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Common Google Places Issues Print E-mail
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Google Places is new (sort of) and as such causes allot of people allot of headaches and to be honest with you Google's help section leaves allot to be desired, so I have compiled a list of the most common questions that I get surrounding Google Places Optimizationand the answers to them.

Edit google places listing:http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/static.py?page=guide.cs&guide=28247&topic=28287


To make edits to your business listing, log into Google Places. Your Dashboard will show all of the listings you have added.

In the business info column on the left side of the screen, you will see an “Edit” link underneath your business’s basic listing information. Click the Edit link to make changes.

This brings you to a page where you can edit information about your business, like address, photos, videos, custom attributes, and more! Your changes should appear almost instantly. IIf you wish to edit a listing that was uploaded as part of a bulk listing, visit the Places User Guide.

If you are a business owner, you can verify your business on Google so that only you can make edits to your listing.

If you're not the business owner, but still notice an error in a listing, you can use the Maps User Guide.

Google places listing rejected / flagged / pending:http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=174542

Why is my listing being reviewed?
Your listing contains a term or other behavior that we monitor, so it has been automatically earmarked by our system for further review. This is a temporary state and is expected behavior for terms that require manual judgment.
Please note that this message previously discussed Flagged listings, but the message in Places account now appears as Pending Being reviewed. This article still applies despite the wording change in your account.

What happens when my listing is pending additional review?
When your listing is flagged, it is placed in a queue to be manually reviewed by a member of our team. While the listing is flagged, it will not show on Google. This is to ensure optimal content for our end users.

Once your listing is reviewed, its status will move from Pending to either Active (i.e. showing on Google) or Action Needed Rejected (i.e. not showing on Google). At this time, we do not proactively contact users once their flagged listings have been reviewed.

What do you monitor?
We monitor a variety of terms and formatting which may or may not be appropriate depending on their context. Because of their ambiguity, they require a manual review.

When can my listing be flagged?
Your listing may be flagged for further review any time it is edited (i.e. not just when it is first created).

How long will it take for my listing to be reviewed?
Review time is highly variable. New tickets are generally reviewed within 4 weeks.


Remove OR delete Google Places listing:http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=guide.cs&guide=28247&topic=28306

You can either remove a listing from your Google Places account, or remove a listing from Google Maps. For more information, follow the instructions below.
Remove a listing from Google Maps or Google Places account

Under the “Actions” column for the listing you wish to remove, click Delete. From there you can choose between two options:

  • Remove this listing from my Google Places Account: TIf you associated a listing with your account by mistake, you can remove it from your account by selecting this option. Verification isn't necessary. This listing may continue to display on Google, but it will no longer be associated with your account.
  • Remove this listing from Google Maps: IThis will remove your owner-verified business listing from Google Maps. Some users might select this option if the business no longer exists or has moved. The listing will remain in your Google Places account, in case you’d like to add it again later.
  • Please note: This only applies to listings that you have verified and added to your account.


Once you have made your selection, click Save Changes. If you chose to remove your listing from Google Maps, this should take place within a few hours.
Delete your unverified listing on Google Maps

In some cases, you may find your business is listed on Maps and you’d like to delete it, but you have not verified the listing. We find that users may want to delete these listings because the information is wrong, or the business has moved or gone out of business. Though you didn’t list this location, this information may have been pulled from third-party sources such as the Yellow Pages or Info USA. The best way to remove these listings is to click the more link in the business’ listing and click the Report a problem link. If you need additional help, check out Ways to correct business information.
Removing bulk listings
Removing bulk listings requires creating and uploading a deletion feed. Listings in a deletion feed will be removed from your Google Places account, but they will not be deleted from Google Maps. To delete a listing from Google Maps, you must first verify each individual listing, then delete it.

For more information about creating and uploading bulk listings, follow the instructions in the User Guide.


Merge google places listings:http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=175290

Listings on Google are built from multiple sources of information, including third-party data, Google Places entries, and community edits. We analyze these sources and merge potentially related information into a single listing. Our aim is to ensure a high-quality, clutter-free experience for our end users.

Sometimes, though, it's tough for us to recognize two legitimate businesses with lots of similar information as separate establishments. To help avoid confusion, make sure your business information is unique. Here are some actions you can take to help differentiate your business:

  • Use unique phone numbers for each location. Include the local office phone number rather than the corporate line, if possible. Having unique information is especially helpful for us if your locations are close to one another.
  • Keep your business titles unique, short, and accurate. Not only will this ensure that you comply with our Google Places quality guidelines, but your listing will also be less likely to overlap with another listing and become merged.
  • Ensure that your business location marker is accurate on Google. if you find that it is incorrect, you can fix it from your Google Places account.


