Using StumpleUpon’s Paid Discovery, you can not only show your appreciation to the blogger by promoting the post that links to your site, sending them traffic; but you can also increase the value that you get from that link.

If you’ve ever used Paid Discover to promote your content, you know that you can get a lot of traffic in a short amount of time for a very low amount of money. Sure, the bounce rates are high, but you can also get a decent amount of links and increased exposure through the Thumbs up you will get from some of the visitors.

Today I’m going to show you how to use Paid Discovery to increase the value that you’re getting from your current inbound links, as well as provide you a great opportunity to start a relationship with bloggers that have already linked to your content.

Link to Link to Link

When someone links to your site, it improves your rankings because you are getting a “vote” from that website, and receiving some of the value from the links that point to their site. So, the more sites that link to that site, the better the link is. Like This:

• • Site A gets a link from Site B.
  • Site C links to site B.
  • Site A gets a little of the link value passed originally from Site C.

So if Site A can find a way to increase the links pointing to Site B, then they will in turn receive some of the benefit. Using Wiep’s method, you can attempt to do just that by sending StumbleUpon traffic their way. Sure, it’ll cost you a few bucks, but I think the benefits outweigh that.

Increasing the Value of an Aged Link

Using this strategy, you are increasing the value of a site that has been linking to yours all along, and it’s no secret that aged links have a greater positive impact on your rankings, than new ones (being that the links are equal otherwise).

Increasing Your Reach

Often times the audience of the blogger that linked to you is a little different that yours. And by promoting the content they produced, you are opening the door to that audience as well.

Blogger Relations

Once you’ve gotten a few Stumbles their way, why not send the blogger an email:

Hey, just wanted to let you know we noticed that you linked to us in your post (insert post here), and that we really appreciate the sentiment. As a token, we included that post in our StumbleUpon budget today. This will send you a little traffic from Stumblers, and hopefully result in a few additional links.

Again, thanks for the link.

You could go on about how you would like to guest blog for them, or some other manner in which you could begin a mutually beneficial relationship. But the biggest thing you could get out of this is returning the favor someone that did you an online solid.

What You’re Looking For

To get the most out of this strategy, you’ll want to find the links to your site that are going to have the greatest impact by becoming stronger. Look for sites that not only link to you, but also send a little traffic to your site.

The best are the kind of blogs that see a good amount of visitor engagement (comments, discussions, etc.).

But honestly, you don’t even have to be terribly picky about the site you’re doing this for as long as it’s a decent link/site. The costs for clicks in Paid Discovery can be as low as $.05 per. So, throwing $20 said blogger’s way will get them 400 hits, not including the number of residual hits they will get from natural Stumbles.

Continued Link Building

If you’ve got a lot of bloggers that link to you, you can scale this strategy by setting aside a monthly budget and keep a group of blogs forever in the mix. One could see rather nice returns after doing this for a few months.

Remember to consistently analyze the returns you are getting though. If you feel like you’ve gotten all you can from promoting a particular piece, replace them with a new one. This could also help you to decide whether you want to promote a large number of blogs with small amounts of money each, or a handful of bloggers with more traffic.

Why You May Need a New Domain Name

The reasons for your new domain name can vary, ranging from the need to correct file names to create SEO friendly URLs to the need to establish your online identity as a part of your re-branding efforts. Here are a few examples of situations we’ve come across:

You manage a hotel that was once part of a chaing (Best Western, Marriott, etc.). But now, you’re no longer a part of that chain becoming an independent property. If you old domain was something like city-best-western.com or city-bw.com, then you may feel the need to change the domain name. This is especially the case if you’ve walked away from the chain to pursue a new strategy that involves re-branding yourself.

There have been a few cases where we’ve had to redirect sites due to the purchase or merging of companies. Once the parent company has established its ownership, it’s time to bring the online presence into the fold.

We work with a lot of small businesses that have recently moved from a home-made or dated website to something a little more professional. Often times this means they moved to WordPress (or would like to so as to start blogging) or another CMS that creates pages with file names that are not similar to those of the old site.

Whatever the reason may be (as long as you’re not jumping to a new domain name for SEO reasons) you’ll need to take a few steps to make the redirect go as smoothly as possible.

Gather Website Information

First things first, we need to make sure we completlely understand the site(s) in question. It helps to create a spreadsheet containing information on all of the pages of the site with at least:

• The navigation title of each page
• The URL to each page
• The content of the pages
• The meta information on each page

Depending on the scope of your redirect, you may need to note additional or less information.

It’s also a good idea to notate the structure of the site, understanding the hierarchy of pages and sub pages. If you’ve got a particularly large site, then doing this by hand will be a pain. Instead, you can use the Screaming Frog SEO Spider tool to get an exportable list of most of that information.

While you’re taking notes, log into your traffic analyzer of choice and try to familiarize yourself with the amount of traffic your site receives, where it comes from and where it goes to. This one step will serve several purposes:

• After the redirect is complete, you’ll want to know if your traffic is moving up or down, and you’ll want to notice as quickly as possible
• Understanding what pages of your site get the most traffic, and from where will help you plan your redirects appropriately.
• After all this is done, you’ll want to update as many inbound links to your site as you can, and the best links are the ones that drive traffic to your site.
• If you’ve been tracking any rankings progress get an updated report for that as well. This way you can keep an eye out for any sudden drops.

