By Internet Marketing Experts
No doubt by now you would have heard of the black hat search engine optimization (SEO) tactics JC Penny’s pursued in order to be ranked well for various search terms particularly in planning for the 2010 holiday season. The news was uncovered by the New York Times in quite a bit of detail.
Their investigation found thousands of unrelated web sites in the retail industry were linking JCPenny.com. The process was done by linking very specific keywords and based on the detail of these links someone planned this process. While JC Penny’s SEO company was apparently fired for this incident, I find it difficult to believe that someone at JC Penny would not have known about this strategy.
Let’s start from the beginning and take a look at linking strategies post Google going public in 2004 and serious algorithm changes that took place in 2005 and beyond. There are a number of data points that Google monitors about a website and the individual web pages within the website. Ultimately it is about a web page, not a web site, therefore, any page can become ranked and any page can become an entry point for a visitor. This would then require you to re-think the call to action if your home page is no longer the entry point.
This first begins with how relevant a web page is relative to the search. This would include your Title tag, the meta Description of a page, and the visible text. The three parts have to work together in order to show a certain level of keyword density on a topic. You will notice I did not say anything about meta keywords as those have become less important over the years since companies can hide what they are really about in the meta keywords versus what they are displaying to the rest of the world.
The next major point would be about the web pages importance. This is determined through the number of web pages linking to your website or web pages. The more links the better. At least that was the original thought until website owners decided to buy links cheaply without doing any work. These links have several sub-components including if the site that is linking to you is relevant to your topic and if that web page itself has any importance.
The process of trying to cheat yourself into the top of a Google search is considered “black hat” optimization or SEO. Google has different ways of monitoring this process and is generally successful in locating the problem situations. Although, JC Penny’s situation was not caught until much later. Websites caught in this act are de-listed from Google and need to clean-up their act in order to get back into Google.
The short-term benefits of black hat SEO do not make any sense to the longevity of a business. It is better to focus your attention on developing real links from reputable websites and communities mostly using Content Marketing with articles, news releases, documents (e.g. Powerpoints), Videos, and Social Media. Aside from the obvious benefits of Content Marketing being a credible linking strategy, the benefits for brand reputation, brand credibility and brand awareness include:
• Traffic from Search Engines
• Traffic from Non-Search Engines
• Owning more search results using 3rd Party website where your content is distributed
Linking strategies are labor intensive and take time. This process also requires three types of linking that include:
• Direct Linking to website home page
• Direct Linking using targeted keywords
• Cross Linking distributed content
• Deep Linking inside of your web pages
This is one reason where Pay Per Click advertising using Adwords becomes beneficial in order to generate short term results while the organic results are being executed through content marketing.
While we can continue to talk about JC Penny’s debacle using cheap black hat optimization tricks that has back fired, as well as, linking strategies, let’s focus a little on the New York Times article itself.
You will notice I am not linking to that article in this writing. Frankly, I refuse to! I do not wish to add a link giving that article any further importance on the web because within the article it is linking directly to all the black hat optimization websites. I am sure I could write an article strictly on the ethical linking policies required by major publications, however, we’ll see if we can get the point across in fewer words.
As an owner of a web marketing agency I took the time to read the entire article meticulously to understand what was written. Mind you I have over 17 years Internet experience with two successful companies and my knowledge is quite deep.
What I am surprised at, considering the writer’s newly gained knowledge about linking strategies, is why would the New York Times setup active links to the companies providing such horrible service from this article (meaning coming from nytimes.com domain) and give them any value, benefit, and support?
In this case:
• Page 1 all the links in the last paragraph to black hat optimization link building farms
• Page 2 link to SearchDex who was fired by JC Penny
• Page 3 links to TNX, cookingutensils and Cocaman.ch who are engaged in these black hat linking building schemes
Why would the New York Times support these companies with links to their websites? Are they planning on helping them further with their business by helping their ranking position? Afterall, NYTimes.com, as a domain, has a lot of power and links to websites from NYTimes.com will only help the destination website.
What ethical policies are in place at the New York Times when it comes to linking to a website?
Of course I submitted this question to the New York Times and am currently waiting on a reply, which will be posted here should it ever arrive.
The Internet is a living breathing marketing tool that has no end point. You cannot perform a certain amount of work and expect the work to provide you millions of dollars next week nor will the one time work or expenditure give you longevity. As a business you have to plan on continued web efforts using all facets of web marketing, which is a multi-directional strategy.
Afterall, something that came up in a client meeting recently, “We will stop your optimization efforts when the search engines stop changing algorithms and technologies!” Yeah, that will be the day.
