Dominate your local market!  This is my daily SEO mantra, and one of the first and most basic ways to tackle local SEO is by claiming your Google local listing.  This is nothing new.  However, an issue I’ve seen a lot lately stems from Google cracking down on what it considers to be ineligible local business listings.  Google has always said that you cannot claim a business listing if you don’t actually own the business.  That’s obvious – I can understand that.  But the line becomes little blurry for my lawyers and physicians who practice and do business out of several satellite or shared office locations.  What can you actually claim in this case?  The past month I’ve seen a lot of my clients’ claimed satellite office listings disappear.

Here are some guidelines that may help you figure out if you can claim a business location as yours or if Google will consider it against their guidelines and yank your listing.

1. Ownership – this is key – are you the owner of the business location you are trying to claim?  If not, then you cannot claim it as your own.  This means no virtual offices, no executive suites that aren’t normally staffed, and no rented office spaces that you use only when you have client appointments.
2. Service Area Listings – If you provide services from a shared office, or several shared office spaces, you can consider setting up a service area listing instead of a business listing with a listed address.  It is my personal observance and opinion, however, that these listings do not show up as strongly in search results as business listings with a physical address that is visible.  So, I tend to stay away from them unless I have a mobile-only business (landscape service, dog groomer, tow truck, locksmith, glass installer, etc…) that will drive to a location to provide their service.  In the case of lawyers and doctors, 9 times out of 10, there will always be a home office and that is the location I would claim.
3. Rented Space – If you do have a rented office space and you are the ONLY one who does business from that particular office, then you can ask your landlord to give you a separate and unique suite number.  It is possible that you can claim your business listing this way.  Every other person doing business from this location will also need their own unique suite number for this to work correctly.  And, of course, there is no guarantee that Google will see this as a separate entity.  So, until Google provides specific guidelines for these types of business setups, be prepared – you may see your listing disappear anyway.

So, if you DO have shared office space that you cannot legally claim in Google places, here are some things you CAN do to help beef up your local presence at your shared location:

1. Add schema markup  and hcard formatting to all your addresses on your website so search engines know your business information should be associated with that particular location.  Be sure to have it on a Contact or Maps & Locations page.
2. Be sure to list your Home Office Locations and Satellite Offices – making the distinction helps everyone.
3. Create a Google+ Business page for each office and satellite office location.  Add information to each page that specifies your contact information, office hours (or “by Appointment” if you don’t have regular hours), and alternate ways to reach you if you are not at that location on a daily basis.

For some time now, Google has offered the capability of accessing Webmaster Tools search engine optimization data directly from Google Analytics. By linking your Webmaster Tools site to a Google Analytics web property, you can now access additional insight into your site via Webmaster Tools data, including Search Queries, Landing Pages and Geographical Summary data. At the same time, you can now access Analytics reports from your Webmaster Tools sections of Links to Your Site, Search Queries, and Sitelinks.

Step by Step: Accessing and Merging the Data

1.  Login to your Google Analytics account and select the web property you’d like to focus on. Ideally, this will be the same account as you utilized for your Webmaster Tools account.
2. Navigate to Traffic Sources>Search Engine Optimization. Click on “Set  up Webmaster Tools data sharing” when you see the following:
3. Under Property Settings, you’ll see “Webmaster Tools Settings”. Click on “Edit” and you’ll be able to select the verified site that you would like to merge with Analytics. If you don’t have a verified site in your Webmaster Tools account, you’ll need to verify your ownership using one of the options identified by Google.
4. You’ll then be able to view and analyze the data in the Traffic Sources>Search Engine Optimization report.
   

How to Use Webmaster Tools data (Search Engine Optimization Reports) to Your Advantage

• Identify landing pages on your site that have good clickthrough rates (CTR), but have poor average positions in search results. These could be pages that people want to see, but have trouble finding.
• Identify search queries or keywords for which your site has good average positions, but poor click through rates. These are queries that get a good amount of attention, but by improving the content or call to actions could lead to more visitors.

