He had many choices for his thesis but was most intrigued with the notion that the inter-relational words and links on websites can be similar to the way academic journals relate to one another.
Page dreamt up a formula that would change the internet and the world. PageRank.
These linked references in journals are called citations and directly influence the value of the referenced journals.
Loosely defined, PageRank assigns a value to a web page and passes some of it onto wherever that page links.
The formula for getting high up in the search results have changed somewhat since then, but not as much as you might think.The ranking algo has changed, but the foundational ideas are the same.
Links pass on value, and give users something that they want.
Google cannot judge the from one widget site from the next based on coginitive judgement like we might. But it can judge if you care about your website. And if other sites care about your website.
How Does Google Determine that You Do Not Care About Your Website?
The best way is to see how up to date your code is
Another is to have standards like a robots.txt or sitemap.xml
If your site loads really slow
Professional Analytics
Un-updated Platforms. Still running Word Press 2.2? If you haven't already been hacked yet, then update it would you please!?
These are a few of the ways that the search engines know if you care enough about your site to keep it up to date. The idea being if you do not care about your website why should Google?
There are a few obvious measures that Google can use to measure your linking:
The age of the page and site where the link resides
The age of the link
The authority of the site based on the size, and in and outbound links(citations).
The PageRank of the page and site. In other words,what page links to that page and links to that page and so on and so on.
The words in the link. Called Reputation. Web designers call it anchor text.
This my friend has been called 70% of SEO.
Whats on your page has been called the remaining 30% and is what we called search engine optimization in 1999. In fact, the absolute importance of links in ranking is so high that whenever I see a problem with a site that is un- fixable sans a redesign.
I like to say that "links make up for the sins of the website".
There is no other higher leveraged act that you can do for your site than get it inbound links. However, what about the other 30%?
This is the on page optimization.
So it is about this time that I give my Cliffs Notes version of SEO.
Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short is the deliberate act of targeting a keyword and representing it on a web page. Once properly represented, then the next deliberate act is to link to that page with anchor text similarly representing the targeted keyword phrase.
Onpage optimization requires representing your keyword phrase.
You can do that with a primary keyword phrase, usually a competitive word. And spreckle much of the rest of the body copy with similar synonyms.
So what are some of the important criteria for on page SEO?
doctypes declaration
validation of code/w3c compliant
sitemap.xml
robots.txt
proper meta tag use(keywords, description, title tag)
keywords representation in htags and strong tags
Intra linking within the site
And of late we are seeing pushes for faster sites, fresher content and more unique fesh content. As someone who has done this for a long time. Much of what is being taught as new, is not very new. In fact much of the on page stuff is common sense. Take care of your site as talked about above and Google will take care of you.
Most of the time these rumored SEO tricks get more important as your website gets more competitive with its keywords. So the phrase "Torrance Hobby Shops", has very little competition. I could rank for this without much help from the site and just the linking.
Its Positive Google Bombing
As a side note this is why Google Bombing works so well. In the photo above you will see how Presidents Carter and Bush got ranked for the term "miserable failure". Obviously nothing on the site say miserable failure.
Clinton and Kerry each were ranking for the term "waffler". Finally Google got tired of the shenanigans going on between the SEO geeks and their political affiliations. So they hand picked the Google Bombs right off the site.
Nowhere on the White House website page did it say miserable failure. Can you imagine? Instead it was caused by massively linking to those ex-Presidents pages with the word "miserable failure" in the anchor text.
The anchor text literally tells Google that this page I am linking to is about x. It passes on reputation to the page it links.
Are you beginning to see now how links are critical to your online success?
As your competition heats up and you have many websites wanting top rankings the little things matter lots. Like Page Speed and load times.
But for most of us, links truly do make up for the sins of the website and a must for the serious on line marketer.
That is to provide you and I advertising. Not the social media thing and the search engine thing. They are merely vehicles to gather information. Google and Facebook are tracking us so that they can produce better ads. Ironically, all this work, all this web space, and technology is really about building a media empire.