Planning

Once you’ve gathered as much information as you can (it’s never too much), then it’s time to start planning your redirects. If you’re simply moving your site from one domain to another, then your planning will be minimal, but if you’re doing this to a site or sites with pages that number in the hundreds or thousands, then get your pencil (mouse) and paper pad (spreadsheet application) ready.

If you’re acquiring a site as a part of a purchase then you’re probably going to redirecting the old site to only certain portions of the parent website. If you’re updating your site as a part of a redesign, you’ll want to map out the old structure and new structure of your site.

The Redirect

To learn a little more about the types of redirects you can check out a previous post on the subject. Suffice to say, the grand majority of your redirects are going to be of the 301 type. This basically tells Google and other search engines that the site has permanently moved to a new location and redirect visitors to the new site quickly.

Depending on the size of your site, you may want to move sections of your site at a time to make sure everything is working properly. We don’t run into situations where this must be done, normally being reserved for sites with hundreds or thousands of pages.

When you’re moving a website from one domain to another, you don’t want to simply redirect the whole website to the new domain name; rather redirect the pages to pages with similar content. This will help to minimize ranking/traffic dips as well as provide a smooth transition for your visitors.

Make sure you are constantly testing your redirects. If it’s a small site, you can easily check each page. If it’s larger, you can use the Screaming Fog tool again. It’s a good idea to manually check at least a few pages from each level of the site (including sub folders, categories, etc.). Check for any broken links or 404 errors.

After The Redirect

Once your redirects are in place and you’ve ensure that they are working properly, it’s time to keep a vigilant eye on the site’s health. Make sure you have all the proper tracking and reporting tools setup, and check your site’s performance daily for a few days.

It’s also a good idea to make sure both of the domains are setup in Google Webmaster Tools, with submitted sitemaps. This will help you catch crawl errors that Google may experience. You can also run the Screaming Frog tool to make sure you don’t have any broken links.

As for the search engine results pages, 301 redirects can take effect within a day, or over the period of a few weeks. Again, this depends on the size of the sites and the and how the old and new site currently rank, etc.

It’s important to know that redirects only transfer a portion of the link value through them. So, even if you minimize ranking losses as best as you can and implement your 301 redirects flawlessly, you may still see a few dips in rankings.

Give it a few weeks to make sure you haven’t seen any problems, then begin persuing as many of the best websites that link to you that you can. You’ll want to have them update their link to reflect the new domain name or page.

If this redirect was part of a business merger/acquisition, then surely there are press opportunities. If there are, then it would be a good idea to include links to the new site if applicable. And if you’re a small business owner that just upgraded to a fancy new site, check out our SEO Website Review or Local SEO Packages to make sure as many people see it as possible.

1. Brand is King

In the world of SEO, we always say “content is king.” But in the world of business, brand is king. Well, maybe not “king,” but it’s pretty important. And one of the ways in which you help to promote and protect your brand is through the use of your website, on your branded domain name.

If you’re marketing your business in any other fashion, you will undoubtedly get links to your site as a result (think: press releases, events, etc.); and if a recipient of your marketing efforts should decide to research your company online, they will likely search for (or “Google”) your company’s name, not a specific keyword.

Even if your site does rank at the top for the search, it’s placed in the same category as the others on the search engine’s results page (SERP). Instead, wouldn’t it be better to have a domain name that would allow searchers to easily identify your official site?

2. It’s not that big of an SEO deal

It’s really not that big of a deal to have your keywords in the domain name. We like to get them in there if we can do so without taking away from the integrity of the brand, but we don’t stress it. And we don’t stress it because it really isn’t that big of a determining factor. Sure, it will get a lot of sites to rank, but not usually out-ranking sites that focus more on the quality of their site and Internet marketing efforts.

It’s hard to believe that when you’re staring at some competitor with a spammed domain name out-ranking you. But let me set your mind at ease with a secret number.

100%. That’s the amount of clients we’ve had that faced some competitor out there with a spammy domain name. It’s almost guaranteed that there is someone out there, no matter the niche, that has decided to create a site to rank. And there’s another number too.

100%. That’s the average amount of times it didn’t matter in the end. Our clients still ranked, still received great traffic and they didn’t have to sacrifice their brand integrity.

I’m not bragging about our work (well, maybe a little); rather explaining that a quality campaign will out-perform rank-quick tactics. Besides, the sites that do that usually (but not always) implement other corner-cutting techniques that end up hurting their rankings.

3. It’s on the chopping block

Google is well aware that they are giving too much weight to domains with keywords in them. And they are aware that this is a weakness in their ranking results. And when Google identifies a weakness in their system, especially one that threatens the quality of their results they attack it.

Google’s own Matt Cutts recently posted a video on the subject, mentioning that they will be looking at that aspect of ranking determination:

Matt Cutts – How important is it to have keywords in a domain name?

How long it will be before we see a “fix” is anyone’s guess, but it’s coming.

4. It’s not worth losing gained ground

New sites can be a pain to rank. New site’s start at 0 inbound links, and what links you can get in a few months still have to age before they fully impact rankings. It’s simply not worth losing the links to your current site, the pages that are already indexed, and referrals you may have.

And if you’re argument is

“We can just redirect the old site to the new”

you have to remember that 301 redirects do not pass 100% of their value. Instead, it is degraded a little when passing through that redirect. Link-building is tricky enough as it is; only getting 80% of the returns that you could be getting is just plain silly.

