Small Business Local SEO Services

I have to share this because apparently thousands of people a month search for a solution to this problem.

How to uninstall Microsoft Office 2007!

I tried the uninstaller info on the Microsoft website and it did not work. Approximately five minutes into the Microsoft Office 2007 removal, I would get a message saying the removal was not possible, blah, blah, blah.

I tried to remove Office 2007 several times with the same result. Apparently, without the installation CD, removal is impossible. Or is it?

No it is not. I found a way and I have to share it.

Go to this site: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/Uninstallers/Remove-Office-2007.shtml

Download the free and safe Microsoft Office 2007 removal tool. Run the program and Office 2007 is removed.

GeoCities, a longtime Internet destination and web space provider is being shut down by Yahoo. The online destination which was bought by Yahoo in 1999 for a hefty $3.6 billion apparently has no value at all according to Yahoo. Although receiving over 10 million unique monthly visitors as recently as last month, Yahoo is closing the doors.

I say this to emphasize the joke Yahoo has become as a online “business”. I am frequently asked by small business owners wanting to rank their business websites, “What about Yahoo?” Well, ranking for Yahoo is hit and miss and there really is no real search volume  there anyway. Yahoo Local has some value but if no one is searching in Yahoo, Yahoo Local’s benefits are minimal.

You can read the full story here.

Google delivers ranking results based on relevancy above all else. The most relevant result for any search in Google will be pulled from sites that are geographically tied to the country of the search origin as a default.

This has been tested and proven by SEO professionals around the world. It can be a little more expensive but it will be difficult to rank a .com in the majority of the search results where a .co.au or .co.uk populates the results.

How many foreign websites do you see in the search results for searches done in the US? I do not see many, unless searching for foreign websites or topics.

I don’t use Internet Explorer as my Internet browser. That is because Internet Explorer sucks. I have felt this way for years. My distaste for IE started several years ago when I started making a living as a web designer. I am not going to get into all of the details here as I have a more recent example as to why Internet Explorer still sucks.

The image above is a screen shot of my homepage to this site in IE7. Do you know what’s missing? If you are using Internet Explorer to visit my site right now you probably do not know what is missing. I will tell you. My sidebars are not there. They are completely gone. Also, the homepage stops about half way down the page. Now the crazy part is, if you click on any of the posts listed on my homepage and go directly to the post pages, the sidebars are then there, but not  on the homepage.

I tried updating to IE8 hoping that might correct the problem but it did not.

So, Internet Explorer still sucks.

If you want a much better web surfing experience, I recommend you do what I did several years ago and start using the Firefox browser. You can download it here.

Luckily, the majority of my visitors already use Firefox.

The image is a little hard to read. The blue part of the graph is my Firefox visitors and the green part of the graph is my Internet Explorer visitors. The good news is, the majority of my website visitors are seeing my site just as it was designed.

I have posted some very important information on this site. I have received emails thanking me for my post on locating blogspot blogs for links. Blogspot blogs carry tremendous authority and a link from almost any of these blogs will greatly help your website’s rankings.

I have also received positive feedback from my post on directory listings. Both of these posts deal with the benefits of links for your website’s rankings. It is, after all, links pointed toward your site and the link text in those links that makes your website rank.

Links are the most important element of SEO.

That being said, I have to report, the absolute only way some websites will ever get to the first page of any very competitive Google search is through paid links.

I know some of you have read about the dangers of link buying. How Google will penalize your website rankings if you buy links. I have read the same articles and guess what? Paid links still dominate the majority of the most competitive search results. I have seen over the last year or so that paid links are also very popular with many search results that are not as competitive.

This is because paid links rank a site.

Literally a hand full of paid links costing on average of $500.00 to $1,000.00 a month will rank almost any business website for any relevant search phrase that makes that business money. These paid links will put you in first position for that very important money phrase and many related phrases as well. First, second and even third position for many online businesses equals huge revenue month in and month out.

The cost of the links are more than worth the expense.

I have wanted to post this info for quite some time. However, as a “SEO”, discussing link buying out loud is considered taboo. I’m not scared by much. My job is to increase website traffic, SEO is the process that makes that happen. Specifically, inbound links make that happen. It takes links to rank. It takes large numbers of inbound links to rank and for an increasing number of online businesses of all sizes, it will also take very high authority, high quality links to rank and these links are what you get when you buy links.

Every website can benefit from high authority links. If you would like to discuss the benefits of these types of links on your website’s rankings, contact me today. In a few minutes on the phone, I can do a little research and tell you if the sites that rank where you want to rank are buying links.

If you can’t beat’em join’em

The search industry is filled with more than it’s share of information sources, some good, in my opinion, most not quite up to par. Of these information sources, a few I consider very good. One such source, Web Pro News.