If your business listing is merging with another business listing, you can tell us about this issue by using the Report a Problem link. If this link is not available in your country, please report the problem on the Known Issues page in our Help Center.


Transfer google places listing:http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=17104

At this time, there's no way to transfer your Google Places listing from one account to another. If you plan to sell your business or transfer ownership of your listing, we suggest that you create a new listing under a new Google Places account. When possible, you'll want to delete the listing from the old account. Please keep in mind that the new listing will need to be re-verified within the new account.

If you want to change your account login, you can do this by visiting your Google Account settings. Click Edit for Email addresses to swap out your old email address for a new one.

Alternatively, consider signing up for Google Places using an email address you wouldn't mind sharing. That way, if you need to transfer ownership of your listing to someone else, he or she can use the same account.


Google Places account suspended / suspension:http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=176520

Your account was suspended because you were found to be in violation of ourGoogle Places quality guidelines. Please review the guidelines for clarification.

If you believe you have made changes to your account such that you are no longer in violation of these policies, you may request a review of our decision.

If your account has violated our guidelines, it will not be re-included. If you'd like to maintain your business listing(s), consider creating a new account.
 
Google Maps SEO Print E-mail
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Google Places Tricks & Google Maps SEO or How to add my business to google maps

Gaining a #1 ranking on Google Maps or Google Places or Google Local Business Center or what ever it is that they call it these days is a key element in any internet marketing campaign and should be considered inline with all of your other advertising efforts.

Recently I have noticed that Google is pushing the Google Place Pages on just about everysite that I visit today which leads me to believe that they are gearing up to make massive changes and also as a defensive mechanism from the recent push that FaceBook and Twitter have been doing into GEO location advertising.

Twitter with their location based tweets and new advertising model and FaceBook with their recent push where advertisers can use geo location as part of the criteria for selecting where, how and to whom to show FaceBook advertisments to, just like Google Adwords does.

Here are the main criteria that IMO Google uses to rank sites in ther GEO algorithm for local searches.

Citations - Citations are when other web properties "cite" your company, address and phone number.

Some great places to add citations are:

yellowikis.wikia.com
merchantcircle.com
cityslick.net
aboutus.org
citysquares.com
google.com/profiles/
getfave.com
fastpitchnetworking.com
superpages.com
facebook.com
brownbook.net
local.yahoo.com
wikimapia.org
tjoos.com
squidoo.com
yellowpages.lycos.com
kudzu.com
crunchbase.com
naymz.com
gomylocal.com
ibegin.com
hotfrog.com
ezlocal.com
businessdirectory.bizjournals.com
busiverse.com

Reviews - Customer reviews from other websites, such as Judy's Book, MerchantCircle, CitySearch, InsiderPages etc.

User Content, Related Maps - User generated google maps that "cite" your company name, address and phone number.

Categories - The business category that your business falls under, as far as I know, the first category must be a ligitimate Google category but the next 4 can be completley arbitrary and keyword/keyphrase rich.

Discreet Links - A relatively new signal in Google Maps that allows you to add links to specific sections of your website, such as pricing, or specific landing pages for example a specific service.

Media - Photos, Videos - This one is obvious, photos of your store and videos.

Coupons - Share coupons on Google Places with your customers. As far as I can tell you can modify this area of your Google Places without affecting your listing, so change your coupons as needed.

Details - The details section of your Google Places page allows you to go hog wild so to speak with all kinds of different items that you want searchers to see when evaluating whether or not to visit your website or physical store. I have not hit the maximum allowable details yet but I an assure you, you can add allot of details here. Items such as brands, products, other services that you offer, just about anything can go into the details section. Also this is where you can add discreet links, put the keyword or keyphrase in the left hand box and the the link to that page in the right.

BackLinks - Backlinks are still a very important element even to Google Maps and is the underlying juice for all rankings in all of Google's properties. An effective targeted link campaign can do wonders for your Google Places page ranking and can be the edge that some Google Place Page rankings need in order to get and maintain a #1 position.