What if I have to change my domain name for another reason?

There are cases in which you simply don’t have a choice but to get a new domain name. When that’s the case, you’ll want to stay tuned as we are writing a solution to that problem for release this week.

Please note that what we are talking about here is SEO friendly URLs (ways of writing your page URL structures to help with your overall SEO campaign) and not “search engine friendly URLs” (URLs that don’t contain too many query strings to as to cause problems with crawling/indexing). Though they often overlap, the search engines have gotten pretty savvy at crawling and indexing difficult to read URLs.

Instead, we are going to talk about a few pitfalls we see when people create their site’s structure and the manner in which the page URLs are created.

“Ugly” URLs

May as well talk about the URLs with query strings, etc. If you don’t know what that means, take a look at the following URL

http://seo-factor.com/cgi-bin/gen.pl?id=4&category=M753n&style=gw3b

Usually you see stuff like this with eCommerce sites, but there are a lot of content-managed-systems (CMS) out there that produce ugly URLs like this for any of your pages. There was a time when this was a really big deal because search engines had a tough time crawling, categorizing and indexing pages like this, but that’s not often the case today. However, it’s still a hindrance to your SEO efforts, and can hold your site back from ranking for desired search terms.

Instead, using our fake “SEO Factor Shoe Store” as an example, we would want a URL a little closer to this:

http://seo-factor.com/mens-shoes/casual/black

The latter is much easier to read, and gives an indication to the content of the page before you even get to it (and that is what a search engine is looking at).

Underscores

We still see this type of URL structure quite a bit as well:

http://seo-factor.com/seo_friendly_urls.htm

This is obviously much easier to read, and will indeed give some sort of indication to the content of the page. But this can hinder your online marketing efforts in an indirect, but very real way.

You have to consider that underscores are not as common as dashes with regard to common grammatical knowledge, most online structures, etc. I know several people who aren’t completely sure how they would type an underscore if they had to.

If you were to share a page of your site verbally, or maybe via a notated-napkin, this may cause confusion when that person attempts to reach that page at a later date. If you’re thinking that this isn’t too big a deal, if that person were someone who may have otherwise linked to that page, you missed not only a visitor, but a ranking/traffic-boosting opportunity.

Besides that (which is genuinely more important) the last we heard Google still has issues considering the underscore a word separator. You can see a video on the topic by Matt Cutts. Please note that this video was published in February of 2009. That’s a long time ago in the world of the web. Either way, we simply don’t like here, and will fix them if we can.

Matt Cutts – Should I use underscores or hyphens in URLs?

Uppercase Letters

This is a bit of a tricky problem. Again with some content managed systems, URLs with uppercases are also a bad idea.

If I met you, and you asked for the location of my blog I would say to you:

It’s SEO dash Factor dot com forward slash blog.

And when you got home, you would type:

seo-factor.com/blog

But if the actual address was

seo-factor.com/Blog

Then you would be met with a 404 error. Ok, well not on this site (we took care of that specific one due to a problem during the site’s inception). And there are ways to handle this on the server side. But if you aren’t that savvy, and if you would rather spend your time more wisely, it’s probably best to stick with lower case letters for SEO friendly URLs.

Keyword-Stuffed URLs

Another problem we often see is the keyword-stuffed URLs. For this example, let’s use our fake SEO Factor Hotel. It’s in Jacksonville, FL. We are using a fake hotel for this example because you see this problem running rampant in the hotel SEO industry. I’m not too sure why, but it’s there. We will take a look at our “accommodations” page.

seo-factor-jacksonville-fl-hotel.com/jacksonville-hotel-accommodations.html

Seriously. Say that out loud. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Now try this on for size:

seo-factor.com/hotel-accommodations/

Much nicer, right?

The argument we usually get is that Google will (all other things being equal) give higher rankings to the site with keywords in their URL. This is true, but we have a few answers to that concern.

First, all other things are never equal. There are a large number of variables that go into ranking determination, and URLs with keywords isn’t nearly as important as other factors (and never worth the missed opportunity to brand yourself). We’ve been up against keyword-rich domains held by our clients’ competitors since the day we got into this crazy business, and we’ve always found ways to out rank them.

Second, Matt Cutts recently acknowledged the ranking trends for keyword-rich domains, and that they are giving a little attention to this issue.

Matt Cutts – How important is it to have keywords in a domain name?

You should check that video out, he goes into the subject with a bit of detail and insight.

Finally, it’s highly probable that Google knows exactly what it is you’re site is about by this time. If you’ve given any thought to SEO, (and sometimes if you haven’t) you’ve been sending signals to the search engines all along.

Consider our hotel again. There are going to be many sites that list our hotel with close proximity to the address or location information. The address is on our site, and we’ve created a Google Places page; again inserting the location address. Google knows where my fake hotel is, they don’t need me jamming my city and state down their pipes every chance I get. In fact, keyword stuffing may not always be a bannable offense, but it is an indicator as to the approach you are taking to promote your site. Do you really want that sort of attention on your site? I don’t.

File Extensions

We don’t hear this too often, but there is sometimes a question as to the most appropriate extension for file names. For example, should you use .html, .htm, .php, etc.? 99% of the time (and that’s leaving a single % margin just in case there’s some weird situation out there) it doesn’t matter. On this, just try to stay consistent so you don’t drive yourself crazy trying to remember what you were using for which page.

