Enhance Your Google Local Listings | Search Engine Journal

Editing Listings in Google Local

Okay, now its time to get to business and start editing directly in Google Local Business Center. Here are some ideas, tips and suggestions to keep in mind on an itemized level:

* Titles: Use common business names, not official ones that no one would recognize. If you can do so logically, integrate a primary keyword or phrase that people would be searching for. An example of a poor listing I came across was for “Big Tony’s Pizza #3 Inc” — Imagine then how “Big Tony’s Pizza and Subs

* Addresses: You would be surprised at how many listings I’ve seen where Google tells me that a business is being displayed in an approximate location. I’ve seen restaurants on lakes, hotels in residential neighborhood, and a car dealer inside a military base. Do not rely on directional indicators (N, E, S, W, etc.) and spell out things like boulevard, street, avenue and others. Be as descriptive as possible, and check to make sure the location is plotted accurately and correctly. You can make corrections using the “Fix incorrect marker location” area of your listing editor.

* Web Pages: Since we are talking about search engines, its common sense to connect your business to a URL. That said, many listings go without a URL bring connected to them despite the fact that they exist. This is yet another reason you need to verify your connection to the business!

* Phone Numbers: Add in all the phone numbers that make sense. Restaurants could have a main line listed for business purposes, another for take out and delivery, and another still for an automated reservation system. Adding them all in will only help to educate your consumers and help make things easier for you once they want to do business with you.

* Categories: These are vital to your success, so choose and update them wisely. Do not assume things are good as suggested either. In fact, test out how different categories will impact your listings over time, and work to implement the best approach across the board.

* Hours & Payment / Photos: I have a rule of thumb here? Overwhelm Google. Add in a gallery of photos and be as descriptive as possible in these areas. If Google has to retain that data for you, you can be assured that they’ll want to push their users to it.

* Custom Fields: Get creative and play around with this. Upload menus, sales and specials, seasonal rates or coupon codes? The options are only limited by what you can think up and add in!

via Enhance Your Google Local Listings | Search Engine Journal.

Getting Started With Adsense

A very important element in the rapid adoption of AdSense is that it has been very easy for publishers to get the ads on their site as quickly as possible.

Integrating AdSense in your website takes only a few minutes, and you can be on your way with one or more nicely integrated AdSense ads.

The first thing you need to do is navigate to http://www.google.com/adsense and either apply or log in with your existing account and password. What follows is a page presenting the Google AdSense Terms and Conditions which you must agree to in order to proceed. Read more

Website Marketing for Local Business and Local Search

“My website has been online for six months, but I can’t find my site in Google!“

As a website and internet marketing professional, I hear this often.  Most of the time, when I speak to small business owners about their existing website, I hear stories about how that website  does not get the traffic that they were expecting.  The small business sector (those businesses who have less than 10 employees and that serve a local market) are becoming more sophisticated, and realize that they need a website as part of their every day marketing efforts.  However, too many of these business owners do not know how to get their website to rank in search engines.

There is a difference in strategy when marketing a website that serves a local market (i.e. restaurant, local contractor, a hotel, etc) than there is marketing a site that targets a National audience (i.e. online retail).  The basic strategies are the same. But the difference is that there are a number of things that a website owner can do FOR THEMSELVES that will greatly help the search engine rankings.

This article  is written for the small business owner with a website. Listed are some items that can really help a website gain ranking, and are things that can be done without a webmaster’s help. All it takes is some time and patience. These are things that our company, AIM – Arizona Internet Marketing, does as part of a larger search engine marketing effort on many websites. Read more

Hits vs. Visitors : Website Traffic Monitoring

Has your business ever been approached to advertise on a website? Were you offered a claim that said something like “Our website gets “60,000 hits per month?”  If so, I suggest being suspicious of that sales pitch.

A “HIT” is not the same as a “Visitor.”  A hit is counted when an individual element of a webpage is accessed. A popular news web page that has many graphics, news feeds, pictures and other elements might have 75 elements on it. One visitor coming to this page would then count as 75 hits.

You may find that a claim of 60,000 hits may equate to only 16 visitors per day on that website. It can equate to any number of visitor counts, depending on each web page and its content and construction, but you get the idea.

What is a Hit?

A web page is typically made up of a number of individual elements. An element is a photo, a graphic, a javascript, a css stylesheet, etc. When a web page is viewed, each of these elements is requested by the web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc) from the web server, and each file request increases the hit-count for the website.

A “Hit” is counted each time one of these individual elements are accessed. Read more

Business Yellow Pages vs. Web Marketing – A Comparison

Post courtesy of Ed Kohler, president and founder of Haystack In A Needle

Here’s a quick question for you: Why are you using the web to find out more about Yellow Page Advertising?

Based on our experience with web marketing, and as web searchers, here are a few common answers to that question:

For consumer products:

• It’s convenient.
• I don’t know where my yellow page book is.
• I’m looking for something very specific.
• I like to research my needs before talking to a sales person.
• I’m shopping from work – it’s easier to use the web than a phone from cube land.
• I can’t find out about the product/service I’m interested in through the phone book and
• Nobody would help me if I called a company to find out more about this product/service (aka. Phone-tree black hole)

For Business to Business products and services Read more