Think about all the stuff Google owns and provides.
Many folks whine and complain that Google has ruined their search engine results. The Google original dictate of providing relevancy is dead. And as such It is blasphemy cry the SEO enthusiasts.
They whine that the home page of a Google search is littered with Ads, Videos (with ads), Photos, News, Blogs, ad nauseum. Most insiders claim that the search from Google is worst than ever.
Check out some of the stuff Google provides to us as Webmasters all for free.
Adwords
Analytics
Webmaster
Profile
Blogging
Split Test Tools
Keyword Research
Google Plus For Business
Adsense (they even let us make money off their ads)
Other productivity tools include a full suite of office programs, Gmail, as well as other neat things like music storage and free books and places to store our family videos and pictures. What nice people those Google people!
With these tools they can track what we buy and our customers buy, what music you are into and what websites you visit. And get this. What you probably will buy, what music you might want next, and what site you might visit next or soon.
The Devil Does What the Devil Does.
I once had a pal who I set up selling mortgage leads. He was desperate for a sale and was not yet able to locate his own buyers. He had great leads but no idea where to find a buyer.
I had heard of a mutual acquaintance of who my pal had thought was of very questionable character, but he needed mortgage leads.
I hooked them up and forgot about it. I found out several months later that all was going well up and until this buyer stopped paying on already delivered leads.
I told my friend that he had done a deal with devil. Sometimes in business, we regrettably do that. But at least be smart enough to build into your pricing the eventuality that the devil will do what he eventually does. He is in no way your advocate and will always not only act as a business should in their own self interest, but will additionally seek advantage over you. Just because it can.
With Google, we are indeed doing a deal with the devil. Our privacy is being eaten up without prejudice on a daily basis. It is even uncool to complain about it. Twenty years ago there would have been an outcry. Today it is just the way things are. To hearken images of Orwell's 1984 simply put us in the camp of not "getting it".
However, if you have been in the business on line for any amount of time you have either sought out Google love or have already got it. Or like some of us veterans you have got it, lost it, and gotten it again over and over again.
Everything the Yellow Pages Wishes it Could Be
But indeed with all these free cool tools Google is taking our behavior and codifying it into a trend. The more data points they have on us the more they can render us not just relevant search results, but more importantly relevant advertisements.
This is everything the Yellow Pages wishes they could have been.
A big money block is in local for Google and we all do things locally. So think about why would Google hassle with the maps and taking photos of every house and business in America? I mean what a pain right?
Because as the funny car snapped the photo of your house, they grabbed and recorded your ip address and no doubt have cross referenced that with freely available ownership information (Are you a renter or owner). Minimally.
As you set up your Android cell phone, you quite possibly used your Gmail account. That Gmail account cross correlates with your home information and all your behavior there. So as you search for spots on your phone or use gps on the maps, I can see a day when Google most likely will serve you relevant advertising that matches to your current location and what you have searched for in the past on your phone and other computers.
Show Me the Money Google
This is the direction Google and Facebook wants to go . The question you need to ask is "how can I take advantage of this?"
The simple answer is you must know the players in the game, the rules of the game, and how to play it.
Google respects two things. No scratch that. Google craves content and references to that content (links and citations).
With content you can syndicate and get into lots of web places. Text, video, pictures, various documents are all indexed by Google.
The opportunities are not only getting your own pages indexed in as many ways as creatively possible. But also the other pages where your content is syndicated like videos and pictures.
Your business can also show up in many local directories and Google Places.
Give us a call or email and find out how you can make this giant task much more manageable and scalable for your business to produce more leads. 310 - 533 -9145
I announced the war with Google and Facebook over a year ago. Did SEO Just Die
Since then many have said that yes SEO is dead. As Google has changed time and time again. Over the next few weeks I will be chronicling some of these deep changes that are effecting your website and your social graph right now.