One of the things I hear repeatedly on those less than cutting edge SEO blogs and even many websites of providers of SEO is talk of keyword density. This is my opinion of keyword density:

This went out with 1999. Actually, many top SEO professionals have stated publicly that keyword density never really existed, except as a part of a service that could be sold to the unsuspecting website owner. There are still many so called SEOs who reference this relic of an idea but it really tells more about their lack of SEO knowledge more than anything else.

Do not concern yourself with keyword density.

This is posted here.

It would seem that one of my favorite sources of real SEO and search marketing information has the same opinion as I do.

Keyword Density – This one might surprise you a little bit.  Keyword density is kind of a joke.  It is in fact NOT desirable to work 500 instances of your target keyphrase into the text of your target page.  I know this seems counter intuitive to some, but I for one was very glad to see this claim supported by some data in the Ranking Factors session.

If your page is about Blue Beach Widgets, you have Blue Beach Widgets in your title and you have pages linking to your blue beach widgets page with the terms ‘blue beach widgets’ in the anchor text THAT is good.

You do NOT have to whore out the content of your page to have ‘blue beach widgets’ repeated 50 times in the description.  I know you have seen these pages…  they look like:
“Bob’s Blue Beach Widget Emporium has the finest selection of blue beach widgets on the web.  Our blue beach widgets are so much better than our competitor’s blue beach widgets, that all of our blue beach widget customers all think our blue beach widgets are the best blue beach widgets ever. So if you need a blue beach widget, or have a friend that needs a blue beach widget, tell them to visit the blue beach widget emporium to find the best blue beach widgets in the blue beach widget business”

This has to stop people. It makes your site read like a bad skit on the Muppet Show. This kind of thing makes me cringe, and it’s ruining the Internet.  Well maybe it isn’t ruining the Internet like MTV ruined America, but it does make for some horrible web pages.  I still hear SEOs talking keyword density to site owners.  If you are a site owner and some SEO comes talking to you about increasing your keyword density, do everybody a big favor and throw something at them.  Please.

The entire article summarizing ranking factors for 2009 can be read here.

Other than my site, Web Pro News is an excellent source of REAL search engine optimization information that can be put into use on your website today.

By far, the most often asked question I get by local business owners is; “How do I get my Google local listing beside the map?”

I have read many theories but the most common belief is that getting reviews of your business on sites like Yelp, City Search or the Yahoo local directory will influence your positioning beside the map in Google. I believe this is probably one of the factors Google uses when other factors are not available. However, I know from experience that links play a much more important role in getting your local business website beside the map in Google.

Believing that links are the biggest factor in getting your site beside the local map, I have read that the links with the greatest ranking abilities are those from local businesses websites within the geographically located city you wish your listing to be displayed for. I also believe this is a factor in getting your Google local listing beside the map.

I am sure there are many factors that are used by Google to determine which local business is listed by the map. I am sure reviews and local links are very important to these listings. In my experience, I have been able to get businesses positioned beside the map by the use of geo-targeted anchor text from inbound links.

Example:

To be positioned beside the map on a search for Las Vegas Chiropractor, you will need a good number of inbound links to your business website with “Las Vegas Chiropractor” in the anchor text of those links. Using a variety of anchor text helps to make the link profile look more natural and aides in the effectiveness of the linking. “Chiropractor in Las Vegas”, “Chiropractor Las Vegas” or “Vegas Chiropractor” would all be great anchor text for inbound links to help your local business website to rank in natural search for those search phrases but will also help to get your business website listed beside the map.

If you have a local business that needs the benefits of being listed beside the map, contact me to get started today. My linking will get your business listed in natural search rankings as well as a listing beside the map.

36

have been accused

of spousal abuse

7

have been arrested

for fraud

19

have been accused of

writing bad checks

117

have directly or indirectly

bankrupted at least 2 businesses

3

have done time for assault

71 repeat…

71 cannot get a credit card

due to bad credit

14

have been arrested on

drug-related charges

8

have been arrested

for shoplifting

21

currently are defendants

in lawsuits, and

84

have been arrested for

drunk driving in the last year

Can you guess which organization this is?

It’s not the NBA or the NFL!

It’s the 435 members of the

United States Congress…

The same group of idiots that crank out hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us in line!

I received this in my email today, not sure how accurate it is but I believe it probably only scratches the surface. I thought I would share it here. My blog posts tend to get some very good visibility in search results so it is my hope that this bit of information is seen by many.

Please feel free to post a comment below if you found this post in a search.

Thanks to a reliable source, I have been educated on the practices of LocalAdLink. If you have not already done so, you might want to start by reading this post.

For starters, LocalAdLink is not relying on any natural search traffic. It didn’t take me long to figure this out. Their traffic comes from a variety of Partner Websites include Photography.com, Davesgarden.com, CNN.com, Facebook.com, and Myspace.com. These are paid marketing channels.

