High Rankings Advisor: Google Places - Issue No. 279

High Rankings Advisor 279 - Your Host: Jill Whalen
In Today's Issue Search Engine Marketing ---> Google Places (Formerly Local Business Center) High Rankings Happenings ---> Need Ongoing SEO Help? ---> May 14th SEO Class ---> Recession Buster SEO Website Review Twitter Question of the Week ---> Local map listings in regular Google? Advanced SEO Forum Thread of the Week ---> Coding from Scratch or a CMS? Advisor Wrap-up ---> Just Letting You Know   Introduction Hey everyone! I want to give a special shout-out to all the new subscribers who joined us after taking our online SEO course at Lynda.com. Welcome! I was going to say that I'll try to make this newsletter extra-special for you, but then I remembered that I do that for every newsletter anyway :) With that out of the way, let's get straight to the good stuff! – Jill   Search Engine Marketing Issues ++Google Places (Formerly Local Business Center)++ In the early 1990s, when I was first online, very few businesses had a website. Gradually companies started coming online, but most of them were those that served a national or global market. While many local directories also came online, it was rare to see a strictly local company with a website. There were some exceptions, like those with professional practices such as dentists, doctors and lawyers. In fact, professional practice websites were some of my earliest SEO clients, although they weren't in my local area. But even in the mid-2000s, the typical hair salon, plumber or chiropractor were very rare to find online. About 10 years ago I remember looking for a chiropractor in my area online and could only find one with a website, and it wasn't even one in my town. Much to my dismay, I ended up using the old-fashioned telephone book to make sure that I found all the nearby chiropractors. Things are different today. While there are still a surprising number of small local businesses without websites, they are easily online thanks to Google's local search results. Did you know that, according to Google, one in every five searches is related to location in some way? It's no wonder that Google has put a lot of effort into enhancing their local search listings. This week I learned through Search Engine Land that Google had changed this feature's name from Google Local Business Center to the simpler Google Places. In addition, they've added even more cool things you can do with your Google Page, once you've claimed your listing. For instance, if you're located in certain cities, you can purchase an enhanced listing, which they now call "tags," for $25 per month. And if you operate a hotel, restaurant or local store, you can even apply to have Google photographers come and do a free photo shoot of the interior of your business!  They've also added "QR code," which you can have printed on business cards or anywhere else. The code enables those with QR readers in their phones or other devices to go directly to your website.  More useful to the average business owner, however, is the new ability to post messages to your Place Page. This is great if you have an event coming up or just any special thing you want to tell people about. It can be up to 160 characters and it will show for 30 days unless you delete it sooner. You can post URLs that will become clickable links, but you can't use HTML code (I tried!). For our Place Page, I added the date to our upcoming SEO Class with a link to the class page. I think it's a nice touch. If you claimed your company's local listing a long time ago and haven't checked it out in a while, you should definitely log on and revisit your page. And if you've never claimed your Place Page, there's no better time than the present! Here's how to find your Place Page in Google: Head over to Google Maps and search for your company by name. When you find it, click the "more info" link. That should take you straight to your Place Page. If you haven't claimed your Place Page yet, click the link that says "Business Owner" and then click the "Edit my business information" button on the next page. Now you can fill in all the information on the form. You might be concerned at this point that someone else could go in and change your information or edit it incorrectly…but don't worry. Once you've filled out the form, nothing will go live until you verify that you are the true owner of the Place Page. They do this by sending you a postcard via snail mail that has a verification code on it that you have to go back later to enter. Be sure to do a thorough job filling out the description field for your website. This is where you want to add your main keyword phrases where they make sense to do so. Don't try to add keywords to your company name, however. The spammers and scammers have already killed that little trick and it will only get you in trouble with Google rather than helping. You can and should add the maximum 5 categories to your listing because what you choose there can help your site show up when people are searching using similar words. Note that you don't have to stick with the categories Google recommends, but make up your own. I suggest doing some Google Maps searches using the types of phrases you'd want to show up for, and seeing what some of the sites that are currently showing up are doing. I also highly recommend that you add photos and videos to your Place Page if you have them. Be sure that one of the pictures is your company logo! You can take a look at what we've done with our High Rankings Place Page if you'd like some ideas. One place we're lacking at our site is reviews. We've