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Its a Social World In a nutshell Google blinked. And much of that has do with the velocity of content being created in the social media. Facebook, Twitter and more. And now the new kid on the block Pinterest is digging into the Facebook Traffic.
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Its about the data. Google's and Facebook's business is not search and Social. It is datamining. While Google has been changing many have complained that Google is no longer relevant. That is the point of search relevancy isn't it?
Google's job is guessing at your and my behavior such that they can serve us relevant advertising.
Google grabs that data through all the data it gets from your cookied searches, visits to websites with adsense, analytics etc, your signed-in behavior, and your Google Plus behavior and your Android phone locations and behavior.
The world just got smaller. Do a search in New York and chances are real good that Google will serve you local results having to do with services in New York. Google Places dominates the local searches with at least 4 results. Often times number 1 of yesterday, is now possibly 8.
Littered within that search will often be images and videos. We ran a post years ago that some day Google will be the new Yellow Pages. That day has come.
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Disinformation. Google has succeeded largely from incredible public relations to compliment their just good enough search engine. With their online personalities, they have been able to spread vast and complicated concepts to misinform what is/was actually going on.
The more things change the more they stay the same. Google has always been about links, then the title tag and matching h tags. This concept has not changed. Its just that there is less of the same coveted prize called organic search results for you to grab.
Less competitive terms are easy as they have always been and the super competitive keywords will continue to be difficult to get.
Links have expanded in their definition. Links are 80% of the game. But now you have likes, Google pluses, and other social markers that Google desperately is trying to track. I call these social noise makers.
One reason Google has moved forward with Google Plus as an answer to Facebook, and recently adding SearchPlus Your World is that they were being blocked out of tracking social graphsof the biggies Twitter and Facebook.
Additionally local citations, or your business name, address, city, zip and phone weigh heavily for your Google Places (local) ranking. They serve the equivalence of links in local search.
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To make things more crazy. Your website will need to adjust for mobile phonessome day soon as more and more searchers are using mobile phones to search the web. Soon to out number desktop searchers.
The long term answer is to get strategic and hire a firm like Spider Juice Technologies who can help you get your arms around the changes, while not getting swallowed up by all the marketing hype.
Step 1 is to embrace the fact that you must become a publisher of your own unique content, ghost written content, curated content, and collaborated content if you are to survive in this ever changing online environment.
Because the fact is. Google simply doesn't need you anymore.
Google +1 is a similar tool. Bing has the advantage of getting some of at least Facebook data to include in their ranking factors. But Google cannot get very deep profile data. Not until starting the Google Plus One Social Network.
Which in many ways is bringing all their tools into one house. By conglomerating all their tools into one profile Google is able to measure your own authority better.
This brings to mind a video I recently did that displayed the advantages that Facebook and Google have over one another.
Facebook launched their social graph over a year ago. And Google uses a concept called FOAF. Friend of a friend. By measuring the authority of each friend that is "linked" to another friend, the idea is that the authority can drip down through the network.
Very similar to linking.
On Page Social Networks
On Facebook your pages are indexed onto Google or Bing to the extent that Facebook or any other social network will allow them. Your personal profile is ranked slightly with limited info and a chance for a no followed generic anchor text.
While a Fanpage gets indexed. Thus its important to title Fanpages correctly. The name of the page is the title tag. Also any text you provide. And probably the most underutilized part of Fanpages that offers a gold mine of ranking potential. The Notes.
It is more important than ever to embrace a publishing model to allow you to rapidly take advantage of publishing opportunities and rapid change in the social media and searchable web.
On flawed SEO logic: remembering simple scientific method helps. So if variables are not isolated it is quite difficult to make an authoritative declaration of causality. Only experience can be declared.Similar to believing that just because there are firetrucks at a fire means that trucks causes fires.
Google Refrigerator (Photo credit: Aray Chen)
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