Certainly your time resources are limited and our team can assist with a deep understanding of organic marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), local business marketing, proper adword management, social media and many other Internet marketing strategies. Local Business Listing Optimization Services are provided by SmartFinds Internet Marketing, a Internet Marketing agency.
By Internet Marketing Experts
Local business listings give your business the opportunity, for free, to make coupons, offers, discounts, photos, videos and more available to local customers. You can be as big as a Target and as small as a florist to take advantage of local business listings. As long as your business is dependent upon the local economy for your revenue, local business listings is an important local business marketing tool.
Local business listings show up in search results, in mobile search results and also in mobile applications. For this reason it is important that you to claim, update and manage your local business listing at multiple local listing websites, search engines, social communities, 411 websites, GPS websites and business directories. There is more to this than just Google.
If you have started to work with your local business listing, here are some tips for the holidays:
- Add photos about your business, products and services
- Add videos about your business, products and services
- Update your local listings keywords, categories and tags
- Create a coupon highlighting holiday specials
- Link to a menu of holiday events and offers
- Update your holiday business hours
- Write a post or add an event to engage with your local customers
These interactive yellow pages are important in your business marketing toolbox and you will have to watch for customer reviews as well. While you are in the process of updating your local business listings, you might as well start planning how to get satisfied customers to submit high ratings and positive comments about your business. You may wish to include:
- Displays cards asking for high ratings and positive comments at checkout or at the front counter.
- Make a laptop or computer available for customers to add their comments to your listing while they are in your store or office (if appropriate)
- Have cards ready to include with any purchase or perhaps with your invoices that you send out.
Customer comments are important not only for your business listing now, but also in the future. Get a start on managing the customer reviews sooner rather than later!
Certainly your time resources are limited and Local Business Listing Optimization Services are provided by SmartFinds Internet Marketing. Additionally, this cost-effective service may eliminate your need for yellow pages advertising and its costs. Let the experts with over 16 years of Internet marketing experience help you use this local business marketing tool properly and prevent brand security issues from occurring.
By melih
Google Places is a free service that offers a wide range of mapping functionalities. While Google is making them available from everywhere, it will take some time before this free service is available around the entire globe.
You can get the additional information from Google at the following link:
http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=168339
As of this writing on June 13, 2010, there are 66 countries listed below in alphabetical order where Google Places is available. Bookmark this page and check back regularly for any changes to this list.
Angola
Argentina
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Bermuda
Botswana
Brazil
Bulgaria
Canada
Chile
China
Croatia
Czech Republic
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Denmark
Egypt
Finland
France
Gabon
Germany
Greece
Greenland
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Japan
Kenya
Korea Dem. People’s Rep.
Latvia
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Madagascar
Malaysia
Mauritius
Mexico
Mozambique
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russia
Rwanda
Serbia
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Slovakia
South Africa
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Thailand
Turkey
Uganda
United Kingdom
United States
By melih
Google Places is a free marketing tool for local businesses. The benefits of these listings include showing up in web search results and mobile search results. Updating these listings is free and available to the business 24x7x365. Not something you can easily do with the traditional yellow pages. Definitely something you need to consider beyond Google and tap into multiple local listing websites and search engines.
Here are a few guidelines and information to know about when using Google Places. Many of these guidelines apply to other local listing websites as well. Many of these points are pretty self-explanatory. Violating these guidelines and your listing can be suspended. The basic premise is that you need to present your business in the local listings as you would in the traditional world.
1. Only the business owner(s) or authorized representatives may claim the local listing(s).
2. Don’t pack your listing with keywords like in your business name.
3. Along the same concept, do not include phone numbers or URLs in the business name.
4. You cannot use PO Boxes, it has to be physical address.
5. Do not provide phone numbers or web addresses that redirect consumers to other landing pages or phone numbers other than those of the actual business.
While we recommend reading Google Places quality guidelines here , we do recommend reading about local listing security issues which are related to the above no-no’s.
The Internet has become a good marketing tool for the local business dependent upon the local consumer for their revenue through web searches and mobile searches. Tap into the power of geo-listings as you engage in geo-marketing!
Local Business Listing Management Services are provided by SmartFinds Internet Marketing. You will find SmartFinds Internet Marketing to be of great benefit to your time resources and the low cost service may eliminate your yellow page ad costs. Let the experts of over 15 years Internet marketing experience help you use this local business marketing tool properly.
By melih
Your local business listing at Google and certainly with other geo-listing websites allows you to promote your events, new products, specials and more. You can take advantage of this very easily, once you have claimed your listing, by following the following five steps. We will use Google as our example.