There is a thought that one is better for SEO than the others. This simply isn’t the case. In fact, if you use WordPress like we do, then you don’t get any extensions at all.

To Sum Up

To sum up the idea of SEO friendly URLs, consider the following:

• If it’s too difficult to share verbally, try to find an alternate solution
• If sharing verbally results in 404 errors more often than a completed visit, try to find an alternate solution
• Stick with hyphens (or “dashes”) as opposed to underscores to separate words
• Stick with lower-case letters
• Stuffing your URLs with keywords may help a little in regard to rankings, but you’re missing a lot of opportunity to brand your business, and the benefit isn’t worth it
• File types/extensions don’t really matter too much. Just try to stay consistent.

Now that we’ve identified some common issues, and defined SEO friendly URLs, we will be following up this week with a post on solving some of these problems, and showing you how to determine the best plan of action. Here’s a hint, we are going to be playing with 301 redirects to pages with better structure and SEO value. Come on. Doesn’t that sound like a good time?

There are plenty of other articles on what signifies a quality link (relevant website, high ranking pages, in-content links, etc.), but what a lot of people seem to throw in the mix is their disregard to attaining links on sites that place the “nofollow” tag on them.

If you are unfamiliar with nofollow, it’s basically a tag a webmaster can place on a link to direct a search engine away from following it.

This was originally designed for bloggers who wanted to control their comment spam from people/robots attempting to artificially increase inbound links to irrelevant, often illegible websites (think: Viagra and replica watches). The nofollow attribute eventually became a tool for SEOs to sculpt the link value flow on their own sites in an attempt to increase the value of each page while retaining the ability to link to other pages internally.

So, by placing a nofollow attribute on a link, you are keeping the “link juice” from spreading to other pages/sites. Being that inbound links have such a determining factor on your search engine rankings, it became something of a turnoff for link-builders.

But we don’t follow this same thought. If you think about it, links are supposed to provide more information on a topic, or point visitors to other sites that may be of use. If you set aside search engine rankings for a moment, and remember that the point is to increase traffic to your site, then there may be many sites out there from which a link would be of great value.

So don’t discount an opportunity to gain a link from a site simply because it would be “nofollowed.” Before Google came along and we realized how important links were to our rankings, this is how we gianed traffic anyway.

As long as the link is relevant and offers the searcher value in some way, we say get all the links you can. A qualified visitor from another website is just as important as that of a search engine.

You may need to hire on a full time employee to handle your needs internally; or maybe you just need to outsource some specific items to a freelance SEO. Or maybe you need a team of professionals to create and implement a full-scale Internet marketing campaign.

Following are just a few tips to help you choose the right Internet marketing professional for your company’s website; be it a firm or independent SEO.

The SEO Package

A topic of great debate. Most professionals believe that it is impossible to offer an SEO package and still provide a great service. While we do agree to a certain extent (we don’t provide package with any of our SEO services either), there is a place for such services.

Should your needs be very basic, or your goals as simple as “better rankings,” then there are a few companies that offer packages to accommodate those needs. For example, if you own one hotel and need to increase your visibility, then a firm with set packages may be what you need.

But if you are a part of a property management company, with several properties in many different areas in your portfolio, then a package is not what you need. Instead, you will want to hire someone(s) that will analyze your specific needs regarding each piece of your business.

I’ve seen this situation go sour too many times. It would make sense that what can be done for one website can be done for a few additional, right? Unfortunately, no, that’s not the case. With property management groups (in keeping with our example) you will need to tackle such items like the domains on which each property has a site, and should you move them.

Duplicate content issues are also a big factor to consider as you may be working with a CMS or have the same person(s) write the same copy for every room page for every property a dozen or so times.

Also, what if something comes up? This is the Internet we are talking about; things change all the time. Will the package that you bought make concessions to such situations? Will the items in the package hold up to the future of Internet marketing?

Either way, even we make use of packages for local SEO, they have to be agreed upon by not only the client, but us as well. If a package isn’t going to work for your site, then it wouldn’t make much sense for us to sell it to you.

Who to choose
In cases where you don’t need too much attention or things are “standard,” then you can pick any type of SEO. An independent or a firm will be able to offer you a service based on your needs, or you can choose to go with a company that sells you a package.

Remember though, that if you choose a firm with packages, you already know what you’re about to pay, and it’s probably going to be cheaper than the competition. A professional will sometimes lump the time it took him or her to analyze your site and include the fees for that time in your service fees. This may end up giving you the same service as a package out there, with an increased cost.

So, small hotel in Orange Park, Florida? Pick who you will, you’re probably safe with a package deal. Property Management Group with properties all over or in competitive markets? Choose a little more wisely; you may need to research your custom SEO solution options.

Niche Professionals

You’ll also have the option of choosing a professional or firm who specializes in servicing your industry specifically. This too holds its own advantages and disadvantages.

A niche firm will have an experience in your industry, and likely have on-hand a great set of places from which they can get a link to your site. They will have a better understanding at the types of targets that will produce the highest conversions, and how to get that traffic to your site.

However, a niche professional will likely fault when it comes time to determine what is actually needed for your site. They will likely have packages, and will most often set you into one blindly, regardless of any factors that would hinder such a campaign.

This can also have an impact for the whole company when a tactic they had used gets away from them and becomes a main focus of every client. If the effective nature of this tactic was suddenly stopped, then so to will be the site’s rankings and traffic.