For additional information, please see Google’s resources: “About Search Engine Optimziation” and Linking to Google Analytics.

Although businesses may have many legitimate reasons to utilize a virtual office, also referred to as a satellite office, Google frowns upon their use in Google+Local/Google Places. According to Google’s guidelines, business listings must have a unique address and phone number. Many providers of virtual offices (which include UPS, Regus, and many more) promise that you will be provided with a unique suite number and telephone, but business need to be careful to ensure this is the case. Even with a unique phone number and address, Google has issues with listings that do not conduct face-to-face business at a location (unless specified, which ruins the point of the office), or that do not have staff on hand at least part of the day at the specific listing.

How did these offices come about? Once it was determined that the distance from a business to the city’s centroid, or center point in Google’s eyes, was a ranking factor for certain searches, businesses began buying up virtual offices closer to the city’s centroid in an effort to rank higher for a given term. While Google has downplayed the importance of distance to the centroid, businesses haven’t slowed in their aggressive use of virtual offices. This is essentially spamming Google Maps with listings that are not always serving clients at that specific location.

Google doesn’t specifically outline this issue in their Guidelines, but recently we heard this straight from a Googler’s mouth. We had worked with a Google support member to help clear up an issue with one of our clients’ Adwords Express campaigns, which had been paused due to our Places account being marked “Suspended”. Many internet marketers have been through this hell, having to clean up listings or waiting weeks or months at a time for any updates to be made from Google’s end. As most of us know, Google provides outstanding customer support for their paying customers that utilize Adwords or related services such as Adwords Express, however at the same time they provide little to no support for other Google services such as Places.

We decided to take this as an opportunity to speak with a Google support member about the Express campaign being paused, to see if they could somehow help us sort out the issue with our Places account. We figured once that was cleared up, the Express campaign could be activated again.

So, we reached out to Google Adwords Support, and were connected with a very nice and very helpful team member that understood our issue. After a few back-and-forths, the Googler reached out to another employee within the Places team, who then forwarded the following questions to us:

• Are any of the locations in this account by-appointment only locations?
• Are any of these offices which do not have the ability to take customers coming in from the street?
• To clarify further, are there any offices they rent only by appointment to make it easier for their clients to meet them?
• Are there any offices that are not their permanent location (i.e. they don’t have staff there at all most of the week?) (The bold emphasis was provided by the Googler.)

To help clarify the questions, the team member followed with:  “Again, I know these questions may seem odd, but the goal is just to ensure that the client is representing locations where the business permanently exists and not appointment-only locations rented on an hourly or quarterly basis. ”

Notice that Google didn’t use the terminology for “virtual” or “satellite” office. Unfortunatley, our client had been utilizing two by-appointment only offices that were essentially the definition of a virtual office. We responded truthfully and deleted the two “offending” listings from our account. They then responded with the following:

“I’m glad to report that you’re now operating within our guidelines after having removed those listings.  We’re only concerned with showing the permanent physical locations for businesses that advertisers have the authority to represent and are not meeting-only locations, so we really appreciate your efforts here!”

The account was cleared up and we were able to run our Adwords Express campaigns again, while also having our business listings published live once again.

The big takeaway? No, it’s not to call Google with all of your problems. Rather it’s that Google doesn’t specifically outline all of their issues with using virtual office locations in Google Maps in their Guidelines document, but they certainly are looking out for these listings and are looking to pounce on them once found. Be careful when your business or client is moving forward with virtual offices!

Yesterday at PubCon 2012 was probably the most info packed day of the week. From the early morning news that Internet Marketing Ninjas in New York acquired WebmasterWorld Online Forums to the jam packed late afternoon Authorship session in a crowded Exhibit Hall A, my notebook was brimming and my brain was spinning. No, not from comped casino beverages, but from a virtual dump truck of information exchanged here at the second big day of SEO sessions. Standout tracks from the day were the Bing session and the Authorship discussions.