1. Log into your Google account and go to Google Places through your account or by going directly to http://www.google.com/lbc
2. If you have multiple local business listings, choose the listing you want to update and click View Report.
3. Once you are in your Dashboard you will notice a box in the top right that looks like the following:
4. Click in the box and write a 160 character description of your business update.
5. Click Post and you’re done.
Your information will appear to the public in your local business listing on Google Maps. As of this writing you can only have one post and we’re sure this will change in time.
The Internet has become a good local business marketing source for the local business dependent upon the local consumer for their revenue through web searches and mobile searches. Tap into the power of geo-listings as you engage in geo-marketing!
Local Business Listing Management Services are provided by SmartFinds Internet Marketing. You will find SmartFinds Internet Marketing to be of great benefit to your time resources and the low cost service may eliminate your yellow page ad costs. Let the experts of over 15 years Internet marketing experience help you use this local business marketing tool properly.
By melih
If you have looked up your business address or company name on Google maps you may want to check if the map marker is in the right location. There are errors on maps occasionally based on oddities that may show your physical address on a map in the wrong location.
Aside from claiming your business listing at Google and other geo-listing websites, Google does allow for community edits to modify the map marker to make it more accurate for everyone. If you find the map marker in the wrong physical location on the Google map, you can move it to the right location with the following steps.
1. After you search for an address or business, click the map marker and you will see the info window appear.
2. If the marker is in the wrong location, in the info window, click on “more” and then click on “move marker”
3. Now you can drag the marker to the correct location. You can use the “X: to help you place the marker. Proper protocol is to place the map marker at the entrance of the location.
4. Click Save.
Here are a few notes you will need to be aware of before proceeding with the above steps.
1. You will need to be logged into Google with a Google account
2. Google will need to review a change if the marker is moved more than 200 meters.
3. A marker cannot be moved if the local business listing has already been verified and verified listings can only be edited by the account owner of that local business listing.
If all else fails if you have problems with Google maps, click on the “Report A Problem” link and report the issue to Google.
The Internet has become a good marketing source for the local business dependent upon the local consumer for their revenue through web searches and mobile searches. Tap into the power of geo-listings as you engage in geo-marketing!
Local Business Listing Management Services are provided by SmartFinds Internet Marketing. You will find SmartFinds Internet Marketing to be of great benefit to your time resources and the low cost service may eliminate your yellow page ad costs. Let the experts of over 15 years Internet marketing experience help you use this local business marketing tool properly.
By melih
Local listing coupons help to promote your special discounts to local consumers that reach your local business listing through web searches and mobile searches. These local listing coupons can be used by printing them out or presenting them on a mobile device when a local consumer visits your store.
Here are the steps to create your coupon in your local listing at Google. The steps below assume you have already created a Google account, that you have claimed and updated your local business listings. If you need help for steps prior to proceeding with the below please visit our quick steps to get you started in our previous post of the Three Most Important Tips for Local Business Marketing
1. Log in to the Local Business Center.
2. Click on the Coupons tab in the top left corner of your screen
3. Click Add new coupon
4. You’ll be taken to a page where you can fill out different fields of information that you want to appear on your coupon. Including a graphic image!
a. Headline 25 Characters
b. Sub-Heading 35 Characters
c. Details 200 Characters
d. Image 150×150 pixels
e. Offer Code: 15 Characters
On the right of the page, a preview of your coupon will update itself as you enter new information.
5. Click Continue at the bottom of the page.
Your coupon will appear in your local business listing within 24 hours. You can find the coupon in Google Maps by clicking more info in your listing’s info bubble, and clicking the ‘Coupons’ tab.
The internet has become a good marketing source for the local business dependent upon the local consumer for their revenue through web searches and mobile searches. Tap into the power of Local Business Listing as you engage in geo-marketing!
Local Business Listing Management Services are provided by SmartFinds Internet Marketing. You will find SmartFinds Internet Marketing to be of great benefit to your time resources and the low cost service may eliminate your yellow page ad costs. Let the experts of over 15 years Internet marketing experience help you use this local business marketing tool properly.
By teamsf
Local business listings have become a significant local marketing tool that is showing the demise of the traditional yellow pages and equally the traditional coupons. The famous Stars Wars quote comes to mind “This will be a day long remembered. It has seen the end of Kenobi, and will soon see the end of the Rebellion. – Darth Vader”
With the onset of mobile devices and mobile applications becoming a more useful tool to the local consumers, we have to wonder how this will affect the traditional coupons that are printed and cut using scissors. The impact we are discussing comes in three forms and we’re not talking about the convenience to the local consumer.
- The first is the cost reduction for the local business from having to pay for their coupons to be printed and distributed. The cost reduction goes down to $0 (zero)!