For example, it was a common tactic for real estate SEO firms to link between other real estates site for their clients. After all, a broker in Orlando wouldn’t normally do business in Atlanta? This tactic was used with such indiscretion that when Google decided to negate such types of links, thousands of real estate sites fell off the map completely.

You’ll also have to worry about the amount of attention your site will receive. Often times, when you receive services from such a provider, your account is viewed as just another in the pile of clients.

Hiring a general professional will afford you the luxury of having someone with a wider scope of experience to handle your online marketing efforts. They will implement strategies that a niche firm wouldn’t even think about, because it was something learned through years of trying and testing and being exposed to varying environments. This might cost a little more though.

Where a general SEO is going to “think outside the box,” a niche firm has their strategy planned out before you even call them. This means that on one hand they will be much kinder on your wallet; on the other, the service may not enjoy hidden opportunities and may be lack-luster due to a “quantity of quality” mindset.

Who to Choose
Shop around. If price is a main concern, then perhaps someone who specializes in your industry would be the best pick. If quality, then be open to other considerations.

Transparency

The reality about Internet marketing is that it is no different than “traditional” marketing. There’s a lot of research, trial and error, and multiple approaches to every campaign. However, there aren’t many “secrets” that we use in order to achieve a goal. There is no mystery.

It’s a good idea to discuss the methods your potential firm or employee will use to increase rankings and traffic to your site. You don’t have to know the gritty details, an overview will be fine to start with. It’s a good way to see if they will at least tell you, or will they try to hide it.

If anyone every says “that’s proprietary information,” it better be in regard to some tool they built to report on a metric, not a method used to promote your site.

If you’re thinking that it’s understandable that a professional wouldn’t want to share his secrets at the risk of losing a client, then I respond with this:

Anyone can tell you how to paint, but will you be able to? A doctor can tell you exactly what he’s going to do during a brain surgery, but would you be confident enough to perform it yourself? The post we published on Ranking in Google Places is a step-by-step, detailed guide on doing just that. But people will read it and hire us anyway.

This is because a successful Internet marketing campaign requires time, experience and hard work. None of which will translate into other areas of your business. You could spend hours learning how to optimize your site, but those were hours lost having someone at the front desk or on the phone.

Who to choose
Someone who will be open and honest with the techniques they plan to use. It’s a good idea to learn more about those techniques to ensure they aren’t against a search engine’s guidelines, but for now simply knowing they are willing to share is a good sign.

Budget

I saved this for last because it really should be the last, and least important determining factor (I know, so says the guy who sells SEO).

But it needs to be said that you will indeed get what you pay for. There are firms of all types out there; offering services that range in price from $99 a month to $1000 per hour. Scams aside, you can imagine the difference in services provided by those different providers.

Consider pricing from a company’s perspective. Whatever the deal is, they have to make a profit on it. So, for $99 a month, what can they provide to you while being able to pay 1 or more employees and still make a profit? Not much. I still haven’t seen a service that was at the same time worth $99 and cost $99 a month. A service that is worth $99 isn’t going to do much for your site anyway, and anything that cost such a price is diluted to mean absolutely nothing.

I also say that it should be the last consideration because there is a flip-side to the common logic. Choosing a firm simply because of a higher price will not guarantee a better service.

Most importantly you should shop around and make sure you are comfortable with both the service and the price.

Who to choose

There aren’t really any hard rules for this one. Some freelance SEOs will be a conservative pick simply because they don’t have the overhead of a firm. However, perhaps they are highly specialized or have positioned themselves as an authority. In that case, the firm may be more conservative.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us. We can either offer a solution for your consideration, or give you some pointers on picking a service provider that’s right for you.

The guide I wrote on Google Places SEO received/receives quite a bit of traffic. Obviously, this is a big deal to small businesses; what with Google Pages listings showing among organic search results.

I’ve been tracking the types of search terms that come through to the article, and wanted to answer some of the most common questions that are asked when people are searching. So, here they are:

How do I rank in Google Places?
I’m afraid you’ll have to read the whole guide. There’s a lot to not only creating and optimizing your listing, but also getting it to rank. Once you’ve taken the steps outlined in the guide, be sure to check out the local citation finder tool we looked at a few weeks ago. This will help you build citations to your site.

There are major determining factors that you should look at:

• Listing information completion
• Distance from the city center
• Reviews on your listing

Those are the major factors, everything else is in the details.

How are some businesses already listed in Google Places?
I think these people are wondering how their, or other businesses are listed in Google Maps/Places without being submitted by the owner.

This usually happens when Google crawls other sources to fill up their database. They use other online directories, usually giving prominence to highly specific sites. For hotels, for example Google will crawl TripAdvisor.

They are also fed by “feeder” sites, like Info USA and other major business directories. So, if you see your business in Google Places but were not the one to include it, simply claim that listing and make it yours.

How often are Google Places listings clicked?
The answer to this question really depends on your location and type of business. I can tell you though, that when a business ranks in the Google Maps listings as well as high in the organic listings, we get a nice look at what has an impact. Depending on the business, those Maps/Places listings bring as much traffic as the natural results (if not more).

It should also be noted that not only do these listings drive a high percentage of overall traffic, they also convert much higher. We’re talking a lot. So much in fact that circumstantially, our efforts will sometimes focus primarily on a client’s Google Places account.

This has only become more important since the recent Google Places/Organic listings merge. Having a solid Local SEO campaign is becoming more of a need.