Duane Forrester from Bing delivered an amazing presentation, that has so far been my favorite track from the conference series. Entitled “What’s Up at Bing?” it was less of a – here’s what we’re doing – type of discussion, and more of a layout of the future of search and the tools that Bing has at the ready for all inquiring SEO minds. Two main things to remember when thinking about SEO in 2012 and beyond is to see the act of search as less of a one time action and more of a lengthy session. Forrester pointed out that for many things (such as a cup of coffee, a slice of pizza, or a recipe) the search may be a one and done type of deal, but for a substantial purchase, or to find a family doctor, the searcher is going to do considerable research. They are going to spend hours, even days, gathering and digesting information (good content), specs or credentials, where the business is located (local), and product or service testimonials (reviews and recommendations in their social circles). According to Duane Forrester’s data:

“44% of search sessions last a day or more”

and in order to capitalize on this, to leverage your product and your brand, you need to be focusing on a different style of search and keyword data than the current one search SEO query is looking at.

A lot to think about and digest? Yes!  But, that was just the beginning of the knowledge-fest because hot of the heels of the Bing talk was the Authorship session (otherwise known as rel=”author” tagging in G+). That’s been the rising focus of many SEO campaigns since August of 2011, and it was clear that the mechanics are still hard to grasp for newcomers to the topic as they were for those of us who have been trying to keep up with Google’s changing preference for implementation methods over the last few months. There were furrowed brows, many questions, and some blank stares in the large crowd listening to Eric Enge, Stephen Spencer, and Jim Boykin shed light on the subject.  At Page 1 Solutions we’ve been following all the changes and keeping up with the most current info regarding authorship, so there was not a lot of new info for us here, but it is good to know that we are solidly on the right track.  Go Page 1 Ninjas!

The rest of today will be spent listening to thoughts on competitor “stalking” (aka – gathering intelligence about what your competitors are doing and analyzing the data). More about that and the final thoughts on the conference as PubCon wraps up later this evening.

PubCon 2012 Las Vegas, NV – Day 1

Yesterday was the first full day of conference sessions at the PubCon conference in Las Vegas. True to Vegas style it was energetic and loud and full of pumped up music and flashing lights. The keynote, about the psychology of motives and persuasion by Dr. Robert Cialdini, was an informative introduction to the day ahead.

There were a lot of new people to meet, and an abundance of great information to be digested. I am proud to be a part of an industry that thrives on knowledge and has such passion for guessing the next piece of the puzzle in the game of SEO. As a whole, the SEO community is very exciting and forward thinking. Everyone I met on Tuesday was eager to share what makes them passionate and what gets them excited about working in this field. I was asked questions like: Do you find it difficult to traverse the Google landscape since the changes in local+? What types of A/B testing do you do with your websites and what has been the most influential revelation from that testing? How do you leverage Pinterest for a local small business? Do you Foursquare? Authorship and Search, how huge has that become, and where will it lead? It’s enough to make a nerdy girl like me giddy.

I am literally amazed at the amount of topics covered in just a few hours the first day at PubCon, and I’m grateful for the chance to be a part of such an inquisitive and passionate community.

Two big takeaways for me from the the first day of the conference:

1. G+ linked content gets indexed faster than content linked from Twitter and Facebook (more about this to come in a follow up blog, but for now, know that it is pretty important to get set up on G+ and utilize it to promote your website and blog content.)
2. Matt Cutts announced the ability to Disavow Links in Google Webmaster Tools (this is HUGE)

Matt Cutts announces the Disavow Tool

 Best quote of the day?

“Google is really making things complicated!” -Marcus Tober

I’m looking forward to Days 2, 3, and 4 – and sharing some of what I learn with you through this blog.

SEOgadget has recently posted on conversion rate optimization (CRO) to increase leads.  They have developed a methodology to help you beat the struggles and difficulties when trying to get customers to convert to valuable leads.  The CRO methodology that they have implemented to help conversion is very simple: identify, target the core barriers and test the changes.