been meaning to solicit some from clients, class attendees, forum users and newsletter subscribers, but haven't gotten around to it. Come to think of it, while I have your attention and while you're visiting our Place Page anyway, please feel free to write a review! Under "Photos & Video," you'll see a section for reviews and a link to write one of your own. Even if your company is national in scope and doesn't do much local business, I strongly suggest claiming and enhancing your Google Place Page. These local listings are showing in more and varied ways in the Google search results, well beyond just Google Maps. I expect them to gain even more prominence, given all the effort Google has been putting into them lately. Jill --- Jill Whalen is the CEO of High Rankings, a Boston SEO Consulting Agency. Share your comments and thoughts here. P.S. If you learned from this article, please feel free to forward your newsletter to a friend!   Twitter Question of the Week This week I asked my Twitter followers: ++Do you like it when local map listings show up in the regular Google results?++ WilliamLang: Y.E.S. Little to no downside. davematson: If it is relevant, it's fine. Hate it when it shows map with results out of range. leebrinckley: Haven't really thought about it...so I would say local map listings don't bother me. netmeg: Would like ability to turn it off; just because I fill it out doesn't mean appropriate for all clients to have it display. ann_donnelly: I can see where Google map listings in results could be helpful, if complete & accurate. In Ireland, often they aren't. KatherineAndes: Does it matter if I like or not? Google doesn't care. Map listings are better than seeing yelp results when that's all that's on page. Emma_Lee1: In the UK they're not accurate enough. Search for solicitors = claims management co results – not solicitors, not helpful. domjbs: Often, yes. Taking off my local SEO hat, it's very useful from a user perspective in many verticals. JTPotts: Yes - I basically only use map listings anyway. marcusbowlerhat: Hmm, it seems a bit patchy. Search for Business type X in location Y works, whilst search for type A in location B does not. marknunney: As a searcher – sometimes (when it helps); as an SEO – sometimes (when I get a 2nd listing there). Jill: Yes, @marknunney has a good point. I feel differently about the Google Maps showing up in regular results depending on if I'm the searcher or the SEO. As an SEO, if your client's address isn't in the big city, their website can be overlooked because the local maps take up so much real estate in the search results. But on the other hand, I have often found those results helpful when doing searches, in general. Want to participate in the Twitter Question of the Week? Follow @jillwhalen on Twitter.   Advanced Forum Thread of the Week Forum member "Hic" asked the other High Rankings Forum members which they preferred for SEO, using a content management system (CMS) or coding the website by hand? See what other forum members preferred here: Coding from Scratch or a CMS?   Advisor Wrap-up That's all for today! I don't have any upcoming trips scheduled for a while, which is nice. It gives me a chance to keep up with work as well as perform those other pesky business chores that always seem to come up. Oh, and I wanted to mention that if you've been thinking about taking one of our in-person SEO training classes, you should sign up for the May 14 class. The demand has decreased and we're getting very busy with client work, so it could be the last one we offer for quite some time. And the other thing I wanted to let you know about was that we've put up all the free Lynda.com SEO videos in one place, in case you haven't see those yet. It's not the entire course, but it will give you some idea of whether you think you want to register to view all the videos. Catch you in 2 weeks! – Jill   Today's issue is also available online in the newsletter archives. If you prefer RSS/XML please feel free to use our newsfeed here. Feel free to forward this email in its entirety to anyone you feel might be interested in it. Paid sponsor ads are clearly marked as advertisements and neither High Rankings nor Jill Whalen take any responsibility for the claims made within these ads, nor the websites they point to. Paid ads do not constitute an endorsement for the products, services or companies advertising in the newsletter. Please visit our sponsors and use your own due diligence for any purchases you make on the Internet.	Need Ongoing SEO Help? Check out our Services! Get the SEO help you need from an experienced, trusted SEO advisor. Click Here to Learn More About Our SEO Services Now   SEO Training Classes 2010 Classes: Register for May 14th Now 1-day SEO Training Class for beginners to intermediate learners. You will learn to separate SEO facts from fiction, and what to do to bring in more search engine visitors who are seeking exactly what you offer. Only 6 people per class in order to provide personal SEO consulting to each student. Learn More or Register Now   Recession Buster SEO Website Review - Only $600 In this economic climate, can you afford to put your SEO on the back burner? What you'll receive: Jill Whalen will personally review your website for the problems preventing you from receiving the targeted traffic you deserve. An emailed statement written by Jill of the issues she found. Answers via email to any questions about the review. Learn which tasks will provide you with the biggest bang for your buck and stop missing out on highly targeted opportunities and sales. Request Your Website Review Now!