 

Next up will be a more comprehensive case study on Google Maps SEO
 
7 Ways to Ensure Your Link Building is for SEO Print E-mail
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When it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), there is an abundance of information available. For the SEO novice, there is everything from free on-line tutorials to endless articles chalked full of SEO tips and advice. But, when you go to research link building the information seems scattered, contradictory and sometimes even useless.
Here are 7 things our expert link building team wants you to know about links for SEO:
1. Type

A healthy backlink portfolio is diverse and consists of multiple link types. Google designed it’s algorithm around links as it’s the most natural way to allow the web to essentially “vote” for each other. Since each link counts as a vote, it’s important to ensure your votes look as natural and organic as possible. If your site was recognizably becoming an authority in your space, naturally all kinds of different people and different sites would talk about and link back to you. This is why diversity is so key. If 100% of the sites linking to you were all higher PR, 100% relevant sites, it would actually look unnatural to the engines and potentially create a “red flag”. In order to avoid looking “paid for”, be sure to acquire a mix of link types to ensure your link building efforts appear as natural as possible. A healthy link portfolio may include: Articles, Press Releases, Directories, Social Bookmarks, blog roll links, etc. Some links may be a higher quality than others, but ultimately it’s the mix of link t
ypes together that ensure your link building efforts are effective.
2. Anchor Text

Staying in line with diversity for an organic campaign within link types, the same can be said for the anchor text used to create the links. Sure it’s important to thoroughly research your key phrases and have specific key terms to use for your efforts. However, if a 100% of your new links use the same key phrases only, it begins to look artificial. If various people/sites were to naturally link to you, why would they all use the same anchor text? Instead, by using multiple keywords within the link building efforts, your links will appear more natural. From time to time you may want to use a slight variation of your keyword phrases (add an adjective for example, such as “affordable”), use a direct URL link or even something like “click here” or “10% off sale” in place of your true target keyword phrases. These types of links help the entire campaign appear more natural while still passing “link juice” to your site.
3. Relevancy

Over the years relevancy has been a huge topic of conversation within the SEO community. How important is it to have “relevant” links?  In our experience relevancy is all about the site audience and NOT the site topic(s). What’s important is that the links appear relevant to the users of the site and therefore the search engine can see the purpose of the link. In fact, blogs, directories new sites and social media can virtually talk about anything and everything. Having a mix of links from strong, relevant sites and general family friendly sites is, again, the most natural and therefore effective approach.
4. Page Rank (PR)

Google uses a scale from 0-10 to display their importance of the website/page you are viewing on the Google Toolbar. Many people confuse toolbar PR with actual PR. In link building it’s been said that the higher the PR, the more valuable the link. However, many are simply looking at Google toolbar PR and assuming that is the value of the site, which is simply not the case. Actual PR is made up of several criteria including, but not limited to: the age of the domain, the number of outbound links on that page, daily hits and time on site, number of indexed pages, number of incoming indexed links, etc. Instead, consider building links on pages that already display a cache, show full indexing and overall appear to be “SEO friendly”, regardless of what the Google Toolbar PR is telling you. If we all simply relied on Toolbar PR, we would be missing out on opportunities to get powerful links on pages that actually pass link juice – even if the toolbar doesn’t give the site a “high” ranking.
5. Deep Linking

When focusing on specific keywords within link building, it’s generally best to link to the most relevant corresponding page within the site. This may be the homepage or a subpage within your site that has been optimized for that particular term or niche subject. Most link builders do this because they want to ensure that the best converting page is what ranks the highest in the search engine result pages. However, as important as link are, content is still king! If you have pages within your site that Google hasn’t indexed, you aren’t getting credit for the content on those pages! If you want to really be seen as an authority on the subject you are trying to rank for, you need to have content to support your efforts. To ensure all content is getting indexed by the engines, you need to “deep link” into each page within your site. Not only will your number of indexed pages increase, but your old content will still appear relevant, which could save you a lot of time and money.
6. Age

In order to combat manipulation of the search engines by link “spammers”, in recent years Google placed more weight on the age of a link. Link age is key when evaluating the effectiveness of a particular link campaign. Because Google needs to crawl a link multiple times before giving it credibility, as a general rule, we suggest giving new links at least 3-6 months to fully index – some new links can take as long as a year to show “true results”. As new links continue to age with time, they actually grow in authority and pass more value to your site. The value that age provides cannot be “faked”, so it’s important to start now and then be patient while you give your new links the appropriate amount of time to achieve full indexing and give your site that boost your looking for.
7. Inconsistencies