Check out their full guide to conversion rate optimization:

A CRO infographic by SEOgadget.co.uk, read the full guide on SEOmoz

Conversion rate optimization is removing the barriers to conversion.  You need to identify the weak points of your site’s conversion funnel and build on your sites strengths.  The way that SEOgadget puts it is that CRO is a scientific process of diagnosis, hypothesis, and testing.  You will need to research the barriers to conversion.  Why are people not converting?  Learn about your …your site may have usability issues, weak calls to action and persuasive techniques or irrelevant page content.  Learn about your users…what are you users looking for?  Are you giving them what they want?

This isn’t a guessing game….do not guess as to why people aren’t converting.  You have the tools to figure out why people aren’t converting and what you can do to change it.

The first thing you need to do is to set up funnels. Analyze where your users are entering and exiting your site.  Identify where they are abandoning your site and where you can improve.  Here are some great tools to create funnel conversions: Google Analytics, Omniture and Kissmetrics.

Also research your analytics.  You can analyze what people are actually doing and what is happening on the site.  You can see what keywords they are searching for and what pages they go to.  Of course google analytics is an amazing tool but there are also tools that you can use for testing including ClickTale, CrazyEgg, Ethnio, Usertesting and Whatusersdo.  These programs will show you exactly where people are clicking on your page and go in-depth as to how many clicks, when they click, what they search, etc.  My favorite tool is CrazyEgg!

The next step is to identify the barriers that users may have.  Give them the option to ask open ended questions and get the information they need on the spot.  Some good survey tools are Kissinsights, Kampyle and Pop-Survey.  Good instant help tools are: Olark and LivePerson.  Try and limit the information you require them to give.  People are very hesitant on giving personal information like their name or phone numbers.  They want answers and information, so give it to them.  The only thing that may be a good requirement is an email address.  This way you can follow up with the user and it can improve response rates which increate conversion rates.

Try and test your site.  Pretend you are a user yourself.  See if your contact form is working, secret shop your sales staff, call you customer service number, test your employees.  There may be simple issues that you are missing.

Sell your site to your audience.  Give your users reasons why they should want to contact you.  Get reviews to your site, list accomplishments, achievements, awards, community service, and testimonials.  Let them know why you stand out and why you are “better” than your competitors.

Once you have diagnosed your errors and barriers, set a plan of action of how you are going to improve your site.  After you have made improvements on and off of your site, being testing and repeat the entire process.  SEOgadget says to review your test, analyze the analytics, and compare it to what you had before.  Most likely you will have better results and more conversions!

So we all have been doing it….cramming as many keywords we have into our title tag using only 70 characters that Google “kindly requests” us to limit our title tags to.  But it seems that things have changed a bit.  Previously Google would only display 70 characters and cut off the SERP title after that.  Now based on an experiment, Google seems to care more about how wide your title is.  Google is more concerned on the measurements of the pixels that your title is regardless of how many characters there are.

Google no longer puts a limit on the number of characters in your SERP title. Rather, it limits the title based on the pixel width.  To sum it up, the old rule of “70 characters or less” is no longer being used.

Read more here: http://www.seomofo.com/experiments/serp/google-snippet-07.html

Google has also been frowning upon long title tags.  The blog by Google Inside Search released a monthly list of algorithmic tweaks for May.  3 of them specifically had to do with how titles are displayed.

• “Trigger alt title when HTML title is truncated.”   When html titles are truncated, trigger alt title.  Algorithms are designed to provide the best possible title.  When the current title is too long, it gets truncated.
• “Efficiency improvements in alternative title generation.” Google has improved the efficiency of title generation systems and they have been more focused on a set of titles actually shown in search results.”
• “Better demotion of boilerplate anchors in alternate title generation.”  When displaying titles in search results, their goal is to avoid anything that does not describe the page.  It eliminates text that is not useful.