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High Rankings Advisor: SEO Q&A - Issue No. 278

High Rankings Advisor 278 - Your Host: Jill Whalen
In Today's Issue Search Engine Marketing ---> Targeting Different Countries ---> Supplemental Index ---> HTML in File Name ---> Manually Submit to Search Engines ---> Forwarded Domains ---> Ampersands and Search Engines High Rankings Happenings ---> Small-Business SEO Package Starting at $749/month ---> May In-person SEO Class Available ---> Recession Buster SEO Website Review Twitter Question of the Week ---> What is THE most important SEO tactic? Stuff You Might Like ---> High Rankings Online SEO Course Advanced SEO Forum Thread of the Week ---> Questions About Link Building Advisor Wrap-up ---> Told you he was a genius!   Introduction Hey everyone! It's that time of the month again when we have our High Rankings SEO Q&A Bonanza issue. If you're a new subscriber, that simply means that I pull out my SEO mailbag from the past few weeks and post some of the questions with my answers. It's a great way to learn about a variety of SEO topics in one fell swoop! Enjoy! – Jill   Search Engine Marketing Issues ++Targeting Different Countries++ Dear Jill, As a long-term subscriber I would like to ask for your advice concerning optimisation of an e-commerce site for multiple countries. Specifically I am in the UK and have a client in Australia operating an e-commerce site. The site is well established and ranks well in the UK (where it is hosted) but not very well in the USA or Australia. My client believes this is because the site is hosted in the UK and that in order to succeed in the bigger US market he needs to host in the USA (same for Australia). He is asking if he should operate 3 sites – one hosted in each country – and I wondered if you could comment on the importance of hosting in the target country, and the implications of having what will essentially be 3 duplicates of the same site – one for .co.uk, one for .com and one for .com.au. Any other suggestions will be welcome. Regards, Ian ++Jill's Response++ Hi Ian, The country code top-level domain (ccTLD), such as .co.uk and .com.au, is more important to Google for determining the target country than where the hosted server is physically located. That said, while a .com domain does target the US audience, it's not actually a US domain, but a worldwide one. Therefore, to target the US market, you might want to physically host the .com in the US. There are a few additional options open to you. You could have one .com website and use different subdomains or subdirectories for each country you want to target. For example, uk.example.com and aus.example.com for subdomains, or www.example.com/uk and www.example.com/aus as subdirectories. If you go this route, you'd need to set up each subdomain or subdirectory in Google Webmaster Tools to target the individual country assigned to it. The problem with that method is that it is only a Google solution and is not going to help with the other search engines. If you already have the specific ccTLDs for the UK and Australia, you are better off using those domains and creating sites that target those geographical regions. While you will likely have duplicate content because they're all English-speaking countries, it shouldn't be a problem because the search engines will typically choose the correct version of your site depending on where the searcher is located. You can see this yourself, if you already have separate ccTLD websites, by heading over to google.co.uk and searching for your site by name. It's likely that the UK version will show up there rather than the other versions. Hope this helps! Jill Share your comments and thoughts here.   ++Supplemental Index++ Dear Jill, I'm still working on my site's link popularity as we speak. But due to my very low link popularity, is that enough to send my pages to Google's Supplemental Index? Jesse ++Jill's Response++ Hi Jesse, First, a quick word about Google's supplemental index for those who may not know what it is. A few years ago, you could often find results in Google that actually said something like, "These sites are in our supplemental index." While there is no supplemental index label in the Google search results anymore, there still is a supplemental index, and it is indeed where pages that have little value can end up. For the most part, pages in the supplemental index are those whose content is the same or very similar to other pages, and/or they don't have enough PageRank (the real kind, not the toolbar kind) to be placed in the regular index. So in answer to your question, yes, very low link popularity can throw pages of your site into the supplemental index. It's doubtful that the top-level pages of your site would be there unless they were dupes of other pages, were extremely new and had no links at all, or most of the links pointing to the site were of very low quality. The pages that typically are found in the supplemental results are those that are buried very deeply within low PageRanked sites – in other words, a site that doesn't have enough overall PageRank to spread some around to its deeper pages. The way out of the supplemental index is to gain more overall link popularity and do a better job linking internally to the supplemental pages. Or, alternatively, try to gain links that point directly to the pages stuck in the supplemental listings. The good news is that most pages in the supplemental index, while perhaps important to your site visitors, often don't need to be found directly from the search engines. Best, Jill Share your comments and thoughts here.   ++HTML in File Name++ Hi Jill, I hope this email finds you well and business is good. We are doing some redevelopment on our CMS and the functionality. To date, all URLs were search engine friendly – that is, they excluded the characters ?, &, %, and =, but we did not allow for them to be rewritten so they can include key phrases on all levels. Now we are developing the package so this can be done. Do we need to have .html at the end of the URL? For example, this page: www.example.com/directory_example/checklist.html would be: www.example.com/directory_example/checklist. Any advice you can give will be greatly appreciated. Regards, Sandra ++Jill's Response++ Hi Sandra, You don't need to have .html at the end of your URLs. You don't really need keywords either, but if you are planning to put them in, you don't want to use underscores, as in your example URLs. You should use dashes (–) to separate the words instead. Hope this helps! Best, Jill Share your comments and thoughts here.   ++Manually Submit to Search Engines++ Hi Jill, There is one question that keeps confusing me – should one manually submit a site to a search engine? I read conflicting advice on this topic. If I recall, you have said you never do it, and I am wondering what the pros and cons are. Can you elaborate? Thanks, Kathleen ++Jill's Response++ Hi Kathleen, There are no pros or cons to submitting to the spidering search engines. It's simply an unnecessary waste of time and bandwidth because it does absolutely nothing. Submitting to directories is a different story, however. Directories are not like search engines because they don't have spiders that find URLs. So if you want to be listed in directories, you do have to manually submit to them to the proper category. Hope this helps! Jill Share your comments and thoughts here.   ++Forwarded Domains++ Hi Jill, I have one main website and own about 10 other domain name versions that are similar. Will I get penalized by the search engines if I have the 10 other domain names forwarded to my one website? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Ted ++Jill's Response++ Hi Ted, "Forwarded" could mean a lot of different things when it comes to SEO. You might have your domains as parked aliases, in which case they could all end up indexed by the search engines. While there is no duplicate content penalty, it's still not a good idea to go this route. What you want to do is 301-redirect your additional domains to your main website. It won't help you with anything in the search engines, but it won't hurt you either, and is fine. Best, Jill Share your comments and thoughts here.   ++Ampersands and Search Engines++ Dear Jill, On my web page I have H2 tags that include the HTML ampersand (&) character code. For example: Health & Beauty I've been told that this confuses crawlers. Can you please advise if this has any effect on the search engine results for my site? I would appreciate your help. Rita ++Jill's Response++ Hi Rita, No, it doesn't confuse the crawlers. They convert the HTML & to the ampersand character. Google also knows that an ampersand and the word "and" mean the same thing. That said, a quick search at Google for "health & beauty" and "health and beauty" (without quotes on either) does show slightly different results. You may want to take a look at that to decide if you want to use the ampersand or the word "and." You may want to use both forms in order to target both types of search queries. Of course, my guess is that not that many people search with the ampersand character because it's a bit of a pain to type. Hope this helps! Jill Share your comments and thoughts here.   Do you have an SEO question you'd like answered? Please submit it to me via our SEO Question form. P.S. If anyone would like to republish any of the above articles, please email me your request and where they will reside, and I'll send you a short bio you can use with them for your site.   Twitter Question of the Week This week, I asked my Twitter followers: ++What do you feel is THE most important SEO tactic for any website?