LOC@L SEO GUIDE

Merchant Circle just launched a City “Mayor” program designed to promote the most connected SMBs in a service area on the site.  As Greg Sterling, he of the newly redesigned Screenwerk blog, put it:
Because MerchantCircle gets so much traffic from SEO in search results this will also be a major SEO play for the SMB [...]

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Merchant Circle just launched an API to allow development of applications on top of their content.  The site is loaded with unique business descriptions, reviews, coupons, SMB blog posts and other fun data that they think will be useful, particularly to the Foursquare’s. GoWalla’s and Loopt’s of the local world.
Here’s the link to the Press [...]

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Last week I was on a panel at the Local Search Summit with Sarah Smith of Facebook.  I asked her about their platform strategy for small business and she responded that besides advertising they weren’t really focused on SMB Apps.  The FB Platform has been a big magnet for developers writing consumer apps, and while [...]

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National IYPs (Internet Yellow Pages) have long been amongst the biggest benefactors of organic search engine traffic.  The typical IYP has north of 15MM business listings.  Add category pages, city pages, reviews, maps, etc and you are easily looking at a 50MM+ page site with a huge amount of high value & high volume keyword [...]

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There’s a great discussion going on over on Mike Blumenthal’s What Is Merchant Circle Up To Now? post.  Mike had heard about Merchant Circle owning a lot of small business domains, did some research and suggested that MC could be squatting on a large number of SMB-branded domains and that many of these SMBs would [...]

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In the previous post, where I stumbled on to ads on a Google Map on Merchant Circle, “Mappin’” Mike Blumenthal took me to the local search woodshed with the following comment:
In mid March, Google announced that they have changed the API to allow the hosting site show ads along with searches for local businesses performed [...]

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I was just looking at this page on Merchant Circle and noticed ads showing up on their Google Map!

I am sensing a trend.

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Just got a press release from Merchant Circle that they are launching a promotion where they will buy your next yellow pages ad if you are not satisfied with the MC experience (I haven’t read the fine print yet).  They are not so subtly tapping into the negative pr that exists out there in the [...]

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Downtreprenuer [doun-truh-pruh-nur] a person who organizes and manages a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk, because they have lost their jobs and baby needs a new pair of shoes.

As different industries falter in the economic downturn (think real estate professions, the auto biz, etc.), people will start to look for alternative ways to make [...]

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Just sat down at the Kelsey Conference with Darren Waddell of Merchant Circle and Andy Klein of Spotzer to discuss their recent announcement that they will be offering free online videos to SMBs on MerchantCircle.com.
Basically the way the system works is that you go to your profile page and by agreeing to get a video, [...]

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My bud Ahmed has put together a list of the top IYPs in the US based on reach derived from Google’s stats.  Nothing too surprising except that Citysearch is #1.  I also think there are a number of sites missing from the list - 50states for example.  But still good info for all you local [...]

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Around 20% of the merchants on our site are not listed on any other yellow pages site. have no other online presence.

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My previous post on Merchant Circle’s SEO generated a bit of heat as some commenters had been the recipient of some of their aggressive marketing tactics.  By coincidence this morning the Pleasanton Kitchen Remodeler who is installing my kitchen backsplash was over.
The coincidence is that about a month ago I had signed him up for [...]

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After my earth shattering post on using phone numbers for SEO, where I discovered that Merchant Circle had been using small business phone numbers in URLs, Kevin Leu of MerchantCircle pinged me to offer a bit more insight into their SEO strategy. Here’s what I found:

17.5 million page views on June (that’s some [...]

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Making sure your business’ location and services data is up to date across the Web is perhaps the most important thing you can do to help potential customers find you. And the Local SEO Guide is here to help.
The sites listed below are some of the most important in the local search world. On most [...]

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