Citations and links are still huge driving forces behind ranking in the major search engines. After focusing on getting listed on the major sites (Google, Bing, Yelp, etc) and exhausting the top local business listings sites, shift your focus to hyper local sites for that extra ranking boost. Almost every area has local business listing opportunities.
Let's assume that we are a new flower shop in Peoria, IL and walk through some real examples of where to get your business listed.
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When you work for a local business search engine, you grow accustomed to a certain amount of spam. Offenders will choose a city and create 5 to 10 business profiles that center around a specific industry. The business names will all be different, but the profiles often have the same phone number, link the same website and display the same stock photo. Once in a while you will run across a craftier spammer who uses a different phone number for each profile, but if you take the time to call each number you will be greeted by the same person.
I don't relish deleting these profiles. On the other side of those phone numbers there is a guy who runs a real business and performs a real service in that geographic area. He may even perform it very well. Does he deserve to be found in local searches? Yes. Does he deserve to be the only one found in local searches? Absolutely not, which is why his profiles are always 86ed.
Far and away, the biggest offenders belong to the service industry. It is no... [Read Full Article]
The online metric provider, Comscore, put out an interesting blog last week, noting that the average length of internet search queries is getting longer:
The average number of words per search in the United States in March was nearly 3.2 words and it has been growing for some time [up from just under 2.9 in July-08]. This is a far cry from our original limitations of "shoes" in order to now search for and find a pair of "nike air jordans."
None of this should come as a shock. Search engines are constantly tweaking their algorithms, striving to deliver the best and most relevant search results to their users. According to Matt Cutts, the head of Google's Webspam team, Google tends to make a change to their core search algorithm at least once a day. The co... [Read Full Article]
For children, summer break inspires excitement. Three months of freedom for playing, planning adventures and plotting assorted mischief. For mothers, on the other hand, summer break may provoke slightly different sentiments. The errands of everyday life remain the same, but during summer break, mothers often acquire a posse of high-maintenance, low-patience helpers. Suffice it to say, accomplishing these tasks becomes a much more burdensome chore.
However, a savvy mom will plan ahead, choosing businesses and shops that will keep her children entertained and content while she works her way down the to-do list. Therefore, a savvy business owner’s job is twofold: create a kid-friendly environment and then spread the word that you run a child-friendly business. Here are a few tips on how to accomplish both:
Provide Toys, Activities or Entertainment for Children While they Wait.
Does your business have a waiting room? Stock it with toys and kid’s magazines.... [Read Full Article]
