This was originally written in 2008, but it still rings true today.
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It appears Google has recently changed its algorithm for Local Business Listings by only giving the top spots to those feeding the search engine’s ever increasing need for content. Keep reading to learn what are Google Local Business Listings, what’s changed recently, as well as how to optimize so your local business is on top of the map.

Google Local Business Listings are different than organic or pay-per-click listings. They typically only show up when the user types a service oriented business followed by the city for their search. A large map from Google Maps appears alongside up to ten URLs with a phone number by each. If you need more than ten listings you can click in “More Results from ‘Insert City’ “ and you’ll be taken to a map with alphabetically lettered red pegs for each register business on Google Maps.

It seems over the last three years being listed on Google Maps and/or Google’s Local Business Listings is becoming even more important since they are being displayed more often in search with up to ten listings before organic listings even start.

One client of ours was listed and is still listed under a Local Business Listing for their service, but it seems the listing fell in a short period of time; they went from #2 to #44 out of 3,656. Since many local business owners are seeing the value in these listings and Google makes the submission process much easier to understand than the general ins and outs of SEO, competition is on the rise.

With this recent surprise in dropping, I have decided Google Local Business Listings has its own algorithm. After noticing what the patterns were and what the top listings did, I made some adjustments using the modeling method. Soon after I noticed a huge rise in ranking.

Based on researching and observation, the pattern that presents itself for those that are high on the listings is they have:

1. Photos - They only recently they allowed this. Add as many photos as you can and a company logo.

2. Multiple Reviews - It’s important that these be from real customers. You can not have too many. Don’t fake them either, it’s easy to see. Just as with Amazon, people trust products with lots reviews that have kept above three stars.

3. Use Keywords in Company Description - They offer an area where the business representative can describe what the company offers.

4. Use Keywords in Company Name - Don’t be deceptive by changing your company name, but if your keywords are in the extended business name or LLC, make sure this is the name in which you register.

5. Add a Coupon – Google allows printable coupons to be added by your listing.

Add these elements to your Google Local Business Listing and you are sure to be in the top ten.

6. Create links to the listing – Add a link from your homepage to the listing and encourage current customers or website visitors to review your company.

7. Add Videos- If your company already has videos on YouTube you can place them right there on the page.

For almost five years, Neil Lemons has worked behind-the-scenes to help create exposure, traffic, leads, and sales through major search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. Calling upon his diverse background in copywriting, advertising, marketing, and sales, he has been learning traditional SEO and SEM tactics since 2004.  He is the lead SEM Strategist at MarketingZen.com, a Social Media Marketing  company. For more information on Google AdWords management services contact The Marketing Zen Group for a free site evaluation.

I wrote this back in May 2007.  A lot has changed since then, but some of the principles still remain.  This became the most highly read thread on SEOChat’s AdWords forum with 16k views and eventually added as a sticky. There were also almost 50 comments.  The original forum post can be found here.
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This is by no means a definitive list. Here are just some straight forward tips that I have learned over the years from experience with pay-per-click, AdWords in particular, as well techniques I have learned from gurus’ books and newsletters.

I am not merely repeating a combined list. These are in my words, and in no particular order. I believe in all of these and am currently using or have used these techniques in the past for multiple client accounts.

Some of these might require more explanation, which you are welcome to ask for here.
Each are split into categories that should help for reference.

Improving CTR & Conversions

1.) Use the core/parent adgroup keyword three times in the ad text and display URL.

2.) Bid on all three match types for every keyword/keyphrase: broad, phrase, and exact.
(This will get you more clicks for your money).

3.) Bid higher on terms that have been converting well. (more…)

Entrepreneurs, SMB owners, publishers, creative-types, writers, citizen journalists and independent subject matter bloggers don’t make the same mistake I did. If you have been blogging a long time whether for business or personal publishing, seriously consider the points made in this article.  If your goal is to gain influence over others, demonstrate expertise, promote your business, make money, get leads and sales, make connections with others interested in similar topics, express yourself or a combination of these, you should stop spending all your time building others’ content. Content equals currency on the web and you are someone else’s user generated content if you’re not blogging on your own domain. Always start with the end in mind.

If you are blogging “just for fun,” but are passionate about certain subjects, why shut the door to making it a viable tool for other avenues of life such as: building credibility and gaining respect in a particular area,  landing the job of your dreams, making money, and creating invaluable relationships in the mean time? As they say in academia, “publish or perish.” You can either be a footnote in someone else’s biography, or create your own. It doesn’t take as much effort as you think. You just need to 1) Register a domain 2) Get hosting (affiliate link, seriously a great host) and 3) Install a CMS or website builder (Wordpress, Drupal). I will show you the easiest way to do this in a future post, but for now this post covers many of the reasons why you should primarily blog on your own domain, not a hosted ad-centric blog network.