- The second is the impact upon companies whose business is reliant on printing and distributing these coupons. This would include large corporations like Valassis and Val-Pak all the way down to the small local coupon company.
- The third impact is one we have discussed before related to the traditional yellow pages. Local business listings are already having an impact upon the usage of the traditional yellow pages and its effectiveness for the local business has been dwindling for years.
The reason the cost to the local business is going to go down to zero is because the local business can post their coupons to their local business listing for free. Particularly with Google, although, electronic coupons through local business listings will all reduce the costs for the local business. Not only will they be able to reduce their costs, but they will see their coupons have a larger reach geographically without any additional costs.
Local business listings and business directories have been on the web for quite some time. This part is nothing new and neither is the ability for the local business to post their coupons electronically. The primary difference comes in the local consumers having the ability to obtain these coupons electronically to their mobile devices while they are about town. No longer do we need to print the coupons before we leave the house, we will have them at our finger tips when we arrive at a store. We don’t’ even need to plan ahead. When you arrive at a store you will be able to bring up their local business listing to see if there is a coupon available.
While this process has a significant impact upon the coupon companies (especially if they are not planning for this existing change to their business), for the local business this is good news and in order to take advantage of this cost reduction they will need to engage in their local business listing at multiple local listing websites.
Local business listings are a local business marketing tool for the local business to reach the local consumer through web searches and mobile searches. As a local business or small business dependent upon the local consumer for your revenue you can tap into a free marketing tool with search engines, social communities, 411 websites and GPS websites.
Tapping into local business listings as a business marketing tool starts by setting up accounts and claiming your listing at multiple local listing websites. Please do not be fooled by companies that provide a “get listed” service, because most businesses are already listed. Of course, the majority of local business listings are not claimed by the business and they have incomplete or incorrect information. Your competitors therefore become the next best choice for the local consumer.
Aside from the benefits of mobile coupons, the other good news about local listings is that they show up on the first page of a search engine result based on the search term and the locality. For this reason, optimizing a website is not as necessary as having your local listing claimed and up-to-date. Local businesses no longer need to understand the intricacies of search engine optimization (seo) of their business website.
If you’re wondering why you need to manage your local business listing at all these locations the answer has two parts.
- The first is the local consumer who will decide which website they will use to submit their reviews and comments about a business, product or service. Equally where they will go to get your coupons. This one is probably the most important.
- The second is the mobile marketing industry. Google may be the 800 lb. gorilla “on” the web, but in the mobile industry, the mobile application developer will decide whose database of local listings they will use to display on mobile devices and this includes the mobile coupons.
Certainly this local business marketing tool is going to evolve and mature over the next few years. Planning and preparing for success lies with getting started now. This may be the first time we can see into the future and not wait to be behind the eight ball.
Your time resources are limited and Local Business Listing Management Services are provided by SmartFinds Internet Marketing. You will find this to be of great benefit to your time resources and the low cost service may eliminate your yellow page ad costs. Let the experts of over 15 years Internet marketing experience help you use this local business marketing tool properly and prevent brand security issues from occurring.
By teamsf
Google announced today through emails to content providers and users of Google Base that they are improving the Google Base services. These changes include the Terms of Service as well as the ability to add more pertinent information about your business.
Google added, “Starting today, when you sign in to your Google Base account, you’ll be asked to select your location. After you click “Continue,” you’ll be presented with our new Terms of Service. Please take a moment to read through these terms carefully. Once you’ve accepted the new terms, we invite you to provide additional information about your business, such as your business address and phone number.”
All users accounts of Google Base have 30 days to access their account and accept the new terms of services. The account can be suspended if the new terms of service are not accepted within 30 days and you could lose your information that has already been posted.
Google Base is a free Google service that helps you publish virtually any kind of information and make it available to users of Google Base as well as those searching the web for information.
By melih
If you noticed that Google has a new look coming for Webmaster tools you will also have notice there is external backlinks data is different in new vs. old (or current) webmaster tools.
Google is about to release a new version of the Webmaster tools and at first glance you will notice that the external links in the new version are much lower than in the current version. After some research we found that the problem has been answered by Google at this link and states the following:
“We hope you’ve had a chance to check out the new, redesigned version of Webmaster Tools! You may notice that your backlinks data differs between the new and old versions—this is because we’re still filling in data for some sites in the new version. We hope that you’ll find the new data more comprehensive once it’s 100% filled in.”
Based on this it would appear that it is only a matter of keeping an eye out on this as Google makes sure the data from the current version ends up in the new version.
Hopefully this will help clear up any issues with others as they find this problem. Thanks for checking in at SmartFinds Internet Marketing.