Using your home address
There are many questions about home-based businesses that come through. If you don’t want your address to show, that’s ok. Simply use the “do not show my address” selection. This will allow you to get the listing, verify it should you chose to receive a postcard and keep your home address safe.

PO Boxes
On a related note, there are a lot of questions coming through pertaining to PO Boxes. Google doesn’t allow them, at least that’s what they say. I used to use PO Boxes all the time with no problems. I haven’t done so in quite some time, so I’m not even sure if it will even take it.

However, if you feel more comfortable using a PO Box, you can get a “mail box” from UPS. Here’s a special hint. You can try to find a UPS store near the center of the city, get one of their mailboxes and you’ve taken care of a huge determining factor. You’re welcome.

Google Places pulling wrong address/info
We feel your pain. A lot.

The official word from Google is that you can simply claim the listing if you haven’t already, and update it. If there are duplicate listings, you can claim both, and delete one of them from Maps.

I’m sorry to say, this isn’t true. Not yet anyways, and not for a long time. I’m not sure what they are doing in the Maps department at Google, but I can tell you this doesn’t seem to be high on their list of priorities. This has been a problem for far too long.

My only advice is to keep submitting tickets to them, and make sure you have as many citations as you can get. There’s a chance Google is pulling that information from another source and attributing it to your business. This is most common when a business has changed locations, and there are listings out there with that old address.

Tags and Google Places rankings
So far, we’ve seen absolutely no correlation between purchasing tags and higher rankings. In fact, we’ve placed a hold on purchasing tags for our clients because they simply don’t perform up to our standards. We’ll keep an eye on them with a few of our test accounts and post something should this change.

How to hijack Google Places listings
I’m not going to give any advice on that front. Keep searching though. As difficult as it has become, it’s still way to easy.

How long does it take for updates to take effect
Rather quickly. We make a change, and can see a listing updated within minutes. Rankings changes can happen within about 20 minutes. Stability happens within a few hours. There have been a couple of exceptions this last month, but that’s the norm for us so far.

That’s it this time. If you have any yourself, please feel free to leave a comment, or contact us.

I warn that I’m about to make a very broad generalization in this post. It isn’t meant to degrade the value of any specific forums or sites; rather, to warn against learning from places that aren’t teaching correctly.

I am in the midst of training someone on the particulars of SEO. Obviously, said person has a ton of questions and curiosity about SEO, where to read more, the who’s who, etc.

He asked me about a forum he regular reads, and a thread dedicated to SEO. After taking a look at the forum (which focuses primarily on domain buying), and listening to a few tid-bits of knowledge they have bestowed upon him thus far, I instituted a new rule for my team.

Any information you get from a forum/blog/site not explicitly dedicated to Internet marketing is null and void.

This might seem a little harsh or even tyrannical, but I have a good reason for such a rule. And my guys know me. There are always exceptions to a rule.

Good Intentions

Most of the information we can gleam from sites offering SEO advice on sites that aren’t SEO-centric seem to be of good intentions. Unfortunately, intentions don’t really matter in this game, and neglected a few details can have severe negative impacts on a site.

So it’s not as if mis-information is spread on purpose. Most of the people pushing their idea of SEO do so with a decent amount of conviction; causing the perceived validity of their opinion to rise. This makes it very difficult to combat when we are consulted.

Us: “I’m afraid that’s not exactly correct in your case.”

Client: “Oh, well this guy on this forum sounded pretty sure. Are you sure?”

In the grand scheme of things, this is only a minor annoyance. Our actions generally speak louder than the words typed on another site. That, and reminding the client that we just cashed their check for an amount that could easily purchase a quality vehicle for 2 of my team members usually does the trick (just kidding…but really).

Over-Simplification

Another major problem with taking SEO advice from a non-SEO is the over-simplification they exude. Let’s be honest here, SEO isn’t “difficult” by any means. More appropriately, it just requires a lot of experience, patience, creativity, organizational skills and sometimes a little luck. This doesn’t make it difficult, just too tedious and time-consuming for most people to implement.

However, there is a very real problem when I see a valid question or concern posed on a forum, only to be answered with a:

“Just make sure you have XYZ and ABC in order. Then get links. That’s it.”

I’m sorry, but that’s not it.

Every single site is different, usually in ways you don’t even understand until you’re neck-deep into the project. So, giving a generic response to a specific question can, and most often does have a negative impact.

Here’s the thing. At the risk of bragging, I can create a killer process in almost any business situation. Give me 2 months and a little authority, and I’ll shave your man-hours/costs and increase throughput. I was mentored by some of the best minds on that front, and I think I’ve grown that aspect of my strengths rather nicely.

What I’m saying is, if there were some way I could process an SEO package and keep the quality and integrity we uphold, I would have. There are just too many variables to strictly package SEO services. I’ve seen too many companies try the same thing (still to this very day) and simply fail their clients (often without them even knowing).

Where Do I Learn/Stay Up To Date

I’ve been doing this stuff since 2004, and still I find quality SEO blogs jam-packed with awesome information every single day. I can’t really list them all here. Instead, I’ll give you some of the staple sites I read. Check them out. You’ll start to get the hang of the logic behind SEO and will soon be able to separate the BS from the real SEO advice.