When your title tag is too long, Google is simply trying to algorithmically determine a better title for the page instead of truncating it for a better page title.  Having a short title tag that is search engine friendly has increased in importance.  Without this, Google would replace your title with just about anything.  This replacing of title that Google will do may lose you the opportunity to entice uses to click on your page.

Final recommendation: Make sure your title tags have shorter, rich keywords and be conscious of how wide your tags are. 

Bing, the “little brother” search engine, has been ferociously revamping its’ services and image over the last few months and really throughout 2012. Through catchy advertisements, improvements in user interface and layout, social media implementation and even a point system that rewards users for “Binging”, Bing has gone all-in attempting to make ground on a search market largely dominated by Google. In fact, Bing has frequently gone the exact opposite route that Google has taken, possibly because those at Microsoft sense a small agitation over Google and the large corporation’s recent tactics and techniques.

Modern and Catchy Advertisements

While Google has always spent ample amounts on advertising and marketing their search engine and products, Bing wasn’t always as aggressive. However, recently Bing’s marketing team has really upped the ante, especially with television advertisements. Throughout 2012, Bing has targeted the young, web savvy crowd of internet users by using the newest and most popular music and bands to help display their services.

Below is just a small sample size of the bands and songs used in their ads in 2012 alone. Click the link to view the advertisement.

• Lumineers – Ho Hey
• Alex Clare – Too Close
• Parov Stelar – Jimmy’s Gang
• The Naked and Famous – Young Blood
• Wiz Khalifa – When I’m Gone

Webmaster Tools Update

Bing has made some excellent strides in upgrading and improving their Webmaster Tools with their dubbed “Phoenix” update. What was once the ugliest, most user-unfriendly layout ever has now become quite the opposite. By mimicking some of Google’s Webmaster Tools layout and adding some of their own pizazz and tools, Bing now provides webmasters with great feedback and allows them to more easily manage their site. The image on the right is a screenshot comparing the menus for Bing and Google Webmaster Tools, respectively.

Bing and Google’s Webmaster Tools now share many common tools and reports, such as:

• Sitemap Submission and Review
• Craw Error Reports (404, Access Denied, etc…)
• Impressions and Clicks Data
• Keyword Research and Data
• Fetch as Google or Fetch as Bingbot
• URL Removal and URL Parameters

While I’m not saying that Bing blatantly copied Google’s layout and techniques, it is pretty obvious where they got some of their creativity from. And why not? Webmasters have become quite familiar with Google’s Webmaster Tools for years now, and Bing is just filling in a gap. They are now on the same plane as Google in these offerings and reports.

Bing has also added new tools: SEO Reports, SEO Analyzer and Link Explorer. The Link Explorer is much more of a complete backlink tool than the links you can find in Google Webmaster Tools, which only shows links to the domain that you manage. Bing’s new Link Explorer is more closely related to the old Yahoo Site Explorer, and I feel/hope that eventually they will be one in the same. The SEO Reports tool, according to Bing,

“…will run an SEO report every other week for any domains verified in your account. Using approximately 15 SEO best practices to scan against, it prepares a report to tell you if you are in or out of compliance with the noted best practices.”

This is pretty awesome, with Bing’s SEO opinions and thought straight from their perspective to the webmaster. SEO Analyzer seems to be somewhat similar to the SEO Reports tool, but you may manually scan any URL from your verified domains to see about best practice compliance.

It is important to note that all of these new tools are still in Beta, so expect them to change frequently.

Facebook Integration and other Partnerships

In an effort to build upon their “Decision Engine” campaign, Bing implemented personalized search results “based on the opinions of your friends by simply signing into Facebook.” Searchers can now see results and opinions from your Facebook Friends via the right sidebar of Bing’s SERPs. While I don’t see the average searcher jumping to Bing simply for this reason alone, I think it’s a large step that Bing is taking that goes against the grain of Google’s efforts. While Google tries to force its own social media platform onto users, Bing embraced the most used social platform on the web and instilled it into its results. Facebook already used Bing Maps and Bing results in its’ search functionality, but this partnership shows that Bing is more dedicated to working with third party companies as opposed to buying them out or pushing them out of the market, a technique commonly used by Google. In a similar fashion, while Google pushed Yelp out of results and targeted Zagat, Bing partnered with Yelp and now displays Yelp reviews on their local and maps sections.

