The Competition Is Clueless
December 20, 2011
Welcome to the Google Places SEO Citations blog at Tucson SEO Solutions.
This blog covers local SEO which is dominated by Google, Google Places and the need for citations. The blog also covers just about any thing related to Google search results and related topics. I hope that you might glean some useful resources while you are here.
The Competition Is Clueless
I seen my fair share of shaky SEO products and services over the years. But I seldom have had the opportunity to examine my local competition business practices up close. However, that has changed recently and I will be sharing what I have discovered.
Recently, someone contacted me about acquiring SEO services. They had used a local website developer to build their website but SEO was not part of that process. When the client discussed SEO with them they were offered a 6 month program for about $600.00 a month. This person though that SEO was a one and done proposition and he didn’t understand why it would take an additional 6 months.
I took the time to explain that SEO is not a one and done process. I further explained that a 6 month proposal was a reasonable approach. But I cautioned him that everything would really depend on what they were offering to do. So he read me the proposal over the phone. What I heard was appalling. Other than providing some monthly reports and 8 or so links a month that was about it. Everything that I heard was BS and fluff.
I mentioned that I thought they should be arrested for malpractice. Now, this is a local business and this proposal only dealt with the organic free search results. Their was no mention at all about Google Places. So I asked what was their primary keyword phrases. Then I looked them up on Google. All the keyword phrases that I looked up had 7 Google Places results at the top of the Google search results.
Yet, there was no mention of Google Places in this SEO proposal. On the odd chance that this business was to rank # 1 in the organic results they still would be sitting in the 8th position overall. I had a hard time hearing that there was no mention of Google Places at all. I took the time to explain this to the caller at great length. This really bums me out when I hear this kind of nonsense.
Then today, I talked with an individual who became my client. He had told me that he had hired a local SEO provider previously. He stated that it did help some but he had lost confidence in this company. He sated that his website just was not providing any leads. After a lengthy conversation I asked if he had hired a Tucson based company. He indicated yes and he gave me that companies name. I indicated that I knew this person but that this was the first time that I had seen her work.
Now, this gentleman markets are extremely niche even for a local business. I explained that since he had extremely few competitors so ranking well should not be a problem. I wondered why he had limited success. Then I visited his website and it quickly became apparent why he needed my assistance. She, his SEO provider, failed to optimize his website for Tucson where he does business. I though OMG!!!!!!!!!!!
This is very basic stuff folks. If your business is in Tucson, you optimize the pages for the products or services and for where he is located. It’s much more difficult to rank well for Tucson related searches when you do not optimize for Tucson. These people were provided or proposed services that will want work and at significant cost. This kind of stuff just drives me crazy. How these people can take their clients money and provide such lousy service really makes me angry.
Everything that I do is based on market research. That’s why I have a 100% success rate of getting my clients onto the first page of Google for multiple keyword phrases. So yes, I have a problem with SEO providers who appear to be clueless.
What say you?
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Twitter May Have Some SEO Value After All
June 7, 2011
Welcome to the Google Places SEO Citations blog at Tucson SEO Solutions.
This blog covers local SEO which is dominated by Google, Google Places and the need for citations. The blog also covers just about any thing related to Google search results and related topics. I hope that you might glean some useful resources while you are here.
Twitter May Have Some SEO Value After All
If you are a regular around here you might have noticed that I am not a big fan of using this micro blogging service. As evidenced by my opening line which goes 117 characters long I don’t do Readers Digest condensed version of anything well.
So the constraints of 140 characters is very a challenge for me. But my disdain for Twitter goes much deeper than that. I like useful relevant information. So what someone had for lunch or what they did last night is meaningless for me.
Originally, I thought it would be a good idea for follow some other individuals and companies that are also providing SEO services. The problem with this idea is that when I followed links from these Tweets, it was mostly just noise.
It seemed that everyone that I was following was tweeting almost anything related to SEO. Most of this information was a waste of time for me. I wasn’t getting the fresh information that I desired.
As for the SEO side of me, that is really where I see little value in using Twitter. The links that are provided on Twitter are no follow links so they don’t help in the search rankings. I tend to only use sites that provide Do Follow links for obvious reasons.
I also observed that my Twitter traffic bounced 100% of the time. That means these visitors came, they looked around, and within 20 seconds they were gone. So I figured why bother. That was until today.
I read a comment on Bruce Clays website that made me rethink my position on Twitter. The writer indicated that yes Twitter links are No Follow. But they noted that when they are re-tweeted they may appear as Do Follow Links.
The problem that I have with this idea is that well this is true, Twitter links still don’t provide anchor text links. Twitter re-tweets still will only provide a generic website link. However, That is just enough of a reason to give Twitter another look.
I also am planning on using Twitter in an upcoming video marketing campaign. So it might benefit me to acquire a few more followers. I have already set up profiles on several hundred sites that allow Twitter feeds to be used. So the plan is to connect as many of these sites as possible.