I realize no website or blog is an island, and having supporting profiles and posts on other websites where there is already a huge existing network is highly important. This is especially true when syndicating your content. You should only do this AFTER the content has been published on your blog and indexed by Google. The name of the game is having a large targeted audience of people who care about what you have to say and for the search engines to see your blog as the ORIGINAL source of that information. (more…)

Are there other bloggers currently blogging with consistency which you feel have the same philosophy on the subject you write about? Another great way to garner more readers, get more backlinks from relevant websites, and ultimately have a highly read blog which gets republished and referenced is [inter]networking with what you might consider competitors or same-subject bloggers. The search engines give you more credit for your keywords when sites that are on the same subject link to your website verses on off-topic sites. Secondly, if other bloggers in your industry like you, he/she will promote your posts as well to a much larger audience than you currently have.

Who are the Big Daddies which have a huge readership?
Before wasting your time networking with every blogger on your topic, you need a rating system to let you know who is worth going after and who is not. When a blogger does not owe his/her blog (hosted on wordpress.com, blogspot.com or Livejournal), it’s a little harder to tell.

If the blogger does own their domain, there are a number of yardsticks in which one can get a better idea of how valuable the relationship. Traffic, backlinks, RSS feed subscribers, PageRank, Alexa, comments/audience engagement are all great measures.  Add Search Status to your Firefox browser and you will be able to quickly judge who’s hot, who’s not. Also, using a site like Compete.com will give you an idea how much traffic a specific blogger is capturing each month.

How to Get on the “Radar” of Big Bloggers

Mentioning and linking to their posts from time-to-time will put you on their radar. Linking off of your site to get more traffic may seem counter-intuitive, but you have to look at the big picture. Aggregations of highly useful links add value to your readers. A-List bloggers knew this secret on their rise to the top, and they do it for a specific reason. The Law of Reciprocity.

Don’t think of this as “losing traffic,” because you’re actually adding value to readers, and gaining respect from competitors as a thought leader and team player in the community. Before you can be seen as a thought leader, you have to get on their radar. In the beginning you must think in abundance, not scarcity. Trying not to lose the very little traffic and influence you have currently will only aid in keeping your blog down on the search engines and in front of less people.

Here are nine ways to make them notice you:

1. Link to their blog often in posts using a DoFollow link and anchor text you think they would like.
2. Put them on your Blog Roll.
3. Subscribe to their RSS feed & be the first one to comment on their blog posts and do it often without SPAMMING or leaving extra links to your blog besides the one automatically provided in your handle.
4. Quote them with a link to their blog.
5. Be patient and develop a relationship over time before asking for links.
6. Befriend him/her on Facebook and Twitter & communicate with him/her often (don’t be discouraged by lack of response).
7. Guest post on other blogs he/she reads, but are not quite as popular yet.
8. Meet him/her in person at a conference and tell them you are a fan.
9. Have an excellent blog on a similar subject, mention you are a big fan, and offer to guest post pitching them on a specific and compelling article using an outline.

For almost five years, Neil Lemons has worked behind-the-scenes to help create exposure, traffic, leads, and sales through major search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. Calling upon his diverse background in copywriting, advertising, marketing, and sales, he has been learning traditional SEO and SEM tactics since 2004.  He is the lead SEM Strategist at MarketingZen.com, a Social Media Marketing company. For more information on online marketing contact The Marketing Zen Group for a free site evaluation.

Flickr photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/67307569@N00/

Google AdWords is the greatest direct response advertising medium ever created. This fact has been recognized by more than one national business magazine, newspaper, and marketing guru. Some business owners have Google AdWords to thank for their entire existence and growth, while others have replaced their traditional advertising budget at a fraction of the cost to advertise on search engines with better results. Since 2001 these classifieds-style, “Sponsored Links” seen above and alongside organic search listings have created millionaires, they have also lost advertisers millions.  With a low barrier-to-entry, many business owners  and marketing managers have tried their hand at Google’s pay-per-click system. Some have soared, while others have hopelessly wasted big bucks without knowing why. Having looked at dozens of accounts over the years and managed over a million dollars in clicks, I’ve seen the costly mistakes often made. Below are six of the most common with solutions.

1. Always Bidding to Be Number One -  Ego bidding can cause expensive click wars. Always trying to be #1 over your competitors on one specific keyword just to be #1 wastes time and money unless you know your keywords’ true value or cost-per-conversion. For high volume, competitive, high cost clicks, make sure you know your keywords’ cost-per-conversion.