I think it’s interested that while Google pushes and elbows its’ way into practically every business medium that it can, Bing is taking the opposite route: partnering with the very same companies that Google failed at either partnering with or buying out.

I don’t care so much about the effect these updates will have on market share so much as the quality of the search results and the information that I can gather through Bing Webmaster Tools about my site. I personally am excited about the future of Bing if they continue in this direction, and that is something I never saw myself saying.

Last week Google gave us a gift, the Penguin update.  In what seems to be their never-ending changes to its infamous algorithm the Penguin in all essence is a continuation of Panda (introduced to the world in 2011). The idea behind the Penguin, like was the Panda, is to provide Google visitors with high quality, original content. After all, that’s what we all want isn’t it?

Have you noticed a drop in search traffic to your website? To many webmasters the Penguin update was Antarctic cold. It literally sandboxed (meaning, de-indexed, out of sight, no longer in existence and can’t be found. Ouch!) many sites Google thought were scamming their system.

Now is the time to check your analytics. Did your site get hit? Websites that took the brunt of it all were using grey hat and black hat SEO techniques. Some commonalities from these sites that got hit are:

• Paid text links with the idea of having your keyword be the EXACT match anchor text. Worked great… up until a week ago.

• Comment spam or users who would have exact match anchor text in their signature.

• Guest posts on questionable sites. Let’s not be mistaken here. Guest blogging is a great SEO technique. However, it can be damaging to your sites rankings if your entire resume of guest blogging is from low page rank sites. And to further do harm, to again have too much emphasis on exact match anchor text and not quality content.

• Article marketing sites. These sites were of low quality, many had little regulation or guidelines in place regarding submission policies and thus published thin content that held exact match anchor text. With auto-syndication tools available, article marketing proved an easy –virtually hands free way of quickly gaining hundreds and thousands of back links to a website.

• Inbound links from bad neighborhoods.  Websites sitting in what Google considers “bad neighborhoods” are no good. Stay away, they are dangerous! These sites have been flagged for malware, dominated by pop-up ads, and other issues Google considers spammy. Links to / from these neighborhoods will do nothing good for your website equity.

All of these techniques worked great… up until a week ago. Classic example of quick gain and short-term profits using black hat SEO techniques. Obviously this isn’t the goal of the majority of business owners.

Yes, Google got excited about blog networks like BuildMyRank and organizations like TribePro. Does that mean what was once grey hat SEO techniques are now black hat?  Grey hat was the loophole around Google. Unfortunately, many who know little about SEO probably got caught up in these practices thinking they were white hat and have since seen their rankings plummet. That is why it is essential to learn the meaning of white hat SEO and diversify your link building strategies.

Should we SEO specifically for Google?

This is a valid question for anyone with a website. Google is the largest search engine boasting nearly 70% of all searches on the internet. How can small businesses compete with the larger ones and not have their entire income suddenly dry up after another Google update?

Of course it’s not best practice for anyone to put all their eggs into one basket. It’s essential to diversify your link building strategy as it would be in any business. Internet Marketing isn’t an exception to diversification.

Let’s go over some other possibilities to optimize outside of Google.

• Socialize content. Blogging is an essential component to your overall presence online. But your efforts don’t stop once the blog has been written and published. It needs to be seen. Share it across your Social Media pages. If you aren’t in the Social Media game now, you’re missing a large opportunity for exposure. I suggest starting small with Facebook, Google +, Twitter, and YouTube. Of course you don’t need all of them but, each of them offer your clients / visitors great benefits to develop a relationship based on trust.

• Exchange blog posts with others in similar non-competitive markets. Exchanging blog posts holds two benefits. The first, it allows you to cross over into someone else’s home on the internet as an invited guest. Your new audience is looking towards you as a trusted referral.