It should be an interesting adventure.
What say you?
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If your business is located in the communities of Tucson, Yuma, Flagstaff, Tempe, Mesa , Chandler, Arizona or beyond and you need Google Places SEO Citations solutions please call Tucson SEO at 520-505-6024 Now!
Tucson SEO… Solutions that create probabilities out of possibilities.
Keeping Up With Page Rank V 2.0
June 4, 2011
Welcome to the Google Places SEO Citations blog at Tucson SEO Solutions.
This blog covers local SEO which is dominated by Google, Google Places and the need for citations. The blog also covers just about any thing related to Google search results and related topics. I hope that you might glean some useful resources while you are here.
Keeping Up With Page Rank
This was originally posted back in 2009.
This is not a post that indicates some hidden truth or explanation about Page Rank. No, it is simply a post that indicates why I pay so little attention to it. Our site and blog had been sitting with a PR of 3 up until the most recent update. Then they both dropped down to a PR of 2. Both had seen steady increases in links so I was a bit perplexed, but it seemed to be part of a general trend. Many websites are experiencing PR down grades these days.
Then I noticed that our Tucson Small Business Networking Group site had a PR of 4. The site was just launched in May and Yahoo’s Site Explorer showed only 17 backlinks recorded. How could this be? Brand new sites are not supposed to have any PR. So how then did I end up with a PR of 4? This is beyond my understanding. Page rank is supposed to be a delayed report based on months old information.
Then today I discovered that the site and blog now have a PR of 3 and the networking site has experienced a downgrade to a PR 3. Could it be a fluke in the Page Rank? I don’t know. It is still this way days later and nothing has changed!
Well over a years time that situations changed. This website now has a PR of 0, but it still ranks well. As for me I only concern myself about page rank when I am building backlinks.
Update 06/01/2011: Back in late 2009 I added a widget to some of my blog posts. Google didn’t like this at all and the blog dropped out of sight in the rankings. Not only that we lost our Page Rank for all of our pages except the home page.
After, I remove the widget, the rankings were quickly restored but not our Page Rank except the home page. However, the blog and many of our sales pages continued to rank well. Often these pages would rank # 1 for their targeted keyword phrases but the page still showed a 0 PR.
My takeaway is this. I now am only concerned about PR when it relates to me acquiring backlinks from other pages. While I might want a higher PR for ego purposes it doesn’t seem to have any impact on our rankings. My 0 PR pages often out rank pages with PR’s of 4 or 5!
What say you?
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If your business is located in the communities of Tucson, Yuma, Flagstaff, Tempe, Mesa , Chandler, Arizona or beyond and you need Google Places SEO Citations solutions please call Tucson SEO at 520-505-6024 Now!
Tucson SEO… Solutions that create probabilities out of possibilities.
Google Sandbox Theory Debunked V 2.0
May 19, 2011
Welcome to the Google Places SEO Citations blog at Tucson SEO Solutions.
This blog covers local SEO which is dominated by Google, Google Places and the need for citations. The blog also covers just about any thing related to Google search results and related topics. I hope that you might glean some useful resources while you are here.
Google Sandbox Theory Debunked V 2.0
This post first appeared back in May of 2008.
I had been reading every since I got into Internet Marketing about this mythical thing called a Google sandbox. I never believed it and by the time this blog arrived I had three sites that ranked right out the gate and stayed there. This would seem to put holes in this theory, at least for me.
I have since launched six other SEO related websites that very quickly began to rank well in the Google search results. Now, I came to the internet game in late 2006 so it is possible that this sandbox did exist at one time. However, over the last three and a half years I have seen no evidence of its existence.
Surprisingly this topic still comes up for discussion on forums all the time. This is why SEO can be so confusing for so many. Certain practices that once worked will become obsolete over time. However, those who make money on these services have a vested interest in keep the practices going. They want to continue to make money and they could care less if there methods still work. Search engine submission services come to mind. They were a valid service in a previous century but they are mostly useless today.
We re-launched this website back in April of 2008. To market the site we created some linkbait that we call our ‘Do Follow List.” It is a of lists of blogs that still pass link juice from comments on their blog.
Two months later the websites “Do Follow Page” sat at #4 in Google for the keyword phrase “Do Follow List.” Now, up until we began this linkbait effort we were not targeting this phrase. These three words never appeared together on the same page of our website previously to this project.
Now, the original post: Google Sandbox Theory Debunked
This is where the sandbox theory comes into the story. So if you follow the sandbox theory it should take six months before this keyword phrase would start to appear in the SERP’s for our site. Almost every SEO will tell you that any work done on a site will take that long to be effective.
Yet, this phrase, Do Follow List, was regularly appearing on the first page after one month. We did not want to write about this until it had reached the top 5 and stayed there for a week. Well, this just occurred.
You might think that we did so well because our linkbait produced thousands upon thousands of links. However, we were not flooded with tens of thousands of links. We did pick up about 2,000 or so links because of this project.