Google is all about trust, and trust comes with consistency and time. Any new link building campaign will alert Google – this is what you want to happen. However, if the new link building efforts do not continue over a period of time and create a trend, Google may throw up a red flag and actually place a hold on your new links. It looks suspicious to Google when they suddenly see a spike in incoming links followed by a decrease or even nothing at all. Just as link age plays a role, it’s also important to continue a new campaign for several months in order for Google to “trust” the links are natural and organic and therefore give your site full credibility. Inconsistencies can actually harm your rankings and even make it harder for you to rank again in the future. If you are struggling with budget concerns and feel as though you can’t continue a new link project, it’s best to, at very least, continue with some sort of smaller on-going “maintenance plan”, this way you will maintain visibility and link trend tru
st and when you are ready to ramp things up again, you won’t have to deal with “mistrust” issues.
These areas are often overlooked by SEO firms and website owners. Everyone is in search of the “perfect” link, but what they are forgetting is that diversity is the key! It’s not about having only high quality, it’s about making everything you do appear organic, natural and authentic. If you are building your brand and reputation online, you want to be everywhere. Why miss out on an opportunity to get seen?
We know it’s easy to get overwhelmed and frustrated when trying to learn and experiment with link building.  As a professional link builder, you don’t want to damage your own reputation or worse, hurt a clients business! As website owners, you don’t want to overlook key factors in an exciting, face paced and ever changing industry. Industry leaders have to work hard every day to stay abreast of the current marketing strategies, SEO techniques and, of course, Google’s ever changing algorithm. By utilizing the strengths of a professional link building team, you are ensuring your focus remains on what is important – running your business! You’re good at what you do; let us be good at what we do too. When in doubt, call an expert!

 
 
4 Tips to Help Your Company Optimize for Mobile Print E-mail
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Mobile marketing has become a must these days as more and more people are using their cell phones for more than simply making phone calls.  According to a study done by RipRoad, over 234 million Americans have cell phones and around 42.7 million actively used smartphones between Nov. 2009 and Jan. 2010.

A study done by Pew has stated that although 83% of adults have either smartphones or cell phones, of that number 35% have accessed the Internet from their mobile device.  With these kinds of numbers, it’s no wonder more and more companies are optimizing their website for mobile browsers.  Optimizing your site may not be as hard as you think—below are 4 main points to ponder over if you are thinking about going mobile. 

Loading Time

The first rule of thumb when it comes to mobile web design is to have your site load quickly.  If you don’t have a site that is quick to load you are going to lose a lot of potential visitors—which could affect your company’s bottom line.  Some quick tips for better loading time are to cut out Flash and to keep your content short, sweet and to the point.  Eliminating fluff will allow visitors to get the information they need quick and fast.

Location

You also need to decide if you are going to create a new web page for your mobile site, or if you would rather use a sub-domain of your current site. Either option is fine, it just depends on your preference.  Using a sub-domain does seem to be easier to set up, but there are also companies who can do the hard work for you.

For wordpress.org sites, there is a plugin that is great for anyone who may not be familiar with CSS and HTML—Wptouch.  Which, “allows you to customize many aspects of its [your websites] appearance, and deliver a fast, user-friendly and stylish version of your site to your iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Opera Mini mobile, Palm Pre and BlackBerry Storm visitors without modifying a single bit of code (or affecting) your regular desktop theme.”

For the more technical savvy marketer (or if you have a web designer on hand) Mobify is a great option.  Mobify offers both a free service and a paid service.  Some of the features they boast are real-time mobile version of your site, optimization of images, styles and advertising.

HTML5

HTML5 is also shaping up to be a great option for mobile. The iPhone for example (well Apple products in general) do not support Flash.  HTML5 solves this problem by using a video tag that supports video files.  HTML5 is currently being implemented slowly by programmers and browsers are starting to support the new code.  If you are not familiar with HTML5, talk with your programmer and see if it is an option for you.

Testing

You may have been using a smartphone for a few years now, but not everyone is jumping on the smartphone bandwagon.  Make sure when you are testing your mobile site that it functions well on both smartphone and other mobile devices.  This will ensure you are keeping the window open for everyone browsing.

Think about why your clients would go online to view your site.  Is it for information, sales reminders or how to locate your office/store?  Making your site useful and easy to navigate will make customers happy and a give you a great ROI.
 
How To Boost In-Store Traffic & Sales By Optimizing Your Digital Storefront For Local SEO Print E-mail
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We all know consumers research online before making local purchases. A 2010 survey byBIA/Kelsey and research firm ConStat revealed 97 percent of consumers research future purchases using online media: 90 percent use search engines, 48 percent use the online Yellow Pages, 24 percent use vertical sites and 42 percent use comparison shopping sites.

Bricks and clicks are aggressively expanding their online channel, as shown in thestatements of the following leaders:

“45% of in-store visitors pay a visit to homedepot.com first.”

 

– Hal Lawton, President Home Depot Online

“We know that 60% of our U.S. store sales are influenced by our customers’ experience on bestbuy.com.”

- Brian Dunn, CEO Best Buy

What are all these consumers looking for? First of all, they’re searching with a mobile device. APerformics / ROI study reported 32 percent of respondents said they used mobile search “more than I use search engines on my computer.”