All of the following have a lot of intermediate to advanced posts, so we’ll start with a really good beginner’s guide:

• SEOmoz Beginner’s Guide to SEO – http://guides.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-search-engine-optimization

Local SEO

• Local SEO Guide – http://www.localseoguide.com/
• Understanding Google Maps and Local Search – http://blumenthals.com/blog/

General Internet Marketing

• SEOmoz Blog – http://www.seomoz.org/blog
• Search Engine Journal – http://www.searchenginejournal.com/
• SEO Smarty – http://www.seosmarty.com/
• Search Engine Land – http://searchengineland.com/

Link Building

• Link Building Blog – http://wiep.net/

(Just the one here. You’re simply not going to find a greater resource for learning how not only to build links, but how to think outside the box and find new ways yourself)

How do meta tags impact SEO?

In my opinion, this is the single most interesting question in our industry. Not because of the answer (that’s simple enough and we’ll certainly cover it); but because it’s a question that I don’t think will ever die out.

Think about it. This is one of the very first topics one would cover when being introduced to SEO. There are thousands/millions of articles talking about that very thing. And every day, someone new comes to this world we’ve created, and they are ripe with new questions; the answers to which we have stored away just waiting for the moment to showcase our knowledge.

So today, I’m going to go over the most common meta tags we talk about in SEO, and how they affect your rankings (here’s a quick hint; they barely do anymore).

The Keywords Meta Tag

Ahh the keywords meta tag. This is a tag that would hold…well…your keywords. I think. I don’t really know for sure because their use in Google went away before I got into SEO myself, and they meant something different to Yahoo! (RIP) back then.

Some say it’s where you would put your keywords so the search engines would know what your site was all about, and they were used to determine your rankings. Others say that they were meant to house the keywords that were not mentioned on your page, but still related.

What I do know is this. At some point Google got really tired of people using the keywords meta tag to spam their search results, and they all but eradicated its use. There was a time even rather recently (comparatively speaking) that they had an impact in Yahoo!, but those days are gone as well; what with Yahoo! being powered by Bing now.

There are still some programs/applications that make use of the keywords meta tags on your site, usually for internal site searching, but that doesn’t help you on the SEO front that much.

No, I’m afraid that meta tag has little to do with SEO these days. Save for one use.

We actually use the keywords meta tag quite a bit. Not for rankings, mind you. Rather, we use them in one of 2 ways.

First, for smaller, quick projects we use the keywords tag to catalog the targeted terms for each page. This way, we know what links to build for each page, it helps with our internal linking and it helps when we are writing content. It just somehow fell into a process of ours one day and really worked out. Remember, this is for smaller projects in which we have a lot of confidence regarding our success. Usually local SEO clients.

Then there’s the way we use them for bigger projects (not necessarily bigger clients). These are sites for which we are trying to rank in a very competitive niche. We can usually tell which competitors have hired SEO help and which haven’t. We noticed that when the landscape involved other SEO firms, then we could make a change on our site’s focus, and it was soon after mimicked on a competitor’s site.

So, we started putting useless/junk keywords in the keywords meta tag. Every once in a while, we actually see those keywords pop into a competitor’s site. Sometimes, this SEO stuff is really fun.

Creating a Keywords Meta Tag

For the sake of comprehension, this is how one would create a keywords meta tag.

Between the opening <head> and closing </head> section of your site’s page you want to add the following:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”">

Within the double quotes after “content” you’ll add your keywords. Usually, you’ll want 2-5 keywords in there separated by commas. Oh, and the term “keyword” is a little loose. We actually mean key terms. So a keywords meta tag would look like:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”my first keyword, my second keyword, my third keyword”>

That’s it. If you decide to use the keywords meta tag, then please don’t spam it with a bunch of one-word search terms or over-stuff it with every keyword you can cram in there. The search engines are a bit smarter than that, and you’ll look like a spammer.

The Description Meta Tag

Now the description tag, there’s a tag I can get behind. Though not as important in the strictest “SEO” sense, the description tag actually plays a very important role in your overall Internet marketing success with regard to Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)

If you search in Google, you’ll get the results, right? And you know how to click on a link to get to a page, yeah? You see that little chunk of text right under that link? Well, that’s your description tag, usually.

So, the description tag is one of the first opportunities your site has to grab a potential visitor’s attention. Notice anything interesting about that screen-shot? Take a look at the example search I used: “searching in Google.” Now, look at those description tags. Check out the words that are bolded.

So you see, if you’re targeting a search term, and you rank for that term, it would be a good idea to make sure it’s in your meta description as well. This is just one more thing that makes your site relevant to a search in a visitor’s eyes.

Creating a Description Meta Tag

The description meta tag actually looks rather similar to the keywords meta tag:

<meta name=”description” content=”">

Again, you would place your description in the double quotes associated with “content.” And again, this whole thing goes in the <head> section of your page.

When writing the description, remember to keep it short and simple. Last time I counted, Google only shows around 150 – 160 characters. If your description is too long, Google will actually concatenate it to show the words they can bold.

That’s pretty much the gist of the description tag. Much more important than the keywords tag, and something people will actually see.

The Title Tag

Technically, the title tag isn’t a “meta” tag. Ok, technically, it is; but not in HTML, and because HTML comes before SEO both alphabetically and chronologically, we will say it isn’t a meta tag. Rather, its a tag in and of itself.

By far the single most important tag in this post, the title tag is not only visible in a SERP, but it also has a pretty major impact on your rankings

Let’s look at the same picture from our description example. This time, see where the red arrows are?