What I believe had the greatest impact was the comment activity on the blog where the list resides. The comments have dribbled in every other day or so and we responded to every question and almost every comment. We put social into our social media effort.
At the time of the original post there had been 90 comments. Currently (as of) Nov. 28 2008 there are now 345 comments. The search engines reward this kind of activity. The visitors and commenter’s enjoy being part of the conversation and seeing a lively discussion. Also their kind comments were very encouraging when the process was becoming tedious and boring (maintaining the lists.)
In less than 2 months we were able to rise to the 4th position in Google for a competitive keyword search “Do Follow List”. We are talking 156 million competitive results. The whole process required time commitments that have exceeded 400 hours and we are still counting.
So this is our evidence that the fabled sandbox doesn’t exist. I am so thrilled to have such documented evidence to debunk this theory. We have never believed in the sandbox after our first website went onto the first page of Google results quickly. Skeptics chided me on blogs and forums that it could not be done for a competitive keyword search. I think 156 million results make my point.
This accomplishment is partly due to that fact that few websites are actually making an effort to maintain their interest in the “Do Follow Movement.” We seized the opportunity and began planning our assault on this keyword phrase two months in advance of ever publishing the list. (this has since changed but we still rank at the top for this search)
So my friends there are no secrets in this business, except those held within the algorithms. If you really want to obtain the first page of results, it is obtainable; you don’t have to except sandbox theories. You really only need a burning desire to be a winner, a good plan that is well executed, time, and resources.
Success is within reach, you just have to want it bad enough and ignore those who say it can’t be done. Believe in the sandbox theory if you must for me is has never existed.
We invite you to join the conversation and leave a comment. We also invite you to continue the conversation on your blog or perhaps use a trackback, or maybe even social bookmark this article, give it a Digg or Stumble it.
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If your business is located in the communities of Tucson, Yuma, Flagstaff, Tempe, Mesa , Chandler, Arizona or beyond and you need Google Places SEO Citations solutions please call Tucson SEO at 520-505-6024 Now!
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Google Drives Me Crazy
April 30, 2011
Welcome to the Google Places SEO Citations blog at Tucson SEO Solutions.
This blog covers local SEO which is dominated by Google, Google Places and the need for citations. The blog also covers just about any thing related to Google search results and related topics. I hope that you might glean some useful resources while you are here.
Google Drives Me Crazy
This post was originally posted in 2009.
That’s right Google drives me crazy, but it still shows this website and blog a lot of love. The overall site and blog rank extremely, as in it ranks on the first page for over 60 keyword phrases that we target. That’s the love part. The crazy part for this site is it can’t seem to make up its mind when it comes to the keyword phrase, Local SEO. It can’t make up its algorithm on which page that it should rank higher our Home page or the Local SEO page.
I though that Google had settled on our home page as the primary page for this search. For most of the summer it settled into the # 4 position. Then in August it started bouncing between these two pages and our rankings suffered. Over the last three days it had delivered our Home page first. Today, it is serving up the Local SEO page first. A lot of this has to do with what data center your search was directed towards.
Yes, Google results are not the same across all of their data centers. I have never seen an explanation for this but it continues to be a problem, at least for people like me.
My other really big concern is the changes that Google is making to its Local Business Center (LBC.) (Now Google Places) They are rolling out new add features that have been appearing in San Francisco and San Diego and that have been widely covered by local maps followers.
For those outside of our industry the LBC simply is the known as Google Business maps.
Just when I was ready to start offering optimization of the LBC for clients Google started rolling out new features. This caused a major upheaval in the results. The LBC algorithm is separate from the primary results that it produces. It is based on what is known as citations.
These citations usually appear as recommendations and reviews that appear on other websites. These have disappeared not only for us but all across the board. This caused many websites to be dumped off of the first page of the maps. This is not a very good thing at all.
So from one day to the next Google sends me and thousands of others into frenzy while we try to figure out what is going on. Generally, these work themselves out… in a week or two. Did I say that I am still waiting! This new add placement feature will make us all rethink Local SEO.
04/20/2011 This craziness continued at a rampant pace in 2011 with the May Day update and Places Search roll out just to name a few changes. The biggest change is Google’s push into local markets. It has rolled out and then closed Tags.
Google is also slowly rolling out an AdWords product for local business that it calls Boost. It is the spawn of the testing that I spoke of earlier. Boost is basically a fixed price AdWords program for local markets. This might be a promising option for local advertisers.
It really all depends what the price per month per keyword phrase is before one can accurately determine what the cost/benefit is. I, for one, have never used AdWords but I might consider offering Boost for clients. It all depends what Google is going to charge.
What say you?
Our Services:
If your business is located in the communities of Tucson, Yuma, Flagstaff, Tempe, Mesa , Chandler, Arizona or beyond and you need Google Places SEO Citations solutions please call Tucson SEO at 520-505-6024 Now!
Tucson SEO… Solutions that create probabilities out of possibilities.