LocalAdLink has also partnered with over 100 Search Engines, such as Google, Yahoo and MSN, allowing local business owners to be displayed in searches targeted to the zipcode of the local business. Yahoo may send a small amount of traffic, MSN will send literally no traffic at all so LocalAdLink is relying on Geotargeted ads in Google as well as the lesser used search engines to send traffic to their geotargeted pages. This traffic, which has been bought through PPC buying is then resold to the local business who has paid to be listed in the LocalAdLink network. As I stated in the previous post, LocalAdLink is just another middleman and one of the worst kind at that.

Any service that provides website traffic to a client, in this case small business owners who are probably not very familiar with this type of rip off, are definitely very low in the bottom feeder world of internet marketing. Basically the scam works like this. LocalAdLink sets up geographically targeted ads in cities across the country. Searchers seeking local businesses or services in Google, Yahoo or MSN see a sponsored listing and click on that ad. The ad takes the searcher to a LocalAdLink page where the searcher than has the opportunity to view and click on additional listings on their site. If your business listing happens to be the one that is clicked on, you are charged a pay per click charge that pays for the Google ad cost, the LocalAdLink fee and a commission to the “account rep” that has sold you and your business into the network. Instead of paying Google for the click, you and up paying the search engine and two other middle men for the visitor.

Obviously, this means the cost per click is tremendously higher than if you had a PPC campaign setup in Google, Yahoo or MSN.

Long story short. LocalAdLink is a ripoff for the small business owner and quite possibly a total scam altogether. If your business need help with pay per click marketing, contact me for the help that will make your paid spending return a profit for your business.

Even worse, LocalAdLink is apparently offering their “marketing opportunity” as a business opportunity to those who feel good about taking advantage of small business owners.

There is a new local search directory in town, so expect to be cold called.

I learned of LocalAdLink through a press release that was forwarded to me by email. I had never heard of the company before but I read the release and visited the site hoping to find something worthy of the small business owner’s hard earned money.

I was disappointed.

From the press release:

LocalAdLink is a provider of services that enable local businesses to reach local customers with targeted Internet advertising. The customer facing Web site, LocalAdLink.com, is a local search directory and acts as the central hub for the LocalAdLink technology. When a customer visits LocalAdLink.com, proprietary geo-targeting software identifies the customer’s location and displays relevant local business listings. In addition, LocalAdLink has created an Advertising Network that publishes local business listings on its owned and operated sites, as well as partner sites.

Nothing new there. Sounds like a Reach Local clone. The release goes on to say…

In the past ninety days, over 30,000 small businesses have chosen to advertise on LocalAdLink. We expect over 100,000 more small businesses to begin advertising in the next 90 days. In addition, the i-SUPPLY division will begin its exclusive phased rollout to LocalAdLink’s Independent Salesforce the first week of May. We anticipate revenue growth from both product sales and advertising space created by this new division.

From my visits to LocalAdLink since the press release was released, there really does not seem to be much interest by local advertisers. Many searches returned the dreaded “No Results Found” page. I got this page time after time from searches that should have provided me with some form of a business listing. I even got this page when searching for specific cities.

Obviously, there is more to do at LocalAdLink than the press release would reveal. This is understandable. It is better to get something online than to wait for everything to be put online. This, however, is not understandable.

http://www.localadlink.com/directory/search/hotels-and-motels/Nashville%2C+TN+37201%2C+USA/

That is the link to my local Hotel and Motel category. Do you know what that is? It is an ugly URL. Specifically, it is not SEO friendly. Now it’s not the ugliest I have ever seen, but to be a local search marketing directory, you would expect to see something a little more SEO friendly than that.

As if that was not bad enough, I made one final observation that says all that needs to be said about LocalAdLink. The page title for every page on their site is, LocalAdLink. Nothing more. This makes it almost impossible for any of their pages to rank for the categories or local listings they are selling. This means no natural search rankings that will send searchers to your category or business listing.

Titles on web pages are extremely important. No page title or worse, page titles that are all the same is the death of a website’s natural search rankings. Spending money on any listing within the LocalAdLink is literally like throwing money away.

Do you have money to trash?

LocalAdLink has three packages. $49.95 a month, $99.95 a month and $199.95 a month. None of them are worth a dime.

If you are considering advertising with LocalAdLink, contact me first. I do not do high pressure sales. I specialize in local SEO and my SEO rates provide real contact with a SEO professional that can increase your website traffic.

These search directories offer to send you traffic from their website for a monthly fee. You will pay this fee even if there is no traffic to the pages in the directory. Don’t let the middleman conn you from money that is better spent optimizing your own business website.

FYI: LocalAdLink is hiring!