Consumers constantly want to know locations nearby or how far they need to travel to find what they need.

They frequently search for operating hours, telephone numbers, products and services offered, coupons and special offers, purchase and in-store pickup info – and these questions are being answered quickly by savvy retailers through their digital storefronts.

What Is A Digital Storefront?

A digital storefront represents a single or multi-location brick ‘n mortar business online. Each store location is represented by a store location landing page that users see when they search for your business on Google, Yahoo, Bing and business information directories like YellowPages.com, SuperPages, Yelp and others.

Below are a few examples of the places where your digital storefronts can be displayed:

  • Your Store Landing Pages
  • Google Places
  • Yahoo Local
  • Bing Maps
  • YellowPages
  • SuperPages
  • IYP’s  and other business directories

When you manage and enhance your presence in the above engines and directories, displaying all of your business data and maintaining consistency, the results are twofold: the engines and directories deliver accurate information to users; subsequently, you achieve higher search rankings, more traffic and more conversions.

Optimizing Your Digital Storefront

Scalable digital storefront optimization is key for increasing search traffic through local and organic search results. People will see your digital storefront, whether you manage it or not.

By not optimizing your digital storefront for Local SEO, you are getting fewer conversions and lower customer satisfaction while diminishing the value of your brand. You will also significantly reduce the market opportunity for each location or dealership.

Since 20 percent of searches across Google properties are local, and that jumps to 40 percent on mobile, why miss the traffic and conversion opportunity?

It’s important to optimize your digital storefront displays, which you can do manually or by using digital storefront software. (Disclosure: I advise firms that provide and/or distribute digital storefront software.)

Most retailers currently do not optimize their digital storefronts for traffic and conversions, and their listings are missing many of the informational components users are looking for.

smartandfinal-300x128

For instance, the example of a poor digital web storefront for “Smart and Final” shows very little information and no mobile version.

 

On the other hand, below are examples of retailer “Sports Authority” optimizing its digital storefront on the Web and Mobile shows this retailer has truly maximized its marketing opportunity.

Since this retailer has multiple locations, it used scalable digital storefront software.

Web Version

SportsAuthorityStorefront-300x494

Mobile Web Version

SportsAuthorityMobileStorefront

 

Because Sports Authority optimized and enhanced its digital storefront so well, its regional stores achieved multiple 1st page positions for the keyword sporting goods, in the market locations it serves.

Note how this provides the best user experience and obtains placement in the top preferred position on page one of the SERPs for Local and Organic.

sporting-goods-san-diego1

Tips To Accomplish The Above Results

Provide users and search engines with the features and information about your company they are looking for. There are six basic features users want and search engine look for on a local digital storefront page:

  1. Images: storefront, employee of the month, manager, products, services.
  2. Location Information: address, phone number, hours of operation, holiday hours, in-store services provided, local descriptions, manager announcements.
  3. Promotions: coupons, loyalty programs, COOP branding/promotion, events, tent sales, community events, sponsorships.
  4. Social Influencers: Facebook, Twitter, Google +1, Yelp and others, check-ins, Likes, sharing, share via email, share via text, text to phone.
  5. UX (user experience) Features: click to call, click to driving directions, text to share, loyalty sign-up, m-commerce, gift card purchase/management.
  6. Rich Media: video, YouTube, product images, COOP advertising/promotion, reviews.

You can perform five basic steps to optimize your digital storefront for search engine and directory visibility:

  1. Location Pages. Build a location page for every location using relevant and updated content. If you have one or one-thousand store locations the process is the same however, using a Web Store Locator Software to generate store location pages is much more scalable and cost efficient.
  2. Mobile Pages. Build a mobile location page for every location with user friendly mobile calls to action.
  3. Local SEO Best Practices. Optimize and add all six of the above features to each location landing page, ensuring you include updated information such as local descriptions, content and Microdata or RDFa mark-up to help the engines and directories understand every detail about each of your business locations.
  4. Submit To Engines and Directories. Submit all of your individual location landing pages to each local search engine and directory. Make sure to enhance your Maps and Google Places pages, linking your location landing page URLs.
  5. Submit To Information Services. Submit each of your individual location landing page URLs and all of your updated business information to Information Services that feed IYPs (Internet Yellow Pages). For instance, you can create bulk feeds and submit to InfoUSA, Axciom and LocalEze.

In closing, this may be a lot to digest, but it’s important for retailers that want to compete aggressively in today’s marketplace to do due dilligence.

You can optimize your digital storefront for prominent visibility manually, or with automated local SEO software as done by Sports Authority; either way, you must optimize to compete in today’s marketplace.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.
 
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