That’s the title tag. Again, search terms are bolded; and again, it’s one of the first thing someone will see. This time, we don’t get as much room to play with. Usually, the title tag is somewhere around 60-75 characters. All the more reason to be as concise as possible.

Let’s get creating the tag out of the way before we talk about a few guidelines.

Creating the Title Tag

In that same <head> section of your page, you’ll write the title tag like so:

<title></title>

That’s it. Your title will go right between those little tags.

Effective Title Tags
So, you know it needs to be short in order to fully show in Google, requiring that we are keeping the title simple and to the point. And you know it’s really important to your rankings and a potential visitor, so we need to be appealing and use our keywords. How do we do that?

Don’t Spam the Title Tag
If you try to fit 8 variations of the word “shoe” in your title, you’ll get lower clicks to your site. We’ve tested it many times, and it’s the same story every single time.

Remove the Fluff
On the other hand, proper grammar isn’t the point with these tags. Superfluous words have no business in this tag (there are exceptions, but these are the basics here).

Unique Titles for all Pages
This actually holds true for all your meta tags, but none so important as the title. They have to be unique to every single page.

A Few Tips
Everybody has a way they like to write titles, but they really boil down to 2 methods. Here at SEO Factor, we like to write them with just a little messaging. You can see that one of our very own titles reads

<title>Ranking in Google Places – A Definitive Guide – SEO Factor</title>

I don’t think the words “in” or “a” are going to hurt our rankings, and it’s just a little easier to read.

The other common method is to state the keywords on the page. For example, we could have written that title like this:

<title>Ranking Google Places | Google Places Rankings | Google Places Guide</title>

There’s nothing “wrong” with that title, and I’ve even heard Matt Cutts give it the ‘okay.’ I’ve just never liked it much myself.

Also, we’ve found it effective to capitalize the first letter of every major word. Some people call this “camel case” or “camel caps.” It’s just makes the text a little easier to read.

Wrap It Up

So that’s it. Those are meta tags (plus the title) and how they affect SEO. People have written novels on each of these, so there’s always a little more to it. But this should at least get you on the right path and answer some basic questions. If not, please feel free to comment below or contact us.

I’ll give you a few options people tend to take, and only one that is the “proper” way of handling it.

The Bad Redirects

Meta Refresh

Actually, I don’t see this very often anymore. This is likely due to the fact that people seem to have forgotten that this meta tag/script even exists; or we’ve all wisened up a little. Either way, you can simply place a Javascript (or via PHP) snippet to have a page refresh to another page. You can set the time it takes to refresh really low (one second) or you could have it refresh after a few moments.

There are times when this is an ok practice. Like when you have to serve a message to a visitor before a page refreshes to something else (perhaps a point in a transaction cycle, etc.). But, that’s about it. It’s not a good idea to do this for a whole domain that needs to go to another.

Why it’s Bad

I know we are ethical business owners would never involve such shady practices, but imagine that you sell something in a very competitive landscape. Let’s say…Viagra. Obviously, getting a site to rank for such terms is a task in and of itself.

Or, you could create a whole bunch of websites with great content targeting long-tail search terms. Something like “luxury resort hotel accommodations in jacksonville fl.” You could have tens of these sites, all targeting different search terms for which you could easily rank. Google would read the content and rank your site(s) for those terms, but when a visitor gets there, they are refreshed to your Viagra page.

Crazy, right? Unfortunately it’s not crazy. In fact, this is a very old-school way of tricking a search engine. But, Google being who they are, they quickly caught on to this practice and made appropriate adjustments to their engine to combat this. And they do so very nicely. Simply, it doesn’t work anymore. At least, not in this fashion but there are some really smart people out there who can and still trick Google all the time.

302 Redirects/Domain Forwarding

You can also log into your control panel for your given host, and have them forward the domain name. The problem is, a lot of hosts turn this into a 302 redirect, or simply forward the domain to another. This way, when someone goes to any of the domain names you’ve purchased, you still see the one website you’ve created. Still, this isn’t a good redirect method.

Why it’s Bad

When you have multiple domain names for the same website, it’s not uncommon to get links pointing to each of them separately. This isn’t the “bad” part, but it does hinder the value that you could be getting from those links should they all point to one domain.

No, the bad part is when you start looking at duplicate content. Google is pretty good about determining the right one most times (which site had the content first, which domain is older, etc.), but they aren’t perfect. And we’ve even been getting reports that the latest update (Mayday) has been causing problems with duplicate content out-ranking the originating source.

301 Redirects – The Right Way

There is a way to redirect all of those additional domain names to one website, and that way is to use 301 redirects. This is a rule that you create telling Google where the proper website/domain is located. This way, should any of those other domains get links, most of the value from those links (not all, mind you) will be passed to the main domain.

How To

There are a couple of ways you can implement a 301 redirect. Instead of going through them here, I’ll just link to a proper page on the subject. Remember though, to always backup your files before you make changes. If something goes wrong, you don’t want your site to stay down for too long a period.

I mentioned that a lot of hosts/registrars for a 302 instead of a 301 when redirecting via their control panel. Due to years of complaining from guys like me, most of the major companies have fixed this. Communicate with your service provider, as they probably have an easy way for you to setup a 301 redirect with a few clicks of a mouse.

So that’s it. If you have a bunch of domains, do your best to have the redirect properly. Your rankings and visitors will thank you.