LOC@L SEO GUIDE

Yesterday I talked about my initial thoughts on Google’s new Local Business Data Highlighter.  Tyler Bell of Factual was quick to point out an important point: [View the story "Cheeky Google" on Storify] If you want to have the best chance of ranking for local queries in Google, you should definitely use the tools they [...]

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Google’s new Data Highlighter for Local Businesses is definitely worth checking out for anyone trying to goose their local rankings.  I have found it to be a bit buggy and it’s a new tool, so proceed with caution.  Here are some basics on how to use it along with some tricks I have figured out [...]

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And in other breaking CitySearch news, Darren Waddell of RadiusIntel just sent me this awesome Google Alert he received this morning: It links to this article from 2007. For all of you marketers recommending that your clients use Google Alerts to monitor what people are saying, be sure to include that it works better if [...]

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Mike Blumenthal’s instant classic Google Local: Train Wreck at the Junction has spawned a lively Google Plus thread where various Localistas have been wringing their hands as to why oh why can’t Google stop screwing SMBs. While I am in agreement that Google Plus Place Local Multi Merge for Business Dashboardgate has been absolutely no [...]

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Been getting a bit of anxious email over the past 24 hours about Google crawl rates going way down. I am seeing this pattern on a lot of sites I follow so my best guess at the moment is this is either a Google Webmaster Tools reporting issue or a Googlebot issue more than a [...]

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Just got this: I applaud Google for notifying site owners that they have some spammy-looking links. I don’t applaud them for not telling site owners which links in particular look spammy. If you have been link-building, then you probably know where to look, but if like me, you haven’t, then you have to spend time [...]

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This past February, in  The Non-Place-Place Use Case I posted about how Google was delisting businesses that did not service customers at their locations but had not requested their addresses be hidden on Google Maps.  Mike, Miriam and others chimed in on how lame this was.   Today, I got this email about this “recent” update: Guess [...]

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A client pointed out interesting behavior in their Google Analytics Real-Time report – when a user mouses over previews of your site’s URL in the SERP, it is reported in the Top Active Pages report. This may not be a fully-rolled out feature as I cannot replicate it on other accounts I have access to. [...]

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Well at least a lot of the linkbuilding I see going on isn’t.  But it can be. Which is why I wrote 5 Local Linkbuilding Ideas for the Post-Penguin/Panda Era And I wanted an excuse to put up ridiculous dog pics on SearchEngineLand.

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Awesome discussion on Aaron Wall’s post, Yes, Negative SEO Techniques Do Work on Google, between Aaron, Danny Sullivan and a bunch of experienced SEOs who are not crazy about the collateral damage of the Penguin Update.  The parts about small businesses and SEO ring particularly true, from both sides of the debate: AndrewL: there’s never any mention [...]

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