Know-How Exchange : SEO/SEM

Paul,

Search engines continually change their rating schemes. It appears that in early 2008, Google (and Yahoo and others) have changed their methods somewhat. It used to be that your ranking solely depended on how close your address was to the center of the geography you chose. More recently, it appears that the ranking, while still heavily weighted by the geographical basis, is also marginally affected by number of pages that have links to the business' site (obviously having a website is important to the ranking - the links can be from Yellow Pages, etc), reviews, title, category, and traditional SEO criteria. Here's a study on this done in July.

https://blumenthals.com/blog/2008/08/04/ranking-factors-in-google-maps-crac...

While there doesn't appear to be a way to "buy" your way into higher rankings for the local pages, Adworks and other pay-per-click allow you to be beside the maps category as a sponsored link. If you pick a zip code, it's not so clear how to get that sponsored link on top.

I hope this helps.

Wayde

This blog article about free local listings on Google gives you step by step instructions on how to get your company listed in Google local results. Just getting listed is not a guarantee of showing up on the first page, but if you are not listed, you will never show up at all.

The hint in the following article states that a higher ranking by local listing may be possible by # of reviews:
https://www.tastyplacement.com/how-does-google-local-order-its-results

Submit to google local (do the other search engines as well). Know your best keyword phrases and add them to the account.

Have your address and phone number within html of site. Include the towns/areas you serve.

Implement search engine optimization tactics including the addition of backlinks.

Sorry for the quick answers - finishing up big project.

Best,

Greg

Thank you for this great question and great answers :)

For me, this is exactly what marketingprofs is for.

I learned some great new stuff from this.

Thank you to all for the advise.

Matthew

Dear Paul

From your specialties in LinkedIn and other sites where we share an entry, I would have thought that you should be telling us how to get to the top 3 slots, not vice-versa!

If it’s any comfort though, I’ve had some of the best advice dished out to me here on MP’s for my own specialities – CRM and Forecasting. Wood and Trees come to mind.

Getting to the top other than the methods you’ve explained yourself or outlined above tend to involve tricks or shock and awe – the latter produces a short term avalanche of articles which include a back-link to your rite.

The “Network Marketing” “Guru’s” have their own methods, mostly involving getting thousands of affiliates to back link top your site in the hope that they too will earn $$$ rather quickly. In fact the best tactic I’ve seen from these fellows was to buy out the top ranking site for a given ad-word combination. It was cheaper than doing it conventionally, quicker and what the heck’s the cost of a second hand Ferrari these days. That’s money boasting, not money speaking, just in case you are tempted!

Doing something on your site which is hugely newsworthy is probably the best way, but do what? As Seth Godin wrote a few days ago; your next market-busting story, product or idea is already out there and already in your head and the collective heads of your client’s board.

The secret is to spot what you can do, release it and to hell with risk adversity. The revues idea also has some weight – the same technique is used by the MLM industry to get the innovators of a scam reviews through hundreds of affiliate websites.

A more ethical way might be to seek out all the other local, non competing companies which use Google Local and to ask them by phone and by email if you could include links to them from your site, in return for the same service on their site. If you have the time to invest, then getting a review of your business from other advertisers is not beyond reason. After all, if your client becomes number one, your review of their business and your back-link is going to benefit them directly.

Hope that’s of some use – I’ve been studying web marketing and the latest guises of the MLM business for a few months now and although most of these businesses are unethical in that they offer rewards which can be achieved only at the expense of the majority who must fail to provide that success, some of the SEO techniques they have developed are quite valid for real businesses. They also have the advantage of being able to test the technique with vast samples of emails, caring little for whom they offend or annoy.

Best wishes and see you soon on LinkedIn or wherever we cross!

Steve Alker
Xspirt

You list this as an 'urgent' question needing immediate response (and I'm assuming result).

If urgency is the issue, seems to me you need to focus on SEM (Adwords) rather than SEO. SEO will take weeks or months to show results (depending on your category and skills), SEM will get you clicks today.