• Quality content. After all, isn’t this why Google keeps updating their algorithm? It’s imperative your site has quality content that over delivers time and again. It will build trust with your clientele, prospects, and community. It’s like a good book versus a GREAT book. Which one has a better chance to become timeless? We want our websites to become timeless regardless of a change in algorithm and it begins with quality content.

• Facebook. Interact regularly with other businesses on Facebook and develop a relationship with them (below I’ll reveal an old school offline marketing technique that when done right will explode your online marketing!)

On a similar note we cannot disregard Google’s investment in Google +. If you think Google is not tracking +1′s  and Google + shares, think again. Take advantage of this easy to use tool and reward yourself by teaming up with Google.

• Purchase Ads on Social Media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Because so many people share so much about themselves on Facebook, Facebook Ads can be designed and adapted like no other, certainly not Google Adwords. Take advantage of that information and create an Ad Campaign that targets the exact demographic of your clientele.

It’s time to think like a Publisher. Create content once and spin it into multiple channels. Create photo galleries on Flickr.com, videos on YouTube and create podcasts for your visitors and prospects to listen to. Turn your blog posts into an e-book to sell or give away. Of course with all of these methods you always point the user back to you via link to your website or other Call to Action such as a phone number or irresistible offer.

Think like an Entrepreneur. It’s time to stop worrying about what Google does. The simple truth is that their algorithms aren’t going to stop. Let’s get back to old school marketing techniques that can help our online marketing efforts. I’m talking about Joint Ventures. Team up with other businesses in your location and explore ways where you can achieve mutual benefits and new opportunities. For example, if you’re a scuba dive shop owner you can team up with local hotels in the area. Maybe together you’ll decide that guests staying at this particular hotel can get your scuba dive for 10% off published rack rate. When guests take you up on this offer, encourage them to leave a review (with your website link) on review sites such as Yelp and TripAdvisor. You win with the business and the added link juice and the customer wins with the great deal and easy accessibility of it all.

Another opportunity is to team up with a local charity. Again, you’ll be crossing over into new exposure and increasing your odds to rely less on Google algorithms and more on building long-term sound business practices and white hat SEO techniques. Will you rank on page 1 over night, mostly likely not but there is a good chance you’ll be in business for the long-term and that is a good thing.

Remember, Google is only 1 marketing channel. Let’s not forget about other search engines and let’s especially not forget about diversifying both our link building strategies (white hat SEO!) and offline marketing opportunities that can lead to positive reviews and ultimately more link juice.

To ranking on the first page for a long-time.

Listing in Directories is one way of building links and can bring value to the site provided we make sure that the directories are credible and have authority in the eyes of the Search Engines. Google is said to prefer Directories that are human edited and that have very specific categories for listings ( e.g.Yahoo Directory).

Here are some points to keep in mind:

1. Does the Directory have a good Page Rank?
If the Directory has a low PageRank, it probably does hold much authority with Google.

2. Are Category Pages Indexed? To be more specific, is the category page you wish to be listed in indexed in Google?
If the category page that you wish to be listed in is not indexed in Google, then the page has no power to improve your site’s link popularity, because Google does not know about it, it cannot recognize that it is linking to you.

3. How Many Sites Are You Sharing the Link Juice Wealth With?
In most cases, an interior directory category page will contain ten listings – maybe twenty at the most.If the directory has too many listings on the same page, it may not be worth getting listed on there unless it is a proven source of traffic.

4. Does the Directory Add the NOFOLLOW Attribute To Its Listings?
If you are submitting to a directory to help improve your site’s link popularity and they are adding the nofollow attribute to outgoing links, it is not going to help you. Unless you are expecting to get some traffic from the directory, avoid it.

5. Will the Directory Send You Any Traffic?
It is worthwhile to keep a track of the traffice being received from a directory to decide whether it is reliable source of traffic for your website.