Solution: Generally, positions 3 - 10 have higher conversion rates because they receive less impulsive and irrelevant clicks. In recent years relevancy has been playing a larger role (Quality Score), and being #1 is not solely dependent on maximum bid. Calculate how much a customer or lead is worth to you and don’t spend more than that per lead (excluding the first month of testing or so). Swallow your pride, mind your ROI, and let your competitors waste their time and money on bidding wars. The one exception being when the keyword is the name of your company. Get five more common AdWords Mistakes & their Fixes. (more…)

Dallas developers, designers, webprenuers & bloggers meet for Who’s Who holiday party in Uptown. Get the story on which Dallas online elite made the event and the games they played.
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This is a recent guest post I wrote for a friend covering an event we both attended. She is trying to grow a Downtown Dallas job, business networking & restaurant review blog. Get the full story with photos on www.SupportBigD.com.  Reputable online Dallas news source Pegasusnews.com also reprinted my story.

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CoHabitat, a shared working space environment for start-ups, individuals and small companies, threw a holiday party with appetizers, games, drinks, dancing, and several of the Who’s Who of Dallas online media in attendance.

The location of the party was a historical house, located off of Thomas Street in Uptown, Dallas. During the workweek this house facilitates creative ideas and a social working atmosphere by bringing together businesses and freelancers who would normally be working from home alone. For a ridiculously low monthly rental fee, you can have your own office. After the workday ends this house becomes the perfect location for get-togethers, parties, and a relaxed less formal meeting-of-the-minds.

The folks at CoHabitat are a very open group and anyone with a Facebook account could have found the event and attended, much like all their events. As the saying goes like attracts like, and just because there is an open party with a kegerator doesn’t mean every frat boy and his dog would show up. Even at the parties, there is a lot of networking and techie-talk similar to Dallas Geekmeet only younger, more hip, to those networking veterans familiar with the Dallas scene.

[Inter]Networking in Dallas

I attended CoHabitat’s Thanksgiving party in November and their crawfish boil in March, both of which were a blast, especially the boil. In my experience, I can say these have been some of the best events for meeting other industry pros. I would not say it’s the best environment for finding business prospects if you are a sales person, but great for finding business partners and collaborators if you already have projects needing special expertise or would like to launch new ones using the fresh ideas and skills of a savvy group of potential partners.

Bev Garvin of the Dallas Interactive firm Urban Interact and Neil Lemons, myself, of Inbound Marketing Blog were in attendance. I met several iPhone application developers, designers, and database architects, many of which are already making a living with their own projects or getting close. There are those who are less technically savvy, more on the marketing, account, and social media side, like myself, which have always been made to feel welcome. Read full story & see pictures of Dallas tech party on SupportBigD.com.

Personal Branding Verses Niche News & Info
For awhile now I’ve been torn between growing this blog as a travel journal about adventures and traveling in Texas, or using it for its original purpose, personal branding and displaying my expertise. I just couldn’t seem to bring it in perfect balance like Couch Surfing Ori. Recently, I changed the title back to industry-oriented phrasing from Texas Travel Journal to The Inbound [Marketing ] Blog. One reason, two success stories of citizen journalists I know were based on the premise of hyper local information relevant to people in a particular city (in this case Dallas). I thought I would focus mine on Texas travel. Then I realized two things:

1) I don’t travel that much.
2) With online niches, it’s better to be deep than wide.

I wanted this site to be bigger than life, but I was riding the fence too long. I did not want to wait until the domain TexasTravelJournal.com was allowed out of the sandbox, so I promoted it, but redirected the site to my vanity URL which had already been established. I’m not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I just need to separate the two and work on them separately. For now I will cover more topics affecting bloggers, online marketers, and business owners.

Since a potential customer’s initial search still starts with keywords on a search engine using a service-oriented keyword followed or preceded by the city in which they’re searching (ex: BMW mechanic Dallas). You should first pay attention to the truly important ones already showing up in Google, Yahoo!, and MSN for your keywords. Below are six of the major review and business listing sites which hold weight and have huge online presence. Learn the six biggies.

1. Google Local Business Listings (The “10 Pack”)

You can get your business listed on Google’s map and show up directly on the search results by registering at the Google Local Business Center www.google.com/local/add Describe your business with location info, services, hours of operation and business website link. After you have a listing, your goal is get reviews. If you let Google find your business first, you’ll be rewarded with better placement on the map. Much like Google would rather find your website on its own through links rather than search engine submission, Google Maps will trust and more than likely post reviews from other review sites before submitting or modifying your listing. Often, the Google Local Listing bot will scour the Internet for other reviews sites already touting your company’s offerings and experiences, so start building profiles on some of the other sites first and you’ll already have a diversity of amazing reviews before you expand. Another backdoor is getting your business listed on the BBB’s website or InfoUSA.com to ensure your Google Local presence. Reviews are by far the #1 one factor in achieving top placement in the alphanumeric listing of the Google Local Business Listings/Map Listings. Make sure the reviews are real though. Having keywords in your business name and a complete profile also helps. Get started at the Google Local Business Center. (more…)