++ Here's what they said: Laurent8: TITLE + Anchor Text and you got yourself a (basic but most important) SEO strategy. josiahcole: Content creation. Without unique content you have nothing to market and nothing for the visitor; inbound links will be organic. netrafic: Browser titles that are congruent with page content tailored towards a popular keyword term or two. semdave: Content development tailored to meet the information needs of your appropriate audience. User-friendly content = strong SEO. AVirtualEdge: Web content and backlink quality. designrox17: Would it be keywords? I'm new to this. Jill's comment: Well, if designrox17 meant keyword research (and not Meta keywords!), then the newbie's the one who got it right! While content creation, titles, and anchor text are extremely important, if you don't first research the keywords, they could all be for nothing. Want to participate in the Twitter Question of the Week? Follow @jillwhalen on Twitter Share your comments and thoughts here.   Stuff You Might Like ++High Rankings Online SEO Course++ We heard your many requests for us to offer our SEO training course online. In response, we partnered with the online training experts at Lynda.com to offer you "Getting Started With SEO." This SEO course is taught by me and covers the entire spectrum of SEO – from understanding how search engines work, to keyword research, site architecture, website content, link building and measuring your success. The best part is that Lynda.com is extremely affordable! You can register for a 1-month membership for only $25 and gain access to my entire SEO course as well as the thousands of other courses in their online training library. You can learn more, watch the live introductory video (plus a few of the course videos) or register for the entire SEO course. Of course, we're still offering our in-person SEO training classes as well. You can register for the May class now.   Advanced Forum Thread of the Week ++Questions About Link Building++ Forum member "ddzc" asked if building too many links too quickly, all with the same anchor text, would be considered spam by the search engines. See what other forum members said, and/or share your own comments here.   Advisor Wrap-up That's all for today! It's been hectic around High Rankings headquarters as our small-business SEO packages have brought in a few new clients. It's always fun to get started with an SEO strategy for new clients because every site is different and has different needs. We can still take on a few more small businesses if you're interested. See if your website and business are a good fit for our program here. On the home front, our genius son Tim proved that it wasn't just his proud mom and dad who thought he was a genius, by receiving the amazing total score of 2310 on his SATs. His individual scores were: Critical Reading 780, Math 770 and Writing 760. This should help in his quest to go to MIT for college. Catch you in 2 weeks! – Jill   Today's issue is also available online in the newsletter archives. If you prefer RSS/XML please feel free to use our newsfeed here. Feel free to forward this email in its entirety to anyone you feel might be interested in it. Paid sponsor ads are clearly marked as advertisements and neither High Rankings nor Jill Whalen take any responsibility for the claims made within these ads, nor the websites they point to. Paid ads do not constitute an endorsement for the products, services or companies advertising in the newsletter. Please visit our sponsors and use your own due diligence for any purchases you make on the Internet.	Small Business SEO Packages Only $749/month! We've heard your cries for an affordable, hiqh-quality, customized ongoing SEO solution that allows you to focus on your core business. If you provide B2B services or sell a handful of products on your website, you can now get the SEO help you need from an experienced, trusted SEO advisor at a price you can afford. Learn More About Our Small Biz SEO Packages Now!   SEO Training Classes 2010 Classes: Register for May 14th Now 1-day SEO Training Class for beginners to intermediate learners. You will learn to separate SEO facts from fiction, and what to do to bring in more search engine visitors who are seeking exactly what you offer. Only 6 people per class in order to provide personal SEO consulting to each student. Learn More or Register Now   Recession Buster SEO Website Review - Only $600 In this economic climate, can you afford to put your SEO on the back burner? What you'll receive: Jill Whalen will personally review your website for the problems preventing you from receiving the targeted traffic you deserve. An emailed statement written by Jill of the issues she found. Answers via email to any questions about the review. Learn which tasks will provide you with the biggest bang for your buck and stop missing out on highly targeted opportunities and sales. Request Your Website Review Now!
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